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Lid geworden op: wo 30 nov 2005 14:25
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Lieverds, dit roert mij tot tranen werkelijk.
Wat deze mensen voor de wereld doen om het leed te verzachten.
Relief just a phone call away
By Liz Gooch
January 26, 2005
It had been 16 years since the elderly woman last heard her daughter's voice.
Her daughter had fled their tiny Sri Lankan village to escape the nation's civil war and resettled in India.
After seeing pictures of the devastating tsunami, the daughter couldn't believe anyone from her village could have survived.
But when Hang Vo, a Red Cross worker from Melbourne, helped the elderly woman call India on a satellite phone, there were tears and disbelief as the daughter realised her mother was alive.
"It was just the most amazing, beautiful thing," Ms Vo said. "(The mother) was totally in tears. It was quite some time before she was composed enough to say, 'Not to worry, I am safe'."
Amid the destruction and suffering, Ms Vo witnessed many more uplifting moments as she helped families in the country's Trinconomalee district contact relatives across the world.
Working with a team of volunteers from the Sri Lankan Red Cross, Ms Vo took mobile and satellite phones into camps where up to 80,000 people were sheltering. In eight days they helped more than 500 families phone relatives.
In cases where people had lost the phone numbers of loved ones, the team posted people's details on the Red Cross tracing website so relatives would know they were alive. They also took the names of the missing.
While much of the relief effort has focused on providing food, water and medical treatment to victims, Ms Vo said the emotional pain of not being able to contact loved ones was often forgotten. Telecommunications were often one of the first things to break down during a disaster.
"Even if you go to a camp and you can only help five people, it's absolutely worth it," she said.
Ms Vo, who worked in Bali after the bombings, said while helping people reconnect with their families was rewarding, it had brought back memories of many broken lives.
She remembers a fisherman who was out at sea when the wave came. He returned to find his entire family gone and his house swept away. He found the bodies of his wife and two of his children, and all he wanted was to find his third daughter's body.
"This man looked like he had no soul," Ms Vo said.
But she was amazed by the strength of the human spirit, and the fact that people divided by years of civil war were coming together to help each other.
The team was welcomed by all sections of society, and Ms Vo said the camps were littered with thank-you signs written in broken English.
One read:
 "It doesn't matter if we are Muslims, Tamil or Sinhalese - all of us thank you for your help".
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Asia-tsun ... 94824.html
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