"If I could only find some way of thanking the Thai people"
Eija Kivi and her partner awoke on December 26th into a wall of churning water that left thousands dead around them
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By Riikka Venäläinen
"It is still hard for me to grasp that I am in Finland and I’m safe. Exactly one week ago I was stark naked, in shock, crouched and bloody in the jungle. Life, death, and a razor-thin line between the two of them."
On Sunday, Eija Kivi is lying under a blanket in her hospital bed at the Töölö A&E Hospital in Helsinki, her home town.
A week ago, she had been lying in bed in a hotel bungalow in the paradise resort of Khao Lak, before she and her husband were torn from sleep by the arrival of a gigantic wall of water that threw thousands of people around like a washing machine and then left them dead.
Kivi cannot sit up, and she cannot move around. It was only when she arrived back in Finland, on a medivac flight, that it was discovered she has multiple fractures in her right leg. Apart from other internal injuries, she has a blood-clot in her lung.
"Apparently they are going to operate on my leg tomorrow. They have to take a bone-graft from my hip to my shin in order to get the leg working again", says Kivi, and she smiles cautiously.
Two other women injured in the Asian catastrophe share the room. The television is showing an American sit-com, and the volume is kept low.
"I can’t watch the news and I don’t want to, and I’m not reading the papers, either. I’ve seen and heard so much, heard so many terrible and grievous stories of others, I just can’t absorb anything any more. It’s necessary to put up a wall to protect yourself, just so that you can go on from here."
Even if news bulletins from Asia are still too much, Kivi has no objections to going through her own personal tale of survival, which she regards as something of a miracle escape.
"I woke out of a deep sleep to find myself under the surface of the water. Everything was going around like the spin-dryer in a washing machine. Sea water and sand in my eyes, my nostrils, my mouth, and all around were these tree trunks that I just kept on crashing into", she says.
Astonishingly, at the moment when she once broke the surface for a second, she happened to be close enough to her partner Hannu Salminen for him to grab her and drag her out of the current and onto higher ground, where he ordered her to hang on to a tree that was still standing.
"Then I saw him, running, completely naked and covered in blood, up the hill. I had no idea what was going on. I was thinking what kind of a place I’d come to, what was happening. We were supposed to be on holiday, for heaven’s sakes. I don’t really remember anything much of what went on around me, I guess I was already going into shock."
Two Germans helped out in carrying the completely immobilised and prone Kivi to a roadside, where a Thai man and his little daughter put the two Finns onto the back of his pick-up truck.
The first three hospitals turned the party away, because they were all full.
"We lay in the blazing sunshine for hours. This little Thai girl held a newspaper over me the whole time so that I wouldn’t burn in the sun", Kivi recalls, biting her lip. The sense of gratitude is palpable.
When she was finally admitted to a hospital, Kivi spent the first two nights lying on a concrete floor in a row with other patients. Only on the third night did a bed become available.
"There was terrible screaming and panic. Children, really young children, without mothers and fathers. Many of the people were very badly crushed. The nurses tried to keep the wounds bathed and clean, and they handed out antibiotics. The compassion and the sense of community was quite beyond belief."
Volunteer schoolchildren came in to help.
"Oh, and there was this one little Thai girl, she couldn’t have been more than ten, who painstakingly cleaned all the sand out of my ears", sighs Kivi.
On Thursday, Eija Kivi was taken by ambulance to Phuket Airport. She was able to sleep - for the first time since Sunday - only on the medivac flight to Helsinki arranged by the EMA Group, a company specialising in emergency medical assistance.
"It turned out that Hannu escaped with nothing much more than lacerations. I had a huge bump on my forehead, and it is a wonder I did not lose consciousness when I was being tumbled around in the water. We were left with nothing. Absolutely nothing. No clothes, no documents, not even my contact lenses. Fortunately, the stamp they put on my wrist served as a passport."
"I got taken her to hospital straight off the plane, and a friend of Hannu's met him at the airport with a set of clothes to wear."
Now Eija Kivi can sleep nights with medication. When she gets released from hospital, she will have to begin the process of putting her life back together from the bottom up. Everything from home keys, to new passports, new bank cards, personal ID documents...
"But in the end it’s really nothing, when my home and the people close to me are all safe. Thousands upon thousands have had their entire lives turned upside down by this."
"If there was only some way I could find to thank those people out there. I don’t know their names, let alone how to get in touch. But I’ll try to find out as soon as I’m strong enough."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.1.2005
RIIKKA VENÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riikka.venalainen@hs.fi
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| 4.1.2005 - THIS WEEK |
 "If I could only find some way of thanking the Thai people" |
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