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Authors: Alison Thompson
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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. Ittook 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.
Donny had a plan to build a toilet, which would hopefully reduce the risk of cholera and outbreaks of other diseases. Oscar had been standing in the middle of the highway stopping aid trucks, successfully obtaining food, clothes, and dried milk. So when a bulldozer passed by, he hijacked it, ordering the driver to turn into the village to dig a hole for Donny’s toilet.
The toilet was a simply engineered structure consisting of a ten-foot hole in the ground filled with lime, with two planks of wood placed across the top. Donny surrounded it with huge pieces of colored plastic for privacy. In most places in Sri Lanka, there was no toilet paper. It was customary to eat food with your right hand and wipe your bottom with your left hand. If you were seen eating with your left hand, it was considered impolite and unhygienic.
Days crawled by as though they were centuries. We found ourselves running an internally displaced people (IDP) camp caring for over 3,000 people. We were in charge simply because nobody else was. The other volunteers quickly came to learn the lesson I had learned at Ground Zero: If we acted with authority, peoplewould listen. No one ever questioned our authority. What the villagers needed now were leaders, and although we were making it up moment by moment, we kept things moving forward. There were aid organizations working in other far-off places, but this was one of the largest disasters of all time and assistance was spread thin. This was simply way too big of a crisis for the Sri Lankan government and even dozens of NGOs to handle alone.
Dead bodies in all states of decay kept turning up everywhere. In the first week, the locals quickly buried over 3,000 bodies in a shallow grave across the road from the village near the ocean by bulldozing them into a hole on top of one another and then covering it up with a few feet of sand and dirt.
Providing the villagers with food, water, shelter, and medical assistance remained our top priorities. During that first week, we used my friend Mark Axelowitz’s children’s donation money to buy water and food from stores farther inland that hadn’t been destroyed. I felt very grateful for their hard work selling hot chocolate
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. Ittook 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.
Donny had a plan to build a toilet, which would hopefully reduce the risk of cholera and outbreaks of other diseases. Oscar had been standing in the middle of the highway stopping aid trucks, successfully obtaining food, clothes, and dried milk. So when a bulldozer passed by, he hijacked it, ordering the driver to turn into the village to dig a hole for Donny’s toilet.
The toilet was a simply engineered structure consisting of a ten-foot hole in the ground filled with lime, with two planks of wood placed across the top. Donny surrounded it with huge pieces of colored plastic for privacy. In most places in Sri Lanka, there was no toilet paper. It was customary to eat food with your right hand and wipe your bottom with your left hand. If you were seen eating with your left hand, it was considered impolite and unhygienic.
Days crawled by as though they were centuries. We found ourselves running an internally displaced people (IDP) camp caring for over 3,000 people. We were in charge simply because nobody else was. The other volunteers quickly came to learn the lesson I had learned at Ground Zero: If we acted with authority, peoplewould listen. No one ever questioned our authority. What the villagers needed now were leaders, and although we were making it up moment by moment, we kept things moving forward. There were aid organizations working in other far-off places, but this was one of the largest disasters of all time and assistance was spread thin. This was simply way too big of a crisis for the Sri Lankan government and even dozens of NGOs to handle alone.
Dead bodies in all states of decay kept turning up everywhere. In the first week, the locals quickly buried over 3,000 bodies in a shallow grave across the road from the village near the ocean by bulldozing them into a hole on top of one another and then covering it up with a few feet of sand and dirt.
Providing the villagers with food, water, shelter, and medical assistance remained our top priorities. During that first week, we used my friend Mark Axelowitz’s children’s donation money to buy water and food from stores farther inland that hadn’t been destroyed. I felt very grateful for their hard work selling hot chocolate
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