Resli's story of compassion, tears and ultimately gratitude

Resli Costabell went to Thailand soon after Tsunami struck and this is her powerful story.

This is what she looked like before her visit :-).

You can learn more about Resli at www.costabell.com

1. Where were you on 26th Dec?
My birthday is Christmas Day. The previous Christmas had been ‘a big birthday’ (sadly not my 21st). Christmas 2003 had been utterly horrible, one of the worst days of my life. To escape a repetition of the previous Christmas/birthday, I had headed to a small town in the north of England, Northwich, where I was welcomed by a family of beloved old friends.

I walked into the sitting room to find my host staring at the news on the television. He said he had heard that up to twenty thousand people could be dead.

2. What was / is your connection with the region / people?
I spent Christmas 2001 in Chaing Mai, Thailand. A Kiwi and a Thai friend of mine got married on either the day before or the day after Christmas – can’t remember which. I’d loved the bustle and heat and sheer foreignness of the place.

3. What made you go out there to help (Thailand)?
Sometimes I feel numbed by the daily news. I have an ongoing sense that there is so little I can do in the face of daily floods, shootings, crooked politicians, car accidents and the rest of the tragedies that happen to other people, when I’m so busy just trying to look after myself and the people I know personally.

But the tsunami story grabbed my heart on a deeper level. I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the catastrophe, and desperately sad for the people who had lost so much. I wished there were something that I could do.

Sometimes when we want to do something, the universe twists and turns, and the means arrive. A friend who was in Thailand as part of a news team phoned to tell me that it was the most painful story that he had covered in 25 years’ reporting. He had telephoned me a number of times from Thailand, just to talk. (And believe me, this is not the kind of person who normally wants to talk when he’s upset.) My friend said there was really no one else he could talk to. After a few days and more than a few phone calls, he asked if I would come to Thailand to support him. He offered to pay for my flights. I thought long and hard, then accepted the invitation.

4. What was your purpose / mission?

My purpose was to do whatever the Thai people wanted me to do. I took work clothes, in case I was asked to clear rubble. I braced myself for working with corpses. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to stomach some of the grislier tasks, but I was willing to find out the hard way.

Before going to Thailand, I contacted the US and UK embassies there, to ask what I could contribute. I was also careful to check that my presence would be seen as supportive, and not as an intrusion at a sensitive time. No one answered the telephone at the UK embassy. I was able to talk with the Americans. The man with whom I spoke seemed to be subtly vetting me, but he didn’t discourage me from coming. He said that the Thai government, US embassy and UK embassy had no official coordination of volunteers, and that they would not be able to help me find voluntary work or look after me in any way. Basically, I was going to be on my own. When I asked how I could help, he described how English-speaking tourists were in hospitals, and could use someone to bring them English newspapers, provide a few treats, and basically just be a friendly concerned person to talk to. It wasn’t what I had imagined I would be doing. I’d have preferred to have done something for Thai people rather than for moneyed tourists. But if offering newspapers, treats, and companionship would help, then that’s what I would do.

Ten days after the tsunami, I arrived in Phuket. I headed for City Hall, its notice boards fluttering with pictures of missing people. There were hundreds. All races, all nationalities, the young, the old, beautiful people, plain people, people making faces at the camera. All missing. Selfishly, I was relieved not to see photos of corpses for relatives to identify.

At City Hall, I made the rounds of the US Embassy representatives, UK Embassy representatives, Thai police, and information centre, offering to do whatever they needed done. They all had the same response: thank you for coming, but you’ll have to find your own way to volunteer. A woman at the British Embassy jokingly said that I could clean the lavatory. I did. There was a tent where people could supposedly find someone to talk to, but no one was there either to listen or to talk. I asked about the English-speaking patients in hospitals, and was told they had all been moved to Bangkok hospitals, been discharged, or died.

