Thailand: After the Tsunami
t’s hard to imagine what the tremendous force of 23 thousands atom bombs means, transmitted to the waves of an ocean, pushing them to a speed of 200-300 miles per hour and lifting them to some 40-60 feet high! It means that the water has the force to sweep along all and everything in its path and throw them three miles inland.
Nature is God’s creation, “good”, but not perfect: it is mysteriously marked by evil, subjected to “corruption” and incompleteness. Nature mirrors man’s own condition, of each one of us, that is” well-intentioned, but imperfect, fragile, a bit touched by evil, and sometimes capable of terrible deeds.
No reasonable human being, in fact, expects salvation from the forces of creation or from human capacities. Thus faced with the bursting out of nature and the misery of our limits the profound question is about the meaning of existence, a question to which only a Presence more powerful than the storm and of greater goodness than ours can give an answer. And it is the sharing of this meaning of life that moves us to come to the help of the survivors, and make ours the grief of each despairing mother and of each child left alone on those devastated shores.
That’s how Sr. Angela Bertelli, Xaverian Missionary in Thailand for the last three years, tries to explain what has happened and has seen.
But the people that Sr. Angela visits every day in the many little refugee camps set up by the Tahi government, have hearts more shaken than the villages swept up by the tsunami of last December 26. Like Giampen, a 26-year old mother who has lost both her children. She and her husband were saved because that morning they had just stepped out of the house for a moment. Far enough to save themselves, but close enough to see their house leveled and the children taken away by the sea. Inconsolable! Sr. Angela tries to sustain her, listen to her, let her pour out her grief, the best she can, because a mother who has lost her children has a wound which cannot be healed. “She asks Why? But I don’t even try to talk about such big things with her who has been through so much. I just hug her, and I listen.”
Giampen and the others
Sr. Angela shares her time with her and others who like Giampen have lost someone, or even all their dear ones. Like the family next door: only the father and one of his children survived. Or like that other mother, who at the moment when the sea-wall hit held tight to her two children only to have her youngest snatched from her by the force of the sea, lost to her forever.
There are, too, stories that end well, like the one of that father who, as on every day, was in his boat fishing. That Sunday he had taken along his two little boys. They were about two miles off shore when they saw the monstrous wave advance at a crazy speed.
Sensing the danger, he rushed to put lifejackets on himself and on his boys. Carried by the fury of the wave, in a matter of few seconds, they found themselves hanging from the top of a palm tree on the beach, frightened to death, badly bruised, but alive.
These people, as so many others, even if they have lost their home and the little or more that they had, now they needed only one thing: they needed someone who would gently handle their despair, their pain and suffering. Someone who would give them a hope and a reason to go on and to start all over again. They are mostly Buddhists, and for them if there is a God, he is someone who is not interested in their lives, does not care and does not give them hope. We believe in a God who is Father, and who cares.
In Answer to an Appeal
Sr. Angela usually works in the slums of Bangkok, but she answered an appeal made by the bishop of Suratthani to all the religious congregations present in Thailand. So she explained to the children and adults of her area that she had to go, for there was someone in greater need. And she left Bangkok for Takuap Pa, a village near Kao Lak, the area most hit.
No one from the centers of operations for help had thought that survivors needed not only daily meals, but above all the companionship of someone who would listen to them, of someone with whom they could open up their grief and fears and hopes. Because how does one start all over again after all that has happened, if one has no more a reason to live?
On arriving to the village, Sr. Angela saw that things were being well organized: the king had taken the orphans under his protection and care, the military had set up tent-settlements around every little hospital or school, International humanitarian organizations had brought in doctors and nurses, while teams of volunteers were cleaning up everything from mud, saltwater and debris. Most of the dead had been picked up.
However, no one from the centers of operations for help had thought that survivors needed not only daily meals, but above all the companionship of someone who would listen to them, of someone with whom they could open up their grief and fears and hopes. Because how does one start all over again after all that has happened, if one has no more a reason to live? And this is what Sr. Angela tries to do above all, and patiently she makes the rounds from camp to camp looking for such people; if they are still too shocked to talk, she just sits with them and patiently waits even for hours.
Giampen, the name of that young mother, in Thai means “necessary.” It’s what Sr. Angela tries to explain to them is the reason why to keep going: this mother, even if she has lost her children, is still important, is “necessary” to help that young father who has lost his wife and who now cannot take care of his little son while he goes about rebuilding his house.
The Southeast Asia tsunami has already receded from the interest of the media, international humanitarian help has been mostly withdrawn considering their immediate task accomplished. But the losses, the broken hearts, the search for a reason to hope and to start all over again have no time limit and no schedule. Someone is still necessary there. And Sr. Angela is there, and she… is not alone!
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)