LONDON: As Toby Porter, emergencies director for Save the Children, travelled around Asia after the tsunami he felt ‘a darkness descend’ as the death toll rose. All the time his thoughts were with his wife Debora and children, Michael, two, and Lauren, three. To explain what he was doing, Toby recorded his journey in letters and video. With each story he included a powerful image. “It was the first time I spoke to my daughter about what I did and she got some sense of what happens to children in other parts of the world.” The letters tell the story of the tsunami by focusing on families, a moving and personal account of the day horror came from the sea.
Oxford, UK
Something terrible happened today. Even though you are only three and two, I can guarantee that your own children will ask you about today, and where you were when it happened. Well, you were at your Granny’s house, celebrating Christmas. With you on my knees, I watched the news for 20 minutes. A massive earthquake off Indonesia had sent huge tidal waves that hit the coast of Indonesia, then Thailand, then Sri Lanka, then India and even Somalia in Africa. They have a word for what happened today, a word that more than half of the country might not have known before today, but a word that everyone learnt for ever by whatever time they switched off the television in disbelief and went to bed — tsunami.
India
Today I am writing from India. I came here last night, after five weeks working flat out in London. I met a boy named Thiru yesterday, when I was going round his village. His family lived right by the sea, like most of his friends. All of the men in the village are fishermen, so they built their houses right next to the sea. This was so the Daddies would not have to spend too much time travelling to and from work, unlike yours.
The picture is of Thiru standing where his house used to be. You can see that many of the buildings have been damaged by the sea, which washed them away. Also you can see the fishing boat, which his Daddy used to keep at sea. It was lifted by the wave, and carried into the house.
It is like our car being lifted away from where it is parked and ending up in the centre of Oxford.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka was worse affected by the tsunami than India. For about 500 metres in from the sea, very few buildings have been left standing. Now there are tents where houses used to be and fishing boats, broken and marooned on the beach. There were some very sad things that happened here. There were many people caught in a train from Colombo to Galle. The water came into the train, and more than 1,500 people could not escape. Imagine living in a tent where your three or four-bedroom brick painted house used to be. Imagine not knowing where your next meal might come from. But imagine having gone through all of this and still being able to smile a beautiful smile. There is an important lesson here for all of us — if these two girls can smile like this after all they have been through, then we should be able to find a smile too.
Banda Aceh
When I arrived in Banda Aceh, the first thing I saw on leaving the airport was a notice board. On it were so many pieces of paper, each one with somebody’s photograph or name. On almost every picture and piece of paper there was a word: ‘Dikari.’ This means ‘Missing’ — I have never checked this is what the word means, there is no need to. You just know.
One of the things Save the Children does is to try to find children lost or separated from their families. In our office we keep a book of all the names of children whose families have told us they are missing; in another book, we list the children who have survived but not seen their families since the water came. When our staff check the two books, sadly, almost all the time they cannot give the parents the news they most want to hear.
But a few weeks ago, after almost a month of both believing that they were alone in the world, our teams found the same name appearing in both books. A man looking for his daughter. A little girl looking for her Daddy. The two were brought together. Looking at this photograph makes everything worthwhile. With this picture of hope, among so much sadness and unimaginable loss, this brings my journey here to a close.
I am just about to leave the island of Aceh. Where there is nothing but rubble there was a noisy, bustly town.—Dawn/The Observer News Service
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