It's
raining, and I'm holding back a wet branch as a journalist films
inside an abandoned house. The flotsam and jetsam of life is
there - religious paraphernalia, a child's shoe, a rotten bed-frame,
even a calendar marking the date of the disaster - the date
when this house ceased being a home, the day the community died.
Inside me is a feeling of waste, of hopelessness, as nature's
tendrils slowly suck bricks and mortar into the wet earth.
This is the Maldivian island of Gemendhoo, a dot on a pewter-grey,
angry Indian Ocean. The ghosts of sunnier days are everywhere
– “Happy 4th Birthday Sammy” in rainbow-coloured
letters on the wall of a house whose entrails spill into the
street. Here a sewing machine. There a doll in the garden, a
fence dashed into a sitting room - life has truly been turned
upside-down.
Too badly traumatized for rebirth, Gemendhoo will forever be
a ghost island. From a nearby island, its 500 former inhabitants
view their home with wistfulness, but know they must move on.
Amazingly - though I've never been here before - I shiver with
deja vu. We're here to report the anniversary of a calamity
so massive it mobilized millions. But just two months previously
I was holding back another wet branch as another journalist
filmed another anniversary. That was in Ukraine, where the Chernobyl
accident of 1986 forced thousands from their homes.
On the face of it, nothing links the Maldives and Ukraine. One
is known for sunshine holidays, diving, relaxation. The other
for an orange revolution, the Crimean coast, a dynamic football
team... But in both countries, people slide away from their
homes, from the land that bore them, the soil that nourished
them, the earth that will not now receive their bones. Roofs
flop in on themselves with no witness to the sound, and schoolyards
which rang with childish cacophony now lie mute, cracked, ruined.
Many of the thousands who left radiation-blighted lands in Ukraine,
Belarus and Russia have got on with living. Some have cancers
which the International Federation is working to detect, to
eradicate, still, 20 years on.
The ending is happier for many in the Maldives. Communities
are born, such as the one on Kudahuvadhoo, where over 100 houses
built by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies will soon be finished.
On other islands building is finished and everyday life is returning:
freshly-washed shirts on a washing line, a young man who watches
the world cup through a neighbour's open window, flowerpots
in bloom, an ancient rhythm regained, where six months ago there
were tarpaulins, tin toilets and tears.
I made a link between a nuclear disaster and the wrath of the
sea as I have witnessed the aftermath of both.
Disasters aren't about numbers. Disasters are personal. Yet
the media, and we aid agencies decide when the death toll makes
it a “major disaster”, and when the “victims”
are worthy of a massive fund-raising effort. And so we must.
Suffering demands a response. It’s our duty. But on anniversaries
such as this we must think about the grief that unites survivors
of the Papua New Guinea tsunami of 1998 or the Bhopal industrial
accident of 1984 with that of their better-known peers. And
we - journalists, aid workers, donors big and small - must redouble
our efforts to identify on a visceral level with those we serve.
They are not numbers, they are not faceless victims. They live,
love and laugh like me and you, but they have felt the desolation
of their homes.
Leaving the island, I catch the dazed eyes of the young man
who told his story to the reporter. He’s just relived
the day when everything that was dear to him, everything that
defined him, was hurled one kilometer into the sea.
His eyes hold the still, solemn sadness of those I saw reminiscing
on their lost homes in Ukraine and Belarus. Home, be it ever
so humble, is where the heart finds peace.
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Destroyed
house on Gemendhoo Island, Maldives. The island will be
left as a memorial to the tsunami and its 500 inhabitants
rehoused in Federation-built houses. The island is too
badly damaged for reconstruction. (p14165)
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Worlds
apart? Abandoned house 20 miles from Chernobyl. (p14163)
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TV
journalist filming on tsunami-hit Thulusdhoo Island, where
the Federation is providing drinking water to over 1,000
people through a desalination plant and rainwater-harvesting
kits. (p14162)
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Making
bricks to build new homes for those displaced by the tsunami.
(p14161)
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Where
the streets have no name (yet)! New homes for displaced
people on Kudahuvadhoo Island, Maldives. (p14164)
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