Arugam Bay Information

Tsunami: Six months after

By: Martin Regg Cohn
Courtesy: The Toronto Star – June 26, 2005
Six months after the Boxing Day tsunami, the biggest, swiftest and most successful humanitarian operation of modern times has saved countless lives.

But it hasn’t yet rebuilt them.

The world reacted with unprecedented generosity by bankrolling a $10 billion rehabilitation effort, reaching out to remote villages across Asia that few had ever heard of.

There were no epidemics. No one died of starvation.

But the hard part has just begun.

All these months after the waters of the Indian Ocean receded from the shores of Indonesia’s Aceh province, the island of Sri Lanka, Phuket beach in Thailand and Tamil Nadu, India — leaving more than 200,000 dead or missing in their wake — life is still far from returning to normal.

Indeed, it could take a full year before tens of thousands of tsunami refugees and orphans still living in temporary shelters can be moved into homes of their own and attend permanent schools.

To be sure, the relief picture could have been far worse.

Apart from disease and hunger, festering insurgencies in Aceh and Sri Lanka could have flared up again, compounding the misery of tsunami victims.

National pride might have kept foreign relief agencies at bay and corruption could have siphoned off massive amounts of donated money by now.

That none of these things have happened is a minor miracle for the more than 1 million people whose lives were wrenched by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Yet it must be said — and many victims and relief workers are saying it — that the rehabilitation effort should have been more effective by now.

With all the money, materials and media that have been devoted to tsunami reconstruction, there is markedly less tolerance for graft, bureaucratic inertia, turf wars and squabbling.

Hence the outrage and embarrassment in Sri Lanka this month when word leaked out that Oxfam had been forced to pay $1.2 million in duties after customs officials held up desperately needed transport trucks the development agency had imported from India.

Oxfam officials pleaded their case, saying they needed the four-wheel-drive trucks to deliver donated supplies, but customs officials refused to budge.

“They gave us a bill and we had to pay it,” says David Crawford, who runs the charitable group’s operations in Sri Lanka.

Two dozen Indian-made vehicles were stuck at customs for a month, with storage fees piling up at the rate of $6,000 a day.

After the media exposed the story, Crawford got a call last week from the ministry of finance sheepishly offering to reimburse the money.

The good news is that despite the extraordinary bureaucratic intransigence, Crawford says Oxfam is making headway in a country that needs an estimated 100,000 new homes for about 500,000 dislocated people.

“From Oxfam’s point of view, the one-year targets we had have already been met, and we are ahead on our five-year plan. There is no disease, no malnutrition, no hunger.”

With about $55 million budgeted for this year, the agency has long since shifted from emergency relief to sustainable programs providing clean water, sanitation, shelters and improved livelihoods for women.

The aim is “reconstruction-plus” — rebuilding better than before by, for example, organizing women into bigger fish processing co-operatives to give them greater clout in the market.

But rebuilding in northeastern Sri Lanka, like Aceh in northwestern Indonesia, takes place against the backdrop of continuing tensions between insurgents and government forces.

On Friday, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels reached agreement with the government on a joint distribution mechanism that should smooth the way after months of disagreements and delays in disbursing $3.7 billion in foreign aid.

“We are losing days because it’s sometimes difficult getting through,” says Crawford. “The security situation has been getting worse …. There can be no development without peace.”

That’s what Craig Kielburger, co-founder of Toronto-based Free the Children, discovered when he visited Pottuville in eastern Sri Lanka last May — he was escorted by 12 armed guards.

Kielburger says his development group was able to overcome obstacles in setting up a vocational school that he believes will be the first to reopen in the wake of the tsunami.

But success stories like this one are coloured by the way some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are tripping over one another trying to raise their profiles to boost donations.

“It’s amazing what the competition is about,” says Kielburger, warning that it “reinforces cynicism.”

The first signs of reconstruction that rose up from the ground, he says, were the signposts erected by rival NGOs staking out their claims.

“The sign industry must be booming. NGOs have each staked their little part, branding their name and logo.”

But while NGOs are occasionally hyperactive, Kielburger complains that government officials drag their feet and fail to co-ordinate activities.

“The government made extraordinary claims of 50,000 new homes by June, but they haven’t even designated the land,” he says. So far, only about 1,000 homes are ready.

Meanwhile, a ban on rebuilding on beaches within 100 to 200 metres of the shore means people have been “kicked out with nowhere to go.”

