The "Actors":	Ravi and his family, who come from Sri Lanka and have been our friends for more than two decades.
Our family:	Heinz and Lisa our daughter Uschi and our son-in-law Andy, their children Katharina (11), Sebastian (8) and Johannes (5)
Friends in Sri Lanka:	Ravi`s family, "our" family in Colombo, which are: Malinee and Piyasiri with their daughters Gayathree and Nadeera, called Nadee. The latter is Uschi`s penpal since 1978 and works with UNHCR Sri Lanka; Toni, one of their friends and another pal of Uschi: Hazeeba, called Hazi.
The GaLeMoss:	Staff and parents of the GaLeMo Private Montessori School in Klosterneuburg-Weidling (near Vienna), which was founded three years ago for children from 6 to 15 years.
Bunte Welt:	Owner, staff and parents of this Montessori House for Children in Greifenstein/Danube.

Lisa's Log
26.12.2004	Terrified, we hear about the flood wave striking Southeast Asia. The enchantment of Christmas has disappeared suddenly. We call our friends in Colombo and are relieved to hear, they have not been bothered; we send SMS and E-Mails to all our other friends and get to know, they too stayed healthy and unhit by Tsunami. Just Hazi, whom we visited recently during our last visit of Sri Lanka in November, suffers from a shock. Naadhia and Nabeel, the two older of her three children went to visit their granny, Hazi`s mother, in Beruwala, when the big wave came. Her house is only 50 yds (approx. 15 m) from the beach. Fortunately they were able to flee to a relative`s house on a hill, about 200 m away and escaped like that. The house has been slightly damaged, but nobody got injured. On Poya Days (= Full moon) Toni uses to walk on the beach, but since that day was Christmas, he went to church with his two kids, so he too stayed far away from the water, when the wave hit the beach. Ravi`s family does not live at the coastline, so they were not hit as well.
29.12.2004	Ravi calls Uschi and asks her, if we can help with a relief-project, Uschi agrees, so he sends her an e-mail in which he lists up all things, which are needed for the Tsunami-victims.Uschi sends it on to relatives, friends, GaLeMo parents and we start calling others, who are not linked to the Internet. The house at Sonnenweg works as emergency headquarter those following days. Katharina is the telephone operator, puts down names and numbers, while Uschi is on the phone and I am on the computer. Everything else stays behind as unimportant. The nights we spend in front of the TV, check all channels for news, BBC has the most news from Sri Lanka. Pictures showing the devastated coast line, hurt our souls. Galle, which we know, is nearly washed off, so many villages have simply disappeared and to make things worse, heavy monsoon-rains complicate the rescue actions.
30.12.2004	The first relief-supplies are delivered to Sonnenweg.
1.1.2005	Not only we have spent a quiet New Year's Eve - we hardly saw any firworks, everybody`s spirits seem to be sad. Whereever you go and to whom you listen - the catastrophy is non-stop point of discussions. We spend the weekend with the things we received from many people. We sort, pack and write content-lists on the banana-boxes, Andy had collected from all supermarkets in the area. We bring the first load to Ravi; his apartment looks already more like a storehouse than a place for living.
5.01.2005	Hazi sends news in form of relief-requests and addresses from various NGOs and organisations which try to help. Mrs. L. Frühstück (GaLeMo-mother) has asked for medical help at the local pharmacy in St. Andrä-Wördern - Mrs. Mag. U. Zahlut calls Uschi and informs her, that she prepaired a parcel in the value of € 1.000,-. Andy collects it and delivers it to Ravi, DHL takes it free of charge to Colombo on
8.01.2005	from where it will be collected by a priest from Batticaloa, who asked Ravi for help. His temple had been partly destroyed, but he hosts hundreds of people who need medical help plus food. Nadee sends via UNO the NGO Volunteer Registration Details.
9.01.2005	Nadee reports about first relief operations in Sri Lanka. Our niece, Mrs. B. Göttersdorfer, has initiated a collection at "Badesiedlung Greifenstein" and has spent the last evenings outdoors (at freezing temperatures, which her back misliked) packing more than twenty big boxes with clothing, shoes, bedlinen, etc. We go, collect it from her and deliver everything to Ravi on
10.01.2005	after he finishes work. During the last days we started to work on another project at the same time. We intend to establish something like a small orphanage in the future and have called and e-mailed again our friends, relatives and spend this evening to discuss details with Ravi. Only one week after we started the relief work, we had to tell everybody to stop the collection because AUA, who originally had promised three free transports to Colombo, informed us after only two, that we have to pay from now on. Mr. Bauer (GaLeMo father) works at a bank, somehow clients heard from the collection and started to bring boxes to bank outlets all over, which meant a lot of problems for Mr. Bauer. The will to help developed like an avalanche but we knew, we had to stop it because of the transport problem. Even AUVA agreed to allow a collection within the staff, so Andy had some more roundtrips to collect these boxes as well and deliver them to Ravi. 1,5 t were packed by Ravi and his friends, wrapped into plastic foil and arrived in two lots at the Prime Minister`s Office in Colombo. Hazi sends more reports about relief operations in Sri Lanka.
