The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [26]
Not long after that, I met two young German doctors, named Sebastian and Henning, at the guesthouse. They were fresh out of medical school and became valuable members of our team. Henning was brilliant at translating the names of the various drugs that were donated by volunteers from all over the world. He built a medicine cabinet and carefully separated and labeled all the drugs. Sebastian created a mobile ambulance out of a tiny three-wheeled vehicle called a tuk-tuk. He placed a German paramedic sticker on the side to make it appear more official, but it still looked like a big toy. Tuk-tuks were the main mode of transportation in the area and were a cheap way to get around. They had no doors, and it could get quite breezy at high speeds. Sebastian and Henning drove off to faraway villages treating people and would sometimes drive them back to the field hospital for further help. Later, Sebastian bought the hospital a refrigerator, which proved to be a major turning point because it allowed us to store important medicines.
As I worked in the hospital, mothers told me heart-wrenching stories of the children who were washed from their arms. I remained strong as my translator stumbled through broken dialogue and women cried into my chest.
I came down with a 103-degree fever for a few days and perspiration flooded my body. Still, I felt there was no time to stop and rest. The villagers had larger problems than mine.
Children surrounded the hospital all day long begging for milk, and when they didn’t get my attention, they would pinch my arm or leg really hard until I screamed out in pain and turned to notice them. I had brought paper and pencils with me, which I gave to the children to keep them busy. They started drawing tsunami images with dead bodies and giant waves destroying their homes. I hung the pictures on the hospital walls and the kids drew hundreds more.
Wherever we went, we recruited tourists and expatriates living on the island to come work in our village. In addition, word of our field hospital had spread throughout the region, so people would just show up at our village to offer help. Sometimes volunteers would offer us $100 in cash, but we would give them a list of supplies instead. They would turn around and drive miles inland to find stocked stores, returning by the end of the day like Santa Clauses, bearing bags of the goods we needed. Many journalists who were in the region to report on the situation were so affected by the devastation that they crossed the professional line and started working with us as volunteers or left money for us to buy food.
We soon realized that we had to establish a management system for our relief efforts. On the first day, we had met the village chief and a number of other responsible men. Oscar and Bruce held regular meetings with them through our translator, Chamilla. Together, they formed committees for food distribution and other basic tasks, and chose organizers to be in charge of each one. They drew up long lists of the families in the village to make sure people didn’t double up on aid and that everyone was treated fairly. Each day, Oscar and Bruce would hold a meeting with heads of the various committees to discuss camp problems.
Temporary shelters were popping up all over the village, but we were in a race to get people under some sort of roofing before the monsoons came flooding through in March. Bruce serendipitously acquired a large shipment of tents that an NGO had dumped somewhere farther up the coast. Oscar and his committees distributed these to families in the village.
The housing situation improved again when a group from the Danish government called Danish People’s Aid came to town and pledged to pay for 700 temporary wooden shelters if we could help provide manpower to build them. Naturally, we said yes. The much-needed temporary