Guest: Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, Margaret Larson, Carol Bellamy, Mary Landrieu
ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of DEBORAH NORVILLE TONIGHT, “Tsunami Stories.”
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What everybody was trying to do was just save everybody that they could. And we were grabbing people‘s arms from the top of the roof.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) The place is gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I‘ve never been in a culture that taught me more about courage and courtesy and...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the worst part for some people is that it‘s the unknown.
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DEBORAH NORVILLE, HOST: You‘ve seen the images of devastation. You‘ve heard the anguished cries of grief. And nothing can compare to seeing it firsthand.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How deep is the wound in the heart of Sri Lanka?
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NORVILLE: Tonight, NBC‘s Ann Curry on the worldwide rush to provide aid and comfort to those in despair.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wanted to roll up my sleeves personally and do something.
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NORVILLE: Former “DATELINE” correspondent Margaret Larson, who left television to help the world‘s neediest. A U.S. senator with moving tales of comforting young shattered lives.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) feelings.
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NORVILLE: And one doctor just back from the ravaged region reflects on the daunting task of mending so many broken spirits.
ANNOUNCER: From studio 3K in Rockefeller Center, Deborah Norville.
NORVILLE: And good evening, and welcome to this special edition, “Tsunami Stories.” Tonight, firsthand accounts from the front line. All of our guests have had a unique view of the physical and human damage in South Asia.
We begin first with NBC News “TODAY” show anchor and “DATELINE” correspondent Ann Curry. She is just back from Sri Lanka, where more than 30,00 people lost their lives in the tsunami. With a relatively small population of just 19 million people, Sri Lanka is in many ways the nation most battered. Ann Curry spent a week there.
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ANN CURRY, NBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Paul found his oldest daughter hanging onto a metal pole. Then searching, he saw a small body covered in a sheet. It was his youngest in the last seconds of her life.
(on camera): You found your daughter. You—she was covered in a cloth.
PAUL: Cloth, yes.
CURRY: And you pulled back the cloth.
PAUL: Yes. I gave her a kiss.
CURRY: And you kissed your daughter. But you knew she was not going to live?
PAUL: She was very small (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
CURRY: She was very small.
PAUL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) So she can‘t live so long in the water.
CURRY (voice-over): Next he found his wife. She, too, was dead.
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NORVILLE: And Ann Curry joins me now. You see the clips. You hear the story replay, and it just grabs you the way it did the first time. You saw it on TV, I‘m sure, when you were there.
CURRY: Heart-breaking. Just heart0breaking. His story, especially. Just imagine seeing a body under a blanket, pulling back the blanket and seeing the face of your child in the last seconds of her life. I‘m—you know, every day we were there, the reporters there wept. I certainly did. It is so heart-breaking. And there was a sense of—there was such an enormous feeling to it, you wanted to do to honor to the story and do a good job telling it.
NORVILLE: Yes. And yet in some respects, the man we just saw, he‘s really one of the lucky ones. As awful as it is to have lost your family, he got to say good-bye. He knows the certainty of their death, as opposed to so many thousands of people who wonder, maybe next week, they‘ll find their way back home.
CURRY: You know, we went to this place near a hospital, the largest hospital in southern Sri Lanka, and they had had to bury so many of the bodies because they couldn‘t be identified. What they did was they basically took photos of them and posted the pictures of the dead on the walls. And people were milling in and trying to find their loved ones, half hoping not to find them. And it was just a heart-breaking scene.
We saw, actually, a picture of a Western woman there, and we put information about her bathing suit out and publicized it, hoping that someone would be able to find her from outside of, obviously, Sri Lanka. But there were more than 500 they could not identify who were buried in mass graves at this particular hospital alone.
NORVILLE: You talk about doing justice to this story. As you flew over—and you got in about a week after the tsunami happened. What was your biggest concern going in to cover what already you knew was the biggest humanitarian disaster in modern history?
CURRY: My biggest concern, Deborah, was that day after day, it was clear to me, especially when we flew to the eastern coast, which was hardest hit—Para (ph) Betlako (ph), those areas—in Sri Lanka, that no outside aid, no significant outside aid had arrived. By day 13, still there were areas where outside aid had not arrived.
