| Tsunami + 8 months |  |
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| Contributed by Raymond Poon | |
| Friday, 09 September 2005 | |
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Our man in NTU, Raymond, went over to Sri Lanka to check on the progress of post-Tsunami rebuilding efforts. Here’s his story, along with some pictures he took … It’s been eight months since the 26th December tsunami disaster and stories from the affected areas have slowed to a trickle. However, when the stories of destruction and suffering stop, does it mean that the worst is over and that life in the affected areas are back to normal?
The following is a personal account of what I saw from day four to seven when we were at the east coast of Sri Lanka, which together with the northeast coast, was worst hit by the disaster.
We picked up our four interpreters in the morning as the people from where we were heading spoke mainly Tamil. The first affected area we visited was the beach of Kattankudy in Batticaloa. Despite it was more than six months after the disaster, the sight of the destruction still awed me nonetheless. It was a hot day, probably about 38 degrees Celsius, with nary a cloud in the sky. This weather is typical in the East for this time of the year when the dry season starts to set in. The ocean was a lovely light blue, its beauty was an odd backdrop for the expanse of rubble around us – scarred earth, broken roads, flattened buildings. It was hard to imagine the beachfront lined with fishermen’s huts, which we were told was the way things were. Now there is just the vastness of sand. 2pm, Navalady, Batticaloa
Lunch was being given as a treat today as it was the last day of the debris-clearing work. Which begs the question: Where’s the money going to come from now? Half a year later, still, tragedies of losing close family continue. Displays of the bodily scars that remind of the injuries sustained continue. Questions of what the future would bring continue. And here, I heard my first complaint about how the NGOs were misguided in their work, unable to find out who the needy were and unable to distribute aid fairly. I spoke with a man, Sinacheh Antony, who lost a wife and two children to the waves. He said: “Such a disaster should not come again, not only to this country but to the whole world.”
July 2, 2005, Saturday We reached Arugam Bay late morning. The bay was one of the top ten surfing destinations of the world and a popular tourist destination on the East coast. The first thought that struck me about the place - shirtless Caucasians with surfboards milling about. In the distance, people were frolicking in the waters. The whole place had a holiday feel to it, that is, if you could forget the ubiquitous skeletons of buildings and rubble piles characteristic of the East coast. The good thing though, was that tourists were back. There was even a surfing competition here a few days back, organised by the British Surfing Association.
According to Fred, the NGOs have not been consulting with the locals on what the latter need. He recounted an incident where a NGO worker, once took a big detour when he saw Fred coming out of his hotel, just to avoid running into Fred. In a place where getting electricity was a problem, Fred said the NGOs were giving out things like fridges and air conditioners, when what were more urgently needed were power generators. Then there were the temporary shelters that did not take into account the hot local climate. Fred said he had taken the temperature inside one of them – it was 126 degrees Fahrenheit. In degree Celsius, that’s 52. Either way, it reads: Very hot! Fred pointed us to a shelter that had a zinc roof – I gathered it was the metal roof that caused the inside of the shelter to heat up so much.
Later, we had our lunch at a restaurant called The Fishing Net. When we were done, we gathered around the restaurant owner, Ajith, as he recounted his experiences to us. Midway through, tears came to his eyes, and he told us that we were the first group to talk with him about what he has been through. There are probably many like him who, besides food and shelter, needs also a listening ear. It’s tough: You can’t drop a listening ear in the donation box at McDonald’s, or pack it in a relief supply container to be airlifted there. Perhaps that was one reason why all the people I encountered were so forthcoming with their stories. And why large groups of locals gathered every time we spoke to anyone. Perhaps it was more than the novelty of seeing yellow-skinned oddities. Or perhaps they thought we could help make their lives better… July 3, 2005, Sunday 4.10pm, beach at Maruthamunai This place is a Muslim stronghold. Some of my friends remarked that the debris clearing here was far from completed, unlike the previous places we visited. It seemed that the relief effort had been slow in reaching this area, despite the fact that there were Muslim NGOs there now. Midway through our conversations with the villagers, there was suddenly a ruckus. One particular villager was approaching our group, shouting and gesturing in anger. Our lecturer promptly intercepted him and tried to reason with him. This bemused the other villagers. One made a gesture of swallowing from an imaginary bottle and said: “Drink.” There were others like him – people who had survived the waves and yet unable to flee from their sorrows drown themselves in alcohol instead. The problems this village faced were little different from those that came before. Again, a village had been promised six monthly payments of 5,000 rupees, only to see the money stop coming in after the first two payments. Again, there was the difficulty of finding work for a people who by and large knew only fishing as a livelihood. Again, the questions of what the future would bring. It must be said that by now, I was a little fatigued from hearing about the problems of the tsunami victims, and I knew some of my friends were feeling the same way too. It wasn’t that what they were saying wasn’t important – it would be churlish to think so, for these were issues of life and death to those who made the effort to share there stories with us. Still, there was a need to speak with officials and the higher-ups in the NGOs to get their perspective on what was going on. Unfortunately it was not possible this time round. A possible second trip maybe? July 4, 2005, Monday There’s no R&R (rest and relaxation) on this trip! Sigh… We were back at the beach of Maruthamunai this morning for some last-minute information digging before the nine-hour journey back to the airport. I’ll be back here again in September. Let’s hope that nine months from the tsunami disaster, things will look a lot more promising than they do now. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 22 March 2006 ) |
I visited a German guy, Fred, at his hotel, the Siam View Hotel. Fred had been in Sri Lanka for close to 30 years, and he was angry at the NGOs, calling them a waste of money. Coming from a man who once hosted an NGO it was a startling accusation.
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