Most of our children are housed in Madurai, two hours inland, so were not harmed. But our team knew many of those who died on the Tamil Nadu coastline.
They were quick to respond, arriving on the coast with emergency supplies within hours of the tragedy. But they found the victims so traumatised that they were unable even to feed or clothe themselves. Piles of unused second-hand clothing became playgrounds for children, and cooked food wasted by the roadside.
At the same time, our children went into the streets of Madurai collecting and sorting vital aid. Others trucked it to the emergency camps.
Despite refusing international help, the response of the government has sadly been neither fast nor efficient. So local NGOs allocated regions among themselves, and Love and Care has been working in two of the worst hit towns, Nagapattinam and Vellankani. The latter is home to a Catholic shrine on the beach, where 10,000 lost their lives in one spot.
Meanwhile, John Arul was hearing of children orphaned by the wave. In one camp were a ten-year-old girl and baby boy, who didn’t speak Tamil, the local language. John established that she was a Hindi-speaking girl, probably from the north. Named Sudiah, she had with her a young boy she called simply ‘Chotti’, which means ‘little boy’. No one knew of them or their
parents. The team named him ‘Sunami Moses’ as he had been rescued from the water.
John therefore brought them and others back to Madurai, but the story doesn’t end there. Little Moses succumbed to a cholera outbreak that has just hit the region (see news), and died in hospital on 26th February. We grieve with John who wrote, ‘I feel so sad to lose him. I loved him so much..’
But in a disaster, there is little time to grieve. It wasn’t long before the team identified almost 100 more children without friends or family. Back in Vellankani, local AOG pastor Robby had offered to help, but had nowhere to house them. A plot of land will cost £3,000, before building anything.
Meanwhile, John rented two rooms in a local lodging house where he located 39 children, effectively starting another orphanage! ‘We appointed two ladies to do the cooking and one young girl as warden and pastor Robby oversees the work. The owner of the building is a Christian from Kerala.’ John plans to set up another three homes there as soon as possible.
