The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [44]
That night, Oscar and I were still feeling out of place. We went down to the beach restaurant for dinner but they had run out of chairs, so we stood there in front of our table for about an hour, looking ridiculous as we waited to be seated. When they finally brought chairs and came to serve us, they announced that they had run out of lobster and just about everything else on the menu. I had been looking forward to a good meal for months and this was just another roadblock on our two-day journey of supposed “rest and relaxation.” We ended up in another fight about nothing. Oscar stormed off his way and I went mine. We decided to leave early the next day and head back to our village.
With Donny gone, the dynamics of the camp changed. Many of the other more experienced volunteers had left, too, though a small group of new ones arrived from time to time. Those of us who remained buckled down to continue the rebuilding process, and homes continued to pop up everywhere.
Geoff, the sixty-eight-year-old Irishman who had been working at the village for quite a while now, took over for Donny when he left. Geoff had heaps of energy, and I have never seen anyone—with the possible exception of Donny himself—work that hard in my life. He had a sad set of tools to work with, but he got stuff done and everyone respected him.
We took to holding our volunteer meetings early every morning at our guesthouse so that we could concentrate without the villagers interrupting to ask us for things. Oscar and Donny had taken great care during the initial weeks to create lists of all the families in Peraliya, specifying how many members each one had, if there were any pregnant women, young children, or elderly people, and if they had special needs, such as a deceased primary provider or disabled person. Over breakfast, we reviewed what supplies had come in—such as temporary or permanent shelters, food, clothing, household goods, school uniforms for children, boats for fishermen, sewing machines for tailors, and so on—and looked over the list of families. We discussed problems and agreed on which families would receive what donations. It was important to make certain that families didn’t double-dip, claiming not to have received aid when they had, and also to ensure an equitable distribution of goods. We were very concerned about not leaving anyone behind during the rebuilding process.
Hospital work consumed me, but I was also being pulled down the road to another village where my cousin Christine, who had come from Australia to volunteer, had decided to start a women’s clinic with my assistance. That village, only a few miles down the coast from Peraliya, hadn’t had much help. Christine and the villagers worked hard to clean up a ruined house to use as their center, where Christine spent every day nursing wounds. The clinic was now more than 300 women strong. They enjoyed sitting around a big pot of tea and talking about life.
Christine also came up with the idea of holding laughing classes at her clinic. She is generally a little spunky, but watching her teach a laughing class in Sydney had to have been the silliest thing I had ever seen. The people stood around in a circle and forced themselves to laugh continuously, making funny faces. Her classes were quite successful in Sydney, but when she tried to laugh hysterically in front of a few hundred village women, they just didn’t understand the concept. They looked embarrassed for her and didn’t know how to react. After a while, they started laughing—at her, not with her, but at least they were laughing.
Bruce was involved in planting thousands of new baby coconut trees, but someone kept digging them up again at night, undoing all of his hard work. This went on for a few mornings. When the villagers found the culprit, Bruce confronted the drunken man and we braced for the first glimpse of his anger. We had never seen Bruce get mad, and we were all dying to see him lose it at least once just to prove that he was human.