The Third Wave (15 page)

For many months now, we had been receiving frequent visits from a grieving lady who had lost her daughter on the train that had been swept away by the tsunami. She lived a few hours down the coast, but made the bus trek up to Peraliya daily to see if we had found any new bodies. She had visited every morgue in Sri Lanka, inspecting thousands of corpses, looking for her daughter. I had never come across such an inconsolable woman. I tried to explain to her, as I had done with many others, that her daughter was in a beautiful place and that her spirit was watching over the woman, but I simply couldn’t say it anymore. The reality was that her daughter’s body was probably stuck upside down in a tree somewhere rotting away. With that thought, I burst into tears, making matters worse.

Sunil and I agreed that we had to think of a way to help this
lady put an end to her miserable roaming of the countryside. Weeks earlier, Sunil and I had come across a body similar to her daughter’s description in both height and dress, although we couldn’t say for sure that it was her. Sunil had a piece of jawbone that he had picked up from that same area that day, to which he felt a strong connection. He spontaneously brought it home to his guesthouse, much to the disgust of his English girlfriend. (We weren’t in the habit of collecting bones for keepsakes, but every once in a while my body bags would be full, so I would slip a finger or toe bone into my pocket only to forget it was there. I’d find it weeks later when looking for a pen.) Sunil and I both had strong separate instincts about that jawbone. Our feelings certainly may have arisen more from our desire to help the woman recover than from any scientific evidence, but deep inside we honestly believed the bone belonged to the missing daughter. So I suggested that we present Sunil’s piece of jawbone to the grieving lady as a representation of her daughter to help her with the healing process.

The next time we saw the woman, we gave her the bone. We told her that she was to bury it in her backyard and create a shrine around it where she could pray each day to feel closer to her daughter. We said we hoped it would stop her agony from wandering the coast every day looking at dead bodies. We explained that there was a 99.9 percent chance that it wasn’t her daughter’s actual bone, but there was also a chance that it was and, regardless, she should treat it as a symbol. The woman followed our instructions. She buried the bone, and from that day on she had a place to grieve. Sunil and I were very pleased that our idea had worked.

Chamilla was the first person I met in Peraliya, and the only native of the village who spoke English. She worked hard as our
translator and was extremely kind to everyone. She had three brothers, two of whom had lost their wives and children to the tsunami, as well as a baby of her own named Wassani. Chamilla, her baby, and I often would go for walks along the beach holding hands while Chamilla and I discussed life.

Chamilla played a critical role in the rebuilding of Peraliya, a job her fellow villagers never thanked her for. She served as our only translator for a long period of time, and we dragged her all over the place to hundreds of meetings. She became like a sister to me, which upset some of the village women, who turned on her in jealous rages. Their vengefulness grew so destructive that at one point I had to rent Chamilla a small place in Hikkaduwa, where the volunteers were staying, so that she could escape the persecution at night, but it only made the villagers’ jealousy of her worse. I felt terrible about the difficult role we placed Chamilla in by asking her to be our translator. But I also gave her many gifts of friendship and financial support—everything I had to give.

While working in the hospital one day, a loud voice came bellowing through the window. “Why isn’t anyone working?” the voice boomed. “Get off your butts and get back to it.” It was Donny! He had returned, and we couldn’t have been happier. He had gone home to rest and see his family for three weeks, but he knew the job wasn’t finished, so he had come back.

Donny walked around the village hugging the monks and calling out “machan” to his friends, while small children pulled at his walking stick. The villagers rejoiced as much as we did. Donny remarked that when he was walking around his hometown,
no one had cared about him, but when he came here, everyone cared. It was time for a celebration. The beers and king coconuts were on us that night.

Shortly thereafter, a Sri Lankan holiday shut down the village, so we decided to take the weekend off. Donny and Bruce came over for breakfast and we watched surfers shoot ten-foot curls. We played Frisbee and swam in the ocean. But no matter what, our conversations always turned to solving the village problems.

