God Sure Hates Our Asian Brothers
With one swipe of his paw he took 280,000 of the most pious, devoted, beautiful people off the books. He drowned kids. Destroyed families. Emptied orphanages. Evaporated towns. A welcome relief from his usual work of installing murderous dictators and striking children with incurable illness, you’d think.
Like most news-gathering organisations, we were hot to set foot on the ravaged Sumatran landscape and stick a camera and microphone in survivors’ faces. Watch us revel in the pornography of human misery! Watch our circulation soar! In our gilded office cages, in between trawling the web for Pharrell-slash-Bathing Ape trainers, useless Lomo devices and mint-condition Z50 mini-bikes, we romanticised about human bodies running as double-page spreads and families bawling for help into our camera lens.
Writer Matt George and photographer Dustin Humphrey,
however, had loftier ideas. Along with a troupe of similar-minded
samaritans, they charted a vessel in Padang, Sumatra, filled it with
medicine and food, and went on a mission to reach villages who’d
escaped any help. For three weeks, wounds were stitched, disease was
checked through antibiotics, homes were rebuilt and empty stomachs
filled.
As we went to press, Matt George was about to head back, bivouacking just long enough to restock the boat. From port he emailed: “Was shanghaied into leading another 40 tons out into the Sunda Strait. Tried calling. Haven't finished story. We must come up with a plan. Maybe I could fax it from Sinabang. Will call at earliest convenience. Do not want to screw you. Stab is my favourite mag and Surfer doesn't even want my story. They think it's old news. They are going to give it a column in the back the pricks. I will do my damnedest to have hand-written copy faxed to you from some exotic port before Monday.”
In another email, Bali-based Dustin Humphrey wrote: “It’s amazing how resilient Indonesian people are. Their whole world can literally be wiped out and they still seem to keep a smile on the faces and press on with life. If you judged by the looks on peoples faces in those villages and not by their surroundings of complete ruin you would never know anything had happened. I love this country and that’s why it is my home.”
Hump, Matt, and their team risked pirates, rogue militias, the nastier elements of the Indonesian army and fought through a web of bureaucracy to deliver their life-saving cargo.
In Australia, super-shaper Greg Webber nearly bankrupted himself pouring money into tsunami appeals while mediocre Australian bands filled the Sydney Cricket Ground on behalf of the slaughtered Asian.
Meanwhile upstairs, the God so adored by Christian and Muslim, did absolutely nothing except inspire more hand-wringing and wailing.
Matt’s story? It never arrived. A final email: “Fuck, no time. Do extended captions with D. Hump and Timmy. Will try to fax from Sinabang but do not depend on it. Fuck, Love, wish us luck, Matt.” See D.Hump’s photos this month, with a story by Stefan Marti. Never met Stefan, never exchanged vocalisms, but the kid sure delivered a powerful read. Sixty-eight is where it all begins. – Derek Rielly.
