I’ve avoided writing about the Indian Ocean tsunamis until now because the level of destruction was so vast that it simply exceeded my reckoning powers. One aspect of the disaster that I found incredibly frustrating was the news reporting on the subject. Most of the news photos of the disaster tended to focus in on weeping mothers or cars incongruously parked in the surf.
How was this supposed to show me the scale of what happened? The before/after satellite pictures helped a bit: at least I could now begin to understand the scale of the damage, but even these show only a fraction of the impact.
On Saturday night, I had dinner with friends who had spent the last four months leading a group of students through India, including several weeks in the affected coastal areas. They had come back to America about a week before the tsunamis hit, full of ideas about buying a second home on the Indian coast for practically no money and spending half the year there. The people there, they told us, were absolutely wonderful — so friendly, so easy to get to know. Now they were trying to contact their new friends to find out if they were all right. No, they haven’t heard anything, but they are operating under the assumption that no news is good news: after all, many of their friends live well outside the affected areas; their unresposiveness is probably due to a preoccupation with helping those who really need it.
My friends had been profoundly moved by their stay in India, and were now trying to cope with the fact that much of the world they had so loved was now gone. To me, India is just an abstract, far-off land, full of mystery and stark juxtapositions of overwhelming beauty and overwhelming poverty. To them, India is a real place, with real memories and real friendships.
When a disaster hits, people naturally seem to want to help. Millions of dollars in donations have already made their way to the affected areas, and millions more will likely be collected. The students who just returned are planning to form their own fund, to buy new boats for the families of fishermen they had befriended in India. While I know the money I have already sent in to Oxfam will certainly be put to good use, I do hope the students manage to start their own fund. I like the idea of helping a real family, with real faces. My money — and that of of others — can’t be a complete “solution” to this tragedy, but building a more direct connection to the people trying to rebuild their lives is probably a good place to start.