Tsunami: The Aftermath - Part I

I made it a point to stop everything else (I am in the process of getting other things done, as I start a new job tomorrow) to watch 'Tsunami: The Aftermath' on HBO. I remember December 26th, 2004 here in Trinidad and Tobago, reading and writing things related to the tsunami. I recall my father not being interested in what I was doing, and wondering why I wasn't outside of this very same room 'doing something constructive' (which I was, but he never seemed to think a computer was work related). I imagined what it was like over there, what the problems were - and came up with a few good ideas; some of these were used - some were not.

But on the ground, the level of the disaster was beyond comprehension. Having seen the first part of 'Tsunami: The Aftermath', I am very impressed with it so far. It balanced the Eastern and Western perspectives on the razor edge; the cremation of bodies being done to protect the living but misunderstood by the Westerners, the young Thai waiter trying to get back to his village to help people yet locked in jail for looting even as people from England tapped on laptop keyboards looking for loved ones. The contrasts, done gracefully, and the dance of the characters through their lives and into crossing paths.

Of course, the reality was probably different. Some people may never have seen each other after crossing each other's paths. But it's a film. And it may have even helped some people in Thailand.

I suppose it makes sense that they decided on Thailand for the story - the contrasts in the stories between East and West are there, unlike the fishing villages affected up and down the affected areas. In that way, I suppose that it does the people in the affected regions some good. After all, I expect most fishing villages don't have HBO - so to get people to understand the story of the poor, they have to see a story that they can relate to.

The whole thing was a pretty big mess, and it seems that HBO and the BBC did a good job of catching the humanity of the situation. In a world trapped in the politics of Iraq and September 11th (how odd to draw a line between those two), the humanity of the tsunami disaster gets lost... and yet... there it is.