Me (22 page)

We arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport, and my executive director again contacted the Thai embassy in Washington, and learned that the ambassador was extremely happy that we wanted to help and offered his full support. Once again, the planets aligned so that everything would flow magically. Or maybe it’s just that the power of the mind is amazing. In those hours of total stress, my mantra helped a lot—that, I don’t doubt for a second.

By the time we arrived in Bangkok, everything was resolved. We were picked up at the airport and we had a meeting with the prime minister, where we were briefed on what had taken place, and how the situation was being handled. Then they took us to the areas that had been most affected by the tsunami.

It was incredible. The earthquake that caused the tsunami shook the streets on the island of Phuket at 7:58 a.m., local time, toppling over pedestrians and motorcycle riders and causing drivers to lose control of their cars. The magnitude of the earthquake, 9.1 on the Richter scale, is considered the third highest since the existence of the seismograph; it was so strong it made the entire planet tremble and move from its axis almost one degree. The principal epicenter was almost five hundred kilometers from Phuket, west of Sumatra, at the bottom of the ocean. (The largest magnitude that has ever been registered was during the Great Earthquake of Chile in 1960, also known as the Valdivia earthquake, which caused a tsunami that devastated Hilo, Hawaii, more than ten thousand kilometers from the epicenter.)

The first tremor lasted for more than eight minutes. When it was over, the worst was still to come. Approximately an hour and a half after the earthquake, the people who were on the beaches of Phuket noticed that the ocean began to quickly recede. Some went to investigate and to pick up some of the fish that were left stranded on dry land with the sudden retreat of the water. Those who were on Mai Khao beach on the north of the island were very lucky, because a ten-year-old British girl had studied tsunamis in a geography class in elementary school and recognized the signs of an imminent tsunami. She explained it to her parents and the family alerted everyone else on the beach, and all of them were able to escape. Not far from there, a Scottish teacher also recognized the signs of what was coming and was able to take a bus full of tourists and local residents to safety.

Unfortunately, the same thing did not occur in other areas. Many went out to investigate, or stayed in place calmly without even realizing what was happening. The first swell came minutes later, and the impact hurled boats and cars into the air, destroyed homes, and ripped trees out of the ground.

The second wave came thirty minutes later, and thirty minutes after that came the strongest one of all, which was estimated at almost one hundred feet tall. That one turned the streets into a violent and muddled river, full of debris that flooded up to the second floor of many buildings and damaged miles of beach.

All throughout the Indian Ocean there were more tsunamis of similar magnitude, crashing against the coasts of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and, seven hours after the initial earthquake, in Somalia. The tsunami was the most lethal in history and left an entire region so devastated that it is still struggling to fully recover today.

When I arrived in Thailand, some ten days after the earthquake happened, they took me to the Pang Na region and told me there were other areas where the damage was five times worse than what I was seeing. It’s really hard for me to imagine that, because where I was standing the situation looked very grim. The school was transformed into a hospital, someone’s home became a school, and the Buddhist temple was now a morgue. So the temple, that place where one normally goes to find some sort of spiritual life, was now populated by physical death. Stop and think about that for a moment.

But in the midst of so much devastation, there was also hope. Many children had been orphaned, but I felt that I could still do something for them. What happens in times like this, as I explained before, is that the traffickers take advantage of the situation during natural disasters. They take advantage of the hopelessness of the situation and literally go fishing in the streets. They know there will be many lost children, without families to protect them and completely scared. When they come upon a child who is crying for his mother, they know that this child will believe anyone who says, “I know where your parents are. Come with me.”

And that’s how they are taken. And that’s exactly why I wanted to go there. Wherever there is a natural disaster, where there is chaos, it offers the opportunity that a trafficker seeks to exploit, taking advantage of the most vulnerable and stealing their most basic human rights.

At a hospital where orphans were being lodged, I met the youngest survivor of the tsunami, who had been dubbed Baby Wave. Baby Wave appeared in the center of the city floating on a mattress when he was only days old. Someone had stuck a note to his clothes that said: “I found this boy in the beach area, but I have no food to give him. I have nothing for him. Please, take care of him.”

It was a miracle in the midst of all the destruction, so the nurses were protecting him as if he was a little jewel. But they had to hide him in an office and monitor him day and night, because when the press got wind of the fact that the youngest survivor of the tsunami had been found, people came from all over claiming to be his parents or perhaps an uncle. But when the nurses said they would be happy to administer a DNA test, they would all disappear.

There were people who even pretended to be doctors, saying they had to take him to another hospital for this or that exam. It was all a lie. They were all traffickers who wanted to take him and sell him or God knows what. The love the nurses showed in their protection of Baby Wave was inspiring, and holding him in my arms was another moment in my life I will always remember. He represented hope.

In the midst of so much death and suffering, I also saw some very beautiful things. I met, for example, the woman who transformed her house into a school because she felt it important that the surviving children not be left without one. It was a very modest house, with a mud floor, located in a small Thai fishing town. Every morning sixty kids would show up, and she would sit them in a small area inside the house, where she set up a chalkboard so they could read and write. They were of all ages, up to nine or ten years old. They had little chairs and used some wooden boards as tables. Maybe for us that’s not much, but the truth is that they weren’t missing a thing. They had food and water, a calm and clean house to learn in, and someone to look after them.

The woman who opened her home in this way was very intelligent because she knew it was not only about the children continuing on with their studies; she knew what they really needed was to stay busy and occupied. It was important that they kept their minds active so that they wouldn’t have time to think about the great tragedy they were living through. The fact that they could stay with her all day kept them safe, because if those kids had not been at school or another place where they could be protected, the traffickers could have come to take them.