That evening, somewhat despondent, I headed into what was left of Patong’s night life. An idea sprang into my jet-lagged mind: I could just listen to people. I was a trained counselor, with experience in drug rehabilitation units, homeless shelters and prisons. I’ve heard plenty of terrible stories, and am able to listen without taking on someone else’s burden as my own. I’d be a listener.

Decision made, I headed to the ladies’ room. The elderly woman staffing the lavatories accepted my 5 baht fee, and I thanked her in Thai. (Please do not form the impression that I speak Thai. I speak perhaps twenty words of Thai, usually to the politely suppressed giggles of Thai people.) Another Thai woman overheard me, and began speaking to me in rapid Thai. When I confessed that I speak only English, she quickly switched to English. Then it was as if the woman had read my mind: she asked why I had come to Thailand, and I replied, ‘To listen.’ She said, ‘Good’. Then she blurted out her experience of the tsunami. She had been caught up in the waves, thrown around, and carried on the waters. She had been certain that she would die, and was surprised to have survived with ‘only’ extensive cuts and bruises down her spine and on her hands and feet.

The woman worked as a prostitute, and had spent the fortnight since the tsunami trying to hide her wounds from clients. She had not shown the wounds to anyone but the medical staff who bandaged them. The tsunami had seriously depleted the numbers of tourists to Phuket, and those who had journeyed to Phuket did not want to hire a bruised prostitute whose wounds reminded them of the tsunami. But the woman wanted to show someone. She turned and adjusted her top and bandages so that I could see deep angry cuts. I wish I had known what to say.

The woman tumbled through her story rapidly and repeatedly. I was concerned that by repeating it, she was etching her memories further and further into her heart. But with each telling, she seemed lighter. We were there for perhaps a half hour. Then she asked my name, thanked me, encouraged me to visit her at the bar where she worked, and disappeared. I felt honoured that she trusted me enough to tell me her story and show me her wounds, and grateful that she had confirmed my role in Thailand as a listener. I looked for her in the bar, but she was not there. Perhaps she got a client after all.

5. What contribution did you make?

When I decided to be a listener, I had expected to listen to English-speaking tourists who had been caught up in the tsunami. However, this never happened. They were all gone. Instead, I listened to Thai people who spoke English. On one occasion, I listened to a Thai man who spoke virtually no English. He understood just enough to know that I was there to listen. We agreed that whether I understood him or not, I could listen. He talked to me in Thai, and I just listened my little heart out.

Phuket was drained of tourists. The people would say, ‘So you are not afraid to visit?’ or ‘How long is your holiday?’ I told them that actually, I had come to listen. That was usually all it took for someone to pour out their story. Taxi drivers pulled to the side of the road to talk for 20 minutes before continuing the journey. Stall holders stopped selling, and sat down to describe how they were affected by the tsunami. I wondered whether everyone was so traumatized that it was a relief to find an outsider who was not as directly affected, to whom they could talk without feeling they needed to reciprocate by asking me for my story.

Two of my Thai friends, Sathern and Eed, were ‘fixers’: professional resource-brokers who knew all the right people to know, and who knew how to get things done in Thailand. I was eager to do some of the nasty work that needed to be done, and they suggested I work with Dr Porntip, the forensic scientist in charge of the tsunami mortuary at Kao Lak. However, excellent fixers though they are, they were unable to help. I never met Dr Porntip, nor was I able to make contact with her. So I kept listening.

I felt guilty. There was so much pain and devastation, and all I had done was to listen to a few people. I could not even afford to donate £1 for every person who had died in the waves. All I was doing was wandering around Patong and Phuket City, making myself available to listen and enjoying the positive aspects of Thai culture that shone through the devastation. I found some people who wanted to talk – or rather, they found me – but it wasn’t as if I’d been able to set up a booth and sit all day listening.