At one point, we flew to Ampara, where 10,000 -- more than 10,000 people had died. We arrived on board—as you can see in this video, aboard a Black Hawk helicopter in an area where there were two people, two outside people from an organization, an Irish charity called Goal (ph), and they came off the helicopter. I said, What do you need? They said, We need everything. We need sanitation. We need everything. They had just the day before began pulling bodies from of rubble. It was such a desperate situation, and this was U.S. aid paid for by U.S. taxpayers finally arriving, some 13 days, Deborah, after the disaster.
NORVILLE: And it was important that that tape get on television and that the rest of us back here at home see it because there was sense of—at that point, America had been called stingy by one United Nations representative. There was this real sense of—the story that was playing out here and the story that we, as viewers, were getting wasn‘t necessarily connecting.
CURRY: Well, I think that part of the thing is that part of the story is that, you know, we wanted—we were sending so much, there was such a bottleneck to get the material directly to the people. To some degree, there was red tape, as well.
NORVILLE: Right.
CURRY: But I think part of it also is that it—really, this particular event highlighted a real reality. You know, we think about ourselves as being such a high-tech, advanced, modern society, and we are, but this really reminded me that just as there‘s a big divide between the rich and the poor in many parts of the world, there‘s a big divide between the advanced societies and the third-world countries that are further slipping behind. And because of that divide, there weren‘t the roads, there wasn‘t the infrastructure to get these needed materials to the people who needed them as fast as they could possibly have done elsewhere.
NORVILLE: And to go back to the hospital that you mentioned, one of your reports—I want to play a clip from it—points out the fact that because there was so much damage and because there weren‘t the emergency room facilities that we expect here in America, the loss of life was even greater. Here‘s another clip from one of Ann‘s reports.
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CURRY (voice-over): Adding to the tragedy, there is no emergency room in this hospital. Had there been one, doctors estimate 300 more lives might have been saved. Soon the bodies—men, women and children—filled the hallways. By the end of the day, 700 corpses, a number that would grow to more than 1,200 by the end of the next day. More than half couldn‘t be identified, but the hospital had to move them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We managed to get the photos and the fingerprints, and after that, we buried them nearby.
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NORVILLE: It‘s numbers, but each number represents a life. Each life represents a family that‘s been ripped apart. How do you keep that emotional separation? Or when it‘s this big, you kind of throw that to the wind and say, I‘m a human. These are humans. We‘re all one big family.
CURRY: The latter example is exactly the right example. I think you cannot go into a story like this closing your heart. There are so many people who were in need.
I would tell the camera to stop rolling after the interviews and then just reach out and—you know, and hug a person. In that particular case, the woman I was touching there, she lost her 2-year-old son. He was—she was giving him a bath on the second floor of their houses when, all of a sudden, the floor fell out from under them, and he was washed away. And she was inconsolable. She could not bear to live, you could see, just knowing that her son would never be a part of her life again.
And I think that—you know, that‘s the thing is that, you know, you
· there is a separation of language. There‘s a separation of culture.
But there is no separation of our humanity. And I found myself over and over again just putting my arms around people, as you would have done so, as well, Deborah...
NORVILLE: Sure.
CURRY: ... because you want to do something for these people. But I think that the great part of this story, the great goodness is that we have seen that the heart of the world opened. The heart of America opened. The heart of countries in Europe. We‘re not just talking about the governments, we‘re talking about the people who donated to charity organizations, who really reached out and crossed all those separations and realized that our human family had been deeply wounded and we wanted to step up. And that was so reassuring. That meant so much to the people I met there.
NORVILLE: We stepped up a time when the emotions were running so high. And this weekend, the tsunami concert for charity will be on, and I‘m sure the numbers coming in will be just absolutely astounding. Do you think, Ann, that this will continue? You know, we lift our hearts, we all join together. It‘s, We are the world, and then the famine comes back to Africa and the people starve again.
CURRY: Well, you know, I think that that is the question now. That is a very important question to ask. I think that there is a real possibility that after the initial phase...
NORVILLE: Sure.
CURRY: ... of giving people some shelter and some food and some comfort, that they will become forgotten people. They now need so much. They need a way to make a living. Their boats were ruined, if they were fishermen. They now need homes. They had nice homes that were completely destroyed.
The good news is that I‘ve heard rumblings of construction groups that
are thinking about coming over and building. I‘ve heard some rumblings of
· you know, some people who know something about emergency facilities talking about going to that particular hospital and helping them with the emergency rooms.
NORVILLE: Do you think you have a responsibility, not as a reporter, but as a human being, to report that part of the story and kind of keep the rest of us honest, when it might be easier to forget it?
