“Here is where we camp. Welcome to our camp.”

That's how three of us were greeted when we arrived at an office of Lutheran World Service India (LWSI) in a village in coastal India . We had come to see the work that was going on there among tsunami survivors.

A prominent poster in the house alerted me that what I was reading was more than a Chinese poem. I had seen the poem earlier in the day when I stopped at the regional office of LWSI. Now, once again, the same poem showed up.

“Go to the people, live among them,” it began.

The LWSI team of five, living in that village, soon made it clear to me that this poem represented an important style of work we saw in this place.

“We live in this village,” they said.

Soon they told us the details of families who had suffered much from the tsunami. These are stories that would seem to unfold slowly to people as they get to know each other. Visitors would not have discovered these stories easily on their own.

I was a visitor. I came because I wanted to see the work and find out how the survivors were doing and coping.

“Let's go and see,” the team said.

We went, first to the water's edge. There, on a concrete pole, was perched a life-sized boat. It was a vivid monument, erected to show how high the water had come last December 26 when the waves engulfed this village and killed 89 people. The boat appeared to be about 20 feet high.

We soon heard wrenching stories.

At the beach we saw two children sitting on an anchor, who along with their sister, became orphans after the tsunami struck. The mother was killed. The father received “compensation” from the government, and then took off with some of the money. He has not been seen since. A kind aunt, whose own house was partially destroyed by the water, is now raising the children. She will soon have one of the permanent houses being built by LWSI.

We drive to rows of temporary shelters, put up by another agency. Sheila, one of the LWSI team members, introduces me to a mother of four. She lost her husband in the tsunami. “He was a tall man, full of energy…a good fisherman,” the widow says, and then tears flood her face. She cannot say more. There are no picture of this scene. Even the camera would be ashamed to intrude on this fresh moment of grief.

Not far away, at a thatched house, a young woman tells me that on the morning that the tsunami struck, she had left her three young children at the house while going some 300 yards to the sea coast to bring some food to her fisherman husband who had just returned from a night of fishing. The tsunami struck while she was there. She and her husband narrowly escaped by climbing trees.

But when she returned she found her house had washed away. She called for her children. There was no answer. They, too, had been swept away. Three days later they were found in the mud.

“It has been so hard on this family,” Sheila says. She visits this woman and her husband almost daily. “I need to let them talk. They are so distressed,” she adds.

“The husband was such a hard working fisherman before,” Sheila says. “Now he is depressed, and suffering from some physical pains. But mostly his pain is emotional.”

He and his wife have both attempted suicide.

There are no psychiatrists. Sheila's ears and heart serve that role now.

Compounding the pain, some neighbors dismiss the grief this family is suffering. “They got six lakhs rupees (almost $15,000) from the government—two lakhs for each of the children who died. They were paid well. They should be happy,” Sheila reports some as saying.

But the pain and sadness do not go away. The wife had had an operation to prevent her from having more children. That happened before the tsunami, before all three of her children died. Now she has spent some of the money received from the government to reverse the surgical procedure. But doctors tell her there is only a 10% chance she can have more children.

“She is desperate,” Sheila says, “and now is telling her husband to remarry so that he can at least have a new family.”

So far, he has not agreed.

I step in, and discourage the woman from saying that to her husband. I give my reasons. She listens. And smiles. Maybe she needed to hear that from an outsider.

A stack of bricks is piled up in front of her thatched house. LWSI will soon rebuild their house.

Rebuilding their lives will not come as easily.

But Sheila will visit again and again.

She has learned the value of going to the people and living among them. She knows the poem by heart.

 

*Thiemann is a former LWR Program Director for Asia and the Middle East.  He served for six months as LWR’s Tsunami Consultant in India.

Photo: Children on anchor find another anchor in a kind aunt and Lutheran World Service India. (Photo credit: Chris Thiemann)

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