Despite the tsunami’s tears, New Year still came in with a ‘bang’

MAASLUIS, Holland – Never mind the dateline. The Dutch greeted Midnight, New Year’s Eve, with the biggest bangs within memory – as far as our eyes could see from the fifth floor apartment picture windows and the wide balcony of our friends, Offie and Jack Bakker. Their modern building overlooks a busy deepwater river connecting to the sea, so passing ships – container vessels and huge barges – set off their horns to welcome Year 2005, with all the coming year’s foreboding and the horrible hangover from 2004’s pains.

Friends rang me up by cellphone from Manila at 5 p.m. European (Holland) time to allow me to listen to all the fireworks popping off in our capital metropolis. That’s when I discovered that it was still 5 p.m., winter time, here in Western Europe, when it’s already Midnight Mass in Metro Manila.

It was morning in the Philippines when midnight struck Holland – that’s when all the fireworks here let loose.

Who says the Dutch are "frugal" even kuripot? By golly, those fireballs, star clusters, rockets, floral explosions, and other pyrotechnics sent up in technicolor from every apartment roof or alley in this suburban area, close to a fishing port, must have set back the private revelers who set them alight a big bunch of euros.

We learned that the Dutch government had "legalized" the sale of fireworks only last Wednesday, so those homeowners who set off that dazzling display in the night’s sky – under the gaze of a three-quarters’ moon – must have rushed to the store to stock up in a frenzy of panic-buying.

Maasslius, if you want to know, is a city almost midway between Rotterdam (20 minutes’ away) and Amsterdam (one hour, ten minutes’), with a population of 40,000. My wife and I had motored down here from Amsterdam to spend New Year’s with our dear friends, the Bakkers, wending our way past the smooth expressways into curving country roads through picturesque farms – beautiful white swans and perky black, little ducks, swimming in the near-frozen canals, shaggy white sheep or black-faced sheep nibbling at roots in the frosty earth, hothouses alight with artificial "sunlight" and heating, so tulips and vegetables can grow and be harvested all winter long.

There are those huge, intimidating modern windmills, now in place, but the Dutch still retain their romantic, old-fashioned windmills, too, as our schoolboy ditty went, the "windmills of Holland are turning, round and around and around . . ." Yes, sir. In spite of light ground fog and frost, we espied them spinning languidly still.

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I know it seems obscene to be celebrating New Year’s when there’s so much misery, grief and loss in Asia in the wake of the terrible Sunday tsunami and earthquake which, by last count, has already killed more than 130,000 people – many of them children – and wiped out almost the entire Indonesian province of Aceh in Sumatra.

Indonesia has been estimated, in all the television programs aired here, to have lost more than 80,000 people in the shocks, aftershocks, and the tsunami tidal waves. The 9 intensity quake, of course, first struck Banda Aceh, then spread all over the Indian ocean bringing devastation to Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Andamans, Nikobar, the Maldives, Somalia and other African coastal countries. I still suspect Malaysia is reluctant to bare all the figures regarding its losses.

Phuket, Thailand’s premiere beach resort – in the Muslim-dominated south, mind you, of Thailand – suffered mightily and many European tourists were lost there, as well as holiday-makers from Hong Kong, etc.

Indonesia, which I know rather well, is afflicted by frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions, since, as we are, that archipelago is located within the "ring of fire". The last immense catastrophe which occured there was when the huge volcano Krakatoa erupted, killing tens of thousands not merely from the lava and lahar, but from the resultant tsunami. The catastrophe was made famous by a graphic movie, Krakatoa, East of Java, which was exciting, except that its title was geographically wrong. The volcano Krakatoa was not East of Java but about Northwest, however the movie effects were spectacular. A new volcano is growing out under the sea in the same spot, called Anak-Krakatoa (son of Krakatoa), what else?

In any event, the current tsunami is the worst natural disaster in our century, and, as all experts say, the worst is still to come. Entire villages have been wiped out – five million are homeless, food and potable waters are scarce, epidemic threatens, but what’s awful is that the effect of the saltwater sea engulfing all those coastal stretches is that crops won’t grow on them for decades to come. The water tables have been poisoned by salt and microbes. Many of the areas afflicted have become uninhabitable.

We hear that almost the entire productive oil-rich province of Aceh has been destroyed. For years , the Aceh-nese have been in armed rebellion against the Jakarta Government, seeking to break away from the Republic. They are the most rabid, fundamentalist of all Indonesia’s Muslims, by the way – and their hatred drove most of the foreign oil companies away, mostly the American oil interests. Now, with their province in shambles, their oil production wrecked, will the surviving Acehnese accept the call of the new Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudyohono (SBY) to "rejoin" the Indonesian Republic and reconcile?

At this point, they’re even welcoming help from the hated Americans who’ve been arriving to participate, even seek to take the lead in the relief effort.

All over western Europe, there are collections being taken, and many are rushing to help. They lost family members who had been vacationing in the Asian resorts, particularly in Phuket, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. One minute the holidaymakers were frolicking in the sea, sunbathing on the beach, shopping in a seaside fair in carnival atmosphere. The next minute they where crushed, drowned, or swept sway to sea, by huge tsunami waves coming out of nowhere on a bright morning!

Here in Holland, appeals are broadcast every few minutes. Call GIRO 555, Den Haag (the capital is The Hague) goes the appeals. It is aired even on TV screens in Amsterdam’s streetcars and efficient trams. The Lotto (national lottery) here has donated Euros 1 million – but nobody seems to be questioning whether this is legal or not, since lottery proceeds are only supposed to be used "nationality", not to meet international disasters.

We attended New Year’s Eve service in the Grote Kerk (Great Church) in the fishing harbor here last night. The Pastor must have been a bit off his feed. My friend Jack Bakker was surprised. He had been going to this church since he was a young fellow and the Pastor usually delivered a sermon lasting one hour and a half at least. (This is why Offie and Jack’s kids – Peter, Henry and Anna Maria – won’t come and prefer the International Catholic Church in the Hague where the service is more... well, "jolly.")

This time, the Pastor spoke in his usual impassioned Dutch, prayed for all the members of the Community – all over them elderly ladies (forgot the menfolk, it seems) – then cut his sermon short to just about one hour. Jack was disappointed. I was much relieved. They didn’t forget to pass the collection bag around twice, however. The second collection was for the tsunami victims, for whom the congregation also prayed.

The Great Church, by the way, was decorated at its altars by models of sailing ships. It was built by fishermen and sailors, who for centuries have inhabited this community. The Dutch, after all, are a seafaring nation – and, indeed, by golly, half of Holland ought to be under the sea. But they wrested land from the sea by establishing huge dikes and creating farms where the seabed had been before. Hence the familiar brag: "God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland."

We have much to learn from the Dutch in making our own destiny. And I don’t mean, Dutch treat.