Never waste a disaster
Mar 19, 2012
I am home – in case you did not know. I was in Japan, which I should say, I treat as my second home. I had to be with them in the memorial service of the 19,009 people who lost their lives last year in a triple tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident
Hillary Bainemigisha
I am home – in case you did not know. I was in Japan, which I should say, I treat as my second home. I had to be with them in the memorial service of the 19,009 people who lost their lives last year in a triple tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Ritcher scale struck off the coast in the Pacifi c, rocking the coastal areas and triggering a tsunami which swept off coastal cities, killing people and destroying 370,000 houses and buildings, including a nuclear plant.
That is where I met one American, Hall Long. “Never waste a disaster,” he told me, adding that he learnt this from his late girlfriend, Tomoko, who is one of those who perished. Long had travelled from the US to join us in the memorial service.
Long met Tomoko in the US where she was studying her master’s in sales management. He later came to Sendai, Japan to visit her. They became lovers and were in touch. Being in touch can mean a lot of things, but Long said they had not ‘gone far’.
That did not stop him from travelling to Japan to participate in the memorial of the victims who escorted Tomoko to heaven. He said he strongly believed he was the last person Tomoko called before she died.
“She was in panic,” he said. “She told me water was gushing into the streets and she was heading for a higher ground and wanted to hear my voice of reassurance. She said she did not want to die before we married. Unfortunately, the phone broke off before she could finish her sentence. I tried calling back and failed. Apparently she died during that very call.”
Sad story, isn’t it? Tomoko had always told him never to waste a disaster. The only way you can conquer is to take advantage of a disaster and exploit it, she had told him. And he was determined to bla bla bla.
That set me into thinking. Natural disasters are not new to the Japanese.
Overtime, instead of humbling them into a fearful nation, they have made them resilient and united with determination to rebuild. Possibly that affected cities look better than Kampala streets. Bring a Japanese here and he will ask you when an earthquake occurred in Kampala.
A city called Ishinomaki was the hardest hit, having lost 3,182 people and 553 are still missing, was chosen as the main venue of the memorial service.
People retold their tsunami experiences with a straight face, of spouses who died, of recovering the body of loved ones, of wedding plans which were disrupted and of lovers they will never see again.
And behind the straight face, a tough spirit, determined not to waste the disaster was glowing.
While the people of Congo Brazaville were wailing in the streets during their memorial services of the victims of the armoury explosion last weekend, the Japanese were more composed and resilient.
I called to mind the many disasters we have wasted, both as a nation and as private individuals in our lives. And felt like abandoning journalism to go into street preaching.
Even street preachers do not see that Christianity itself came from the cross, a disaster without which it probably would have died out.
But when we face disasters in marriage, like adultery, bereavement, barrenness, discordance, HIV et cetera, we tend to crumble and withdraw into self pity and wrong decisions. Yet these are always wake-up calls to revitalise the relationship into some resilient force.
We do not have to marry a Japanese before we learn not to put our disasters to waste. Start now. I know many people it has worked for. Never put a disaster to waste.
hbainemigisha@newvision.co.ug