Ｃｈｉｌｄrｅｓｃｕｅ　Ｃｅｎｔｅｒ Official website The Sumatra earthquake Charity Activity 2005/2/14-2005/2/16

Child Rescue Center 3-3-11-101 Hon-cho Nakano-ku Tokyo, Japan 164-0012
Tel 03-3373-9998 Fax 03-3373-9994 (We can presently only respond via phone or fax)
http://www.childrescue.jp

The Sumatra earthquake Charity Activity held by the Child Rescue Center

Supported by Singapore Airlines, Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd. and Izawa Office., and Sun Music Production.

No.1 Night before the departure (Feb.14th) Day 1 (Feb.15th) Day 2 (Feb. 16th) To Diary page

Wednesday Feb.16th, 2005 (Day 2)

Amritapuri is located on a sandbar and is surrounded by the backwaters of the Arabian Sea.
We first visited the coastlines of the area at 5:00 am.

2 months have passed since the tsunami hit but the disaster it left behind was still there. The houses built by palm tress were destroyed.

Amritapuri sunrise

The ashrum of the MA Center where we stayed

Arabian Sea coastline 1

Arabian Sea coastline 2

3 km from the MA center.		7km from the MA center	Amritapuri sunset
Visited two shelter camps at 16:00. Up to 7km from the coastline was affected by the disaster. We were lucky to have a person from the MA center take us around by car. At the first camp, 300 to 400 children gathered behind the school and happily accepted our candy and chocolates. 200 children gathered at the second one. We visited the camp site where we planned to visit the next day. There were many tin shelters built beside each other, and the room temperature must have been very high in this hot weather. The silver walls in the background of the picture are the tin shelters.		Visiting the site for the next day, at night.	Water tank

Feb. 15th, 2005 (Day 1)

Hiroko Izumi and Yuko Kusama, the two charity staff members went on the Singapore Airlines flight 997 and departed at 11:30 as scheduled. Singapore Airlines gave us extra weight allowing us to bring more luggages for chocolate onto the plane. I would take this opportunity to thank Singapore Airlines for their support.

The seats were economy, but there were screens for each seat, and it was very comfortable. The movie “Shall We Dance?” was showing, but I soon fell asleep. It seems that all that preparation the day before had gotten me really tired.

We arrived at Singapore in the early evening. We then transited to Silk Air flight 298, and went to Trivandrum, India.

Left: Hiroko Izumi
Right: Yuko Kusama

SQ Ms Flight attendant

SQ seat

We arrived 30 minutes late at 22:00. As soon as we arrived, we exchanged our cash into Rupees for payment in India, and American dollars for donation purposes. Please check this page for the income and expenditure report.

We arrived at the airport at midnight and the baby that was with us in the plane was fast asleep. After customs, we went outside, and it was a world of never ending summer right on the equator.

Exchanges at Thomas Cook

Exchanging currency

It is mid winter in Japan so I left my winter clothes at home before departing and came to India with light wear. Since we had an important job of delivering presents, I tried to keep my own baggage as little as possible.

We used a car from the airport at Trivandrum. It took 2 hours until we reached our destination and it was midnight when we reached the MA center at Amritapuri. Our long day has finally ended.

Baby fast asleep at the airport

Our destination is 2 hours by car from here!!

Feb. 14th, 2005 (The night before our departure)

With the help of our chocolate providers (Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd., Izawa Office., and Sun Music Production), we prepared to bring the chocolates to India. The stuffed animals were included as well. It may be hard to see by picture, but the stuffed animals were pretty big, about the size of a baby. The chocolates and stuffed animals received by our kind supporters filled 3 big suitcases! Thank you very much for all your help.
We planned to buy all of the candy in India, but to prepare for an unpredicted shortage of candies, we had brought with us 1000 lollipops from Japan. These were very popular! This is the green candy the child in the right picture is carrying in his left hand.