Our days were long and the responsibility of caring for more than 3,000 people grew heavy on our shoulders. Oscar was becoming more and more agitated by the lack of aid, and he expressed himself through his short temper. We had a visit from a gentle Australian doctor who volunteered to be his therapist. He was a wise and happy man who sat and listened to Oscar’s problems as he lay on the bed. The doctor recommended that Oscar take a day off, and they decided to go snorkeling out to the reef together.

The next day, they set off swimming toward a large cluster of rocks. But the rocks were farther away than they had looked. Three-quarters of the way into the adventure, Oscar and the therapist grew weary and contemplated turning back to shore. Instead, they decided to finish swimming out to the rocks and hitch a ride back to shore on a passing boat. When they finally made it, they slumped onto the rocks and looked around for a ride, but by then the last boat had left and the ocean was very rough. Trapped between the reef and large waves, they were forced to swim the long way back to shore. The doctor struggled and then started to fail, simply too exhausted to swim any farther. Exerting every last
bit of energy, Oscar dragged the doctor through the water and safely back to the beach. They sat catching their breath for some time, and then the doctor went back to his guesthouse to sleep.

We didn’t see the doctor again for a few days, but when he did emerge he clearly wasn’t the same man. Gone were his permanent smile and upbeat personality. A darker, depressed fellow sat before us. He told us that the swim had depleted him of critical nutrients and medications that were keeping him stable. He had a medical condition, and the swim had nearly killed him.

Oscar laid the doctor down on his bed, sat next to him with a piece of paper and pen, and began asking the therapist the same questions that he had asked Oscar a few days earlier. I had to run to the bathroom to hide my irreverent laughter. The sight of Oscar being anyone’s therapist was hilarious. The next morning at breakfast Oscar declared that he knew things were bad when he ended up having his therapist as his patient.

So far, our volunteers had been excellent. They had dropped out of the sky from all over the world and we hadn’t had a single problem. That was, until a sevety-five-year-old evangelical Texan man I’ll call Jerry wandered into camp singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Jerry had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which meant that he did quite an excellent job at cleaning the hospital, but when, late one rainy night, he broke into the Peraliya village storage shed and decided to make it his home, I knew we were in trouble. We had a rule that no volunteers stayed in the village at night; we all lived in Hikkaduwa. The next morning we arrived to find Jerry walking around in front of small schoolchildren in nothing but his underwear. His clothes were hanging in the sun
to dry. It was clear that we were going to have to ask him to leave the village.

Oscar, Bruce, and Donny were supposed to have the chat with Jerry, but in the end they were all too chicken, so I had to break the news to him myself. I explained that he couldn’t live in the village. He responded that he would sleep across the road at the beach. I made many attempts to persuade him until I finally had to insist that he leave. He did leave, cursing my name under his breath. I had never had to do anything like that before, but I knew it had been the right thing when we heard rumors later on that he had “gotten into some trouble” with kids farther down the coast.

A team of New York Mount Sinai Medical Center students and their teachers suddenly showed up without warning, as most visitors were inclined to do. I was thrilled; I had no doubt that I could turn the hospital over to them and take a break. New Yorkers were among the most competent people I had ever met. Knowing that they’d immediately get to work, Oscar and I decided to go for a motocross bike ride for the day. We raced to the other side of Galle and began riding off the beaten track along all sorts of fun jungle trails. We found hidden Buddhist temples and spectacular views of the coast. We followed a very rough trail all the way down a steep mountain, where we discovered a tiny private beach that looked as though it had been spun from gold. It was an oasis away from the rubble. We took off our clothes and swam naked for hours in the beautiful blue sea. This, we decided, was our special hideaway paradise. Unfortunately, it was so secret that we were never able to find it again!

On my birthday, Oscar arranged for us to go to the Lighthouse Hotel near Galle for a night. The owners had given us a free room in appreciation of our hard work along the coast. Unlike our weekend at the hotel in Colombo, I didn’t feel guilty this time because I desperately needed to recharge. If I didn’t go, I might have had to return home to New York for a week. Also, unlike the Colombo hotel, this one wasn’t far from Peraliya, so I knew that I could rush back to the village in no time if a problem arose.

