From Kevin Sites on the scene:
We ride our motorbikes — my 17 year-old translator Mohammed and me–as far as we can down a rutted, muddy path to the village of Darussalam. We see a fire a little way ahead and stop at a swampy opening of palm trees. Two brothers — in their early twenties are sifting through the remains of a house about twenty yards across the water from us.
“We’re looking for our parents,” one says — before slipping off a downed tree trunk into the muck up to his waist. The others laugh. It seems a welcome sound, if out of place in this ghoulish setting.
Seeing a flat, smoky fire nearby — I ask what it is.
“A body, but not someone they recognize, ” Mohammed translates.
The flesh burns, appropriately enough, like the tallow of a candle and melts slowly into a maze of branches below.
We ride further down the trail — seemingly deeper into the heart of darkness- — careful not to run over the many black body bags that line both sides. As we pass, a brownish-yellow foot sticks out of the end of one.
“Ughhh,” Mohammed reacts, veering the bike away at the last minute.
Despite being in the epicenter of this disaster — he had never even seen a dead body prior to yesterday — when we had walked through the city’s devastated marina area.
Compelling reading….from a special weblog.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.