CURRY: I certainly do, and I‘ve already begun that. That was part of my reporting last week and—but certainly, I will certainly looking forward to doing updates as we move forward.
NORVILLE: Yes.
CURRY: I mean, there‘s so much tragedy in the world, no question, and
sometimes you feel like there‘s not—you can‘t do enough to help satisfy
the needs of the world. But I think that in this particular case, and in
other cases, as well, if we feel that we do our part, Deborah, then we can
feel that at the end of our lives that it mattered, that we made a
difference with our lives. And I just hope that in our reporting—and I
· in all the reporting that we‘ve done...
NORVILLE: Yes.
CURRY: ... as journalists all collectively, that maybe we might have done some good here.
NORVILLE: Finally, you can‘t report a story like this without being changed yourself. How are you different, having witnessed what you‘ve seen?
CURRY: Well, I—I‘m not—you know, I‘m so still fresh—it‘s still so fresh with me, So I don‘t have a clear answer. I know that I‘ve been very emotional about it. It‘s been very difficult to not close the door emotionally, you know, to kind of just put it aside and move on.
But I think that one of the things that I will go—come away from this experience with is this amazing—this intense admiration for the amazing work of people who very—are very poorly paid and very little respected, but these people who are in the field, who go first into these circumstances, with all of these wonderful charities, Save the Children, Oxfam, Mercy Corps, so many of these organizations—and there are many, many of them—I have such great admiration for these individuals.
NORVILLE: Well, and we have great admiration for you for telling their story and the story of what goes on there.
CURRY: Thank you, Deborah.
NORVILLE: Thank you for being here, Ann.
CURRY: My pleasure.
NORVILLE: And speaking of the people who have done such great work in that area, up next, the story of an American doctor. She was just on vacation in Sri Lanka. Then the tsunami hit, and she stayed on to help the wounded. She‘s just returned to this country, and she‘ll share her story in just a moment.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amputees, severe other kinds of illnesses, dehydration, diarrhea, a range of illnesses that we‘re seeing at the moment.
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NORVILLE: Back now with this MSNBC special, “Tsunami Stories.”
My next guest, a doctor from New York, was on vacation in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with her parents when the tsunami hit. Her parents are also doctors. But they didn‘t realize the extent of the devastation until the following day. And that‘s when all three of them decided to stay and treat the wounded.
They‘re now back home, and joining me is Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, who has just returned from Sri Lanka. And certainly, it‘s a vacation you‘ll never forget.
DR. ROSHINI RAJAPAKSA, NYU MEDICAL CENTER: No. Definitely not.
NORVILLE: When did you realize that the tsunami had hit and that it was as bad as it turned out to be?
RAJAPAKSA: Well, in terms of when it hit, we were actually by the coast in Colombo, but it didn‘t hit us at all. So we got a phone call about—in retrospect, I would say 40 minutes later from a friend, who said he had heard something had happened down south. But really, the entire day, the reports were very sketchy. We really didn‘t know the scale of the problem. We heard maybe 100 people died, a few hundred people. And it wasn‘t really until the next day that we heard this was really the worst disaster in the history of the country.
NORVILLE: But at that point—in the history of the modern world, really.
RAJAPAKSA: Right.
NORVILLE: You and your folks got a car and got what supplies you could and just went to do what doctors do, which is try to...
RAJAPAKSA: Yes, we...
NORVILLE: ... treat the wounded.
RAJAPAKSA: I mean, in a situation like that, exactly, you just feel like, What can we do to help? And you know, we‘re three doctors in our family, so we wanted to do—actually, the second day, when we realized how horrible this was, we really couldn‘t get to the affected areas because of road blocking, just trees, you know, overturned vehicles. It was impossible. So that day, what we did is we spoke to doctors in Colombo. We found out what medical supplies were needed. And we spoke to our colleagues back in New York and had start airlifting and mobilizing antibiotics and anything that was needed to send over to Sri Lanka.
And then really, it was the following day where we were able to rent a van. We actually went with another family that had two doctors. And we bought some supplies in Colombo and just kind of hit the road.
NORVILLE: And when you got there, what struck you?
RAJAPAKSA: Well, the entire ride there was just unbelievable because it‘s a coastal road, so once we were about an hour out of Colombo, it was literally four hours of absolute destruction.
NORVILLE: I mean, we look at this and we see what just—it‘s as though something just came in and mowed it down at ground level.
