Sealed in my Air-Conditioned Car

When I think that I've got things under control and I feel firmly comfortable and confident, I suddenly stumble across a crack in the road that sends me into a funk and contraction. Driving down the same roads day after day you'd expect to find monotony in the scenery of the insane. Buildings hanging by a hinge from the earthquake, caved in foundations as if built in quick sand, roofs corrugated at the seams and debris bound up like a gorilla's bowel movement… stenchy, mushy and mucky. The mud and solid soot from the bowels of the sea is something like an oil spill as it suffocates all inanimate and once animate now inanimate debris. Dead bodies line the road still in different colored plastic sheeting bags. The stench is covered by facial masks that the custodial workers wear. I drive by it all in a sealed and air-conditioned car watching with disbelief through the window. I don't need to smell the smells. I don't need memories of this stench. When I leave here, let it be gone and done with. Let me be effective now and give the most possible, but then leave it when I leave. I don't need to carry this back with me.

What is so remarkable is the shear scope of the devastation. Hundreds of miles of shoreline are gone, sunken in the sea, swallowed by it leaving nothing but ruin in its path. Some villages are without a single dwelling. Ninety per cent of the population has been killed in some areas. Today, I explored affected areas on the outskirts of the city. To date, most of the clean up is focused on the city center. What I saw cannot possibly be described. Villagers pick meticulously through the wreckage looking for perhaps trinkets, but there is nothing resembling anything useable in any way, shape or form. Nothing is left salvageable.

Why was today a great day? Well, it's a feeling. I see such tremendous moments that touch profoundly the fabric of the soul itself. An old woman, frail and sinewy drudged on the street in under an obsessively oppressive hot sun. I stopped my driver and gave her some money. Then a bit farther down the road another little fellow needs me to follow so I gave him money, too. Let them have a respite from a hard life for a while.

I then went to a mobile clinic that we are supporting and scoured the city in search of medical supplies. I found the obvious sources and then went into the nooks and crannies looking for more. The city is still dysfunctional with most shops closed or destroyed. The ones that have managed to reopen have practically nothing of interest or value to sell; something like the Eastern block countries during Communism. There is nothing to buy and when something is there it is usually so unappealing that it's best to keep looking for some breakthrough down the road.

The Danish emergency rescue team has set up a hospital for orthopedics where perhaps the best orthopedic surgeon on the planet resides. He is a man with a heart of a saint and cares for his patients beyond what one would consider normal in anyway. He holds people's attention through his profound affection and love, and shows great respect for all people. He inspires me.

The Danes set up a mobile hospital where they care for 40 patients with fractures, amputations and infected wounds. One man without a leg was profoundly depressed finding no further reason to live. He'd lost everything and everything minus everything didn't leave him much to hold onto for the future. So, why stick around. I approached his bed and with the help of a translator I worked at finding a way inside to give him some hope. I promised that he would have a new leg and that he would walk and no one would even know that he was without leg. His battered face was still swollen while his hip was pinned many times in the intact appendage to the left. "You will have a leg, I promise. If no organization will give you one, I will. I will buy you a leg myself," I promised him.

While walking around one of the camps for displaced people, my driver spotted someone he knew from his village. He sat with her and they talked about their ordeals. They went systematically through the events of their recent lives and identified who had been lost or killed by the tsunami. They were comforted by each other's stories of loss. It fascinated me to watch them together. Neither could do anything for the other, but having company to deal with the pain is very healing.

Love,
Cary