Jill and Arnout communicated by text message and she asked him if they needed supplies. He said there was a need for basic medical supplies, and before we quite knew what we were doing we found ourselves on a plane for Phuket with three suitcases full of bandages, amoxycillin, immodium, antibiotic creams, panadol, and more.
Tsunamis, it turns out, are an odd sort of natural disaster, because their effects are very localized. A few hundred metres in from the coast are destroyed, but of course everything else is intact. All of which meant that you could fly into Phuket, rent a car, stay in a hotel, and you might never know that anything was wrong.
Assuming, of course, that you didn't notice the posters everywhere, and the family members who had flown in from Sweden, from Germany, from all over the world. This was a week after the tsunami, and the reality was that it was past the stage of finding survivors, or coming upon a missing relative in the hospital. For those still there, it was about identifying bodies and arranging for their return. Phuket City Hall, which was where relief efforts were being coordinated, was now just a terribly sad place.
There was not much to be done to help there, however. We left some medical supplies with the relief tent, and waited to hear the report from Jakob, Arnout, and Christian, who had gone north to Phang-Nga province.
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