That woman saw these children’s needs and did whatever she could to help. And the one who dedicated herself to those sixty children during that gruesome tragedy made a monumental difference in their lives.

After spending a few days visiting the various damaged areas, I returned to Puerto Rico and held a fund-raiser. It was a breakfast in San Juan, where I met business leaders and other distinguished individuals from the island. At the breakfast I gave a testimony of all that I had seen in Thailand. I spoke to them about the pain I felt upon seeing so much destruction and the anger I felt over what was happening, and I invited them to join me in helping these damaged areas. Just like the Swiss, the Norwegians, the Finnish, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Indians were all working to lend a hand. I needed us in Puerto Rico to also do something.
Anything
.

And that’s how it went. Those people and more contributed so that we would be able to build homes for some of the victims of the most damaged areas in Thailand. But since I don’t have the knowledge or experience for this type of project, we allied ourselves with Habitat for Humanity, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to building safe and decent homes for people in need in over ninety countries around the world. I spoke with the prime minister of Thailand, and he was very amiable and helped me to find land where these homes could be built. The majority of the funds that were raised for the construction came through various collaborative efforts of my foundation, and then we matched the amount donated. Together with the connections and expertise provided by Habitat for Humanity, and all the local and international volunteers who donated their time in support of our joint efforts, as well as the local people who donated additional construction materials for the homes, we were able to build 224 homes in total.

It gave me tremendous satisfaction. We all mixed cement and lent a hand. I placed the cement against the bricks and then cut the bricks. The truth is that I had never done construction work before, but there were many people there volunteering who had never laid a brick, either. And we all had a great time. At the time, I didn’t get to see any of the houses fully completed, but I was able to finish a wall that will hopefully remain part of that family’s home forever.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. After spending a few days in Thailand I did the other part of my duty: I returned to the United States to appear on the
Oprah Winfrey Show
, to talk to the world about what was going on. We ran the video of me visiting one of the most damaged areas, and we showed the people not only what we had done but also everything that was still (and still is) left to do.

It is likely that there are people who think I did what I did for publicity. If that is the case, let them all think what they like. Maybe a few years back I might have felt the need to justify my actions. But now I know the only thing that really matters is what I think. My only objective was to get people to understand the need for help in these damaged areas, and to show them everything that can be done to help. There are so many ways of helping, and on so many different levels, that I believe everyone should find a way to do it, be it with money, time, or anything else. In any case, I felt so proud of what we had done. Especially when a few months later I had the privilege of going back to Thailand to hand the keys to the family that would move into the home we had begun building during my previous trip, and to meet additional families that would move into some of the other homes we sponsored. That was another day I will always remember. In total, more than one thousand people in two tsunami-affected areas ended up permanently benefiting from the work we had done.

I could see the expressions of joy in those families when they walked into their new homes for the first time, and I thanked the cosmos for giving me the chance to help. I also gave thanks for having been able to see firsthand how these families were rebuilding their lives with love, which united them and gave them the strength to face and overcome anything.

Something similar happened at the beginning of 2010 when a brutal earthquake shook all of Haiti. Upon seeing the first images on television, and being intensely moved by the proximity of Haiti and Puerto Rico, I felt that I had to go there as soon as possible to see how I could help. But just like with the tsunami in Thailand, a lot of people tried to talk me out of it, saying, “That’s total chaos there, Ricky. What are you going to do over there?” But like with the tsunami, I felt deep in my soul that it was something I had to do. I had to go there and walk the streets and live what our Haitian brothers and sisters were living, to really know what I could do to help. Just being there I could feel, resonate, and understand what was going on in order to lend a hand.

And the truth is that I could never have imagined what I would find upon arriving in Port-au-Prince. It was absolute chaos, but a chaos unlike anything I had ever seen before, even in Thailand. The structures were all collapsed—there were areas were there was literally not one single building left standing—and the streets were littered with corpses and remains of the dead wherever you looked. On top of that, there was zero organization. While in Thailand there was some semblance of order via the government and the local entities that still stood, in Haiti there was nothing. There was no government structure in charge and not even community leaders, because the majority had perished. Being in Haiti was like living in some kind of living hell; I have never seen anything like it. The devastation was such that even the organizations that specialized in the recovery and aftermath of natural disasters, professionals on the subject, were completely lost and didn’t know where to begin.

Like in Thailand, after visiting the most damaged area, we decided that the best way to help would be by building homes, the idea being once again that if children have homes to come back to, they will stay off the streets, where they are most vulnerable to the traffickers. With all of our foundation projects, we always try to think in terms of the big picture. It’s not about finding a solution just for today and tomorrow alone. We want to find ways of helping that are permanent and serve to prevent more tragedies or dangerous situations in the future.

So we again joined forces with Habitat for Humanity, and together we are implementing both short-term and long-term housing solutions for children and families in Haiti. We have already provided emergency temporary shelter and housing solutions to hundreds affected by the quake, and soon we will begin construction on permanent homes. Once again, our alliance is providing safety and shelter for children whose lives could otherwise be in danger as a result of this natural disaster, and by doing so we are providing hope for their futures. I can’t wait to meet the Haitian families and hand them the keys to their permanent homes, which will be built with love, just as the homes in Thailand were. In the meantime, with the collaboration of many colleagues from the entertainment world, I recorded a series of public service announcements (in English and Spanish) urging the world to help Haiti. Slowly but surely we are making a difference, as tiny as it may seem in the sea of problems that Haiti faces today. Once again, here, like with so many different aspects of my life, I have learned that I have to focus on what I have done, as opposed to what is left to do. Otherwise, it would be too overwhelming.