Tsunami Kids: Our Journey from Survival to Success by Paul Forkan & Rob Forkan

Author:Paul Forkan & Rob Forkan [Forkan, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Published: 2014-11-12T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Aftermath

IT SEEMED SURREAL being in the UK for all of us. In the weeks and subsequent months after we returned, we were in limbo. We didn’t know how long we were going to stay with Marie or what the future held. Until there was official news, we kept hold of the hope that Mum and Dad would be found alive and would return. No one talked about the sighting of Dad. No one wanted to believe it, so we carried on as if they were still alive, lost somewhere in the maelstrom of human misery we had escaped from and which was unfolding each night on the news. In the cold British winter it seemed a world away.

Straight after we got back, Jo went back out to Sri Lanka to look for Mum and Dad. She booked a flight with her friend James and headed down to Weligama where she looked for clues as to what had happened. She was there for about a week but, in the chaos that was still unfolding, she found nothing.

Those first weeks passed in a blur and it’s still hard to remember details about them. I remember the tiredness and the paranoia. I remember constantly trying to make sense of what had happened. I was annoyed about not coming back with our parents.

Initially it took time to recover from the exhaustion and battering we’d received. Rosie, Mattie and I sported scars where the wave left its mark. The injuries healed, but the emotional toll persisted. We were confined indoors for a long time, advised not to go out because of the continued media interest in our story. So we stayed inside, trying to avoid the news as none of it from South-East Asia was good. The death toll was immense and TV bulletins were full of footage of suffering.

At that point we didn’t know what was going to happen to us. We assumed our parents would come home and they’d find somewhere to live. We were all quiet and weak.

We were introduced to a family liaison officer who came to the house every day. He was our link to the outside world. He was there to talk to the officials in Sri Lanka and in the Foreign Office and to coordinate things. He sat patiently with us and talked through the events in Sri Lanka to build up a story of where we had been and how we got back. He was passing the information on to the search parties and aid organizations in Sri Lanka in the hope it would help them locate Mum and Dad. We didn’t talk to him about our fears that they had perished, it was too painful. Even though the tsunami was a massive global event, it wasn’t mentioned in the house. Relatives came to visit. People got uncomfortable, no one really knew what to say. Any comment, no matter how well meant, always sounded glib. It wasn’t a normal situation. We’d been caught in a natural disaster of unimaginable scale and lost our parents.

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