The Third Wave (7 page)

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.