We then visited a World Health Organization doctor so that we could get the booster injections we needed. I was nervous about not having the money to pay the doctor’s bill, but I kept my faith that somehow I would be able to pay later. When the nurse giving us the injections heard about our plan, she gave us some of the treatments for free, adding in extra ciprofloxacin antibiotics and diarrhea pills.
Next, we had to decide where to go. We chose Sri Lanka because it was an extremely poor, small country and wouldn’t receive as much assistance from its own government or international aid organizations as the other countries that had been hit, such as India and Thailand. Some of my friends had been on surfing trips to Sri Lanka, and they had told me shocking stories of the poverty and horrible hospital conditions there. I read that although the coastline had been devastated, there were still places in the capital city of Colombo where one could buy food and supplies, so I found a cheap hotel online where we could stay the first night, and printed out road maps of Sri Lanka from the Internet. We would head out to the affected areas after we’d had a chance to stock up.
Later that week, my friend Samantha brought us sleeping bags and walkie-talkies. We packed those along with our other basic necessities—a first aid kit, medications, rubber gloves, waterproof matches, and flashlights. We had to be ready to camp out in the wild if necessary. Of course, I also threw in my bottle of Chanel No. 5. I packed my handheld video camera, thinking it would be useful for taking some shots of the tsunami damage. That way, I figured, we could hold a small fund-raiser when we returned to New York a few weeks later. Noticeably missing from my gear were plane tickets and spending money, but those were only minor details. I knew that I was going to make it there somehow.
I continued to watch the disaster day after day on TV. I couldn’t believe it when the reporters said that the death toll had now reached over 100,000 people. It made me sick with frustration to think about how every second I sat in my apartment could mean life or death for someone over there.
On New Year’s Day, Oscar heard from a friend of a friend in Telluride, Colorado, who knew a chef called Bruce who was also heading over to Sri Lanka. We spoke with Bruce on the phone and coordinated a cooking stove and a few other supplies. We told him to stay in touch about travel plans.
My friend Mark Axelowitz had three children, Nicole, Jared, and Chloe. They had the idea of making hot chocolate to sell outside a grocery store in New York to raise money for the tsunami victims. The next day, the whole family sat outside in zero-degree weather selling hot drinks and cookies. Then Mark and his wife invited me to their home, where his children presented me with $300, half the money they had raised (the rest they were donating to the American Red Cross). I was excited and humbled by his children’s actions. It was the only cash donation I received before leaving home.
At 2 a.m. on January 3, 2005, I finally received the phone call I’d been waiting for. It was from my friend Joe in Michigan. He had found me an air ticket and had driven two hours in a snowstorm to the airport to buy it for me. The only hitch, he informed me, was that I had to be at JFK Airport in three hours. I was ready. I turned to Oscar, who still had no clue where his air ticket was coming from, and told him that I needed to leave. I said that he should follow me as soon as he could, and not to give up until he found a ticket.
Two hours later, I set off into the unknown, waving to a nervous Oscar through the rear window of a taxi. I was leaving home with $300 in my pocket, tears leaking out of my eyes, and a heart full of love.
Eighteen hours later, I landed in Singapore to connect with my flight to Sri Lanka, and the airlines informed me that I had a twenty-three-hour layover. It felt like I was finally at the marathon starting line but the race official had yelled, “Ready, set, stop!” Furthermore, Singapore Airlines wasn’t going to give me a free room to wait in. I burst into tears like a little girl. I explained my mission to the airline attendee and flashed my September 11 Ground Zero American Red Cross badge, and they quietly slipped me a hotel coupon.
When I got to the hotel, I checked my email. Oscar had written to say that he was now on a flight heading toward me. He had called his friends Tony Detre and Henry Jarecki, who had happened to be at the airport at the time and purchased him a ticket. Oscar had had two hours to pack and get to the airport. He’d only just made it. The best news was that due to my extended layover, Oscar was able to catch up with me in Singapore. After some long Italian kisses in the airport, we continued on to Colombo together. So far the whole trip had been like watching a magician pull a rabbit, a tiger, and then a jet plane out of an empty hat. The universe unlocked its magic, and we were ready to ride.
