E-Paper
Rehabilitating the victims: Echoing tsunami tragedy
Here is a firsthand account of rehabilitation of tsunami victims by two students who spent 8 days with them.
I expected a disaster scene. I expected to see throbbing packs of men and women, pushing and grabbing for bags of rice and dal (pulses). I expected to see people begging for help, right here and right now. I saw people who wanted to help themselves, but did not know how.
I came down to the Cuddalore District of Tamil Nadu, India, for one week in the middle of my yearlong service fellowship in India. I came one month after the tsunami swept through South and South-eastern Asia on December 26, 2004. Exceeding expectations, the Tamil Nadu government has well provided for tsunami victims' immediate needs. People did not need to claw for food. In fact, practically every family had received 60 kilos (132 pounds) of rice. One relief worker remarked that they had enough food for two years.
What I saw was just as disturbing as the images of people turned animals in the wake of disaster. I saw no flailing, running, pushing or screaming. Instead, I saw a lack of energy, a lack of life. I saw men, strong and proud from years of self-sufficiency on the ocean, squatting idly at the entrances, looking bored and lost. In every village, I asked what people do all day. "Nothing," they would say. "We are bored, waiting." They waited far from the shoreline, in chokingly hot temporary shelters made of tin and mica. They were waiting for the government to give them money, or at least advice, on how to repair their boats and livelihoods. Waiting to be back on the sea. Waiting to move past the tsunami, the waves, and the lives they lost in that fateful half-hour.
In one village, I saw something I had not seen before-a man wading in the ocean. Many of the villagers, children, women and men, were too scared to enter the sea again. I was at another villager's house - where she was showing me the mark the tsunami water had left on the walls, the color of dried blood, and similarly sanguine water coming from her well- when through the palm trees, I saw him.
I saw him staring out at sea, sarong rolled up to embrace the lapping water on his legs. I wondered what he was thinking. I thought that, like me, he must have been contemplating how these dancing waves could be so destructive. Perhaps, he was searching for those things that the water had dragged away, for clay pots and televisions and for books and toys swimming through the foam.
He suddenly looked down, and jerked his body backwards. A fish, attached to a thin line, flailed in the sand. It registered. He was fishing without a boat, without a crew, with just a line and the experience of a lifetime at sea. He was not just thinking, as I had suspected. I do not know if I saw hope or dreams or even recovery, but I did see a man face a force of destruction to catch his own lunch. I saw him doing, actively rebuilding today.
(By Sheela Prasad, a graduate of Brown University, USA)
