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the accountant and the tsunami

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I took my corporate income stuff in to an accountant tonight. I'd ridden my bike up to her office, so we started talking about how she'd never been allowed to learn to ride a bike as a child. When I expressed my surprise at this, she said that it was because of her growing up in Sri Lanka.

Naturally, I asked if she was from part of the country hit by the tsunami. The answer was yes, and the unfortunate reality was that she'd lost an aunt, a cousin, and some eighteen other family members! Whole families (including several children) had been swept away entirely, never to be found again. Homes, business, everything were lost along with the many lives.

She said that her surviving family was for the most part doing well, financially. She went down to see them, and finding the family as okay as they were going to be under the circumstances, she put together her own effort to help poorer families, financing the reconstruction of those families' homes. She'd already funded the rebuilding of two homes, and was financing a third.

I was happy to do business with such a person.