I still feel guilty. Sometimes people find out that I went to Thailand to do voluntary work. They say all sorts of nice things about me, and seem to think that it makes me a deeply noble person. But I had a free trip there, all I did was listen, and I had plenty of time between ‘listenings’ to enjoy myself. Was I getting unwarranted credit and ‘nobility points’, when actually I had enjoyed the trip? I’m still not sure. Part of me thinks that enjoying what I’m doing doesn’t detract from the good work, and may even enhance it. Then the old Puritan ethic kicks in, bringing guilt along with it.

At dinner one evening in Patong, I told Sathern and Eed about my frustration and guilt. But both repeatedly said, ‘It is enough that you want to help my country.’ Sathern wiped his eyes each time he said this. Another Thai friend, Tong, kept saying how much it meant to him that I respected his culture and had come to help as an equal. Maybe I should stop comparing what little I did to the scale of the task. Maybe I should just trust that wanting to help was enough in some ways, and that any good I did while I was there was a bonus.

6. What impact did the event have on you?
It has brought home to me how lucky and cosseted I am. I have my life, my business, my house, my friends, my family. I have photographs and letters accumulated over a lifetime. I have my books, with marginalia scattered throughout them. My loved ones die one at a time.

The tsunami has given me a different perspective. Things happen that in the past, I might have let upset me. Now I’m more likely to shrug and think, ‘So I missed the last tube. I still have my legs to walk on and a home to go to.’ Seeing the aftermath of the tsunami gave me a powerful perspective on how fortunate I am.

The Thai people taught me so much. Generally speaking, they are incredibly kind and gentle. It’s as if the main cultural value is ‘be nice’. No raised voices, no arguing, no fighting even if people have had a bit to drink. It was a shock to return to London, and hear people shouting, swearing or honking car horns at each other. Soon after I returned to England, I was walking across the road, perfectly legally. A car deviated from its path and swerved towards me. The driver stopped just before he hit me, then leaned on the horn, stepped out of the car, shouted, and made obscene gestures at me. I was shocked, and shouted back. I added some obscene gestures of my own, for good measure. It felt great, for about 5 seconds. The man hadn’t even driven off before I felt ashamed of myself. I felt rather sad, really. I’d been in Thailand for ten days, among people who were suffering intensely, many of whom had lost so much, and had never heard a cross word. And here was me losing my temper and shouting at a stranger. I wasn’t even hit by the car, just scared. Since then, I’ve been better at keeping my temper, and have softened my words.

About a month after the tsunami, there was a television programme about the tsunami. I normally don’t watch television; I have it on in the background more like a radio. I heard a clip of amateur video that I had heard a few times previously. It featured a family of tourists on their hotel balcony. As the first wave hit, a young boy shouts ‘Tsunami!’ Moments later, the father orders them, ‘Get in. Get in!’ and shoos his family back into the hotel. For some reason, I looked at the television and saw the sights in the clip for the first time. It showed a large swell rolling up the beach. The water hit a flat roofed restaurant just like the ruined restaurant next to the hotel where I’d stayed. I mused that the beaches of Thailand must have dozens of buildings built in that style. The wave continued into a wall of palm trees, just like the wall of palm trees in front of my hotel. As it hit the trees, the video showed the wave bursting up to treetop height. That’s when the man shouted ‘Get in! Get in!’ to his family. The wave rolled past the hotel, swamping a set of half-constructed buildings just like… the realization hit me. The video had been taken from my hotel. The family had stayed in one of the rooms near mine, on the same side of the hotel.

I sat still in shock. I stopped breathing for a few moments. My face felt cold and stiff and I could feel my heart racing. Somehow, seeing a video of the tsunami hitting where I had been, brought it home to me. And if it were that distressing for me to see the tsunami on video, thousands of miles away and weeks later, what must it have been like to be there when it hit? It’s been months since I saw the video on television, but I can feel my heart racing again as I think of it.

