Something happened on the way to heaven

Today in 2004, I was busy finalizing plans for a project that I would work on the first week of the new year. I was in my old, one-bedroom flat. My living room doubled as my home office. I kept the TV on because I couldn’t work in absolute silence. The TV was tuned to CNN. Earlier, I had caught a report that a very strong earthquake hit Indonesia. How unfortunate, I thought.

Not an hour later, a news bulletin caught my attention. Apparently, a tsunami resulted from the earlier-reported earthquake, hitting Indonesia and reaching as far as Thailand. There was no video accompanying these reports, but I was riveted. Hundreds were feared dead. My mobile phone rang with text messages from Manila and from friends here in Cambodia. Did I hear about the tsunami? Are you safe there? Did you know if so and so’s trip to Phuket pushed through or not? I sent messages to my family in Manila that as far as I knew, Cambodia was not hit by the tsunami.

As the day grew old, however, the magnitude of the disaster became apparent. Reports started coming in that from Indonesia and Thailand, the tsunami has reached other countries like Burma, Malaysia, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Sri Lanka, and India. Reports on the estimated death toll varied but shared a commonality: it was rising. I am not sure when the tally became final (up to now there have been thousands missing and unidentified) but the 2004 Asian tsunami claimed more than 220,000 lives and destroyed homes, arable lands, and infrastructures in 13 countries (Bangladesh, the Maldives, Seychelles, Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia).

H, a colleague, who was pregnant that time, missed her flight to Phuket the day before, forcing her to stay in Bangkok. When I went to Colombo in 2002, I met the staff of ‘Companions on a Journey’, a local NGO that worked with MSM and TG in HIV prevention and social support. A significant number of its staff and volunteers died in the tsunami, and many more lost family members and homes. I saw S, one of CoJ’s heads, in New Delhi on September 2006 and risking indelicacy, I asked him about his experience in the tsunami. He’d been able to cope with the grief of losing friends and relatives, but I could still sense the trauma that the experience has left him. If I’d been in his place, I’d been a nervous wreck longer than him.

As a Filipino, I’d experienced quite a number of disasters first-hand. I mean, typhoons are a common occurrence in the Philippines. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as well. I was out with my friends when the July 1990 earthquake happened. We were on the second floor of a fast-food joint, and when it hit, the glass windows just shook relentlessly in their frames. Across the street we could see the big building of a public high school swaying left and right, as if it were bamboo being blown by the wind. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in June 1991, I was fascinated to see our neighborhood in Manila covered in 2 or 3 inches of what looked like snow (it was ash).

We Filipinos like to claim that we are a resilient people but I think that we do not have a monopoly on this. I believe that resilience is a human trait. But resilience in itself is empty without social support.

Three years after the 2004 Asian tsunami, many are still experiencing its effects. Governments have responded to the disaster in varying degrees, and aid agencies worldwide claim that no significant success have been achieved. Former US President Bill Clinton even said that only about a third of those affected by the disaster were back in permanent housing. A UN-backed report said coastal dwellers in at least 5 countries were being discouraged or even prevented from returning to their land to give way to commercial projects. Homelessness leads to other vulnerabilities like diseases, poverty, and exploitation of women and children.

Today, as the world commemorates those who died in the disaster, let us not forget those who are still living in the shadows that the tsunami had cast upon their lives. Let us make governments accountable for responses to address the practical and psychological effects of the tsunami on their citizens. Let us contribute to the efforts of aid organizations in providing services to the most needy. A little individual effort, when gathered together, goes a long way.

This is probably the greatest disaster in recent history, but unfortunately, this will not be the last also. The way we respond to this event now will determine how we can respond should another disaster of the same (or greater) magnitude occur.