RAJAPAKSA: Exactly. Exactly. You see, you know, houses razed to the ground, overturned cars, vans sticking out of house windows. You know, it just was unbelievable. I mean, I had been at ground zero, and that was crazy, too, but it was only a few blocks that were affected. This was miles and miles and miles of utter destruction.
NORVILLE: People also say what struck them was the quiet.
RAJAPAKSA: Yes. There was, I think, a sense of shock among all the people that we met, the people we treated, but also just the people on the road. People were sort of wandering around in groups for comfort, I think, but really not speaking, but digging through the rubble, looking for either possessions, loved ones possibly. And there was a sense of quiet. Not even really crying, more people just really in a state of shock.
NORVILLE: And what kind of injuries did you see?
RAJAPAKSA: We saw people that had been injured during the tsunami, but more of the walking wounded. We didn‘t see the critically ill people. They were in other facilities. What we saw—we went to very makeshift—they call them “health camps” that came up in temples, schools, churches. And we saw people with leg injuries, open wounds, head injuries, aches and pains from, you know, being hit by falling debris, that kind of thing.
NORVILLE: We hear that one of the bigger problems than the puncture wounds and the infections that result from that may actually be psychological. And I‘ve seen predictions from other physicians that their biggest concern is that the epidemic is not going to be malaria, as the World Health Organization fears, but suicides, that people are so devastated, they see no reason to live. They‘ve lost everything.
RAJAPAKSA: It‘s definitely a concern. I think the immediate needs of food, water and shelter, that in the first few days—that was what was on everyone‘s mind. You almost don‘t have time to think about your grief when you‘re looking for food and survival.
NORVILLE: Right.
RAJAPAKSA: But I think once those needs are met, I agree that the psychological toll is going to be enormous. I have to say I was very impressed, though, by the resilience of the people, and children especially, who are still able to smile and make jokes. And I‘m hoping that that resilience will carry them through, but I definitely think psychological counseling is going to be a tremendous need.
NORVILLE: Is that an area where America is better equipped than other countries to provide that specific kind of assistance?
RAJAPAKSA: I think so. I think just culturally, America is one of the advanced in terms of psychological counseling. A lot of cultures, including many Asian cultures, don‘t really approve of it. They don‘t think...
NORVILLE: And would they be receptive to it, then, if that were being offered to then? They talk about a tsunami generation now.
RAJAPAKSA: Right. Well, I think it‘s important that it‘s coming from other Sri Lankans, either psychologists or people trained, because I think it is a very touchy issue, and to have a foreigner come in, I don‘t think the reception would be very good. But I think the plan is to have American or European psychologists and psychiatrists come train the local doctors or local social workers, so that they‘re are equipped to deal with this problem.
NORVILLE: When you close your eyes at night, having just gotten back home, what flashes in your mind‘s eye?
RAJAPAKSA: You know, we had friends that lost loved ones, so that really affected me personally. And you relate to it because it‘s a girl my age, you know, a family of doctors, so that sort of thing.
NORVILLE: A lot of tears, aren‘t there.
RAJAPAKSA: Yes.
NORVILLE: Thank you very much. We‘re glad you‘re back, and we look forward to hearing more about what you do for the folks here.
RAJAPAKSA: Thank you.
NORVILLE: Good luck.
When we come back, Margaret Larson, once a “DATELINE” correspondent, changed careers, now working in international relief. And her experience has brought her to the area of tsunami devastation. She joins us when we come back.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our aid workers, our people are moving freely, without restrictions. and we‘re bringing food now also into the northeastern part of Aceh, where people have been waiting for the food. So our work goes on.
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NORVILLE: That was a spokeswoman for the World Food Program, who says the relief effort continues in the Aceh province of Indonesia, despite calls by the Indonesian government to restrict the movement of aid workers because of the threat of rebel attack.
My next guest, Margaret Larson, knows firsthand the challenges those workers face. She is a former “DATELINE NBC” correspondent who now works for the international relief agency Mercy Corps. And she returned yesterday from two weeks in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Margaret, thank you so much for being with us. It‘s good to see you.
MARGARET LARSON, MERCY CORPS: Thank you. You, too, Deborah.
NORVILLE: How do you think this is going to change things, this new ruling by the Indonesian government that your colleagues and others have armed guards with them?
LARSON: Right. It‘s hard to say. This is a very complex situation politically and militarily in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. But right now, it has not interfered with Mercy Corps. We are letting the government know about the travel movements of international staff. But otherwise, we‘ve been able to work. So we‘re crossing our fingers. So far, so good. We have good relationships with the government and with the local municipalities, and we hope we‘ll be able to continue to work for some time there.
