Posted on 01/07/2005 11:56:55 AM PST by flitton
ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (AP) - Standing in the hangar bay of this mammoth aircraft carrier, Seaman Joviena Kay looks across the waves toward the devastated coast of Sumatra, remembering a time 13 years ago when she huddled on the same deck with evacuees from another great Asian disaster.
Joviena was 6 years old then, a refugee from a volcano. The Filipino-American eventually joined the U.S. Navy, and she is serving on the ship that rescued her as its sailors help the survivors of an earthquake and tsunami.
``It's horrible, what happened to those people out there,'' she says of the tens and tens of thousands of Indonesians swept to their deaths by huge waves.
It was horror of a different kind that descended on Joviena and her mother in 1991. A gigantic eruption of Mount Pinatubo rained crushing volcanic ash on their home in the Philippines. More than 700 people died.
When friends urged them to go to a Navy ship evacuating American citizens from the disaster area, they packed a few clothes and rushed to the U.S. base at Olongapo City, its streets flooded by a tropical storm.
Married to a Navy man stationed in the United States, her mother carried an expired identification card, but the guards let them through the gates and onto the Abraham Lincoln. On its maiden voyage, the ship led a 23-ship armada that carried away 20,000 military dependents, children and civilian workers.
Joviena, now a cook and administrative assistant aboard the warship, recalls long lines of evacuees, the kindness of the crew - and a monotonous diet of sandwiches.
After nearly a year in the United States living with grandparents, she and her mother returned to Olongapo City, where her mother owned a bar frequented by sailors. But U.S. forces were pulling out, Joviena's father had died, education costs were rising and the prospects of a job were dim.
So after a year in college studying hotel and restaurant management, Joviena followed a time-honored tradition in the Philippines: She joined the U.S. Navy - and found herself assigned to the ship that saved her.
She heard of the latest disaster from her mother, who was distressed by the tragedy in Sumatra but thankful that Indonesia's vast archipelago may have blocked the wave surge from reaching the Philippines.
The carrier's crew, including Joviena, had just enjoyed a Christmas liberty call in Hong Kong. But they were soon steaming at high speed toward Sumatra, where entire communities were obliterated and isolated survivors badly needed emergency aid that only the ship's helicopters could deliver.
``Sometimes I feel we are not doing enough down here, but we're still helping in our own way to support everyone on the ship,'' she says of her kitchen work, hunched behind a computer in the bowels of the carrier. The kitchens cook more than 20,000 meals a day to keep the vessel's 5,500 sailors going.
Like almost everyone on board, Joviena volunteered to help in the relief operation ashore, loading food and water onto helicopters and carrying the injured being evacuated from ruined villages. But she and the other kitchen workers have been banned from entering a potentially disease-ridden area for fear of food contamination.
Joviena, who hopes to finish her college degree in the United States, says she works up to 14 hours a day, and in some ways doesn't live as well as she did as a little evacuee, when she ate in the officers' mess and slept in their quarters. She has a narrow bunk in a crowded room shared with 12 other sailors, and the daily call for ``Happy Hour'' means it's time to scrub the decks and sweep the floors.
In her few spare moments, the soft-spoken sailor counters homesickness by keeping in touch with her mother via e-mail.
``She's proud of us, trying to help out here,'' Joviena says. ``She just tells me to be careful.''
BTTT
Now that's a human interest story!!! Where's the picture (her preferrably, but I'll settle for one of the carrier :)
Sorry no picture, it was on the site under latest news so there was just a report.
I would like to see a picture of the Abraham Lincoln riding at anchor in Hong Kong Harbor. OK, and the sailor too.
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