I cried this morning on the way to work listening to two stories on NPR about the tsunami recovery and rebuilding efforts going on. One story was from a reporter in Indonesia, and the other from one in Sri Lanka.
The reporter from Indonesia said that the relief workers get together once a day to talk about “what made you cry today” to help them cope with the work they’re doing. The interviewer, who I believe was Alex Chadwick, asked, “Is there one story that you’ve heard during these sessions that sort of sums up the kind of things they’re dealing with?”
The interviewee responded something to the effect of: “In fact, this morning, a worker came upon a city with tents. When he opened the flap of one tent, he found about 100 bodies in there. And over in one corner there were five people, who turned out to be all one family. And the way the bodies were situated, the parents’ arms were extended toward their children as if they were trying to reach them or save them.”
The interviewee from Sri Lanka was a Sri Lankan who works in Europe, but had returned home for vacation, and had stayed to help. During the entire interview, his two cell phones kept ringing, and he took the calls, mostly brokering trucks with people who needed them, and talked about how important it was to him to help get his country back to some semblance of order.
And on WQDR this morning, their biggest concern was that they couldn’t get a guy to call in to play against “Michelle” for “The Battle of the Sexes Game.”