NORVILLE: And I know your organization is like many relief organizations, in that you contract with local people to be kind of your hands and feet on the ground and do a lot of the front-line work.
LARSON: Well, we‘re there, obviously. Our teams are on the ground. What we use a lot of local groups for, the individual distributions of food items and things like tents and shoes and other things that we‘re delivering because the Indonesian people, particularly in the Aceh region, are very well organized in neighborhoods and communities. They‘re quite family and community-oriented. So they can aid us in making sure that our distributions are effective. And so far, that‘s worked very well.
NORVILLE: You spent a great deal of time there. When you first got there, what struck you? What just knocked you over by the devastation or the people or the need?
LARSON: All of it, just the hugeness of the task, the complexity. I have covered typhoons and hurricanes and earthquakes and war zones, and I‘ve never seen anything like this—the geographic scope. We‘re talking about 11 countries in two contents, a humongous death toll. We‘re talking about families literally ripped apart by this water, and just the vastness of the damage. It looked like Hiroshima. But even that doesn‘t adequately capture what it was like. And the air thick with the smell of death. It was really astounding to me.
NORVILLE: And how different was it when you packed your bag and you got on the plane to come back yesterday?
LARSON: It‘s always a little disorienting to come back. Our lives are so comfortable. We are safe here. The water is clean. I have shelter. My son is safe. There‘s such an excess, in terms of food and all the other things we have access to. It‘s always harder to come home than to go, frankly, like two different planets.
NORVILLE: Margaret, I want to talk to you about your own personal change in life. I first knew you when we were both here at NBC. And Ann Curry was here a moment ago talking about how important she feels it is as a reporter to get the story out there and allow the rest of us to know of the need and know of what role they can play in trying to help address that.
You chose to wear a different hat. Why?
LARSON: Well, it came gradually. I‘ve been associated with Mercy
Corps for 12 years as a volunteer, a board member, an employee, now a
consultant
And it came from years of, as you have, covering these tragic stories. And I think after a long time of absorbing how much human suffering and misery there was out there, that there came a time when I wanted do something more than observe and wanted to roll up my sleeves and get involved. And that‘s how the career change came about.
But what I do is very light duty compared to our professional relief workers who are on the ground for months, for years, for a whole lifetime helping people. So, I don‘t want to make this sound like I‘ve undertaken some enormous challenge here. What I do is a drop in the bucket compared to them.
NORVILLE: Sure.
And how do you make it make sense? You mentioned your son. Family is important to you, as it is to all of us.
LARSON: Right.
NORVILLE: How do you make this tragedy and the seeming senselessness of it make sense to a boy?
LARSON: I think in many ways seeing the world through his eyes is what has prompted me to want to do something more than observe, although I think journalism is a very, very important part of this puzzle of making things work.
But in explaining to him this kind of tragedy, the suffering of people in families just like us, I think it helps me to understand that the answer for all of us is in responding to one another. We find our humanity when we come together, and we‘re made for that as human beings, to respond to each other‘s need. And I think that children understand that sometimes better than adults.
NORVILLE: So what exactly is it that you do now with Mercy Corps as a consultant? You go on the ground. You obviously—we saw you helping people and handing out supplies.
LARSON: Well, most of my work has to do with communications. I help journalists reach these areas, so they can better tell their stories. I document our programs and get information and pictures back to headquarters and to our donors and try to facilitate at the very beginning of emergencies like this.
And then, occasionally, I‘m hands-on with the relief projects. But, for the most part, those are done entirely by specialists, water and sanitation engineers, people who get goods and distribute them. They‘re all professionals at Mercy Corps.
NORVILLE: If there‘s one thing that you think people ought to know about this tragedy and the response worldwide to it, put the reporter hat back on, what is it?
LARSON: I think it is that this may be the challenge of our generation. This may be to us what in some ways World War II was to the greatest generation.
We have a chance now to show that we‘re equipped to hand this world off in better shape than we found it by how well we respond to this tragedy, to this region and to these people. I think we‘ve done a good job so far. The question is, can we sustain it until these people can stand on their own? I hope and pray that we do.
NORVILLE: We know that will be a long time before that happens, too, though.
Margaret Larson, great to see you again. Thank you so much.
LARSON: Thank you.
