Hopewell Township woman back from Sri Lanka relief trip

Vanessa Sandom worked on a 13-member team under the auspices of the English relief organization, i-to-i.

By John Tredrea
   Hopewell Township resident Vanessa Sandom made a two-week trip to Sri Lanka because she wanted to pitch in with the actual work involved in the huge tsunami relief effort.
   Ms. Sandom, who returned to her Harbourton Ridge Drive home early last week, spent much of her time in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) at the physically and emotionally draining task of clearing a mile and a half stretch of beach of the debris and wreckage left behind by the disastrous waves of Dec. 26, 2004.
   "We picked up a lot of things from beach homes that were destroyed, or largely destroyed, by the tsunami," Ms. Sandom said. "Wedding pictures, pictures of children, diplomas, wallets. Anything that might be found in someone’s home could be found. Toothbrushes, combs. The worst thing for me was picking up the baby shoes. Tiny little flip-flops. It was heartbreaking."
   Ms. Sandom, a member of the Hopewell Township Committee and former township mayor, worked on a 13-member team under the auspices of the English relief organization, i-to-i, which can be visited at i-to-i.com. Team members ranged in age from 18 to 60 and came from the United States, England, Ireland, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
   "It was a great team," Ms. Sandom said. "We worked well together. At times it seemed almost like we were called there. I was the oldest woman in the group. The youngest member was 18. Her name was Carly Peart, from the United Arab Emirates. What a remarkable person. One of the hardest workers you’ll see. A great heart and sunny disposition."
   The oldest member of the team was Clay Austin, from Oregon. "He was the only member of the team who hadn’t done a lot of traveling," Ms. Sandom said. "He had sold his hardware business three years earlier and been spending his time driving around the states in an RV."
   "I didn’t want to go without being a member of a team. The i-to-i already had a presence in Sri Lanka. They worked in orphanages and did community development projects in shantytowns. In January, almost everything was diverted to tsunami relief." Ms. Sandom said.
   When she arrived in Sri Lanka on April 16 after traveling for two days, Ms. Sandom attended an orientation program in Colombo. "We learned about the customs, some of the language," she said. "We learned how to break up bricks and efficiently move things from one place to another." The team learned how to break up bricks to prepare itself for dealing with the destroyed walls of the buildings on the beach. "We wanted to save as many of the bricks as we could," Ms. Sandom said. "And you had to break up the walls so you could pick them up to cart them off the beach."
   From Colombo, the team went south to the town of Kaluthara. "We had very little equipment," Ms. Sandom said. "Nothing electrical or mechanical. Shovels, pick-axes and wheelbarrows, simple hand tools. That was it. We picked things up from the beach and took them to the road. It was really heavy work. It was so hot and humid that you were exhausted as soon as you started. The sun was brutal because we were so close to the equator. We raked the beach and bent down to pick up stuff or pull it out of the ground. When all you end up doing after two weeks of work is clearing a one and a half mile stretch of beach, you realize how extensive the damage of the tsunami is and how long it will take to clear it up."
   The stories she heard from the inhabitants were "overwhelming," Ms. Sandom said. "We met children who had lost both parents, parents who had lost their children, a man who had lost his leg . . . it was story after story after story like that.
   "We tried to get as much stuff from the beach into bags as we could. We had to get in between boulders to get some of it. Some of it was stuck between palm trees, whose roots grow on top of the ground. We separated the good brick from the bad brick. Of the homes on the beach, a lot of times there was nothing left but the foundation. The tsunami waves had been about 8 feet high there," Ms. Sandom added.
   From Kaluthara, her team went south to Peraliya, where the waves were much worse – 20 feet high.
   "A train had been capsized there," Ms. Sandom said. "We planted coconut trees there. That was fun. It was the only time we did something that felt like it was just for the future."
   In Peraliya, a lot of people had moved to emergency camps from the beach. "They didn’t want to go back," Ms. Sandom said. "They didn’t want to go near the water, or in the water. They won’t fish. It’s sad. A lot of them were fisherman, and the Belgians had given them fishing boats to replace the ones they had lost. But they won’t go back in the water. It was amazing how little the people in the camps had. They had lost all their possessions and, often, family members. They had no jobs. No pets were allowed in the camp, so dogs by the thousands were roaming around, eating what they could find."
   To find out more about the camp in Peraliya, visit www.peraliya.com.
   Ms. Sandom said she and her fellow team members felt "we made only a small difference, but it was a difference. We all felt we wanted to do something personal instead of just giving money. We were all sad to leave. It was great to get back to amenities like showers and ice, but we were unhappy to leave the team and that we couldn’t do more."
   She concluded: "Now that I’m back, I feel like I have more perspective on what’s important in life. It brings me peace because it makes me realize how fortunate we are here. We have a beautiful community and we know we can count on our neighbors. Our problems can be big, but they’re not life and death on the scale the tsunami brought. Sometimes I lose track of that and don’t see the small treasures. But I feel like I can see them now."
   How did Ms. Sandom get involved in the first place?
   "I knew as soon as I heard about the disaster that I needed to contribute more than just money. It might have something to do with how much I value this type of hands-on international volunteering in the first place, since this was my third such trip. But finding a way to get to one of the affected areas was difficult, because I didn’t want to go by myself. The organization, i-to-i, already had volunteer programs in Sri Lanka, so they simply changed the focus of their community work to tsunami relief. They provided the support I felt I needed and was glad I had when I was there."
   According to its Web site, i-to-i is in its 10th year. It provides "unique travel and work experiences to people of all ages, from all backgrounds . . . We believe everybody has the potential to make a difference to their own lives and the lives of others through meaningful travel. By offering a wide variety of volunteer experiences throughout the world, along with quality TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) training, each year we help thousands of people to catch the travel bug."
   In the last 12 months i-to-i has, for example: "helped 3,200 people to volunteer to assist in vitally important projects in 25 countries; trained 10,000 people how to Teach English as a Foreign language (TEFL) and assisted them in their job search overseas; and sent 190 people from eight countries to Sri Lanka to assist with tsunami relief efforts."
   On the local level, the Hopewell Valley Tsunami Relief Fund account with the Hopewell Valley Community Bank is still accepting donations, Ms. Sandom said. The funds will go directly to the Peraliya Camp, and will be used exclusively to rebuild the school’s library there. Checks can be made out to the Hopewell Valley Tsunami Relief Fund, and may be mailed to the Hopewell Valley Community Bank, PO Box 999, 4 Route 31, Pennington, 08534.