The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [27]
In late January, we moved into a new guesthouse that was a dollar a night cheaper, which meant a lot to us at that point. At night we would collapse in excited exhaustion and drink beers and king coconuts around a bonfire on the beach. There were more stars out than could ever be counted.
The town of Hikkaduwa, where our guesthouse was located, was slowly reopening, in large part thanks to the help of the U.S. Marines who were on vacation from the Iraq war. We invited them to Peraliya and asked for satellite photos of the area to see how much damage had been done. The photos revealed that the village was now four feet below sea level, which meant that the area would continually flood. The Marines were in Sri Lanka to restore government facilities and hotels, so unfortunately they didn’t have permission to help us clear land. But they did boost our morale and play volleyball with the children in front of the hospital.
Oscar, Donny, Bruce, and I were so overloaded with work that we usually wouldn’t even stop to eat during the day. The food in the village was spicy and strange-tasting anyway, and large bugs and other unrecognizable materials would fall into it. So we lived mostly on bananas and the local king coconuts, which were extremely large green and yellow coconuts with clear milk and without the strong coconut taste. Known to cure more than forty-eight diseases, they also made an excellent moisturizer and hair conditioner.
A few mom-and-pop food operations started opening up at the local guesthouses, and they would cook meals for the volunteers. The only problem was that if many hungry volunteers descended on one guesthouse at the same time, it could be hours before we ate. The guesthouse cooks would prepare only one meal at a time and present it to the person before going back inside to cook the next meal. By the time the fourteenth volunteer received his meal, it would be three hours later. I thought it was a very strange way to do things, but we learned to make it work for us by dropping off our dinner orders at least five hours before we planned on eating.
On one particularly busy day at camp, hundreds of children swarmed about the hospital while the adults had their heads deep in worries. Then an Israeli volunteer group came through the village and started playing games with the children designed to release trauma. They were fantastic. The games included a laughter circle where we would all point at one another and laugh, as well as a mime circle where we would pretend to throw gigantic balls at each other. Oscar joined in to play. He would fall on the ground and grunt loudly, leaving the children in hysterics. We linked hands at the end and cried tears of happiness. It was the first time we had heard the children laughing and singing.
That night, we invited the Israeli volunteers to stay at our guesthouse. Some very fine red wines surfaced from their luggage. The Israelis knew firsthand about trauma and what people needed after a long day in the field. We invited them to stay with us longer.
On one particularly hot day, we decided to take the children out of the village and across the road to the ocean for a swim for the first time since the tsunami. We wondered if the children would ever trust the sea again. Oscar led the way, putting on his snorkel and flippers and blowing his whistle. Hundreds of children, parents, volunteers, cats, dogs, and drunks excitedly followed. We crossed the highway and stood on a small piece of soil above the beach. The Israeli volunteers gave the children a large piece of rope with colored flags on it, and they