By:Nicole Falco
Dunham arrived in Sri Lanka from Africa just two weeks before the worst natural disaster in recent history struck. She awoke at 9:20 a.m. Dec. 26 to shrieking and shouting, as the ocean rushed violently through the guest house she was staying in, just one house off the beach in a town called Unawatuna, which is just south of Galle.
"At the moment the wave hit, I looked out from the balcony and I thought, This could be it," recalled Dunham, a South High School special-education teacher. As quickly as the water rose to meet her second-floor balcony, it descended, but it left death and destruction in its wake.
Dunham and her traveling companion, Kate Posner, a math teacher from London, were among the fortunate. They survived, and would eventually go home. Damika, the owner of the guest house, lost his father, brother and uncle. Dunham tried for 10 minutes to revive a British couple's 8-week-old son using CPR, but it was too late. Within a matter of seconds, thousands were dead and thousands more were without homes and livelihoods.
Eventually, Dunham, her friend and others trudged through the water to higher ground just as another wave battered the beach village below. "I was in shock," she told Mark Licurse, a reporter for South High School's Falcon Report, the student-run broadcast news program. "I never experienced anything like that in my life, and you don't ever expect to experience anything like that in your life."
Despite being overwhelmed with death and devastation, the Sri Lankan people opened their arms to tourists like Dunham and Posner, sharing what little they had left. "It's important to remember that those people lost everything, and they didn't have that much to begin with," Dunham said, recounting that every family in the village took in tourists. They climbed trees to pick bananas and coconuts. They offered visitors tea and water from their wells. They gave them mats to sleep on. Because the tourists had to sleep outside, the Sri Lankans slept beside them, offering protection from possible looters. "I think that I've always believed that people are intrinsically good," Dunham said. "I think I believe that now more than ever."
She was able to tell her family that she was OK using a cell phone. By Tuesday night, Dec. 28, she and the other tourists were evacuated from the beach to Colombo by the Sri Lankan government and the British High Commission. By Wednesday night, Dunham and Posner were on a flight to London. Still shaken, Dunham was nervous about flying home to New York, so her mother and sister met her in London on New Year's Eve. They flew to New York on Sunday. Dunham, a former resident of Manhattan, is now living with family in Babylon.
Besides being featured in a Newsday story, Dunham appeared on News 12 and says was probably contacted by every major media outlet to tell her story. She stopped by South High on Jan. 5, just three days after she arrived in New York. She was interviewed by Licurse for the Falcon Report - whose faculty advisor is Ross Lipsky -- and attended a faculty meeting that afternoon. The school had been following her progress as she traveled through Africa and made her way to Sri Lanka, and all were eager to know that she was safe. A monthly synopsis of Dunham's travels was shared on the Falcon Report in a segment called, "Where in the World is Miss Dunham?"
Though she swore off any further travel the night the tsunami struck, in the days that followed, Dunham and Posner were already thinking of ways to help the villagers who had helped them. Dunham, who is on a leave of absence from school until September, wants to spend the next eight months traveling across the country to raise money for Sri Lanka -- in particular, the village where she was staying. Dunham and Posner hope to speak at schools to raise awareness of the Sri Lankan culture and the long-term struggle faced by that country and others. Dunham is already scheduled to speak at Memorial Junior High School Feb. 3, and she plans to speak at each Valley Stream high school. The Central High School District is already discussing how it will aid disaster relief.
The greatest challenge the women face is getting started. Dunham has already contacted Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that builds houses for the homeless. According to Dunham, it costs approximately $2,000 to build a house in Sri Lanka. She hopes to donate any money she raises to Habitat for Humanity, which already has a presence in Sri Lanka. She also hopes to one day return to the village she visited.
To learn more about Dunham's plan to help, e-mail her at lasulo@hotmail.com.
Comments about this story? NFalco@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 208.