Sri Lanka is an island shaped like a large teardrop located to the south of India. The country was called Ceylon under British rule, and its teas are among the finest in the world. It is also a very long way from New York City.
At the baggage claim in Colombo, I met a large, loud man named Donny Paterson. He was an ex–Army engineer and truck driver from Newcastle, Australia, who had come by himself to help the tsunami vicitims. He reminded me of a young Crocodile Dundee. When he told me he was on a mission from God, I saw it as a sign from the universe and asked him to join us. Now the only problem was that I had to go over to my protective Sicilian boyfriend and tell him that I had just invited another man to tag along with us. Surprisingly, Oscar was a good sport about it, so Donny came with us to our pre-booked hotel. He quickly proved a critical addition to our inexperienced team, possessing loads of practical skills, like building and truck driving, that I didn’t have.
Bruce French, the chef from Colorado with whom Oscar’s friends had connected us, joined us the next day, and we became a team of four volunteers. Bruce was a quiet, muscular outdoorsman in his forties who was shocked to find Donny in his hotel bed when he arrived at 3 a.m. Bruce lived in a yurt in Telluride and was a private chef to Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones. Cute and well-weathered, Bruce had sailed all over the world and added a calm strength to our gang. He ended up being the voice of reason in our team.
We found the yellow pages, which were actually white, and searched for car rentals. It turned out that there were streets full of rentals close by, so we set off on foot to find a vehicle. After much negotiating and heckling over what in the end was only an extra dollar a day (it sounded like thousands in rupees), we rented a minivan that came with a non-English-speaking Sri Lankan driver. We packed the van with food and water bought from a local supermarket in Colombo and waited anxiously for our driver to meet us at the agreed-upon time of 4 a.m. He arrived two hours late, but at least he made it, and we started driving down the coast to find the tsunami disaster zone. At last, we could get to work.
Australians are loud. I should know: I am one. But Donny was louder than any Australian I had ever known, and he never stopped talking. He had a voice that could be heard in outer space. As he jabbered on for the entire ride down the coast, the rest of us sang along to James Taylor on the van radio as the sun was rising.
It wasn’t long until we came upon what used to be the Sri Lankan coastal villages. Everything was gone, like some giant monster had come through and demolished the place. I felt as though I was standing at the gates of hell on September 11 again, only this time there were still people alive whom I could help.
Villagers wandered around looking sad, desperate, and lost. Donny asked if we could stop for a while. We walked around the rubble asking people if they were okay. Donny yelled out, “How are you, machan!” (“Machan” is an old English term that means “my friend.”) People cracked a smile as he offered them a cigarette or candy. We didn’t have enough water or food for everyone, so Donnie’s gifts, a bag of airplane toothbrushes, and big smiles were all we had to give that day. Soon Donny was surrounded by fifty desperate people grabbing at him to get at the goods he was passing out. It was quite a frightening experience and I motioned to the driver to start the van in case we had to make a quick getaway. But the crowd died down when they
saw he had nothing left.
Donny and I opened our first aid kits and attended to basic medical needs. It was 105 degrees and Donny was melting over everyone. He bandaged an old man’s leg with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth and sweat dripping off his head. Throughout the day, Donny proved to be a caring and competent medic, and I was relieved to have him by my side. Oscar did what he did best: He started performing magic tricks and break-dancing for the children. Bruce listened even though he couldn’t understand what people were saying and beamed love all around. He had a gleam in his eye that could soothe anyone.
After hours of hot, sweaty work, we continued driving down the coast in a quiet state of shock. Hundreds of miles of coastline were destroyed and starving people sat around everywhere. Where was the help? Where was the government? Where were the aid groups and the NGOs?
