The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [36]
I usually went to collect bodies alone or with one or two volunteers, but for our first large body collection expedition, I gathered up a dozen or so volunteers and headed inland, where the water had surged up a river and taken hundreds of villagers along with it. We trekked for miles with sweat pouring down our faces and backs. The German paramedics who walked with us were dressed in hospital whites, which quickly became covered in sweat and dirt.
We came to an exposed area where I saw something strange lying in front of me. At first I didn’t recognize it. It was a human body with two feet sticking up in the air. Everyone took two steps backward as I walked over to it. The toes were long and elegant, the feet dry like someone had drained the water out of them. The lower legs barely had any meat left on them, but the thighs, chest, and inner organs were still in good condition. The head was a raw skull with long black hair caressing it. I stared at it, knowing that sooner or later I would have to pick it up. This, after all, was the reason we had come.
Body collecting
I slipped oversized blue rubber gloves over my hands and unzipped the white body bag, placing it next to the body. Then I quickly picked up the legs and swung them into the bag, followed by the heavy head. I zipped the body bag up, trapping the flies and maggots inside. One of the paramedics helped me carry the corpse to our designated collection spot. Donny came walking over from another direction with his own body bag, his face looking drained.
The second body I found was not far from the first, but it was stuck in a soggy, muddy place and a lot harder to unearth. I was wearing the black Army boots that I had purchased in Soho only a few days before leaving for Sri Lanka, which felt like a lifetime ago. I craved a bubble bath and my Jimmy Choos, but instead here I was, digging up corpses under a sweltering sun.
I found a long wooden plank and placed it in the mud in front of me so that I could walk out to the body without sinking into the mud. When I reached the body, I squatted down and gave a solid tug on the head, which snapped off into my hands. The rest of the body fell back into the swampland. I found a huge stick to lift the stringy legs over to my body bag, but then the thighs snapped off. “Pass me that leg,” I said to a hippie volunteer who had come to help me. In a Sri Lankan minute (which means a long time), the dirty deed was done.
The grim operation went on for hours. When it was over, we headed back home in silence, swinging the bodies over our backs like a delivery of dirty clothes to the laundromat. Once we were out of the jungle, we collapsed in exhaustion and drank king coconuts under a palm tree. Donny threw up. He said it hadn’t been the sight of the dead bodies as much as the revolting smell of decay that had disagreed with him. This is where my Chanel No. 5 came in handy. A little under the nose took me all the way to Paris. Vive Coco Chanel!
In some villages, more than forty children and adults would watch our every move as we collected bodies. Some trips would generate twenty-four corpses, others just one or two. The bodies had millions of maggots and flies living inside of them and were mostly unrecognizable to their loved ones. I became fascinated with the bodies in their various stages of decay. They turned up in trees and drains and under rubble. Oscar came with us once, but he fell into a mud hole filled with bodies up to his waist. After that experience, he never came again. On one occasion, I found a body in a strange location at the very top of a steep hill where no water could have possibly reached. I wondered if it could have been a murder.
Several weeks and many body collections later, I became known as the Body Collector. People started bringing me unidentified heads and legs and other body parts. One afternoon while I was sitting on the side of a dirt road with a tattered leather bag full of legs and arms hanging out of it, a little boy ran up to me and handed