11.01.2005	Charles Wardell has created a webpage for our project "Charity Home for Children". I report our project to UNO, UNHCR, UNICEF and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs as well as Ministry of Inner Affairs.
12.01.2005	My penpal Sharon from Texas, USA, sends an incredible photo from the Tsunami wave, taken in Indonesia. Toni sends an e-mail refering to our project, he agrees to our calculation of general costs and offers his help in form of looking after the place when it is founded. Ravi receives a fax from the Prime Minister`s office, in which the relief operations are welcomed. AUA confirms, that they are not taking over free transports any longer. They offer a reduced freight-price (€0,85 per kg). We desperately start to look for other possibilities. We start creating stationary, E-Mail forms to write to donors and ask for help with the distribution of our project, we create and print out pappers where we point to our webpage and ask for support, etc. Our webpage needs all sorts of informations to be able to introduce our orphanage to more people, we start working on that as well.
17.01.2005	Hazi sends a map of Sri Lanka - before and after the big wave. Nearly all coastlines present themselves differently now. The lagoon near Trincomalee, which we admired during our last visit there in November, has disappeared. But there is a huge gap next to Galle in the South of the island, nearly all little bays along the Eastcoast have been washed away - the coastline is rather straight now. We are very upset about the fact, that nearly all media stopped to report about the effected countries - after a lot of promises by various governments everybody seems to have returned to the normal daily agenda. How disappointing!   Point your mouse at the map
18.01.2005	I send e-mails to all donors, also to those people who agreed to take over a sponsorship, work out forms, go on to write informations for the webpage, report our project to the honorary consuls in Salzburg and Munich, to the Council of Vienna and the Minstry of Education, Sience and Art ("Partner of all Nations")
20.01.2005	Uschi presents our "Charity Home for Children" at the meeting of parents at "Bunte Welt" Montessori House for children in Greifenstein. This is very upsetting for her, because Sri Lanka nearly is her second home country since her teenage-years, she spent so much time there, what happened, makes her heart aching. Gabriela Domes, the owner of "Bunte Welt" intends to share the income of future children`s house actions with our orphanage-project. My life would be much easier, if I could handle my pc in a more efficient way - I spent a whole night integrating Uschi`s addresses into my address-book but - I succeeded, yippie! In Mr. Herbert Marchula (GaLeMo-father) Uschi found someone, who might be able to help us to solve our transport problem. He will contact a friend at the freighter`s association, a friendly carrier could bring our goods to an European harbour, so I try to find also a friendly reeder, who is willing to take over the freight and ship it to Colombo. I talk to Mr. Norbert Wowy from Hapag Lloyd Austria, who listens to my problems and promises to ask the headquarter in Hamburg, if they agree to my request. Ravi has to empty the room he was allowed to use for the storage of all the delivered releif-goods. He finds a warehouse for free in the 10th district and since that is not big enough for all the boxes, he needed another one, which is at Hotel Biedermeier in the 3rd district. We also got a lot of winter-clothes and winter-shoes, 75 boxes and 16 big bags are delivered by him to "Würfel" - there everything will find a new owner, in Sri Lanka nobody could use these things. We still have 20 m3 clothes, shoes, toilet articles, bed linen and medicines plus 12 m3 stable food, that means we need for the 32m3 a 20' General Purpose Container. Mr. Wowy will pass on our request.
21.01.2005	I repeat our request in a mail addressed to Mr. Wowy, send out also mails to donors, introduce our project to more of our friends.
22.01.2005	Heinz and Uschi have organised a surprise party for me at the GaLeMo school hall, which also can be rented for private parties. There I find 36 of my "old" friends, relatives and 9 children, who sing "happy birthday" for me. Lots of cards, flowers and gifts are handed out, the African Buffet offers a delicious variety of food, spicy, exotic - most guests like it. I use the opportunity to present our project, when we empty the collection box, we count a donation of more than € 700, -. Together with my "Birthday Book", written by my guests, a wonderful and generous gift.
24.01.2005	This was my 60th birthday and the phone kept ringing. I automatically answered "Hallo, this is the birthday child speaking." This time however it was Norbert Wowy of Hapag Lloyd on the line. He laughted and congratulated me .... and then I received the most wonderful birthday present one could imagine: Hapag Lloyd has agreed to provide us free of charge with a 20' Container for the transport of our relief goods from Hamburg to Colombo. Further details will follow. I inform Herbert Marchula of GaLeMo who will take care of the logistics. What a memorable day!
27.01.2005	I receive an extra long e-mail from Mr. Mike Penitz from Hapag Lloyd, in which he gives me all details about the following procedure. To me most of the listings are rather confusing but I am sure, we will be able to solve also this problem. Meanwhile we have 15 people willing to take over a sponsorship for our project, I send out the necessary form by mail and e-mail and ask again some of our friends to help us by introducing the project to their friends. And I try to think of a way to collect the necessary capital of € 10.000 to be able to start the whole thing.