The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Derwin Kitch wasn't immediately aware that his adopted homeland had been hit by one of the worst disasters the world has ever known. The former Flin Flonner was quietly working out in Sri Lanka, where he teaches, when word of the deadly tsunamis came over the television. "The initial reports that we saw on BBC, which was playing in the gym, were that there were 300 dead," said Kitch in an e-mail interview. "The magnitude of the tragedy wasn't really known until later in the day." With more than 220,000 people in Asia dead, the scale of the devastation shocked the world. So close to the catastrophe, Kitch and his wife, Dana, were obviously no exceptions. By some estimates, almost two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastal region was destroyed, including hundreds of thousands of homes. Estimates from the tropical island nation put the total death toll at over 30,000. "ÊWe haven't known anyone directly lost, but everyone seems to know someone indirectly affected by this," said Kitch. "It is an island of 19 million people, but a disaster of this magnitude affects everyone, even if it is a distant friend or relative." Since Colombo, the community where Kitch lives, is 15 kilometres inland, it wasn't affected much, at least physically, by the tsunamis. "We haven't seen much of the devastation ourselves," he said. "This weekend, we're going to go for a drive down the coast to the south part of the island.Ê That'll be an eye-opener." Though Kitch and his school are involved in fundraising for the relief efforts, he said things are pretty much back to normal in Colombo nearly a month after the deadly waves struck. "The radio has pretty much forgotten everything," he said. Media such as CNN may create the impression that Sri Lanka is falling apart, but Kitch said that is "very far from the truth." "Things are starting to happen in the clean-up and rebuilding Ð nowhere near as fast as India, but that's a country with a lot more going for it than Sri Lanka," he said. Kitch taught at Hapnot Collegiate during the 1998-99 school year. He quickly became a favourite of the students, as evidenced by the invitation he received Ð and gladly accepted ÐÊto speak at the commencement for the Class of 2002. "Hapnot was a great place to be," recalled the Swan River native.Ê" Actually, it was so good that I felt if I didn't try the overseas thing that I would never leave." But leave he did, heading to the faraway lands of Kuwait and Pakistan before arriving at his latest stop in Sri Lanka. "My parents always took us traveling on summer vacations and I love to travel on my own," said Kitch. "Like I mentioned earlier, I loved Flin Flon, but thought that I would really regret not trying the overseas thing.Ê Now that I've done it, it'll be hard to return to Canada."Ê Kitch plans to remain in Sri Lanka for another school year before heading toward "new challenges," possibly in Europe, Africa or South America.
