The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [28]
When we got to the seashore, many of the children began to cry out in fear. They shouted, “Big wave, big wave!” We reassured them that they were safe. We held hands, forming a long line that stretched across the beach, and slowly walked toward the ocean, where we began by dipping our toes in the water. There were excited shrieks and many children ran back to the safety of the rock wall. Oscar, Sebastian, and the Israeli volunteers did crazy somersaults into the water, trying to entice the children back into the sea. About thirty boys ended up swimming with them, while most of the girls and very young children stayed at the water’s edge, clinging on to me for dear life.
Taking the kids to the ocean for the first time after the tsunami
We stayed at the beach for a few hours, the parents watching their brave children from the road. Our first official swimming day was a success, and we followed it with many more.
The chief of the village was a sturdy fisherman with a fleet of boats. Although he was sixty-eight, which is quite old by Sri Lankan standards, he was built like a bronzed god. He had two wives who loved him very much. Years earlier, when the new government had come to power, the secret police had captured him, beat him up, and pulled off his toenails and fingernails. They poured chili powder over him and left him to die in a closed sack. After this, he supposedly escaped and lived for a year in a fishing boat at sea, and then later slept in a secret coffin buried underground. Whether or not the story was true, it was part of the legend that made the chief a beloved leader.
During the tsunami, the chief had lost everything he owned except for one boat, but he always seemed to have plenty of marijuana on him, which made him very popular with some of the volunteers. He would often invite the volunteers over for a fish dinner, and we would sit in his dirty shed and laugh the night away.
We wanted the chief and his leadership committee to feel like an important part of the rebuilding process. We continuously emphasized that we were not there to take over their village, but to work together with them to get them back on their feet. After a time, the chief treated me like his granddaughter.
With the chief of Peraliya, A. P. Darmedesa
In spite of our fondness for each other, the chief and I would butt heads nearly every other day, though I knew he was trying to help his village in the fairest way he knew how. He never accepted any gifts for himself, always giving them away to others who needed the help more. Yet despite his equitable intentions, he would get furious when I helped certain villagers who he considered to be murderers, thieves, or whores. I explained that I wanted to take care of all people equally, just like he did. If we helped only the “good” people, then the “bad” people would be even more desperate and worse off than before. Besides, who was I to decide who was good and who was bad. I told the chief that we should leave that role up to Buddha or God.
We would hear daily reports of orphaned tsunami children being kidnapped. Two French nurses who had just joined us had witnessed a child being dragged away screaming in another area but couldn’t do anything about it because the men produced Sinhalese paperwork. In Sri Lanka, when orphaned children reached a certain age, they often were sent to work for free in rich people’s homes or sold as sex slaves through the human trafficking markets. Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other nearby countries were the biggest sellers of children in the world. But we weren’t going to let it happen on our watch. So Bruce and James, a journalist