Tsunami Relief Coverage

A nation rebuilds

2005-10-22T23:12:00.000+04:00

Tsunami-affected Sri Lanka is slogging to rebuild from the scratch. It is a painstaking job, and apart from international support, the driving force is hope. Rajeev Nair writes

In Galle, southern Sri Lanka, the rain rattles. It drenches the relief workers, who slog on in silent gloom. The talk in this coastal city is that an unrelenting downpour would have washed away much of its debris. Relief teams don't agree. The drains are blocked; rains mean more problems.
Galle had built part of its immediate past fortune from the sea and its beaches. When the sea snatched its share, it took away everything in its gushing wake giving back lifeless bodies, and past wealth now crumbled to uselessness.
After the easy friendliness of Colombo, the capital city that is the first gate for virtually the entire relief materials pouring in from different parts of the world, the true scale of the tsunami damage in the southern districts hits you with shocking abruptness.
The isolated destruction in the north of Colombo does not prepare one for the total battering the south has taken. Riding down to Galle, the first signs of what is in store, pop up in Kalutara, where a whole line of houses by the seashore are today nothing but heaps of wooden splinters and lumps of bricks.
Further down, it is business as usual. Children go to school. Shops are up and running. Buses ply. Nature's fury took selective turns to lash out at helpless humans. It spared some; tormented others; and destroyed the rest.
The Galle road that has brought in the hippies of the 70s to Sri Lanka's sleepy villages lines the coast, and on either sides, huts are in rubbles; electric posts lie overturned; iron shutters on shops are bent on their middle — it is a vast stretch of absolute devastation.
On the way to Galle, a court is in session. People stand huddled. Are there old scores to settle? Even now? Cemeteries line the roadside. That is a coastal tradition of burying the dead by the sea. Today, they add to the sadness.
There are dogs and cows, at every turn. The animals had better survival instincts than the 'more developed' man.
Some schools are shelters for the displaced. At others, chalks and notebooks are left to dry; broken blackboards lie in piles. Chairs and tables strewn limb-less on the muddy ground.
A railway track runs parallel to the shore, sometimes cutting in through the villages. It lies twisted into mud tracks in places; at others, the tracks project upward to resemble a DNA double helix spiral.
That is demonstrative of just part of the power of the waves, which had lifted off a train, the Ruhunukumari, off the tracks, killing over 1,500, many of the dead being local villagers who had rushed in to the train to escape the surging waves.
On the way are shops that sell traditional masks, gems and jewellery. Today, the residents need modern masks to escape the stench of death and decay. Death, here, smells organic. A clinging odour you cannot wash off.
Galle, the city centre, is limping back to normalcy. The bus station, the scene of the oft-repeated television footage of the tsunami, where once waters overflowed, has lines of buses. The Galle International Cricket Ground is being repaired.
Very near, the Dutch fort and its innards have been unaffected. The waves rose, at some places spilling in water through the ramparts, but did little damage.
Declared a World Heritage Site in 1988, the fort was first built by the Portuguese, fortified by the Dutch in 1663, and strengthened by the British. For those who look at the greater good, was the offshoot of the Dutch invasion to prove a boon some four centuries later?
In the city centre, a statue of Col. Henry Steel Olcott, the American who embraced Buddhism and devoted his life to Buddhist education, presides mutely over an eerie row of shops with little business. Yet, a printing press is working. But Philanthropic Grocery — shut. Marshmallow Stores — just the board remains. There is only so much of devastation the mind can take. After that, there is only numbness.
But then, much has already been written about the rampant damage unleashed by the tsunami. Today, in Sri Lanka, the focus is on the future, on a painstaking process of rebuilding, especially at places where immediate relief work has already been set in motion.
To the north of Colombo, in Hendala, a camp for the displaced which operated in a church has almost closed down. People have returned to what were their homes, and a few still return to the camp at night only to sleep.
There is a lot to do during day, little of which is remunerative, which brings the focus on the biggest crisis that awaits the tsunami-affected in Sri Lanka: When can they resume productive employment? Fishing folk hardly venture into the sea — the boats are still resting on the roads, washed ashore by the tidal waves. It is a cumbersome task, taking it back to the waters.
The challenge currently before the Sri Lankan government is not in simply rebuilding the homes. The overall relief and rehabilitation efforts are being supervised by the Committee for National Operations (CNO), established by the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga. Sri Lanka has also formed a 'Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation,' Tafren.
The immediate concern is to convince many of the tsunami-affected not to build on within 100 metres from the coastline. The government plans to make it a buffer zone so as to minimise the impact of rough seas.
The task is not easy. There is a grey area even when it comes to the exact distance that is to be left without manmade structures; some government representatives speak of extending the construction ban to 200 to 300 metres. There is also talk of a clause limiting building restrictions to "new" structures.
All these have a direct bearing on the economy, which having been ravaged by civil war, had only begun to enjoy the benefits of a two-year-old cease-fire the government had signed with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Tourism was beginning to blossom.
Vasantha Leelanand, president of Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators and managing director of Walkers Tours, says the country was on its course to achieve the target of average tourism spend at $100. Before the tsunami hit, it was $67.
While any revival in tourism — a mainstay of the economy after tea and the foreign exchange remitted in by expatriate Sri Lankans, many of them working in the Gulf — can only be considered after January according to modest projections, tour operators and airline companies, draw attention to Sri Lankan inland tourism.
“Sri Lanka is more than about the beaches. There are the central hills, the tea plantations, the heritage activities, the natural parks – these can form the basis of a short-term shift in strategy to bring in tourists," says Kumar De Silva, area manager, Sri Lanka and Maldives, Etihad Airways.
Amidst the pain of reconstruction, the positive outlook that envelopes these words is not to be missed. Here is a nation going through insufferable pain, and what can drive them on is nothing but hope.
Hope, it springs in Sri Lanka. In the face of the young lad, who sells betel leaves in the devastated city centre of Galle; in the couple, who sits drinking from a tender coconut on broken down chairs on the shambles of their house — probably that is where their dining room was; in the Shah Rukh Khan film posters that dot Galle; in the men who build their homes brick upon brick; in the children who assist their parents in clearing off pieces of mud clods; in the Buddhist monk, who stays solemnly by a group of sad men and women, who had come to bury a dead... And perhaps also in the crowds that have formed near the only 'working' shop — a beverage outlet.