There was another incident as well. I am a professional speaker. I’d been asked to give an interactive seminar on looking after your inner resources. Someone had titled the talk ‘Feeding The Flame’. A small part of the presentation involved a candle that a woman in Thailand had given me. I said that she had so little left after the tsunami, yet she wanted to give me a gift. What I wanted to say next was that even a tsunami could not quench her inner flame. Instead, I was surprised to feel my eyes fill and my throat close. I stood for some time, unable to speak. (When you are a professional speaker, this is not a good thing.) I cried when I’d seen the tsunami on the news, before I went to Thailand. I don’t think I’d cried a drop in Thailand or in the days after my return. It was less than excellent timing to have the impact hit me when I was standing in front of a group of people. (This hadn’t happened in rehearsal!) Was it A Bad Thing or was it A Good Thing? The feedback that I got was that it was good in terms of the presentation, because there’s nothing quite like a shocked presenter bursting into tears to grab an audience’s attention. But on a more meaningful level, I was glad that I had cried. I want to find a balance for myself, a balance between being numbed by the tsunami and being overwhelmed by it. The tears were a good start.

7. Describe some moments or incidents that moved / touched / inspired / galvanized you?

This is the question that feels impossible to answer. Words are inadequate.

I can describe one incident that shocked me. I was walking down a street in the night district. I wandered down a side street to explore. Bars and noise and market stalls and working girls lined the street. The noise and activity ended abruptly about two thirds of the way down the street. The rest of the street was completely boarded up, save for one market stall at the end. I stood idly musing on why all of the businesses at one end had shut. Then comprehension set in, and I felt like an idiot for not realising sooner: the tsunami had destroyed half the street. I looked more closely at the walls of the surviving businesses, and saw high water marks near the ceiling. It felt as if a ghost town and Oxford Street had been stitched together. I made a cowardly retreat into the music and bustle.

8. What lessons did you learn from your trip?
Perhaps anger and angst are not an inevitable part of life. The Thai people can stay calm and gentle in the face of disaster. So I can stay calm and gentle in the face of the much more minor upsets in my life.

9. How has your life changed due to your experience?
I am more grateful for what I have.

10. What one line message have you got for the world (i.e. the readers)?
Act with love, take responsibility.

11. How did the project change other people’s lives?
I cannot even begin to express the loss and grief that the tsunami has wrought. My hope is that just as a forest fire gives space for new shoots to breathe, the tsunami will give space for us to love.

12. Please share one special moment during your project that made it all seem so worthwhile.

Within about thirty seconds of my deciding that my role would be to act as a listener, a woman intensely wanted me to hear her tsunami experience. I instantly knew that I had made the right choice. If was as if someone were saying, ‘Yes, Resli, this is what you were meant to do here.’ The timing was so perfect that Hollywood could not have scripted it better. (Except Hollywood might have set our meeting somewhere other than a public lavatory.)

PS: I closed this file, deciding to sleep on it before sending it to Arvind tomorrow. Still musing on the amazing coincidence of deciding to be a listener just as a woman decided she wanted me to listen to her, I checked for new emails. The only new email was from a woman in Boston whom I have never heard of in my life. The email describes a Christmas in Thailand, many years ago. That’s enough shivers down my spine. It’s also enough prompts for me to send my scribblings to Arvind at last, to send them tonight. As my Belgian friend Jean says, ‘Coincidence is the name of the path God walks, when he travels incognito.’

13. What is next for you and the project?
Overcome my sense that just as the voluntary work I did was not enough, these words are not enough. I have many times thought about answering Arvind’s questions. I have composed words and paragraphs and chapters in my head. But my words are so feeble and the tsunami was so powerful. Someone said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Writing about the tsunami feels the same. Then when I do churn out a few pages, my ramblings seem self-centred, shallow, and self-important. I feel like a fraud. I didn’t do that much. What could I possibly have to say? Why should I write anything, when hundreds of thousands of others have more right to write?

I need to decide to let Arvind be the judge, not me. I’ll send this to him, and if he laughs at my efforts, then at least someone has smiled.

© Resli Costabell, 20th Dec 2005