Spending my share of time in Florida and the east coast of the United States, I’ve lived through tropical storms and hurricanes before. This left me absolutely unprepared for what I experienced early in the morning on December 30th just outside of Pondicherry on the southeast coast of India. Cyclone Thane, a storm categorizes as “very severe” or a category 1 hurricane, made landfall just after midnight.
The door to my room flew open and immediately slammed shut. I reached for my flashlight, turned it on just in time to see the door fly open again, along with the windows, which came unlatched due to the high winds. There was no glass to cover the screens so rainwater poured in and we sat in the corner, as protected as we could be, to wait for the fury to subside.
What we found in the morning, as the storm moved on, was devastation: trees down everywhere damaging houses, shops and roads, no power or water because the wells depend on electricity. I, along with the 20 other people from the American University of Paris’s Sustainable Development Practicum, and residents of Auroville, the town where we stayed, knew it was time to get to work. We came for a month to learn about sustainability, get to know Auroville and Pondicherry, and work as communications consultants for local NGOs. We ended up having a short-course in disaster relief.
Cyclone Thane is being named the worst storm in decades, with more damage than the Tsunami that hit the area in 2002. More than 70% of the forest was uprooted, including cashew, mango and flower crops that provide livelihood for a huge portion of the residents in the area. Almost 25,000 people were evacuated and more than 200,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Still, more than two weeks after the storm, more than 40% of Pondicherry remains without power, causing huge losses for industries that provide employment for the almost 1 million residents.
My experience in India certainly wasn’t the trip I had imagined and will make me reflect on travel, volunteering and how they connect. Because of the storm our group was immediately thrust into helping with clean-up efforts along with the locals. In part this had do with the fact that we were staying for a month and already working with local NGOs. Even so, this intense experience allowed me to see much deeper into the community and make real ties there. This reinforced what I already believed about connecting with the places that I travel. Hopefully, I can recreate this in the future without a cyclone.
The American University of Paris Sustainable Development Practicum has started a relief fund through Auroville International and all of the proceeds will go directly to the small non-profit organizations that we worked with on the ground in India. For more information about how you can help please visit our website.
The post Travelling with Disaster: What happens when mother nature changes your plans appeared first on Context Travel Blog.