Hope, however, doesn't come easy. The destruction is so total, many of the affected do not know where to start from. At a camp for the displaced in Galle, where the UAE Red Crescent team distributed relief materials, the people want to urgently rebuild homes, they want a productive job — now, they have nothing. Some of them, little children too, with not even loved ones to hold on to....All robbed by a sea, which they cannot wish away: The ocean still holds their future.
Indeed, amidst the devastation all, the sea is a relentless presence. It simply is there, blue and cool, now resting drowsily after feasting sumptuously on the little triumphs of mankind.

Box:
Nature shapes
Cartographers are hard at work sketching the current Sri Lankan coastline. The devastating tsunami, reportedly, has altered it, taking off vast chunks of land, depositing them elsewhere, or not at all.
One visible alteration that the tsunami has brought in to the coastline can be glimpsed at Bentota, famous for its sea turtle conservation projects.
Here, the Bentota River houses on its banks a string of holiday resorts, which operate boat rides for tourists.
Bentota River closes off in a slice of land that blocks out the waves of the Indian Ocean. Much of this piece of priceless landmass has been eaten way by the tidal waves. The lagoon today stands exposed; the placid backwaters now surging to the ebb and flow of the tidal waves.

Box:
Facts, not fiction
When man fails to explain events, they surrender to the mystery of the supernatural. If Thailand had thrown up stories of 'ghost sighting,' Sri Lanka has many tales to offer of the waves washing away everything else but hardly touching some of the places of worship.
Local residents are particularly excited as they narrate the 'miracle' that has left practically unaffected a temple in honour of Seenigama near Hikkaduwa.
It can be accessed from a Buddhist temple by the roadside, where vehicles stop to make offerings for on-road 'protection'. The temple lies a little into the ocean and visitors sometimes walk across the sea to it during low tides, says Karu Naratna, a local tour guide.
The tsunami ravaged the buildings far into the shore but virtually skipped the temple, offshore, taking with it just a few tiles from the roof.

