The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [19]
On New Year’s Day, Oscar heard from a friend of a friend in Telluride, Colorado, who knew a chef called Bruce who was also heading over to Sri Lanka. We spoke with Bruce on the phone and coordinated a cooking stove and a few other supplies. We told him to stay in touch about travel plans.
My friend Mark Axelowitz had three children, Nicole, Jared, and Chloe. They had the idea of making hot chocolate to sell outside a grocery store in New York to raise money for the tsunami victims. The next day, the whole family sat outside in zero-degree weather selling hot drinks and cookies. Then Mark and his wife invited me to their home, where his children presented me with $300, half the money they had raised (the rest they were donating to the American Red Cross). I was excited and humbled by his children’s actions. It was the only cash donation I received before leaving home.
At 2 a.m. on January 3, 2005, I finally received the phone call I’d been waiting for. It was from my friend Joe in Michigan. He had found me an air ticket and had driven two hours in a snowstorm to the airport to buy it for me. The only hitch, he informed me, was that I had to be at JFK Airport in three hours. I was ready. I turned to Oscar, who still had no clue where his air ticket was coming from, and told him that I needed to leave. I said that he should follow me as soon as he could, and not to give up until he found a ticket.
Two hours later, I set off into the unknown, waving to a nervous Oscar through the rear window of a taxi. I was leaving home with $300 in my pocket, tears leaking out of my eyes, and a heart full of love.
Eighteen hours later, I landed in Singapore to connect with my flight to Sri Lanka, and the airlines informed me that I had a twenty-three-hour layover. It felt like I was finally at the marathon starting line but the race official had yelled, “Ready, set, stop!” Furthermore, Singapore Airlines wasn’t going to give me a free room to wait in. I burst into tears like a little girl. I explained my mission to the airline attendee and flashed my September 11 Ground Zero American Red Cross badge, and they quietly slipped me a hotel coupon.
When I got to the hotel, I checked my email. Oscar had written to say that he was now on a flight heading toward me. He had called his friends Tony Detre and Henry Jarecki, who had happened to be at the airport at the time and purchased him a ticket. Oscar had had two hours to pack and get to the airport. He’d only just made it. The best news was that due to my extended layover, Oscar was able to catch up with me in Singapore. After some long Italian kisses in the airport, we continued on to Colombo together. So far the whole trip had been like watching a magician pull a rabbit, a tiger, and then a jet plane out of an empty hat. The universe unlocked its magic, and we were ready to ride.
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