Tsunami's 'Angels of Charity'
BY THARUKA Dissanaike
They need our care-displaced victims
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THE tsunami death toll of 31,000 would have been much higher - if the
rest of society did not rush to the aid of the affected the way they
did.
Within minutes of the disaster, and even while it was happening
people from around the wrecked coastal margin were rushing to pull the
survivors to safety, the injured to hospital and donating food, clothes
and medicines to those in refugee camps.
In the next few days, the authorities were still too dazed to
announce any concrete action. But civilians flocked around the affected
helping out at every turn.
In Colombo supermarket shelves emptied as people bought up essential
stocks of rice, sugar, soap and milk powder and other essentials to
distribute in camps for people displaced in the disaster.
Civilian volunteers pulled the dead out of wrecked buildings and
saved the few remaining survivors. The spirit of giving had never been
so strong.
A country that has seen deep sectarian divisions among its people
virtually pulling it apart at the seams, suddenly saw a different side
of society. People forgot their ethnic and racial divisions and biases-
even for a few days- and pitched in to help with equal gusto whether in
the Tamil North, or Muslim East, or Sinhala South.
One of the most unforgettable sights of the relief effort, for this
writer, was in Valachchenai three days after the disaster. Convoys of
villagers from the deep interior were carrying food and drinking water
to the refugees along the coast. The villagers came from the troubled
border areas and were mostly Sinhalese, the convoys being led by the
village priest.
The refugees near that coast were a mix of Tamil and Muslim
fishermen. The relief convoys crossed jungle tracks and even LTTE check
points to get to the affected areas, in hand tractors, rickety trucks
and old lorries.
The sight was amazing and heart warming. As was the news from Vaharai,
an LTTE-held coastal area badly battered by the tsunami that many
Sinhalese villagers including a Buddhist monk has stayed on for days
helping the locals to recover the dead from the wreckage.
It was amazing to see this kind of bridge-building in the very areas
where the civil war was fought with ferocity and had affected the lives
of so many civilians.
Four months after the disaster, the situation has certainly changed.
The rush for relief ebbed down and the country which was earlier,
practically at a standstill now resumed 'normal' life.
But inside tsunami affected communities there is yet a great deal of
local action- mainly to help each other get through personal loss and
cope with the new responsibilities.
Ajith Nissanka, a 22 year old fisherman from Tangalle found himself a
very young widower after the tsunami with an infant child to look after.
The disaster also razed his house to the ground and destroyed his boat
and implements.
He lives with his sister and the baby- just a year old- is being
looked after by his sister-in-law while Nissanka struggles to regain
some normalcy- a place to live and a livelihood. Many affected people
today live with relatives or share their compound.
Several other widowed fishermen we met lived in their parents or
siblings compound in a separate temporary shelter donated by various
NGOs.
In Akurala, Hikkaduwa we met four families now living in a single
house that managed to survive the tsunami with little damage. Before the
tsunami they were neighbours and although some of them had erected tents
on the foundations of their destroyed homes, the tents were far from
livable, especially in the rain.
Across the country, in badly destroyed Kalmunai, similar informal
arrangements between relatives, family members and neighbours make life
marginally more comfortable for the displaced- whose only other option
would have been to languish in tents, and temporary shelters in
ill-designed camps until they manage to rebuild their homes.
In Batticaloa displaced fishermen and their families found they just
could not live under the tin-roof temporary shelters erected for them at
their relocation site. A group of them moved out to a nearby field and
erected crude cadjan shelters which are much more comfortable in the
heat. Many of them had lost their wives and were left with young
children.
Because they now live in a closely dwelling community the women who
survived the tsunami pitch in to look after the mother-less children
while the men go fishing in their newly acquired boats.
The men, with the help of a local NGO, have formed a club through
which they interact and share their loss, trying to come to terms with
their widowhood and new responsibilities towards the children.
The most telling factor is the very small number of children who
needed to be institutionalied in orphanages or homes after the disaster.
According to State records, only 37 children were admitted to
institutions of the 1700 who lost both parents. This is a hugely
positive indication that Sri Lankan society, regardless of geographical
area and ethnicity, still retains compassion and care for victims of so
tragic a disaster.
Many children have been unofficially adopted by surviving relatives
and elderly grandparents. In some instances the guardians themselves are
without adequate means of livelihood or support after the tsunami- like
the 65 year old woman in Batticaloa who pounds rice for a living to
bring up her three orphaned grandchildren.
Or the mason who did not have the means to complete his own two
roomed house but was brave enough to take his seven orphaned nieces and
nephews to the already crowded house and look after them. |