Box:
A leaf from history
Was history repeating itself in Sri Lanka? Is the tsunami that battered the island nation on Dec. 26, 2004, a retake of a disaster that wrecked the nation in ancient times?
History has reference to Queen Vihara Mahadevi, the daughter of King Kelani Tissa, who had put a Buddhist monk to cruel death. The unfairness of the episode is supposed to have lifted the waves of the ocean to frightening heights.
The king repented and offered his daughter, Vihara, to the ocean. This calmed the seas, says the lore, and fortunately, Vihara was swept safely ashore, albeit in a foreign land. The king there married her, and their son Dutugemunu is to this day revered by the Sinhalese for his guts, grit and wisdom.
Dutugemunu, incidentally, means Gemunu the Disobedient. Gemunu is said to have disobeyed his father, who asked him to stay obsequious to the invader Tamil general, Elara. Dutugemunu eventually killed Elara in a fierce battle that also saw a contingent of Buddhist monks aligning with the king.

Bringing back the tourists

2005-10-22T22:31:00.000+04:00

While relief and rehabilitation work takes the priority on the ground level now, Sri Lanka is also looking at bringing back the tourists by promoting inland destinations

By Rajeev Nair in Colombo

The Golden Week in tourism, as Sri Lankan tourist officials call the Dec. 24 to Jan. 1 period, turned out to be anything but for the country. It is also missing out on the highly remunerative Jan to March months. Nature plundered the shores of a country that thrived in its tourism potential.
While the most optimistic outlook on any signs of revival of the tourism sector is set for end of January, tourism officials are exploring other areas that had largely taken a back seat in the face of the burgeoning beach tourism in Sri Lanka.
Vasantha Leelanand, president of Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators and managing director of Walkers Tours, singularly regarded as the country's largest destination management company, says Sri Lankan tourism can derive strength from its central hills and cultural packages.
“What has happened has happened and our focus right now is to see how we can move forward. But even as we start promoting the country in an aggressive manner, and ask foreign tour operators to start sending people here, we must do so with responsibility. We must have credibility in what we see and ensure that the ground conditions are conducive for tourists,” he says
In the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, Sri Lanka must address two issues, says Leelanand. “One, and the more serious, is about health, sanitation and fear of epidemic outburst. When mass numbers are involved without shelter, food and other conditions that are not idea, these things can happen,” he says. However, thanks to the presence of the major health organisations from all over the world, assistance has reached out to the remotest camps and so far, we haven't had any alarm of any outbreak of major diseases, he adds. “Any day that goes past without any health incidents, is a clear mandate that the threat is behind us.”
The second issue pertains to infrastructure. “We are mindful that it is not simply about opening hotels but in delivering the right and total infrastructure for tourists,” says Leelananda.
He says many hotels, even in the south of Colombo, that have been badly affected are limping back to normalcy. “More properties have been rebuilt and the general lifestyle is returning.”
Leelananda says the government's proposed move to limit new constructions in the coastlal areas in the 100 metre distance from the sea will lead to a qualitative change to tourism.
Sri Lanka predominantly welcomes tourists from western Europe. This year, there were a number of travellers from Scandinavian countries too. The per day spend of an average tourist is $67, which Leelananda says, is low according to global standards. “Our goal was to increase it to $100 and we were well on track to achieve it; the disaster has upset it.”
Sri Lanka should also strengthen its inland destinations and cultural packages, reiterates Leelananda. Anyway, the beaches to the north of Colombo are hardly affected, he says, adding that travel advisories issued by embassies are cautioning travellers only against going to beaches in the affected areas.
As president of an association of over 90 inbound tour operators, Leelananda is confident that “the tourism industry will rise from the ashes and bounce back.”
His company is part of the John Keells Holding with a leisure division that owns ten hotels in Sri Lanka. “In inbound destination management, we handle more than 30 per cent of the organised leisure market,” he adds.
Kumar De Silva, area manager, Sri Lanka and Maldives, Etihad Airways, shares the optimism of Leelananda, about the country's tourism sector. “This is the most horrendous disaster the country has faced in recent years, and it has touched every Sri Lankan. As far as the tourism sector is concerned, the beach areas are the most affected but Sri Lanka is more than about the beaches. There are the central hills, the tea plantations, the heritage activities, the natural parks – these can form the basis of a short-term shift in strategy to bring in tourists.'
A tourism development authority is being formulated to work on reconstruction of the affected areas, on a planned note, he says.
De Silva had mobilised his entire work team of 20 immediately following the disaster. “We set up assistance units in camps where the tourists were temporarily put up apart from opening a 24-hour assistance line. We accommodated requests for changes in travel dates and did the cancellations and re-booking free of charge. At one point we were facilitating the travel of those who had lost their passports and all travel documents, too. We also brought in an upgraded aircraft of higher capacity.”
He had instructed the staff to be totally understanding with the travellers even as some of them broke down requesting to be airlifted as early as possible. Simultaneously, Etihad also assisted in airlifting cargo for UAE Red Crescent to be delivered at the UAE embassy in Colombo, with the airline office assisting in customs clearance. “The first consignment, in fact, was swiftly processed it reached the beneficiaries by 2 pm in the afternoon,” says De Silva.

