tsunami relief trip

8/6/2019 Tsunami Relief Trip

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Tsunami Relief Camp

This piece of writing is about the Tsunami Relief Camp which was conducted

from Tuesday the 4th Jan 05 to Friday the 7th Jan 05. A three member crew fromUbiNetics [Jayakishore, Rajesh, and myself (Ravi Sekhar)] were part of a teamcomprised of 16 members including 2 Doctors. The camp was organized by anNGO named Indian Council For Voluntary Blood Donors. On Tuesday, Jayakishore andRajesh purchased the relief materials and collected the necessary officialdocuments for our vehicle to enter TamilNadu The Relief materials werecomposed of

a. Matsb. Steel Platesc. Tumblers

d. Milk Powdere. Torch lightsf. Milk packetsg. Feeding bottlesh. Water packetsi. Tea/Coffee Packets

j. Buckets

We all were eagerly awaiting to distribute the Tsunami Relief materials, whichcommenced only on Wednesday morning. We started at 8:00 AM on Wednesdaymorning from Bangalore in a Tempo Traveler, and loaded the relief materials

onto a truck. You can see the pictures of the tempo traveler and the truck whichwas used to carry the relief materials.


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We had breakfast at around 10:00 am in Hosur and reached a village nearDharmapuri, where a kindhearted landlord by name Muthu Swamy provided 30Quintals (3000 Kgs) of rice and 2 bags of red lentils for the Tsunami victims. We

were obliged to have lunch at the landlords place. We started form there at3:30PM and reached Pondichery at 8:00 PM. We had dinner in Pondichery andheaded towards Chidambaram. We finally reached Chidambaram at 12:30 AMand stayed in a guesthouse provided by another NGO named CREED. Westarted the distribution of the relief materials on Thursday.

On Thursday morning we started approaching the affected areas. Before meetingthe victims, we delivered some rice bags, milk and medicines to an orphanagerun by CREED organization; the picture below was taken in the orphanage.


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After that we visited a village named Perengapettai. The residents of that village

were mostlyfishermen and snake catchers (Muslim/Adi Dravidar/Tribal). Theywere honest enough, to let us know that they were not directly affected by theTsunami, but were indeed indirectly affected because of the ban on fishing, forthe next 3 months by the government. So we distributed some milk packets andfeeding bottles to the children and a few rice bags, sarees and lungis to thevillage headman. Everyone agreed to give the materials to him, who in turnwould distribute it to the people of that village.


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When we were about to leave the village, we met a software engineer by nameDinesh working for NetApps in California, who had come here to help theTsunami victims. We came to know from him about some of the worst Tsunami

hit villages and he agreed to help us, in reaching those places. We had lunch atthe Aid India camp at 1:30 pm and started going towards a village namedThonithurai, which is surrounded by the sea backwaters, an area ofapproximately 400 Square meters. There were approximately 18 families mainlyfishermen (Most Backward caste (Meenavar)) in this village. We distributed therelief materials to the individual families by name (list provided by Dineshsteam).


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We then started moving towards another village named Kuvaiyar. There werearound 83 families mainly fishermen, who had got affected by Tsunami waves.We distributed some of the relief materials to the individual families by name

(thanks again to CREED person who had the list).


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By 7 PM we completed the distribution of a part of the relief materials, and by thistime we all were tired and moved back to the CREEDs guest house (Thanks tothem for providing shelter).

Due to other commitments Jaya Kishore and Rajesh left to Bangalore. I stayedback and was in, for the next days activity.

On Friday morning, we visited the famous Siva temple in Chidambaram. We thenmet an auto driver who was familiar with the affected areas and wanted to helpus in delivering the relief materials to the Tsunami victims.


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After having breakfast, we went to a village Murasil Vadai, it was an islandindeed!, where again 102 families(Most Backward caste(Meenavar)) had gotaffected. We decided to assess the situation in the island and hence visited the

island which is 1.5 Km from the main land, surrounded by the sea backwaters.


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We came back after meeting the village headman and getting his feed back onhow to distribute the relief materials. We then loaded two boats with some of therelief materials and distributed the same to groups of five families. We returned at

around 3:00 Pm from the island.


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We decided to visit yet another most affected island/village MGR Thittam(1Kmfrom the main land) , which was populated by 400 people, now left with only 320people alive , who have been evacuated by the government authorities and

presently taken care by the government run Tsunami camps. We went to thisvillage by boats, to see how much devastation the Tsunami waves had caused. Itwas truly an unimaginable loss of life, houses, boats and cattle. This was a placewhere the water had proceeded for more than 3 kms from the backwaters. Beloware a few pictures of the washed away island.


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We finally returned from the completely destructed village, and headed towards abigger village, [dont exactly remember the name] it was suggested by the guide(auto driver) where we handed over all the remaining relief materials to the

village headman for further distribution. This village is populated by around 300families, and is 1 Km from the seacoast.

After the hectic distribution we returned to Chidambaram and had dinner by 9:00PM. We then packed off to Bangalore, with the contentment of service andreached here on Saturday morning.

tsunami relief trip

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