NORVILLE: When we come back, the head of UNICEF on why so many experienced relief workers are so incredibly shocked by what they‘ve seen in the region.
Stick around.
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NORVILLE: Experienced relief workers say they‘ve never seen anything like the tsunami damage in South Asia. Next, the head of UNICEF on what‘s it‘s like.
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MICHAEL COPELAND, UNICEF: And so many children have lost parents and parents have lost children. I think one of the biggest challenges we‘re facing is to put families back together, to put some kind of family structure back together.
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NORVILLE: Putting families back together. Back with this MSNBC special report, “Tsunami Stories.”
One of the most important lifelines for survivors in South Asia has been the relief workers. Many over there have seen countless disasters all over the world. But no matter how many tragedies they‘ve seen, a lot of folks say you just never get used to it.
And that‘s true of our next guest. Carol Bellamy is the executive director of UNICEF. She‘s seen a lot, but nothing to compare to this.
Welcome back.
CAROL BELLAMY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNICEF: Thank you. It‘s nice to be here.
NORVILLE: It‘s shocking to see the extent of the devastation. It‘s almost suffocating to think about what it‘s going to take to bring some sense of normalcy back to this region of the world.
BELLAMY: No question. I think you‘ve heard from all of us just the scale, just—everybody is almost without wards to talk about the expanse of this devastation, the number of people dead, but the number of people who survived and what you do to try and, as you just heard, bring the families back together.
For us, looking at children, bringing a little bit of normalcy back into the life. That‘s what children need. So, even now, schools are starting to open again.
NORVILLE: Right.
BELLAMY: But it‘s going to be a long time before they‘re really functioning.
NORVILLE: Talk to me about the process. We have heard that one-third of the victims were children. But I haven‘t heard a good estimate on how many survivors are children or how many of those children have absolutely no parent left in this world.
BELLAMY: Well, in most of the countries affected, and, in fact, at it‘s different levels of impact, there‘s actually quite a significant registration program going on right now to determine that, the children, are they accompanied by anyone? Did they lose parents, one parent, both parents? Do they have extended family?
This is a region with a long tradition of extended families. There‘s no question there will be some children who‘ve lost everything. But our observation—and we‘re very involved in this—is that the majority of children probably at least have some extended family members.
NORVILLE: And, in the meantime, where are these children being housed? We had someone from Save the Children last week on. He had like 900 kids in what was a sort of de facto orphanage, because they didn‘t know what else to do with these children right then.
BELLAMY: It‘s a mixture, actually, and, again, differing from countries.
But let‘s take the two most affected, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. You have these makeshift, almost spontaneous camps that are going up. And that may be in the one or two or three of the buildings that are still standing. It might be a school. It might be a mosque or a religious institution or it just might be under tarpaulins.
You have some of them who‘ve gone back to their extended families, but may not be able to stay there that long. You have some larger camps and you have some small camps. So, it‘s all quite temporary at this point.
NORVILLE: And because it‘s so temporary and so makeshift, how are you ensuring that the children are safe? These reports, you know, the Reuters news flash that came when the guy had gotten the spontaneous, kids for sale, tell us what you want, these are horror stories. We hope they‘re urban myths, but this is a part of the world where this happens.
BELLAMY: A couple levels of safety.
One is the safety that they don‘t die from some disease outbreak, and so getting food, shelter, but also water and latrines. The other is trying to protect against exploitation. Most of the reports so far aren‘t substantiated. But with this kind of chaos, we know that some of the criminal elements might be in place.
NORVILLE: You mentioned water. Just earlier this week, President Clinton announced that his foundation would be joining with UNICEF on a pretty basic, but incredibly important effort. And that‘s to get safe water to everybody.
BELLAMY: Not very sexy, but I think it was very interesting. He said the reason he chose water and sanitation is, it probably would be the least funded area. And it usually is. But as important as food is to life, so is water.
NORVILLE: And this is what the president had to say when he made his announcement on Monday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We decided to set up through the U.S. fund for UNICEF this special tsunami water and sanitation fund. The money will be used by UNICEF working with others to make sure that we do everything we can to keep people alive and to prevent the spread of disease.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NORVILLE: And I understand the former president and Senator Clinton were the first to donate to this new cause.
BELLAMY: They were. Very nice of them.
NORVILLE: Yes.
As money rolls in for tsunami relief, 157,000 is the figure dead now. We know that 140,000 die every month from malaria. Is there a concern that the money going to tsunami relief is going to detract from these other also very serious issues that need to be funded?