Bitter harvest

2005-10-22T22:08:00.000+04:00

Tamils in Sri Lanka celebrate one of their most important festivals, Thai Pongol, on Jan. 14. A harvest festival, Pongol, this year, is a bitter reminder of the past for many

By Rajeev Nair in Colombo

Lagneshwaran and Suman are beading flowers at their dilapidated wooden stall by the coast in Muthuwella near Colombo. They are nonchalant, eyes registering little emotion as they mechanically thread in one flower after another into a string. They are stringing the floral garlands for the local temple, which withstood the waves that lashed across the rock barriers. But the waves took away many homes and many shops.
In the coming days, they will need to make more garlands. It is Thai Pongol, the Tamil harvest festival that is marked by much gaiety and fun. Apart from people adorning new clothes, the festival, which is also a thanksgiving of sorts to the sun, wind and the cow for a bountiful harvest, sees fresh grains cooked in milk, until it spills, to make a delectable dessert, which is brewed in virtually all Tamil homes.
This year, Pongol could yet mark a new beginning but the past is weighing down on the affected. There is little to celebrate; while most try hard to reconcile to the material losses they have incurred, they simply cannot overcome the unmitigated grief of the loss of the loved ones.
For children, Thai Pongol, as with all festivities, is a day to cherish. This year, there are thousands orphaned by the tsunami waves, and no festival will ever be the same again for them. Indeed, they might not even realise that another Pongol had passed by and this year, there was no one to pamper them with sweetmeats, no one to dress them up in new clothes and many of their friends will not be around to take part in the fun.
There is a belief associated with Thai Pongol among many residents here that the direction in which the milk spills is an omen on what is in store for the year. As a battered old woman explains it, she finds it hard to resist tears. She breaks down.
Lagneshwaran and Suman continue to bead the flowers.

Challenges in aid

2005-10-22T21:56:00.000+04:00

Sri Lanka witnesses an overwhelming response in cash and kind from the world over, and relief organisations are working hard to streamline it all