It had been ten days since the tsunami, and we felt very alone.
This was Oscar’s first volunteering experience. He had always wanted to do something like this but didn’t know how. In those first days, he was excited and nervous. He chain-smoked, not knowing what he was supposed to be doing, but soon felt more at ease performing magic tricks for the children. Donny was retired from the Army and living in the suburbs of Australia with his wife and three teenage kids. He had a restless soul and had a powerful calling to serve others. Bruce had sailed to Sri Lanka years earlier and had made a deep connection with the people, so he had wanted to come back to help them. He made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with first aid—he was there to clear rubble and build. Ever since my experience at Ground Zero, I had been eager to do similar work again. I had learned that when a disaster happens, nobody is really in charge and there are always ways to help.
We stopped at village upon village, and we were surrounded by people with medical needs. A small cut that got infected could lead to amputation and deformity later. There was nowhere for these people to go for treatment; we were their only hope. I was grateful for my nurse’s training.
We came to yet another destroyed village called Kosgoda, where people sat around in hopelessness. We cooked rice and handed out water and gave hugs. Donny saved a little turtle that had been trapped in a well and rounded up the village kids to release it back into the sea as a symbol of good luck. On the beach we came across a decaying headless body, which had just washed up out of the ocean. Everybody, including the children, stared in shock. It looked like a boy around ten years old. The corpse had a strange rope tied around its belly, and its feet and hands had been chewed off. And it had an erection. We moved the crowd farther down the beach and released the turtle into the water. It just floated there as if it were dead, so Donny gave it a few hefty pushes and at last it swam out into the ocean. Everybody cheered and the children huddled around us.
Back in the village, a toothless ice-cream man arrived on a rusty bike. He had cycled from somewhere inland. Oscar bought the entire village ice cream, and for a few minutes the world tasted better.
An elderly man from the village walked over to us and introduced himself in English. He told us that long ago, he had traveled to the United States on a ship. He then showed us an old American one-dollar bill covered in plastic, which he kept in his pocket, and offered it to us to help. He had kind eyes but was ashamed about having no teeth, so he covered his mouth with his hand as he spoke. He talked about the tsunami troubles and then introduced us to the village leaders, acting as translator. They told us that it didn’t matter if we had nothing to give them; the fact that we had come from the other side of the world from very important countries was enough to give them hope. Then they got on their knees, bowed before us, and started kissing our feet. Later, we found out this was a Sri Lankan custom, but I never did get used to it.
As it started growing dark out, we stopped in a larger town to buy ropes and plastic so that we could rig up a temporary shelter for people to sleep under. In the shop, we met two guys named Luke and Steve, who were pilots from Emirates Airlines. They had been coming to Sri Lanka to surf for years, and when they had heard about the tsunami, they had grabbed their first aid kits and flown over to help. Luke had left his wife and two-month-old baby girl in London. We bonded instantly. They told us about a village they had just found with an overturned train, and mentioned that there was also a town nearby where we could sleep. We all decided to head there right away.
The town of Hikkaduwa had been destroyed, but since there was a large reef in front of it to protect it, it wasn’t hit as badly as other areas had been. The worst affected villages were the ones where the locals had removed the coral reefs. In those reefless areas, the water surged through and destroyed everything. In Hikkaduwa, on the other hand, many structures were still standing, although the shops and hotels had filled with water and the goods had washed away. Most buildings were boarded up. We found the only guesthouse still open. It was called The Moonbeam and it cost four dollars a night. I felt great about the accommodations, as I had thought we would be spending the night in tents. The news reports had shown only destruction.
