Bangkok--Jan 14--Francom Asia
I have covered wars. I have covered situations where I have often feared for my life. In this instance, I don't think I was scared of being killed by some random bullet or being shot at by an insurgent. But the difference here was that you are face to face with people who have lost everything and the suffering is very much in your face at every turn.
We have seen a lot of children in our trips across through these camps, but many of the children actually died when the Tsunami struck. There are others who have been orphaned, some who have been or are in a situation where they have come to these camps with strangers - in some instances with other families or relatives. The thing that strikes you when you look at these children is that some of them appear to have a sense of sadness in their eyes. Others appear to be like normal children anywhere wherein they are playing with their friends or just with the other children at the camps.
It is certainly a very hard and trying situation in terms of health, hygiene and the fact that many of these people have to basically rely on the goodness of other people for food. In some instances for their clothes and it is a trying time for the adults. For the children, of course, it depends on what age they are. I mean, certainly a sense exists that I felt that many of these affected people almost don't know how to really cope. At one camp we went to there was one girl who had a deep sense of sadness in her eyes and a broken arm. She also had a black eye but it appeared that there was something else. We asked her about her family, whether they were okay and she said, "Yes my father's alright, my mother, they tell me, is in a hospital.” Of course she was just looking at us as if we might be able to tell her more but obviously we knew nothing and were just looking at her, trying to reassure her. These are the kind of things that stick in your mind after a time like this.
In some ways, it would appear, that some of them are very resilient, certainly the children, the younger kids seem very happy. They appear to be walking around, playing; there certainly isn't a sense of loss - at least in the camps. I mean it's just like childhood - continuous. But someone looking at it from the outside would feel otherwise that these kids have been deprived, you end up noticing more than perhaps you know they themselves do. Some of them think of this as just another fun experience.
There were a couple of stories that I do remember. One involved two girls, two cousins who were perhaps in their early teens and they came up to us and the first thing they wanted to know was what we do and they wanted to talk to us to find out why we were there. We explained we were television journalists and they kept peppering us with questions such as what we do, do we speak this language. We would like to converse with them. There was a sense that they wanted to carry on a normal conversation. We were there for a different purpose so it was at first a bit difficult to figure out where exactly the conversation was leading but it appeared that these two girls wanted to have a real conversation. During the conversation, one of them turned to me and said, “You know, why do you think we are so happy?” I didn’t think they were particularly happy, I just thought they were being very friendly, so I said, "No, I don't know why you're so happy." They said, "You know if we aren't happy then there's nothing left to live for and this is what we want to continue to keep in our minds. We want to be happy.” Next they asked me, "How would you feel if you were in a situation like this?” That question caught me by surprise; I didn't know what it meant. What struck me most was that these two girls were so engaging and so charming, and yet perhaps had a very sad story to tell.
I don't think one can be neutral in these instances. In many ways, what you are doing is you are chronicling what is happening around you. I think as a human being as you feel for people who have suffered, you feel for kids as well. You feel for the children who have lost their parents. You also feel for the parents who have lost other family members. I don't think at any point one can be neutral. In fact, I think if there is anything, you are very sympathetic about their situation, but it’s also hard because you are trying to see whether what you do will make a difference in their lives. Whether what you report can bring some change or whether just reporting on one individual somewhere in one tiny corner of the region is going to have an impact on anything else. One is never sure, but one does try to, I think quite consciously, look for ways to ease the pain that these people are going through.
My daughter is four years old and she is really very much in my thoughts through the day at every turn. I look at the situation in these camps and the first thing that comes to one's mind, as a parent is your instinct. My instinct as a father is to protect my children, my daughter in this instance. And I have to ensure that she has a better life, that she will never need to worry about anything. Then you look at these children and you wonder who is there who feels that way about them. Perhaps a relative might want to take care of them but do they feel the same sense of bonding a father or a mother feels, and that to me makes it harder to get over the idea that these children are perhaps left with no bonds.
Covering the story from India, which is no stranger to adversity, where at every turn you see poverty and people in distress, where natural disasters are common and they usually end up in large scale suffering and loss of life — perhaps the only good thing is that people seem to have some sort of resilience and are able to overcome their trials and tribulations. For the children that you see here, in some ways I think the attention of the outside world being focused on them, to my mind, is heartening. Because if some of them have not had such a happy childhood, perhaps this disaster might be that turning point, perhaps something good might emerge out of this. End.