2 decades after the deadly tsunami
since today is the two decades anniversary of the great disastrous acheh tsunami and i notice many media and FB groups mentioned about it, i too, must jump on the bandwagon lah.
can’t imagine 20 years ago when at that time i was very involved in it, that is still fresh in my mind. it was a very world wide popularly known disaster and my involvement was also a once in a lifetime involvement, thus i remember it well.
at that time i was working for the catholic church and i joined the ‘penang office of human development (pohd)’ in their voluntary and relief works to help the tsunami victims. at that time, pohd was headed by fr fabian dicom, a priest who is very passionate on social and community works. fr fabian even ‘turun padang’ (how do you say that in english? went to the grassroot?) when he visited aceh itself after the aftermath of the tsunami. he had some good inspiring storeis to share to us when he came back. i remember how he was saying, looking at the place where the tsunami occured, he was very shocked and sad. total disaster, total wreck…. just walking by, he could smell rotting corpses everywhere.
ok, about my involvement, basically, one was helping the fishermen whose houses were affected, to clean up their houses and the other one was the collection of clothes and foodstuff, sorting them out, helping to load to lorries. at that time, i had blog about it in my blog so i will just give links about what i had written.
one thing i am sad to learn is that, actually i have a lot of photos of my involvement but unfortunately almost all the photos were gone when the free album (worldisround and photobucket) i save on it, started charging and of course i did not pay (also silly me, i should have gone to save those photos to my PC but didn’t). well on my blog, i notice i can still see some of the photos, which i think i upload direct to the blog itself, thus the photos are still there (though there are watermarks on it now).
however, one thing i am happy to learn was that my involvement was picked up by the singapore straits times and they mentioned my name/blog. *proud*
links to my post about the tsunami:
hepling the tsunami victims. this one is about going to their house to clean up and clear the debris
helping at the tsunami relief centre. at the diocesan office which had been turned into a relief centre. help like sorting out the donated items, e.g. clothes and helping to load up the items.
this is the general link where when you do a search at my blog for 'tsunami'. thus can seeall post related. we had a memorial service too which was very beautiful.
http://lucialai.org//?s=tsunami
note: just testing to see if i can post pictures on my blog. since still christmas season, posting a christmas wish.
