British boy donates £ 4500 for orphaned tsunami children
from Rodney Martinesz in London
A nine year old British boy who miraculously survived the Boxing Day
tsunami which struck Sri Lanka, yesterday reached out to the tsunami
orphaned children in the country with a gift of 4,500 Sterling Pounds
collected from his friends in a London Primary School.
Toby Carroll of Devonshire High School presenting the cheque for
4500 pounds collected by his classmates for tsunami relief funds
to Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Picture
by Nimal Navaratne |
In a moving scene which left not a single dry eye among those
present, Toby Caroll presented the cheque to Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kadirgamar who is on a visit to Britain to say "thank you" to the
British public for their magnificent response during Sri Lanka's hour of
peril.
The event took place at Arunde House. The money was raised through
what is termed a Bob a Job campaign engaged in by the 400 co-eds (aged
three to 13) of the Devonshire House School in North-West London.
For Toby's mother Jackie, though the Caroll family could not do
enough for the survivors knowing how lucky she had been to be counted
among the parents to see their children alive following that cataclysmic
moment.
Jackie Caroll nee Roche incidentally is a descendant of the well
known Maurice Roche business family in Sri Lanka.
Recounting the events of that fateful day at the Paradise Beach
Resort in Mirissa, Jackie said things happened so fast that she could
not picture the happening.
One moment she and her husband were on the top floor cabana and the
next thing she knew was they were being swept away by giant waves.
"The cabana suddenly gave way where my husband and I stood and we all
fell in a heap. I suddenly saw Toby being held by a Dutch couple and I
yelled 'run'."
Later, she saw the Dutch couple running towards a nearby hill holding
Toby. Although the memory of that scene keeps haunting her everyday, she
still loves Sri Lanka and is planning to make the trip with her family
in a couple of months. |