tsunami

we dedicated our perfomances in valence to the victims of the disaster and there was a collection at each instigated by the musicians and the theatre. meanwhile there was a funeral here in mazan for one of the victims and, even closer to home, my friends sarah and nicolas were in a hotel in sri lanka when it happened. i thought you would be interested to hear her words:

The tsunami hit the hotel where we were staying at Bentota beach. The

ground floor of the hotel was completely wrecked and we could not stay there

so were transfered to another hotel in Colombo. We were not in any danger as

we were on the first floor, although the third wave that came in had us a

bit worried. We decided, as we were not injured and still had all our

luggage, that we would stay as we had

only just arrived! We ended up going into the interior of the island and

although we got plenty of news on CNN we were away from the main impact of

the tragedy. The Sri Lankans are very friendly and kind people and never

made us feel that we should not be there. Of course we were respectful of

their situation and made sure that we did not intrude on their grief. It was

a very strange time. It did cross my mind to go and help but when you are

not qualified in any of the fields needed it seemed as if we would just be

getting in the way rather than helping. The tourist industry was very badly

hit by the tsunami as many many tourists just went straight home. We thought

that at least we would be helping a few people continue their livelihoods.

We are now back and begins the business of getting back to reality. The news

has apparently been wall-to-wall here so we may get more of an idea of what

is going on re the relief effort. I have already been asked to play in a

concert for the Relief Fund, I'm sure it will be the first of many. I

donated money while I was there so that it goes directly to the Sri Lankan

fund as we were extremely lucky, two people did die in our hotel, stuck in

their rooms on the ground floor.



We are home now, and beginning to get back to reality.

Actually we were not too shocked by the tsunami. I know that seems weird but

at the time we were not in any immediate danger and it was only afterwards

that we realised how devastating the whole thing had been and how many

people had actually died. We count ourselves extremely lucky indeed in

hindsight.

Am taking part in one concert for the relief fund already on Jan 28th at

Haileybury.