Kielburger’s concerns are echoed by Raga Alphonsus, a Canadian aid worker who has spent time in Sri Lanka’s Ampara district, where Ottawa deployed troops from the Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART) last January.

Looking back, DART’s short-term contributions look like a costly, but not terribly cost-effective footnote to history, while much long-term work remains to be done.

“The military are not trained for that — they are there to get the job done and move on, and they had a set focus,” Alphonsus says.

DART behaved like other NGOs in quickly planting the flag, rather than putting down sustainable roots in communities that must have ownership of long-term projects.

“These agencies are like a business: they need to be seen by donors to be visible and doing something sexy,” Alphonsus says.

Sri Lankan tsunami projects also have created problems in cases where “tsunami victims are on one side of the road and non-tsunami victims are on the other side of the road.”

And there is an obvious double standard in evicting poor fishing families from beaches, where they need to be close their boats, because of the new ban on building near the shoreline — while luxury hotels are allowed to build in close proximity to the water.

Similar land problems have arisen in Indonesia, the country hardest-hit by the tsunami, but NGOs there appear to be co-operating more effectively. Turf wars are less of an issue because, with so much devastation, there is no shortage of rebuilding tasks.

“This is such an enormous disaster that there’s enough work out there to be done — there’s no competition problem,” says Geno Teofilo, an aid worker with World Vision in Aceh.

More than 500,000 Indonesians lost their homes, with at least half that number still living in tents today.

An estimated 42,000 children are being taught in tent schools. Another 150,000 people are living in new shelters and 750,000 are receiving food aid.

But bridges are being rebuilt and roads repaved, Teofilo reports. Acehnese are being hired to clear land of debris for $6 a day and look forward to the work, he says.

“People don’t want to sit in temporary shelters and have someone bring them food. They want to get out and build homes.”

But to build homes, people need land — and clear title to it. One of the biggest obstacles to the recovery is proving ownership in cases where documentation was lost. Or finding alternatives if the land was swept away by the tsunami.

“In some places, 500 metres of shoreline were washed away, so where are they going to live now?” Teofilo asks. “The land issues are pretty big here.”

One solution is temporary ownership certificates drawn up by aid workers based on testimonials by a village headman or witness.

But the advocacy is a slow process — and it’s a reminder that no matter how much money or material are moved into place, rebuilding will take time.

source:

http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=52&id=3369

By KEVIN SITES
June 26, 2006

The sun is setting over the Indian Ocean and, for a moment, Arugam Bay is paradise. The coastline, a jagged, gray-toothed smile of crumbling walls and stone foundations destroyed by the 2004 tsunami, is bathed in the giddy, rose-colored light of dusk.

The upstairs bar at the Siam View Inn is beginning to fill up with surfers who just finished their afternoon session at the south end of the bay. It is, they know, a wonderful secret spot – a reward for intrepid and fearless surf travelers, a right-hand point break which can carry you into next week, if you‘re lucky enough to out-paddle the other 50 hard-core surfers gunning for the same peak.

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But tonight they‘re out of the water early. Mostly Aussies, along with a handful of Japanese, they‘re keen to see day two of the World Cup soccer matches, Australia versus Japan, on the bar‘s satellite television set.

As the first round of beers is poured, the national anthems are played before the start of the match. The Aussies sing along to the sounds of Waltzing Matilda. Everyone seems to savor the good fortune to be in this place, at this moment.

It is a well-earned moment of serenity in what has been a tumultuous two years for the people of Arugam Bay and the surrounding areas.

The Siam View Inn had 22 rooms before the tsunami hit. Now it has four. The owner, a German named Manfred, is a quiet but determined guy who knows how to get things done. He is rebuilding slowly, with the hope that if he does, they – the tourists – will come.

The reputation of having been devastated by the tsunami was obviously bad for business, and though there has been progress, the region is far from reconstructed. Officially, over 30,000 Sri Lankans were killed by the 2004 tsunami, many of them in this area on Sri Lanka‘s southeast coast. Thousands more here are still living a rudimentary existence in thatch houses without water or electricity.

But businesses like the Siam View, struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of the tsunami, began to see a light at the end of the tunnel: the possibility of becoming, if not a mainstream tourist spot, at least a bragging-rights stop for the young, hip, “Lonely Planet”-type traveler.

But then, in April, the Tamil Tiger rebels used a female suicide bomber, a “Black Tigress,” in an assassination attempt in Colombo against Sri Lanka‘s army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. The attempt only injured Fonseka, but likely killed any hopes for rekindling a viable tourist trade in Arugam Bay.

