Henry Aruffo III can’t seem to shake the grotesque images of bloated, purple bodies splayed out on the beach and dirt roads. He still smells the putrid water of decaying bodies, emptied bowels and motor oil. And the screams — he’ll always recall those first piercing screams of men, women and children running from a 20-foot wall of water.
These are the mementos Aruffo has taken back from his short-lived retirement in Thailand, along with hepatitis C, two bouts of dengue fever and myriad skin, ear and nose infections.
Now, between trips to four different doctors, Aruffo sits on an air mattress in his small studio apartment in St. Petersburg and alternates between lashing out at the Red Cross and lamenting his ailments. Neither emotion, he says, is typical for him. Then again, nothing in his life has been the same since the tsunami.
Aruffo, a former University of South Florida geography professor, used to teach 400 students at a time in lecture halls; now, he is so afraid of crowds he can’t even go into a Wal-Mart. Once a globe-trotting environmental activist accustomed to less-than-sanitary conditions — like eating crickets at Burmese refugee camps — he now steers clear of even common foods like apples for fear of other people’s germs. Just two years ago, the former Marine climbed to the Mount Everest base camp. Now the 57-year-old groans when standing up, crippled by back pain, and takes frequent naps during the day.
“All I know is I’m not the same person I was when I was teaching at the university,” Aruffo says.
There’s only one constant in Aruffo’s life: His compassion. Despite the horrors he witnessed after the tsunami, and his ensuing health problems, Aruffo longs to return to Thailand — and the tsunami orphans he left behind.
Aruffo left USF two days after winning the 2003 USF Distinguished Alumni Bayboro Award, ending a decade of teaching that spanned both USF campuses, Hillsborough Community College and St. Petersburg College.
“My job was over [his teaching contract was not renewed] and I thought I’d go to refugee camps for a few months and volunteer, then apply for another [teaching] job in January,” Aruffo says. He ended up staying for five months, and then moved to Phuket, a small Thai town on the Indian Ocean. There, Aruffo started the Coral Reef Institute, a nonprofit environmental organization that educates Thai people on preserving coral reefs. When he wasn’t diving or organizing beach clean-ups, Aruffo also taught Thai teachers English, who in turn taught poverty-stricken children in the area. Single and living off the sale of his St. Pete condo, he planned to spend the rest of his life there.
The earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004 lasted only a few minutes. Aruffo didn’t think much of it. After a short evacuation, he returned to his eighth-floor condo overlooking Patong Beach, poured a cup of coffee and settled down on his balcony with a Tom Clancy novel.
He had no way of knowing that a tsunami was at that moment tearing through the Indian Ocean. It was two hours before he heard the first screams.
From his condo, Aruffo saw the water rushing inland, sweeping light poles and cars into people.
“It was chaos,” he says.
For the next 48 hours, Aruffo worked nonstop. He joined a diving team looking for survivors trapped in flooded grocery store basements; the divers also plugged up fishing boats leaking oil and gas. “The water was putrid,” he recalls. “All the food, the chickens, the meats, the people.”
When he came home, Aruffo would scrub himself with bleach, even gargling with it. He stopped eating during the day. He started smoking cigarettes.
“That was to cover up the smell,” he says. “The smell was there all the time. It was pervasive.”
It was seven days before rescue crews arrived in Phuket. But Aruffo, though suffering from a debilitating ear infection, refused to leave.
“I couldn’t leave,” he says. “I lived with these people. They were my friends. I saw their needs and I tried to help them.”
For the next nine months, Aruffo continued working on recovery efforts, including teaching English to a group of children orphaned by the tsunami. If he could teach them and raise money for scholarships, the Thai children could attend a trade school when they turned 18, instead of ending up in the sex industry or homeless.
But after contracting dengue fever (a painful mosquito-borne virus) in September 2006, Aruffo’s condition worsened. Ear and nose infections flared up. His liver, infected by hepatitis, swelled with intense pain. But his ailments weren’t just physical. He began sinking into depression.
“All of this stuff was catching up with me,” he says. “Eventually, I was standing on my balcony, thinking it wouldn’t hurt so much to hit the ground.”
Aruffo bought a plane ticket to the United States, stayed a month to recover and flew back to Thailand. But after a week, he bought another ticket to St. Petersburg. He promised “his kids” he’d be back to help them get into a trade school. That was five months ago.
Aruffo lights another stick of incense. It helps to block out those remembered smells, he says. He keeps his doors and windows open; otherwise, he feels “closed in.” He has a convertible for the same reason, but only uses it at night, driving to the grocery store and back.
He flips through several business cards — pain management specialists, dermatologists, anger management, psychiatrists. Without insurance, he’s begun dipping into his pension fund.
“What will I do when it runs out?” he asks. “I don’t fucking know.”
It’s hard for Aruffo not to be bitter.
In the first few weeks after the tsunami, he says the United States embassy never offered Americans living in Thailand any kind of assistance, other than an offer from one official to notarize his will. For $50.
Since returning to St. Petersburg, Aruffo has written letters to both Florida senators, several local representatives and President Bush, urging them to send more aid to tsunami victims and not to forget those who helped the recovery efforts. None have returned his correspondence.
But Aruffo saves most of his anger for the American Red Cross, which still holds nearly $350.4 million in donations two years after the tsunami hit. According to a Red Cross spokesman, those funds are being applied to long-term recovery, to be released over time until June 2010, mostly toward health and sanitation efforts.
But Aruffo is looking for more immediate relief.
“Will it be the same amount next year?” he says. “I would love to see the Red Cross to release some of those funds. … I’m not trying to be a crusader, but after two years in the tsunami zone, you see the needs of people.”
He’s just frustrated, he says, eager to return to Thailand.
“I’d like to be back helping the kids, diving and helping the environment and social issues,” he says. But with his condition, Aruffo is not sure when that will be. Doctors tell him it could be several months. He’s always thinking of other options.
“I’d love to find a teacher who would love to go over there and help them,” he suggests. “If you’ve already given to the Red Cross, maybe you can make sure they are giving these programs funding.”
“You help them and they help you,” he continues, eyes widening with hope. “That’s why I helped in the tsunami.
“It’s good karma.”
Donations toward tsunami aid can be sent to World Vision International at www.wvi.org/wvi/asia_tsunami/thailand_tsunami.htm. The Red Cross Tsunami Recovery Program “believes it has sufficient funds to allow it to fulfill its long-term recovery programming.”
This article appears in May 30 – Jun 5, 2007.