At dinner, I ordered a delicious steak, but when it arrived my olfactory senses cheated me, making me think of the smell of dead bodies, and I couldn’t eat it. But I had no trouble enjoying the room, which had a large four-poster bed filled with pillows. I swam into it and found Atlantis. I decided that there are times for IDP camps and there are times for an Upper East Side New York girl to enjoy a few five-star pleasures. Up until then in Sri Lanka, I hadn’t allowed myself to enjoy any of the finer things in life. That night, Oscar and I slept for hours and our worry lines melted into the thousand-thread-and-still-counting sheets. My cousin Christine had recently given me a new bottle of Chanel No. 5, which I sprayed on my freshly cleaned body. After that one-night stay in the hotel, I felt as though I had had a two-week vacation. I wouldn’t have to go back to the United States just yet.

By May, life in Peraliya was beginning to feel like something out of
Lord of the Flies
. We had to watch our backs, as some villagers had nothing to do but cause trouble. Deep trauma set in and emotions ran high. Noisy drunks would tell us they had planted bombs under the hospital. In anger and jealousy, husbands were beating their wives and children. Aid was anorexic and fewer cars were stopping by the village. Many volunteers had left, so the remaining people had more jobs to cover.

Suicides also were on the rise. A sixteen-year-old boy threw himself under a passing train just outside the hospital. Miraculously, he survived with only a small hole in his side, which we treated at the hospital each day. During the tsunami, his heavyset father had been wheelchair-bound and his brothers had fought hard to save him as he bobbed up and down in the gigantic waves. They had been washed a few miles inland hanging on to his chair and had successfully rescued him.

When I went to the house to check in on the suicidal son, I found the boy’s father rotting away in their roofless house. He
had horrific infections and abscesses in his groin. With those conditions, it was only a matter of time before he died. But every time we placed him in a Sri Lankan hospital for special care, we would find him at home again a few days later. The hospital would release him because they needed the bed.

Shouren and Carolyn, Scottish MDs who had just started working with our clinic, cared for him, but when they left Sri Lanka, the father was placed in a hospital with strict instructions for the nurses not to release him until one of us returned to resume his care. The hospital released him anyway while we were out of the country, and he died in poverty from the infections a week later. He was the only one who got away from us. I remember his sad brown eyes watching my every move.

With houses well under construction and more help in the hospital from the Scottish doctors, I found time to walk around Peraliya most days visiting families. I had hundreds of new friends, and as I toured around, children and families would invite me into their simple homes to share their laughter and curious customs.

I got to know a little man and his wife who would cook rice and dahl for me while their giggling teenage girls played with my hair. One day, they called me inside to visit their eldest daughter, who had a special gift for me. They waited in excited anticipation as I opened the plain brown bag they had presented to me. Inside was an orange. It then dawned on me that there were no fruits or vegetables for sale anywhere nearby. The only fresh fruit that we had access to were the coconuts, papayas, and occasional mangosteens that we plucked straight from the trees. I hadn’t seen an orange since New York. The mother told me that her daughter had traveled four miles into town by bike to buy it for me at the
Sunday market. It was indeed the most precious gift I had ever been given. I peeled the orange and shared it with the family.

Gaggles of children followed me everywhere, all trying to hug me as I walked. In extreme heat, they would walk beside me holding an umbrella over my head to shield me from the burning sun. They would quietly push one another aside and fight over who got to hold the umbrella. My hospital walls were filled with their drawings of the volunteers, which were generally quite accurate. But for some reason whenever they painted me, they drew me with black hair instead of blond. When I asked them why, they answered that it was because I was one of them.

We knew from the start that it was important, as volunteers, to do more than simply rebuild the infrastructure of the village ourselves. We also wanted to create jobs that would help sustain the locals’ lives long after we left.