“Sixty people canceled on me after that,” says K.M. Rifei, one of the managers at the Siam View Inn. “They were from all over the world, too – Germany, England, Australia.”

Rifei is troubled by the developments, but he‘s seen enough tragedy in his life that his emotional range seems wisely shifted to neutral. Rifei says he lost 17 members of his family in the tsunami, including his son, who was just one-and-a-half years old.

“When the tsunami hit,” he says, as we sit on the deck of restaurant overlooking the beach, “my family was all in the water, including my son.”

Now the challenge, the same for everyone here, is surviving the tragedy after the tragedy. If the world‘s most deadly natural disaster wasn‘t enough, Sri Lanka‘s slow slide out of a 2002 cease-fire agreement between the government and the Tamil Tigers and back into civil war now seems not only inevitable, but already in progress.

The economic costs are already high. Two pro surfing events scheduled to take place in Arugam Bay this summer have been canceled because of the violence.

“We weren‘t expecting much from them, though,” says 24-year-old Asmin, whose father and uncle own the Tropicana, a small surfboard rental shop, and handful of beachside rental cabanas. “They‘d probably all stay at five star hotels somewhere else.”

Asmin and his family are Muslims, like the majority of the people in this area, and so don‘t directly share in the Sinhalese versus Tamil feud that has divided Sri Lanka for decades.

Jamaldeen, Asmin‘s father, says the people here have a good relationship with government security forces, especially the elite police commandos known as the Special Task Force (STF), who are in charge of this area.

“The Tigers aren‘t active here but the government perceives this as an area in which they operate,” says Jamaldeen, “so they don‘t invest a lot to help counter that reputation.”

It is, I think, a dilemma like the legendary scene in Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Apocalypse Now” in which American Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (an avid surfer), played by Robert Duvall, covets a stretch of beach held by the enemy (Charlie) simply for its surf.

When his men protest that the beach is heavily fortified, Kilgore responds, “Charlie don‘t surf!” and orders an attack on the beach.

Like Charlie, Tiger may not surf either, but the perception of potential violence here, as in other areas of the country, hasn‘t made Arugam Bay seem like a safe spot for many mainstream travelers to hit the water.

Jamaldeen says that the ongoing dearth of tourists could eventually do what the tsunami did not: kill their business.

And while businesses struggle to survive, many tsunami survivors in the region are also still doing the same, even a year and a half later.

In one refugee camp a few miles from the beach, hundreds of families are just scraping by, they say, without any assistance.

Kaleander Musama says she, her husband and six children got a large water tank from the government a few days after the tsunami, but that was the last thing they ever got – since then there has been no one to refill it.

As I photograph the family, an angry old woman from the camp confronts me.

“You people are like the marauding elephants that come and ransack our homes and leave us with nothing,” says the woman, Yasim Bawa. “Three hundred photographers have come here and taken our picture and nothing has changed.”

I ask her why things haven‘t changed, why the government hasn‘t helped them more.

“You know what I got from the government after the tsunami?” she asks, half smiling now – “a coupon for 100 rupees (about $1).”

Things are a little better at another refugee camp further up the road where the Sri Lankan Lion‘s Club has helped build dozens of new houses with concrete walls and corrugated tin roofs.

Still, the trauma of the event still lives with all of the families here.

Forty-two-year-old Mohammed Bahdurdeen, a tall, proud-faced man, makes a living as a fisherman when he can hire onto a local boat. But those days are often few and far between.

Mohammed places his hands on the shoulders of his six-year-old son Ajiwath, a boy seemingly full of energy – if not words.

“Since the tsunami he doesn‘t speak anymore,” says Mohammed. “I think the trauma was too much for him.”

Others here can speak, but have tired of it when nothing seems to change.

Back at the Siam View Inn, the world cup match is over with the Australians beating the Japanese 3-1.

As the crowd, a few at a time, pays their tabs and heads out, there are smiles on the faces of the employees behind the bar. It was a good night – the kind of night they haven‘t seen in quite some time – and with the increasing violence, may not see for some time again.

It is, however, a place stubbornly committed to optimism in the face of challenging times.

Above the bar on a whiteboard is a message in blue marker written on the day of the tsunami. It has not been wiped clean since.

It reads, “This event is not the end, just a new beginning. A great chance for all of us. Posted 20 hours, December 26, 04.”

Find more reporting from “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” at hotzone.yahoo.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com)

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No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem… Asia » Sri Lanka	By Lynch Mob April 15th 2006