The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [18]
Oscar and I sat in a trance as events unraveled before our eyes. The death toll climbed to 10,000 and kept going. We were hypnotized by CNN, watching it twenty-four hours a day. The television reports were uncensored. They showed hundreds of dead bodies lying in the streets and wounded people walking around in a daze. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was reporting from a pile of rubble when he stopped mid-sentence to acknowledge a bad smell coming from beneath him. He said he thought there was a body under the very spot where he was standing.
It was during Cooper’s report that I realized I had to go to Asia to help. I called my mother to tell her about my decision, and she responded by saying that she already knew I would be going. She gave me her blessing.
Later that night, I turned to Oscar and told him I was leaving to help and asked if he would like to come with me. I said it was okay if he didn’t want to, but I was going anyway. He thought about it for a few hours and then said yes. I was happy he agreed to come on the adventure, but since he had never done anything like it before, I wondered if volunteering together would put a strain on our relationship.
We began talking about the logistics of getting there and gathering the necessary medical supplies. Money was another problem, but I already knew that if you want something badly enough and summon up all the faith and courage inside of you, the whole universe opens up for you.
The next day, Oscar called his parents. They were upset at the idea of him going to Asia and advised against it. His mother was so worried that she wouldn’t send any money to help with the journey, hoping to discourage him. Oscar and I started calling our wealthier friends about the possibility of using their frequent flyer miles to get our plane tickets. I also contacted my healthcare worker friends at local hospitals and began collecting basic medical supplies.
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