Via Brad Newsham at Backpack Nation (btw, there's a story contest underway if you're a travel-inspired writer), I hear that travel writer Jeff Greenwald went to Sri Lanka with Mercy Corps and is writing dispatches from the field.
The following snippet vividly displays resiliency in the face of disaster and devastating destruction. Wow. Talk about dealing with disruption...business types take note. What makes one fearful to ever go out to sea and another resolute to go back out?
Earlier, I'd spoken with a fisherman who had lost his son; his home was also destroyed. When I asked when he'd fish again, the man shook his head in a panic and clapped his chest in the universal gesture of fear.
"Never," he said. "I will open hotel, or make other business. I won't ever go into the sea again."
André Tissera, in contrast, is determined to demonstrate that people can reclaim their traditional lives and vocations. Just 36 hours after the tsunami, to the slack-jawed astonishment of his neighbors, he piloted one of the only surviving boats into the lagoon. He has since made a project of rounding up the vessels scattered by the killer wave, and repairing their damage. Tissera reckons that a third of them can be saved. (It's estimated that 80% of Sri Lanka's entire fishing fleet was destroyed.) His motive is simple: If the people of Arugam Bay cannot overcome their fear of the ocean, their community will never recover.
"I'm going fishing at 6 a.m. tomorrow," he says defiantly.
When I ask if there's anything left to catch — a question that not even the marine experts have yet answered — Tissera replies with absolute confidence.
"The fishing should be brilliant," he says. "Nobody's been out for ten days."
I witnessed varying reactions to much smaller disasters: for instance, the dot-com crash of 2000 left tech entrepreneurs reeling and of late information technology and knowledge workers wander shell-shocked as their jobs are displaced to India and other emerging creative class centers. Interesting to note the different responses that fearful and stressful situations bring out in people. It also sounds to me as if André Tissera found a purpose greater than himself and much of resiliency is connecting with that which is universal and beyond ourselves thus shifting the focus from our personal woes.
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