By Rajeev Nair in Colombo

Resilience is a silent force that comes from within at the most trying of circumstances. That encapsulates the current mood of the relief agencies slogging it out in Sri Lanka to streamline the relief aid material pouring in to the country from various quarters.
Every moment brings about new challenges and new needs. So much so that relief workers cannot conclusively say that they have got enough of anything.
The blankets and clothing have been pouring in, and on the ground, agencies face the unprecedented challenge of managing its logistics and warehousing. While the country's overall relief and rehabilitation efforts are being supervised under the Committee for National Operations (CNO), established by the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, there are others like the Sri Lankan Red Cross Society, which is aided by Red Cross societies from other regions. In order to effectively channelise the relief efforts the Sri Lankan Red Cross Society (SLRCS) has formed The Movement Committee (TMC), which has set up a Task Force for all relief operations that in turn is aided by the SLRCS Disaster Operations Management Unit and the International Federation of Red Cross Operations Management Unit. This puts together all like-minded movements under one umbrella of work practices, says Tissa Abeyyawickkrama, chairman, Task Force for Relief Operations.
Abeyyawikkrama is a past president of the Sri Lankan Red Cross Society, and had earlier mobilised the society's volunteers during the devastating strike of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) in 1996 at the Central Bank.
The SLRCS office in the heart of Colombo is a busy beehive with the different levels of the rather worn out building involved in cash and relief collection as well as routine monitoring and updating of the casualty figures.
The latest figures of the tsunami affected in all over Sri Lanka put the number of affected families at 222,688 with 773,636 people displaced, 30,615 dead, 16,257 injured and 4156 missing. Of these, Ampara, Batticola and Galle bear the maximum brunt of people displaced. Ampara, on the east, also accounts for the most people dead – 10,436 with no estimate available of the people missing.
Abeywickkrama reminds that Sri Lanka has not yet come out of the needs for immediate relief, as projected by many quarters. “Roughly 10 to 15 per cent of the affected regions are still not looked after properly,” he says.
This observation also comes in the wake of reports of displaced persons who were accommodated in camps, in certain areas of the country, moving out of these centres and seeking the help of friends and relatives.
In a temporary shelter near the capital, Colombo, near Hendela, The Gulf Today found hardly any of the many hundreds of displaced who had taken refuge in the days immediately after the disaster struck. Residents nearby said while most of them have gone back to rebuilding what is left of their homes, many others have taken shelter with friends and relatives, and a small minority still return only in the nights. During the day, they are also out – seeking work or salvaging what little is left.
Relief work, aid workers say, must urgently reach many areas in the east coast, which had largely been cut off from immediate help. In Batticola, for instance, a rough estimate of the number of displaced is put at 203,807. Tricomalee, further north, accounts for about 51,863 displaced individuals.
SH Nimal Kumar, national secretary, Sri Lankan Red Cross Society, says volunteers were deployed on the very same day of the disaster and they helped take the injured to the hospitals and rescue many from the debris. But the pace of work hasn't eased. “Today, children are a very vulnerable group,” he says. “Many of them need psychological support.”
Apart from the immediate challenge of managing the relief supplies, SLRCS says it is important to have need-based relief supplies. Nirmal Kumar says hurricane lamps, ladies undergarments, sanitary napkins and slippers have been found to be in need. “There are many who are left with nothing but the clothes they wear,” he adds, “but it is not simply about pumping in more of these materials either. The situation calls for a judicious use of cash and other resources.” More so because every 15 to 20 minutes the country gets consignments of relief materials, he adds.
A rough estimate puts a demand for 400,000 pairs of slippers alone, adds Abeyawickkrama. “But then how do you find the right size – these are grassroot issues.”
However, the logistics issues are being overcome by delegation of responsibilities to the district and local level, says Abeyawickkrama. He says the primary objective of SLRCS forming the Task Force was to ensure that “the donations that are piling up are used in an organised way, avoid duplication of activities and strengthen the productivity of the whole operation.” He sees another two to three months of sheer relief work before the actual process of rehabilitation can be beefed up.
Sri Lanka, however, faces new problems in the rehabilitation process. The government plans to strengthen law enforcement to avoid new buildings coming up 100 metres (to 200 metres, and this forms a grey area, with conflicting statements coming from various government quarters themselves) form the coast. Construction activities in the 200 to 300 metre zone too will be monitored. This is expected to be the key to a national plan that is being prepared. The catch here is the word 'new.' If old buildings can continue near to the coastline, observers say it would be hard for the government to demarcate between rebuilding measures and building of new structures. Moreover, there is the issue of finding alternate accommodation for the displaced.
Abeyawickkrama says the there are different plans being drawn out including offering high-rises, or flats, but nothing has been finalised, as yet.
Despite the challenges faced, SLRCS hasn't eased its relentless pace of activity. As with other disasters it has faced, the tsunami crisis too has brought them new learning. But the sheer extent of the Dec. 26 devastation shows that 'disasters do not differentiate anyone,' says Abeyawickkrama. And the scale of the tragedy has, indeed, been an unifying force for the country.
So when asked to pick between hope and pain, to describe Sri Lanka's current mood, Abeyawickkrama does not hesitate as he says: 'Hope.'

