The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [55]
Meanwhile, Oscar was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was not easy to deal with. We hid away in my apartment trying to make sense of the previous months, living on bananas and air.
I had accumulated a lot of footage of our tsunami rebuilding efforts, but it would have taken hundreds of hours to watch it, and when I got home I just didn’t have the time or the energy. Although we had recorded our experience, we had never sat down to talk about making a documentary. I had just collected the tapes from Sunil each week and thrown them into a big steel container to protect them from the heat and humidity. The only thing on my mind now, besides the tsunami recovery effort, was getting a ton of sleep, which I did.
During our first week at home, we received a call from Kym Anthony, the CEO of the Canadian bank who had volunteered in Peraliya with his daughter Callen. He had organized a trading day during which the bankers had agreed to donate their commissions to the tsunami cause. He wanted us to attend the event, so he sent us plane tickets, and off we went. We were thrilled when Kym announced at the event that he and his traders had raised over $800,000 Canadian to rebuild the Peraliya School.
It also warmed my heart to receive an email from a CTEC officer about a week after I had returned to New York:
Dear Alison,
Two villagers came running to CTEC. They asked, “Is there a tsunami?” We checked the Internet and email to find out if there was a tsunami warning. There was no tsunami warning. We called the Met Department and asked whether there was a tsunami. They also said there wasn’t. We told them not to worry. We announced through the loudspeakers and said there was no tsunami. Next we called our team. We went through the community and told them not to worry. They were happy about our center and action. We are happy too.
Bye, Chathura and Nadun.
Oscar and I started to hear from a few of the remaining volunteers in the area, with whom we were in touch via email, that rumors about us were flying in Sri Lanka. People were saying that Oscar had stolen all the tsunami money and was building homes for himself in Switzerland. Others claimed that we were on the run, hiding in coconut trees, and that when the international police had found us by shaking the trees we had dropped to the ground. After the cops had supposedly arrested us, we had been sent to the CIA for further questioning about where we had buried the tsunami money. The stories grew more and more elaborate.
We also heard reports from some volunteers who had just returned home to New York that Chamilla, our translator, was having a hard time. Now that we were gone, many of the villagers had turned on her with jealousy about how she had gotten too much help from the foreigners. They tried to involve her in the rumors about our having stolen the missing funds. I sent some of the volunteers still working in the Galle region to go check on her, and Chamilla told them that I had never helped her.
Sunil, our cameraman, was also being persecuted for being our friend. He didn’t argue against any of the rumors about us, either. I understand that both he and Chamilla were trying to survive in a hostile environment, but it must have looked really bad to the villagers when our two right-hand people, who had been with us every day, didn’t stand by us. It set us up for a homecoming reunion that we would never forget.
We had been back in New York for only ten days when it became clear to Oscar and me that we had to return to Sri Lanka. There was still a lot more work to do over there and it was the only place we wanted to be. We felt rested and anxious to get back to work. I missed my precious Tsunami-dog. I missed the dusted white sands and the turquoise seas. I missed the red-ink sunsets and the smell of chicken curries. I missed the nightly lightning shows off the coast. Most of all, I missed the children who swarmed us in love. We repacked our gear, found friends to donate tickets once more, and, knowing that our rent