BELLAMY: Well, there is. I mean, there is the crisis du jour, although, coming back again, nobody‘s seen a crisis of this scale and magnitude of this one, so that the resources are largely going to be used certainly for people who have been affected in this region.
But, yes, a couple years ago, Afghanistan was in the headlines. Who hears about that? Iraq stays in the headlines. But there are forgotten emergencies of enormous consequences all over. You just said it. More children die of malaria in Africa every day than of any other disease. HIV and AIDS is a pandemic that is worse than the world may have ever seen in its life.
So it is important that, while there‘s a focus on this incredible disaster, that these other areas are not forgotten.
NORVILLE: Well, and UNICEF, we know, is involved in all of them.
Carol Bellamy, thank you for being with us.
And people who want to donate can do what?
BELLAMY: Well, for UNICEF, if they want to, they can go to the Web site, UNICEF.org. I urge people to just donate. Choose the fund or charity you want, but make a difference.
NORVILLE: Yes, make a difference and make sure you make a check, so you don‘t get scammed by some of these people that we know are out here.
BELLAMY: Or a credit card.
NORVILLE: Or a credit card. There you go.
Carol Bellamy, thanks for being with us.
When we come back, the U.S. senator who says she‘ll never be the same after touring the devastated area. She‘s coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWS BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It‘s hard to describe unless you see it. It‘s truly a monumental task. But I think it‘s one that the U.S. government is going to be able to work with the government of Indonesia to help Aceh recover.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NORVILLE: They‘re called the tsunami generation, the thousands of children who lost one or both parents to the deadly tidal waves that swept through South Asia.
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu got a firsthand look at the problems those children are facing during a visit last week to Sri Lanka. She says the future of the region‘s children are at stake and she‘s afraid that relief efforts for orphans could be headed in the wrong direction.
Senator Landrieu joins me now from Capitol Hill.
And it‘s good to see you. Thank you for coming on.
SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D), LOUISIANA: Thank you, Deborah. And thank you for committing this show to this great cause.
NORVILLE: Well, it is an important cause. And it‘s very, very disconcerting to think that children could be rushed out of their countries out of a well-intentioned, but maybe misguided effort to find them a home anywhere ASAP.
LANDRIEU: Well, Deborah, I was so pleased to hear Carol Bellamy, who is a dear friend and just a great leader and now leading UNICEF, say that we want to really concentrate as it comes to children and rebuilding families, finding extended families for them to join.
We‘d like to spend as much effort and time as we can building families, as opposed to building orphanages. And with the right approach, we can most certainly do that.
Now, one of the most important things is for us as a world family to really recognize that children have a right to a family. And if for some reason their parents and no extended family is willing to take them in, then we should, under international law, keep sibling groups together and try to place them in another family in country. And if no space can be found or no family, then somewhere in the world family.
And that‘s the idea. And it‘s shared by so many people around the world. And I hope we can execute it.
NORVILLE: But your concern is that they‘re not be a rush to take these children sibling groups, if that‘s the case, and put them in other countries. You think the majority can stay in their home countries.
How big of a percentage are we talking about? Because we don‘t even know how many children potentially might be available for adoption.
LANDRIEU: Well, you‘re absolutely correct.
And as Carol accurately outlined, there‘s a tremendous registration and certification process under way. First of all, of course, meeting medical needs and getting water and food, keeping people alive and attending to their medical needs, and then registering to see which children belong to which family and if both parents died or one parent died.
And so that effort is going to take obviously several months, many months, and then as we, all of us, governments, NGOs, faith-based organizations, work hopefully in the same direction, which is reuniting children to their extended families, and then supporting those extending families, Deborah, to support those children, and then, if there are no extended families, however, to place those children in another family somewhere, as opposed to sticking them into an orphanage or abandoning them in some institution.
NORVILLE: While that‘s a notion that certainly the United States should support, is it something that‘s appropriate for this country to actively be engaged in? Aren‘t these really issues that are appropriate for the home countries of these affected children?
LANDRIEU: Well, actually, it‘s appropriate for the whole world, in the sense that there‘s an international treaty on this called the Hague Treaty on International Adoption.
NORVILLE: Right.
LANDRIEU: Which is about the care and adoption of orphans, which says that children really deserve families and, if at all possible, to try to keep them with the parents that brought them into the world, if not, keep them in their extended family, try to keep them in their communities and their home countries if possible, but, if not, to try to find them some family in the world that will take them in.
