Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey

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Links from Andrew and Annette:

Pro Photographer Dixie's web site

Mondo Challenge set up Andrew and Annette's trip.

Unawatuna is the village where they're staying and working

In the north, Andrew and Annette are working with Norwegian People's Aid. NPAID is partnered with the German organization called Arbeiter Samariter Bund.

Bensonwood.com

Andrew and Annette Dey have taken a leave of absence from Bensonwood. Their original plans were to spend three months teaching in Nepal. On their way though, they heard about the Tsunami, so they changed their plans. They are now in Sri Lanka helping rebuild. They will be e-mailing in updates periodically, and we'll be posting them here.

3/8/05
Andrew

Annette and I catch a tuc-tuc early into the Galle Fort. The driver surprises me by cheerfully accepting my opening bid of 150 rupees. Could it be that he is simply grateful for the business?

We are supposed to meet Nithila for breakfast, but when we phone him on our way into town, we learn that he was delayed leaving Colombo. We eat without him on the shaded second floor terrace of the Rampart Hotel. The view of the fort walls and the ocean beyond is calm inspiration for the post cards that we write. I call Yannick, hoping to line up a surfing lesson for our last day on the coast, but he is too busy with his good work on behalf of the villages of Donuwela and Mitigama: “we build fifteen houses now, and start more businesses.” I feel vaguely guilty for having asked, but he appreciates the opportunity to say good-bye.

After breakfast we walk along the path at the top of the fort walls. Our Lonely Planet guidebook suggests taking this stroll at sunset, but we figure that a quiet Tuesday morning is probably the best we can do. We are passed by a jogger. We see fathers playing ball with their sons, a couple kissing under a parasol, a group of young men trying to walk off their hangovers.

We pause on the tall walls where they overlook the cricket field and the town of Galle. I scan the view, and am hard-pressed to find any obvious signs of the destruction that was wrought here ten weeks earlier. There’s the pile of scrap metal by the cricket field grandstand, and the grassy areas near the ocean that are now suspiciously clean. I know, however, that if my eyes could travel past the traffic rotary and onto the coast road, they would quickly find entire blocks still in ruins.

On the tuc-tuc ride back to Unawatuna, we pass those ruined blocks, and encounter a protest rally just south of the temporary bridge. Several hundred people, mostly women, are holding banners and chanting slogans. We ask our driver what the protest is about.

“It’s for women,” he tells us, “and also for housing. Today is a day for women’s rights. Tsunami victims who are angry at the government about housing have joined the protest.” I sympathize with the protestors, many of whom are probably living in the tents located nearby in the interstices of damaged buildings and piles of rubble. I read recently in the paper that many tsunami victims are worried that when the monsoons come in late May, they will still be living in tents—tents that are often too hot for sleeping, and not designed to resist torrential downpours.

The crux of the housing problem, as I understand it, continues to be space. The government is committed to building permanent housing for all tsunami victims, and my sense is that the NGOs have enough money and expertise to do the job. The stumbling block is finding space to build houses outside the 100 meter buffer zone—on the government’s own limited acreage, on land that is purchased, or on land leased from companies or individuals..

When we arrive in Unawatuna, Annette and I meet a woman named Alison who has just come from England to volunteer for two weeks. She connected with us via these postings on the Bensonwood web site, and independently she found her way to Annie Walsh. I am gratified to know that the web site postings have served some purpose other than simply keeping family and friends apprised of our activities.

At Annie’s bidding, we check out the site of a proposed community center near the small temple down the road. A building adjacent to the temple is currently being used for storage; we suggest to Annie that it would make an excellent community center. She will see about its availability. The small lot next to the temple would allow for the construction of a modest building that could serve temporarily as a community center, but it would have to be dismantled every August to allow for the passage of the annual parade of elephants.

Back at the Shangri-la guest house, we find that Nithila has arrived, and Annette and I walk with him to the Italian restaurant on the beach. Today we sit at a table. Nithila tells us that in all his years of hearing about Unawatuna, this is the first time he has actually visited. I wonder if he shares my appreciation for the view from the restaurant—including the bikini-clad Italian tourists.

The stories that Nithila tells us of his difficulties finding worthy recipients of tsunami relief ring familiar to us. There is the man who, in the midst of being interviewed by Nithila, breaks off the conversation to take a call on his cell phone. There are others who take offence when asked why they have not yet gone back to work, in spite of there being opportunities and support. At the children’s home Nithila visited to assess its needs, an international NGO has agreed to pay for renovations, and to cover the operating costs for the coming ten years. The home’s director showed Nithila a half dozen new wheelchairs lined up in the corner of one room—“we do not have any use for these at the moment, but perhaps in time…”

Nithila explains to us that he has decided to direct his funds and activities not directly toward tsunami victims, but rather toward people who are struggling in the island’s interior villages. He is focusing his efforts in several very poor villages near the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. He describes to us a typical family: the mother cooks rotis—folded pancakes with various fillings—to sell. This endeavor brings her seventy to eighty rupees per day, of which she takes twenty for herself, and sends the rest to her son who is studying to become a doctor. Nithila asked one of her younger sons how many uniforms he had for school, and was told “two.” When Nithila offered to buy the boy a third uniform, he replied, “It would be better if I could have the money to buy a uniform next year, when I will need one with long pants.” Nithila has been inspired by these and similar stories to sponsor the expenses of a number children from these villages. Annette and I tell him that, given our experiences with tsunami relief in the south, his plan makes good sense to us.

Nithila leaves to make the long drive to Kandy, and Annette and I return to Galle to run errands: the internet café, Cargills to buy wine for dinner, and a fabric store where we purchase thirty meters of poplin fabric (“poh-pleen” in the local pronunciation) for the seamstress.

The spaghetti dinner that evening at Shangri-la is in what Veronique calls “traditional family style,” meaning that the various volunteers who are staying as Mally and Rajika’s guests gather together to share in the cooking, eating, and cleaning up. In the early days of our basing at Shangri-la, the dinner conversation would turn inevitably to the tsunami, but this is no longer the case. We have been hearing drums from the beach all afternoon and into the evening, and Rajika explains that these are for the funeral of a villager who died recently in a traffic accident. Veronique mentions that the brother of a local friend of hers just succumbed to heart disease. I find that to hear of such prosaic causes of death is oddly comforting, as though the information is a measure of the progress we are making.

Mally and Rajika have been tremendously generous with their guest house. They offered rooms freely to anyone who was in Unawatuna to help with tsunami relief, and opened their kitchen and living room to us all. As part of our transmogrification to tourist mode, Annette and I have decided to pay our hosts for our final stay at Shangri-la. We have also given them some of the funds that Benson Woodworking raised for tsunami relief. Rajika will apply the money toward the new bathrooms needed by her relatives in Weligama. Mally will buy a new bicycle for the man who is repairing his catamaran.

As I look around at the dinner guests, I feel a part of an ongoing cycle. Other volunteers have sat at this table—I think of Max and Heidi—and subsequently returned to their homes and their work. Now the wheel is turning for our departure. But other people continue to arrive to help—this evening the new faces belong to Alison from England and Caroline from South Africa. Annie and Veronique will remain the cornerstones of this little Shangri-la community. It seems that with each passing week, the likelihood grows dimmer of Annie returning to her job in Ireland, or of Veronique leaving Sri Lanka to settle back in Holland. This place and the work the work they have been doing has not just touched them, it has transformed their lives.