As relief efforts continue in the wake of the Tsunami disaster, stories of Hope, Courage, and the Strength of the Human Spirit are emerging daily. Perhaps, by sharing a few of them, we can all believe just a little bit more in the “miracles” happening around us. Thanks to one of our members who sent it in.
A rare dolphin that was trapped by the tsunami in a small Thai lagoon has been freed. The adult female dolphin was successfully pulled out of the lagoon and transferred into the sea, which lay a full kilometer away. For many in the devastated region, the dolphins have become symbols of hope and survival.
An Indonesian woman had been rescued after clinging to a sago palm tree is expecting a baby. The 24-year-old Malawati, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, was afraid that she had lost her unborn child during her harrowing experience, but doctors were surprised and thrilled to tell her that she is still carrying a healthy child and that she will give birth in five to six months.
Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, who is known as the "hugging saint" for the some 30 million hugs she has bestowed as blessings over the past 30 years, has pledged a sizable donation for tsunami relief efforts. The leader, who is also known in India as "Amma," or "Mother," announced that the money will be used to build houses for those who have been left homeless, as well as provide basic household items for the affected families. The tsunami's water flooded Amma's ashram, or the building where she prays and works, but no one was hurt.
Lokesh Pillai, who was at the South Indian shore when the tsunami struck, did not know how to swim. Yet after a harrowing moment in which his leg was fractured by the wave, he clung to a bamboo branch and survived four hours in the water. Washing up on a remote jungle shore 2 kilometers from where he entered the water, Pillai was rescued by a boy who carried him on his back to his village. The boy's sister then took him to a hospital for treatment.
When everyone else was running, panicked, away from the roaring waves, one Swedish woman was running straight into them to save her husband, brother, and three sons. Photographed as she sprinted into the tide, newspapers reported that no one knew whether Karin Svaerd or her family had survived. The BBC is now reporting that the entire family did survive, reuniting minutes after the wave carried them to higher ground. "We came so close to death that we realize how valuable life is," Svaerd said.
Even though the tsunami's waves ran 2 miles inland into Yala National Park in Sri Lanka, not a single one of the park's hundreds of elephants or leopards was killed, park officials report.
Zoologists are investigating the possibility that the animals have a sixth sense that alerted them to imminent danger and urged them to higher ground. The animal instinct has been long suspected but never scientifically proven, though ancient cultures in the region revered elephants as sacred animals with special powers.
Clinging to an uprooted sago palm tree, an Indonesian woman was found alive after five days adrift after the tsunami. The 23-year-old woman suffered from weakness and leg injuries, but was conscious when a Malaysian fishing boat rescued her Friday.
A 7-year-old boy was saved from the tsunami's force by the family dog, which pulled the boy up a hill and out of the small hut where he had taken shelter. The boy's mother had fled with her two younger children, hoping against hope that her older boy would be strong enough to outrun the wave on his own. When the boy ran into the hut, the dog, which is named Selvakumar after the boy's uncle, nudged him back outside and up a nearby hill.
In a seemingly impossible discovery, a 20 day old baby was found, unharmed, floating on a mattress near her parents' restaurant in northern Malaysia. "Thank God the mattress was floating in about five-foot deep water and my baby was crying,” said the baby’s father.
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