UAE Red Crescent at Katugoda Camp

2005-10-22T21:45:00.000+04:00

UAE Red Crescent distributes relief material in Sri Lankan camp

A delegation of UAE Red Crescent toured Galle, one of the worst affected areas in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka, and distributed two truck loads of relief materials including food grains, milk powder, blankets, kettles and clothing.
Headed by Mohammed Abdullah Alhaj Al Zaroni, manager, Red Crescent Dubai Branch; and Ahmed Al Ali, the team spent much of Tuesday morning co-ordinating the relief activities at the camp for the displaced at ARM Thassim College, Katugoda.
The camp is the largest of the twelve temporary shelters for the tsunami-affected and houses more than 2500 Galle residents, who have lost virtually everything to the killer wave.
The UAE Red Crescent team had earlier toured the battered eastern region of the country as part of preparing a fact-finding report, which will be submitted to the UAE authorities.
Zaroni told The Gulf Today that following discussions with the displaced at the Katugoda camp, UAE Red Crescent will take a more active role in helping the Galle residents to build basic infrastructure. "These people have lost every thing; there are many orphaned children. We will have to look at relief and rehabilitation measures from an overall perspective of helping them build their lives from the start."
That will be a difficult task. People at the camp have suffered devastating personal and property losses, the overwhelming feeling you sense here is one of utter helplessness. Many affected people have relatives in the Gulf countries and have no way of informing them of their own whereabouts because they had lost all contact details.
MKM Nizam is a Tamil-speaking Muslim, whose daughter, MNF Rizana, now works in Sharjah. "She has been gone for more than five months; there are no letters or money," he says. All he knows is the post box number of her sponsor.
The day the tsunami struck, Chitti Najima had returned from Colombo after seeing off her only daughter to Umm Al Quwain. She hasn't been able to make any contact with her, and she is worried no end.
MM Abdeen, who used to do take up odd jobs earlier, lost his wife and two sons. He cannot find any work now, and his surviving child is now with a relative. He urgently needs to rebuild his home. Mohammed Jiffry also says his immediate need is rebuilding his home. Mohammed Arif lost his wife and three children. He used to run a shop of his own.
Faisa had been working in Saudi Arabia earlier; she talks to the UAE team in Arabic. She lost her husband and now, must take care of her three little children.
People list out the list of dead or missing relatives with a nonchalance that is at once frightening and shocking. Many orphaned children are temporarily under the care of other relatives but they too have nothing to start their life once again.
The camp provides them food and shelter but space is limited. Not all the 2,500 sleep in the camp. Many of the men return to whatever is left of their shanties to spend the night.
Bhandula Gunavardhane, a public health inspector, leads a team of student public health monitors, who monitor the health standards of the camp. It being the largest in the region, he says, the task is tough. They have built temporary latrines but keeping up the sanitation is proving to be a challenge.
Drinking water comes from a well as well as from the government Water Board but more water purifying machines could be helpful, says Gunavardhane.
Children, the worst affected of the lot, also show the most resilience. Infants cry on the shoulders of women but they also cheer up fast. But it is hard to miss the almost permanent gleam of tear on their eyes, and the dry patch of the tear drops on their cheeks.
A little older ones scramble around the see-saw and swing that is part of the college campus. They have nothing else to do. Schools had started on Monday but apart from the survivors registering with the authorities regular classes seem many weeks away.
At the nearby Sudharma Mahavidhyalaya, classrooms are in shambles; chalks assembled on tables to dry in the sun. The palm-bones of a skeleton from the science lab lies ominously on the muddy school ground. Torn chart papers depicting school projects hang to the walls; below there is nothing but a floor of debris. US marines had come in to clean up the school premises.
Two children play in the classrooms — cricket, of course — but with planks of wood for a bat and a rubber ball. Tharinda, a class 5 student, lost his father, brother and younger sister. Ishara, a class 7 student, hasn't suffered such a shattering loss but he has lost his home and along with his family lives in a camp.
In their moment of deep tragedy, they are trying to pick up the ropes of living. That, arguably, is the pervading spirit in Galle.

