Bangkok--Jan 14--Francom Asia
It was our first night on the ground here in Northern Sri Lanka, part of the country that is very much a rebel strong hold. It’s held by the Tamil Tigers that won this territory after a 20 plus year civil war against the south. We heard there was a lot of damage here. We heard that many people had been killed in the Tsunami, but we couldn’t get here. It was very much cut off from the rest of Sri Lanka. It was difficult for any broadcaster to actually get through the border but we managed to do it. We were actually the first broadcast crew to get here and report from the ground.
I was only here for about an hour or so when the full enormity of this story really hit me. We become a bit numb really to the big picture, the big images. We see the endless rows of bodies laying down on the ground and the hundreds of thousands of casualties it’s effecting but somehow it looks remote. It looks distant. And I was the only one of the ground here about an hour or so when I saw something that was all together more affecting, real, and human. We were traveling with a group of Tamil Tigers who were collecting the bodies of the dead from one of the areas that had been devastated around this particular part of Sri Lanka.
And we came across a group of bodies in the distance and from where I stood I could see that they were children. No more than babies really. Aged maybe between one to three. And from a distance, it just really didn't look real. They looked almost like mannequins or dolls but as we got closer I saw their arms were locked around each other. They were hanging on to each other. Their bodies had been tossed in the torrent and the wave as it came through.
But somehow these three little kids had hung together and died together and in those moments you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just doesn’t cut it anymore. I remember standing there looking at it and I couldn’t help thinking about my own children because I have three little boys of my own. And I know I look in on them sometimes before they are about to go to bed and they are often lying there and they have got their arms around each other. Looking at these three little babies with their arms around each other reminded me so much of my own kids. And I started thinking about the little things that matter.
As I stood there I actually started to broadcast live. I had a phone into one of the programs and Richard Quest, one of our London Anchors was on the other end of the line. And as I was speaking to him, the bulldozer came through and it lifted up those three bodies. And put it onto a funeral pile. They stacked the wood about a meter or so high and placed these bodies on the funeral pile. I remember standing there, live on air, describing this scene in front of me, trying to do my job as a reporter, which was just futile because I had stopped being a reporter. I was a father. I remember getting to the end of it and just not knowing anymore what to say.
Richard came on and he said at this moment obviously it is a very solemn moment there's nothing I can ask you. I hung up the phone and at that moment the fire was lit. It was a funeral service. That is what I was witnessing. A Funeral Service. No priest. No mourners. No parents. Just three little babies in this barren landscape lifted up onto a funeral pile and set alight. I remember then just thinking a little prayer for them and wanting to be with my own family and I tried to ring my wife a few minutes to hear her voice but she wasn't home. And I think its that image, and how it touched me and how it made it seem so more real that distilled what this story is about for me. Down to its basics. It's not about the hundreds of thousands of people who have been affected and tens of thousands who have died. It's about the individual lives. And it’s those individual lives now that have to try to go on. That are going to have to survive. And they are going to have to find the little things in life to sustain them. End.