The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [48]
On my birthday, Oscar arranged for us to go to the Lighthouse Hotel near Galle for a night. The owners had given us a free room in appreciation of our hard work along the coast. Unlike our weekend at the hotel in Colombo, I didn’t feel guilty this time because I desperately needed to recharge. If I didn’t go, I might have had to return home to New York for a week. Also, unlike the Colombo hotel, this one wasn’t far from Peraliya, so I knew that I could rush back to the village in no time if a problem arose.
At dinner, I ordered a delicious steak, but when it arrived my olfactory senses cheated me, making me think of the smell of dead bodies, and I couldn’t eat it. But I had no trouble enjoying the room, which had a large four-poster bed filled with pillows. I swam into it and found Atlantis. I decided that there are times for IDP camps and there are times for an Upper East Side New York girl to enjoy a few five-star pleasures. Up until then in Sri Lanka, I hadn’t allowed myself to enjoy any of the finer things in life. That night, Oscar and I slept for hours and our worry lines melted into the thousand-thread-and-still-counting sheets. My cousin Christine had recently given me a new bottle of Chanel No. 5, which I sprayed on my freshly cleaned body. After that one-night stay in the hotel, I felt as though I had had a two-week vacation. I wouldn’t have to go back to the United States just yet.
CHAPTER 9
By May, life in Peraliya was beginning to feel like something out of Lord of the Flies. We had to watch our backs, as some villagers had nothing to do but cause trouble. Deep trauma set in and emotions ran high. Noisy drunks would tell us they had planted bombs under the hospital. In anger and jealousy, husbands were beating their wives and children. Aid was anorexic and fewer cars were stopping by the village. Many volunteers had left, so the remaining people had more jobs to cover.
Suicides also were on the rise. A sixteen-year-old boy threw himself under a passing train just outside the hospital. Miraculously, he survived with only a small hole in his side, which we treated at the hospital each day. During the tsunami, his heavyset father had been wheelchair-bound and his brothers had fought hard to save him as he bobbed up and down in the gigantic waves. They had been washed a few miles inland hanging on to his chair and had successfully rescued him.
When I went to the house to check in on the suicidal son, I found the boy’s father rotting away in their roofless house. He had horrific infections and abscesses in his groin. With those conditions, it was only a matter of time before he died. But every time we placed him in a Sri Lankan hospital for special care, we would find him at home again a few days later. The hospital would release him because they needed the bed.
Shouren and Carolyn, Scottish MDs who had just started working with our clinic, cared for him, but when they left Sri Lanka, the father was placed in a hospital with strict instructions for the nurses not to release him until one of us returned to resume his care. The hospital released him anyway while we were out of the country, and he died in poverty from the infections a week later. He was the only one who got away from us. I remember his sad brown eyes watching my every move.
With houses well under construction and more help in the hospital from the Scottish doctors, I found time to walk around Peraliya most days visiting families. I had hundreds of new friends, and as I toured around, children and families would invite me into their simple homes to share their laughter and curious customs.
I got to know a little man and his wife who would cook rice and dahl for me while their giggling teenage girls played with my hair. One day, they called me inside to visit their eldest daughter, who had