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Amid the Ruin and Sorrow
on Sri Lanka, the Reservoir of Kindness Remains
By LAURA DUNHAM
OMEN shrieking and what sounded like the roar of a
freight train awakened me. I jumped out of bed and
ran to the balcony door of our second-floor guest
room to see water - filled with wood and cars and
pieces of twisted metal - swirling below us.
Damika, the owner of the inn, and some of his
family had run up the stairs to our balcony. I
looked over their shoulders at the rising waves
and went cold with fear. I shouted to Kate, my
friend and travel partner, who was getting ready
to go to the beach, to grab her money belt, and
then rushed back to watch the sea escalate to the
bottom of our balcony in an agonizingly prolonged
20 seconds.
It was 9:25 a.m. on Dec. 26 and we were in
Unawatuna, a beach town in southern Sri Lanka. A
few minutes earlier, it had been clear and calm.
Kate's decision to take her morning walk on the
beach a half-hour later than usual was one of many
fateful choices that we had made or that had been
made for us. Ultimately, Damika's decision to give
us a room on the second floor instead of the
ground floor was what saved us.
Many days later, we would learn that the series of
tsunamis unleashed by an underwater earthquake off
the shore of Sumatra had taken the lives of more
than 150,000, including more than 30,000 in Sri
Lanka. But on the morning of Dec. 26, there was no
explanation for the relentlessly rising sea.
Eventually it slowed, then stopped, and there was
silence. Almost instantly, it was replaced by
screams. Everywhere I looked, people were
scrambling onto any high surface they could find -
rooftops or balconies.
Paul, an Englishman who was sleeping in the room
below us, swam out of his room. We hauled him onto
the balcony.
A young Sri Lankan woman splashed up to the stairs
shouting: "My grandmother. I let go of her hand."
Damika was banging his chest and sobbing, "My
father, my brother, my uncle ..."
A British teenager, who was in shock, and
screaming "My mum, my dad, my sister, my
8-week-old brother!" was dragged over the railing.
He had lacerations all over his body, and his
clothes were torn and muddy. We tried to console
him, but each second brought new screams of
terror.
Now I realize that the strange calm I felt at the
time was shock. The scene outside had become
increasingly more terrifying, more surreal. The
water was slowly receding, but now buildings were
starting to collapse around us, and the noise
brought fresh waves of panic. Half of Damika's
house, right in front of our balcony, came
crashing down. Would our building be next? The
mantra I repeated to myself would continue for the
next four days: "I want to go home. I want to see
my family. I don't want to die."
Below us, the water was teeming with all the
objects that once held so much importance:
televisions, furniture, cars, shoes. Life was the
only thing that mattered now, and people were
screaming out for the ones who had lost it.
Suddenly, the sister and mother of the British boy
appeared on the balcony of the guesthouse next
door. They were overjoyed to see each other alive,
but their father and baby brother, it seemed, were
still missing. At that moment, the father shouted
from the ground floor of our guesthouse. He was
holding the limp baby in his arms. I yelled down,
"Give the baby C.P.R.! Give the baby C.P.R.!" but
neither he nor his wife was able to do anything
other than stroke the motionless bundle.
I furiously tried to remember the infant C.P.R.
lesson I had been given by my friend shortly
before I left. Three fingers and cover the mouth
and nose to give mouth-to-mouth were all I could
remember. But it was too late. Quietly, the mother
took her baby up to the balcony and cradled him to
her breast. I walked back upstairs to our room and
threw my soggy money belt on the bed.
Shouts in Sinhalese from the neighbors across the
way brought us to our feet, and to the balcony
door again. Someone had seen another wave coming.
That was it. "We're going to die here," I told
Kate. I thought of my mother's having the same
look as those around us - inconsolable sorrow.
There was nothing we could do but wait. After an
interminable hour of intensely watching the
receding water, we saw dry patches of ground. Kate
and I decided to leave. We packed a small backpack
for survival: bottled water, flashlight, water
purification tablets, extra socks. My other
belongings were left behind.
We plowed through the thigh-deep, debris-filled
water toward an undamaged hotel on the hill. The
journey took no more than 15 minutes, but each
second brought jolts of fear that another surge of
water was about to strike. The hotel was filled
with people in varying states of shock and
despair. Everyone had stories, stories that on
their own would be chilling almost beyond belief.
Together, they created a portrait of sorrow in
surreal proportions.
We wanted to be higher still, and, with the help
of a local man, Raja, struggled up the cliff
behind the hotel. Raja told us that the entire bay
had emptied of water; the sea had withdrawn and
was no longer visible. Halfway up, we heard shouts
from below and then the dreaded sound that I still
listen for. It was the sound of the ocean as it
pelted its entire being, once again, onto the
battered shore, traveling farther inland as there
was less resistance from the fallen buildings. We
ran, stumbling, over logs and up embankments,
through the jungle, helping the injured and
shocked, to get to higher ground. At the top, we
turned and watched the sea enfold the once sleepy
tourist-filled village. Only the palm trees were
visible.
The village at the top had not been physically
affected by the water, but grief was everywhere.
People, dressed only in tattered bathing suits or
wet pajamas, were dazedly walking around asking if
others had seen their wife, daughter, husband,
aunt. How could any of us get through the next
minutes, hours, days or years?
Together. That is how. We survived the trauma of
this disaster because we had the generosity and
hospitality of the Sri Lankans. Every family in
the village took in tourists for the three days we
had to wait before we were evacuated. They shared
their meager belongings, their limited food and
their precious water. They, who had nothing and
had lost much, gave everything.
Forty of us slept on mats outside the home of a
family who came around at regular intervals with
sugary tea, bananas and coconuts. They cooked us
dinner for two nights. They let us drink water out
of their well. They slept beside us to protect us
from possible looters. Only one person spoke
English, a man named Siri, who had owned a bar and
restaurant on the beach. He had lost his business,
his home and a nephew, yet he never stopped
looking out for us.
We gave all our extra money, water purification
tablets, clothing, antibiotics, malarial
medication and shoes to Siri and his family, and
also to Damika when we saw him on the day of our
evacuation. By then, Damika had already buried
three members of his family. He now stood in the
only clothes he had, waiting with us for an hour
until our bus arrived to take us away, to safety.
Since I will not return to my job as a teacher at
Valley Stream South High School on Long Island
until September, I plan to drive around the United
States, visit schools and do presentations on my
experience, which revealed the generosity of a
people who live in a country that many Americans
cannot even find on a map.
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