TNL

It’s a common leisure activity to switch on VH1 on a Saturday morning and plonk yourself in front of the television to enjoy the long and relaxed breakfast you never get to have on a weekday.  

But if you happened to tune into a rerun of Friday’s Hope for Haiti telethon, you would have had a different kind of wake up on your weekend.  

‘Haiti I can see your halo…pray it won’t fade away,’ Beyonce crooned from under her fringe; ‘I’ll stand by you…wont let nobody hurt you,’  Shakira consoled in her rendition of a Pretenders’ classic, and then, the most prayerful moment of all, when Justin Timberlake very humbly offered his rendition of a piano-accompanied Hallelujah.  

It wasn’t just the music; it wasn’t just the fact that if you called to donate money you could talk to Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan or Taylor Swift; what kept you watching was the scary reality that people, not too different from the rest of us, who usually beam sun-kissed smiles and bask under the shade of plaintain leaves, just like the rest of us, were now struggling to lift themselves out of a great tragedy.  A tragedy that moaned through the unsettled dust of collapsed buildings, rubble of broken lives, while we, in an island of our own, remained preoccupied with a flagrant display of ring-side politics. 

Yes it’s true that we forget others when we get caught up in the concept of personal gain,  but it’s more scary that the ones we forget quickest of all in such times, are those who are most scarred and most vulnerable to the greatest losses when forgotten. 

George Clooney teamed up with MTV to produce a Hope for Haiti telethon featuring the likes of Coldplay, U2, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. 

Super trio, Bono, the Edge, Jay-Z and Rihanna teamed up to compose an original, called Stranded, Haiti Mon Amour. 

Haiti was struck last week by its worth earthquake in two centuries and up to three million people were affected by it.  

If you want to know how you can help log on to http://www.hopeforhaiti.com/help.php

Like a Prayer - Madonna

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Hallelujah – Justin Timberlake

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Stand by You - Shakira

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Let it Be – Jennifer Hudson

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Lean on Me – Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock and Keith Urban

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Stranded – Haiti Mon Amour – Bono, Edge, Jay-Z and Rihanna

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Each of these songs can be purchased on iTunes.

 In the words of Jay-Z, ‘sky falls, earth quakes, we gonna put this back together, we wont break.’