And, as you know, so many people now are building families through adoption. It‘s quite a natural way and a natural thing to want to help. So, I want to thank everyone who has expressed an interest and concern.
But there‘s a process. It cannot be rushed, as you said.
NORVILLE: Right.
LANDRIEU: And it has to be done in the correct way.
NORVILLE: And yet the United States is not a signatory to that international treaty. And this is what State Department spokesman Richard Boucher had to say about that the other day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD BOUCHER, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: The final guidelines on the Hague Treaty on international adoptions are still a work in progress. We put out proposed rules, I think, in December or so? And we have received subsequently something like 1,800 individual comments on those rules from a variety of different organizations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NORVILLE: Why hasn‘t America signed this? This treaty‘s been floating around for a very, very long time. And I know you as an adoptive parent have been a real point person in trying to push these issues.
LANDRIEU: Well, Deborah, actually, Jesse Helms, Senator Helms and I, passed the treaty, along with so many other members of the Senate. And it‘s been ratified and passed by the Senate. And now our State Department is implementing it.
And the fact is, unfortunately, the State Department has been slow to respond. And I understand that they‘ve been busy with so many other things, but we hope to put this on the front burner now and get this implementation. The United States led this treaty; 63 countries have ratified it. We hope that every country in the world will ratify it, because it really is a profound statement of commitment to children, which says children deserve families.
Governments do wonderful jobs at some things. Raising children is not one of them. And children should be raised in families. So, let‘s press on to get our government to implement, but to share this idea and notion. And I think we‘ll have a lot of success.
NORVILLE: And it makes the rules the same for everybody.
I also want to quickly ask you. You‘re a part of the subcommittee and the appropriations committee that oversees some of the foreign appropriations and foreign operations that go out there. Do you think America is doing right? Are we spending enough money? Have we donated enough to do right by this country in terms of foreign assistance?
LANDRIEU: Well, that‘s a very tough question. As you know, the president committed a smaller amount initially and of course, then upped it to $350 million.
But, in addition to the federal government‘s commitment of $350 million, we‘ve done, I think, some debt relief in addition to that.
NORVILLE: Yes.
LANDRIEU: As well as our corporate sector.
NORVILLE: OK.
LANDRIEU: These contributions have even doubled, if you will, as well as our military assets.
So we‘re doing more than that. And if we have do more, I believe there‘s the will of Congress to do so.
NORVILLE: Very good. Senator Landrieu, thank you very much.
We‘ll be back.
LANDRIEU: Thank you, and thank you for your contributions.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NORVILLE: Finally, tonight marks my last night here on DEBORAH
NORVILLE TONIGHT.
As 2004 drew to a close, I, as probably a lot of you did, took stock of my life and realized that two jobs, three kids and all the juggling that entailed was simply too much. I would come home from the studio to find my family sound asleep, my 10-year-old‘s homework carefully laid across my bedroom doorway for mommy to check.
Daddy was there, but some things only mommy can do. And that‘s just no way to parent. And I can tell you, while I‘ll miss our nightly opportunity to talk about the day‘s big events with the people who shape them, I will relish even more talking about the tiny events of the day in my own family‘s life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NORVILLE (voice-over): This past year, we heard from some of the biggest players in the biggest stories of the year. Janis Karpinski talked about the Abu Ghraib prison she ran.
We heard from regular people, touched in ways they didn‘t expect by movies, people who saw “The Passion of the Christ” and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” We tried to make sense of the senseless killing of innocent school children in Beslan, and learned more about a discredited polygamist offshoot of the Mormon Church.
A veritable constellation of stars came by. And when Mother Nature was the headline story, we were there, too.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NORVILLE: And so were you. You kept us honest with your e-mails. You gave us feedback that we needed to hear. And you let us know that, most nights, you liked our efforts to put smart conversation on TV without all the shouting that seems increasingly a part of the cable world.
To the bosses at MSNBC and NBC, you have been great. To the team here in the studio and in the production offices who have made DEBORAH NORVILLE TONIGHT happen, you are so smart. You challenged me every day. And you will continue to do great programs in this time slot.
And to you viewers, you matter. At a time when our nation and our world faces such huge issues, your involvement is critical. Stay interested. Keep informed. It keeps them honest.
I‘ll still be doing the day job, so I will see you over on the broadcast side of your television.
And so, until then, the best to all of you. Thanks for watching. And good night.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
END
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