A train ride to no return

2005-10-22T21:44:00.000+04:00

Bernard AM points to where his home was. Like all the other houses in the immediate vicinity of the Peraliya camp for the displaced, near Hikkaduwa, south of Colombo, it lies in shatters.
But more than the shambles of the houses, it is the shock of witnessing the Ruhunukumari, or Queen of Ruhunu, the train that was blasted off its tracks by the killer tsunami wave that is imposing.
A team of UAE volunteers were touring the area and they watch the displaced trying to gain a foothold on life. The UAE team is greeted with questions: "Saudi...?" No, they clarify. "The United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi..."
Crowds form around the volunteers. They are forthcoming with first-person experiences. "Five hundred and twenty-five, from this region, alone died," says Bernard. Most of them resting in a mass grave nearby. Bernard shows his relative's house: Everyone there perished. The total count is put at 1,500.
The death toll in the train tragedy was higher because many local residents ran inside the train as the first waves hit. The train, from Colombo to Galle, had stopped on its tracks waiting for signal to enter the Hikkaduwa station, says Karu Naratna, a guide. Then the second wave came and all were washed away.
The disaster area tugs at your heart. Little shoes lie scattered by the tracks. Colourful clothes, bags, softdrink bottles, biscuits.... Monks, relief team workers and police men walk the ground. There are the media teams, who cross the red and white boundary demarcated by the police between the train and the camp.
Train service is yet to resume to Galle. The tracks have been bent beyond repair in many areas. This rebuilding process is going to be painstaking. Work has begun, and that is almost therapeutic for the local population, who are building on their lives brick upon brick.
The area bears the stench of death; it hasn't died down yet. It sticks to you, to your skin, your ears, your eyes, like the houseflies that buzz around.
Nearby, at the local school, which is now the camp for the displaced, students are busy cleaning up the area. Waste is being burnt, the smoke taking dark fumes.
Ruhunukumari takes its name from a slice of Sri Lankan history. The southern part was referred to as Ruhunu.
The damage to Hikkaduwa, a preferred destination for the 'hippies' of yore, has been a blow to the tourism sector. Many hotels have been damaged; signboards announcing the sale of gems, silk, lobsters abounding, and adding to the pall of gloom. Today, they are reminders of a past, which they must rebuild as their future.

Little fingers cling to dear life

2005-10-22T21:43:00.000+04:00

Amidst heart-rending tales of devastating losses in tsunami-battered Sri Lanka, four-month-old Varshad offers a story that is repeated to visitors at the camp for the displaced operating out of the ARM Thassim College, Katugoda, in Galle district.
Varshad and his mother, Munna, are in Galle to visit the child's grandmother, Fausi. Munna, married to Sulaiman, lives in Thalashery, Kerala, and Sulaiman works in the catering section at the Jeddah International Airport, Saudi Arabia.
When the waves started coming in, Varshad was in the hands of his grandmother. The water threw the child off the frantic woman. Crying out, she returned to find the boy. Water was surging in to their house and the old woman could see household items being washed off.
The child seems to have been carried off by the waters for a few seconds because when Fausi heard his cry and rushed towards the spot, he found Varshad clinging on with his little fingers to a piece of wood by the outer wall of the house. He was crying aloud but not letting his fingers go. Fausi caught the child, having to force to take the boy's fingers from the wood, and ran.
Varshad's mother is waiting to return to her husband's home but she has lost all travel documents. Now, they live in the camp along with several of their relatives, who have lost their homes to the tsunami.
One of the worst affected, the southern Galle region is in absolute ruins, huts and mansions alike crumbling to the might of the killer waves.

Muthuwella, near Colombo.

