The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [52]
We wanted the staff to take their positions seriously and to show up on time, so we made the tsunami officer position a paying job. We interviewed applicants from the entire Galle area and carefully selected the most responsible people. Officers wore new uniforms and followed strict protocol. We asked them to punch-stamp a card every fifteen minutes to make sure they didn’t fall asleep at the computer on their watch. The officers would work in five-hour shifts 365 days a year, funded by me and any donations I could find. Cronulla Rotary Club in Australia bought us a generator and supplies. Some of the CTEC officers had family members who had been killed during the tsunami, and they all felt proud to be protecting their people from future disasters.
After the CTEC opening ceremony, we walked back over to what used to be the field hospital, which we had converted temporarily into a movie theater. Chandran Rutman, a filmmaker friend of ours from Colombo, had brought by a DVD of Finding Nemo for us to screen. For most of the villagers, it was the first time they had ever seen moving images projected on a screen. Hundreds of children and adults sat in a trance as the magic of movieland swept over them.
One day shortly before we left, Oscar and I had just finished work and were feeling down. We were sitting on a rock watching the sunset and venting our frustrations to each other when a small boy whom we had never seen before jumped off a bus and came walking over to us. He said quietly, “I know who you are!” We asked him to join us for a king coconut. He shook our hands and said he had been observing us for a while. He told us that he wanted to thank us on behalf of the president of his country for the important work we had been doing. Dumbfounded at this random act of appreciation from such a young boy, we both spontaneously burst into tears of joy and sat there crying with him. It took a little boy of no more than nine years of age to take away all the pain of the past six months.
The original team: Bruce, me, Oscar, and Donny
Everyone in Hikkaduwa and Peraliya knew that the four of us were leaving. Word had spread as soon as Oscar, Donny, Bruce, and I had made the decision that we needed a serious rest. Since the four of us had arrived together, we agreed that we should leave together.
Donny and Bruce indicated that they wouldn’t return for a while. Donny had to attend to family matters, and Bruce was about to go on a long tour with Pearl Jam. Oscar and I were in the middle of raising money for the new Peraliya School and running CTEC, so we knew that we would be back after a rest, probably within the next year, but we couldn’t be sure of anything. We couldn’t promise our return, and if we did indeed come back, it would be not to work in the village but to oversee larger projects. The villagers probably assumed we weren’t ever coming back, as they had seen many volunteers leave, never to return. Regardless, we knew Peraliya as we had experienced it in these past six months would never be the same again.
We spent our last day in Peraliya at the beach, swimming and laughing with the children. They had been working on a song they had written for us, and a few days prior they had recorded it onto a primitive cassette tape. We sat around a bonfire listening to the song, which was titled “The Only Gods We See.” The chorus repeated: “Alison, Oscar, Donny, and Bruce, these are the only gods we see.” It was hard not to laugh out loud at the words and the children’s voices, which sounded on tape like sad karaoke music. But the silliness of the song gave way to a flood of gratitude toward the children, who had spent many weeks creating it for us and who had always been there to raise our spirits.
For our final night, Dr. Novil organized a phenomenal farewell gathering with hundreds of villagers in attendance. The activities began