Today	Sat
Clear 22°/ 9°	Partly Cloudy 20°/ 7°

← Blogging is the diary of the 21st century Hard to ‘crack’ The Age good wine guide →

The Angel of Galle

Posted on January 13, 2012

AUSTRALIAN-born film-maker and author Alison Thompson was working in New York when two of the four planes hijacked by terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. She was one of the first volunteers at the scene, arriving on roller-blades, and spent the next nine months helping rescue workers.

When the Tsunami hit South-East Asia on Boxing Day, 2004, Alison left her job as an investment banker and flew to Galle, 120 kilometres from Colombo in Sri Lanka, doing work over the next 12 months that ended with her being labelled ‘The Angel of Galle.’

Within two days of Haiti being devastated by an earthquake in 2010, Alison again packed her bags and co-ordinated an international emergency medical team that cared for 65,000 homeless and sick at an Internally-Displaced Persons camp.

Her impact on recovery and restoration work in the wake of natural disasters around the world has attracted interest from the likes of entertainers/activists Sean Penn and Bono, now close friends, and she has been ‘adopted’ by the elite 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army.

Another friend, author, depth psychotherapy life coach and international speaker MeiMei Fox, lists Alison as one of her heroes, and writes that just meeting and getting to know Alison has made her a better person.

“This petite, blonde-haired and blue-eyed young woman, unmasked and unprotected but a trained nurse, dived into the rubble that was the World Trade Centre in search of survivors,” MeiMei writes. “She stayed at Ground Zero for nine months, working with the Red Cross and caring for rescue workers.

“This experience gave Alison the ‘volunteering bug,’ and she realised that service to others mattered more to her than any career objectives or personal goals.”

Three years later, when the Tsunami hit, Alison again dropped everything and flew with her then boyfriend Oscar Gubernati to Sri Lanka, one of the worst-affected countries.

They pooled their meagre savings, solicited donations of medical supplies and other basic necessities, and spent the next 14 months in relief and recovery efforts, assisted by fellow Aussie Donny Paterson, and Colorado’s Bruce French, personal chef to the bands Pearl Jam and The Rolling Stones.

In one of the most amazing small team aid efforts ever recorded world-wide, they re-built the entire coastal village of Peraliya, including a school, hospital, and shelters for hundreds of displaced people.

The horrors and challenges that Alison and her team faced along the way are well documented. There was corruption on a massive scale from Non-Government Agencies, death threats from some disgruntled locals, and accusations that she and her team were pocketing aid money.

She has witnessed cases of extreme cruelty and countless atrocities, helped bury hundreds of bodies in mass graves, and admits that at one point she had all-but lost faith in humanity.

But it was something so simple as a child’s hug that put her back on track. “You don’t have to be a doctor or a construction worker to be of service after a crisis,” Alison says. “Anyone can give a hug.”

And she’s given out thousands in recent years, describing laughing with local children, or consoling a grieving mother with more hugs as among the things that give her strength, and hope, and which keep her going, often against the odds.

Her work as a film-maker back home prompted her to buy a video camera and document the relief work in Sri Lanka. Back in the USA, she put together a documentary as a way of inspiring others to volunteer.

The documentary, ‘The Third Wave,’ was selected by Sean Penn as his Presidential Pick of the Cannes Film Festival of 2008. More than impressed with Alison’s work, when an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince in Haiti last January, Penn sent her a simple text message…”Haiti?”

Alison responded by assembling a team of doctors, while Penn organised a sizeable donation from Bosnian philanthropist Diana Jenkins, and fashion designer Donna Karan offered the use of her private jet.

Penn joined Alison in Haiti, and over the next few months helped him establish the Jenkins/Penn Haiti Relief Organisation, which manages one of the largest tent villages in the city.

Apart from brief visits back home to Miami in Florida, Alison has stayed in Haiti ever since, firstly working with Penn, and then starting her own ‘WeAdvance’ relief organisation, with co-founders actress/activist Maria Bello and lawyer Aleda Frishman.

Alison said her main aim is to advance the well-being, health and safety of Haiti women and children who have been subjected to many horrors, included rapes and beatings.

In one of her last emails to the Mildura Weekly before heading off again to Haiti, Alison had a simple message to any reader who had time to spend as a volunteer; “Come to Haiti to help,” she wrote. “You will lose weight, get a tan, make hundreds of new friends and save lives. You might even fall in love like I did.”

This was in reference to a chance meting with another volunteer from the United States, Albert Gomez, who was also working in Port-au-Prince at the time. Alison ended her book ‘The Third Wave,’ with the words; ‘Albert Abelardo Gomez – the man I love. Will you marry me?’

When we asked the result in an email exchange, Alison replied; “Aha. You will have to wait until the second book is published. It’s in Chapter Six.”

Tweet This Post Post to Facebook