2005-10-22T21:27:00.000+04:00

Sri Lanka: Hanging on to hope

2005-10-22T21:22:00.000+04:00

Betweeen pain and hope, Sri Lanka is learning to hold on to hope as it painstakingly rebuilds the nation.Rajeev Nair reports from Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka wakes up to another morning with a pang in its bosom, a tear in its eyes and a lump in its throat: Two weeks after the killer tsunami struck the coast of this island nation, the people are learning to cope with the loss, and struggling to live with it.
Colombo, the capital city, wears a picture of normalcy outwardly. But the aftermath of the disaster, and the largesse of international aid agencies and individuals that has followed, is hard to miss.
On Jan. 10, the airport at Katunayake, some 35 kilometres from the city centre, welcomed a group of Swiss volunteers, who have come in to Sri Lanka with medical supplies. They will soon fan out to disaster-struck areas.
The airport also witnessed groups of marines, and the authorities, in a bid to streamline the expatriate Sri Lankans, returning from various countries, particularly the Gulf, and the foreign visitors, have put up assistance personnel to guide relief teams and media units. Their entry procedure is eased. Volunteers can also sign up to join in for relief work at the airport.
If the foreign visitors go about their work with the commitment of volunteers, the expatriate Sri Lankans who have returned home make for telling pictures. It is homecoming for some, many of them returning to their country after long stints in Gulf countries; some are maids, many are workers at textile units. The vacationers, many of them unaffected directly by the tsunami, fall smilingly into the warmth of greeting relatives.
But heart-rending stories await some others. Safeer, 28, an employee with a bank in Abu Dhabi, lost his three-year-old daughter and a little nephew to the killer waves. His wife, Nahoura is recuperating from the trauma and after a week of hospitalisation is under the care of Safeer's sister, who has been married off a few hundred kilometres from his hometown, near Colombo.
He lost a house, built at a cost of Rs15 lakh, which was completed only recently. He also lost another residential property. Add to that gold worth Rs4 lakh. All these were his earnings from over five years of work in the Gulf. He was to return to Sri Lanka, to stay with his wife and child, and now his dreams lay shattered. He can cope with the loss of property and money, but his daughter's life âÄ“ that loss chokes him.
He clutches on to a photograph of his daughter sent only a few weeks back. The little girl had also written in clumsy big letters, aided by her mother no doubt, how she wanted colour pencils, pens and a school bag. Safeer was planning to send her to nursery.
Safeer's tale resounds in the woes of Sajjad, who had been working in Saudi Arabia for many years now. Only recently did he move in to Abu Dhabi; he lost his entire property and whatever savings he managed. Luckily, his nearest of kith and kin escaped.
Residents in Sri Lanka say how the killer waves were in some instances rather erratic in picking up its victims. Karu Naratna, a driver with a destination management company, Walkers Tours, remembers spending the night before at a hotel near Yala National Park. It is a popular picnic spot in the south of Sri Lanka, 20 kilometres from Tissamaharam. He had left early to Colombo, when the waves struck and disrupted road traffic. He took a detour from Hambantota, one of the worst affected regions, and drove inland to reach Colombo. The hotel he had lived in was virtually unaffected by the waves while a closer one was totally devastated.
Incidentally, the animals of Yala National Park survived the ordeal, largely unaffected, while nine staff and three of their family members, of a total of 80 employees, died. The flora of the park too has reported little damage though officials say the 'coastline has been reshaped.'
Experts say the seismic activity that triggered off the tsunami could also have emitted energy waves of long wavelengths, which the animals could sense and hence scramble for safer spots.
Naratna also cites the 'mercy' of the killer waves in sparing Colombo; the city centre faces the sea, which was unusually turbulent on Dec. 26, the day disaster struck.
Sri Lanka has formed a 'Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation,' Tafren, which has identified housing, hospitals, schools, roads and bridges, railway, urban township development, water supply and drainage, power, telecommunications, fisheries, tourism and tourist resorts, coast conservation and environment protection, and wildlife and wildlife sanctuaries as areas of priority.
The island's tourism sector has been badly hit and any semblance of recovery is only expected by end of January because currently tour operators are not taking up reservations, observes an industry-watcher.
Residents feel the international donations that pour in could be constructively channelised for strengthening the country's infrastructure, even as the nation's leading daily, Daily Mirror, urged that 'maximum transparency and accountability is sine qua non,' in aid utlitisation, 'this being a country notorious for mishandling, misappropriating and frittering away generous gifts from abroad.'
The high profile visit of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James Wolfensohn has put the spotlight on the country's reconstruction bid from two lights: Socio-political and economic. Though Annan has pledged he would visit Sri Lanka again, to tour the entire tsunami affected areas, his current tour did not include the LTTE-contolled areas.
Newspapers report that about 300 people protested outside an office of the United Nations in Jaffna against Annan not showing up in the rebel-held areas. The report comes amidst rumours of LTTE chief V Prabhakaran's 'death,' which has been refuted by LTTE and later retracted by the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Authority, which had flashed the news. The areas controlled by LTTE are badly hit, say newspaper reports, and the organisation has welcomed all rescue and relief support. Observors say the initial wariness of LTTE to relief work was meant to buy time to 'cover up' the actual losses faced by the organisation.
Wolfensohn's visit laid emphasis squarely on nation rebuilding; he has urged the local communities to rebuild the nation as engaging the affected people, he said, gives them hope.
Survivor stories and distressing tales of those who are missing also take centrestage in Sri Lanka, today. Appeals abound calling for those with information on their missing dear and near ones to contact the survivors. They live in hope.