There was nowhere to eat, so we opened up our cans of baked beans and pears. We cooked them by flashlight on Bruce’s little stove on the pathway outside the guesthouse. It had been a long day. I pulled out my handheld video camera and asked the gang to express their feelings. Our reports reflected the sad situation. Then Oscar asked Donny if he had “had a special moment” that day. Donny said that he hadn’t really had time to have a “special moment” that day because he’d been so busy. “But maybe I’ll have one later tonight in bed when no one’s looking,” he said, cracking us all up. Donny’s irreverent sense of humor reminded me of my brothers. I knew it would play a large role in getting us through our journey.
We woke up at 5 a.m. to a beautiful sunrise and walked along the beach, staring out into the now tame ocean. Bruce cooked baked beans and eggs we had brought from Colombo. I began to put on my shoes and found a little mouse sleeping in one of them. We then drove back to the village Luke and Steve had told us about, which was located about four miles from the town where we had stayed the night.
The village, which was called Peraliya, had been completely destroyed. A forty-foot tsunami wave had attacked it and overturned a passing train, killing approximately 2,500 people and destroying 510 homes. The wave had also surged up the river and traveled two miles inland. The only remaining structures were the school library and one block of classrooms. As we walked around, villagers who had been sleeping in the open rubble came over to us. They looked like the walking dead. I found a mound of long black hair hanging on a tree. At first I thought it was a wig, but upon closer inspection I discovered it was a real human scalp, just like out of an old American cowboys and Indians movie. The force from the tsunami must have ripped it right off of someone’s head.
The overturned train in Peraliya
Nobody spoke English, so we communicated with sign language. The villagers needed clean water, food, shelter, and medical aid. All the wells had been contaminated with salt water, so we began by handing out small rations of bottled water. Children swarmed around me begging for a small plastic lid full of it, and I watched them suck it into their mouths like it was chocolate syrup. My insides twisted as I realized that the situation was far worse than I could have ever imagined. I cried out to God to send every spare angel in heaven and on earth to this hurt area of the world.
Next we started cleaning out the library building, which was completely filled to the roof with broken tables, mangled chairs, and ruined books. Donny found men to help him remove the furniture, while I collected the wet books and laid them out in the sun to dry. Bruce found a ladder and climbed onto the roof to start patching up the huge holes with the tiles he had found on the ground. Steve tried to help him but realized he was scared of heights and came down quickly. The temperature outside was an inferno. Sweat ran down our bodies as we worked.
As the day scorched by, hundreds of people slowly appeared from out of nowhere. They mos
tly sat around under the trees in shock. I knew from the news reports that many people had lost more than twenty family members to the tsunami. Men had come home from fishing trips to find their entire families and homes washed away. Although I couldn’t understand what the villagers were saying, I listened to their stories as I worked, and found that I didn’t need to know their language to feel their pain and make them feel heard.
Meanwhile, Oscar surveyed the area. He found a Buddhist temple and walked inside to speak with the monks. Sicilians are generally good at two things: eating and getting stuff. The monks led him to a room with a surprisingly large amount of rice and spices, which Oscar asked for in exchange for medical supplies. I’m not sure if it was a fair trade, but Oscar managed to set up what he called “the restaurant” in a school classroom. Village women helped cook the food in a gigantic pot over an open fire. As soon as it was ready, hundreds of starving villagers inhaled the lunch.
Donny at our makeshift first aid station
In the afternoon, Luke, Steve, Donny, and I set up a first aid station out of the van by hooking a tent to its side, and we started treating villagers. Soon, dozens of wounded people were lining up for help. One little girl named Nardika had run so fast to get away from the tsunami that she had no skin left on her feet. It took me two hours to clean them, and when I was done, I had a new best friend. From that day on, she rarely left my side.
Just ten hours after we began, we had treated over one hundred people, served a meal, and cleared the library completely. It was a comfort to know that hundreds of people would sleep there tonight. We called it a day and headed back to our guesthouse in the neighboring village. Over another simple dinner of canned food, we held a meeting to discuss what to do next. We all agreed to stay there for at least a few more days instead of driving farther along the coast.
The Third Wave Page 5
