Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey 2/4/2005

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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

Today Independence Day is celebrated in most of Sri Lanka, but not here in the Vanni, which is controlled by the LTTE. Tuc-tucs with loudspeakers are cruising the streets, reminding the Tamil people that they still do not have their independence from Colombo. Black flags of protest are flying in Kilinochchi.

We spend the morning trying to track down timbers. Just as at Benson Woodworking, no timbers equals no work. A number of the other NGOs charged with building shelters in camps have also chosen to build frames using round timbers. The high demand has resulted in a scarcity of timbers, and price gouging—even though the timber supplies here in the north are tightly controlled by The Forest Protection Division of the LTTE. Procuring timbers involves traveling from one obscurely-located government-run wood depot to the next, looking for people in authority with whom to negotiate, and trying to make sense of the often-conflicting information that we are given. Eventually we are promised one truckload of timbers per day. Even if this were true, at the rate of one truckload per day, we will have all the timber we need by the end of the month—and one week past the admittedly unrealistic deadline set by the local government. We resolve to keep pushing for more timbers, and to look into obtaining them from the South.

On the drive to the camp sites, I ruminate on the vehicle progression that we have witnessed during the last month in Sri Lanka. For the first week or so that we were working in the south, we traveled mainly by tuc-tuc (three wheeler) and public bus. These forms of transportation can be considered both practical and recreational. In fact, there are people who treat riding the public buses like an extreme sport. The drivers, whose pay is directly proportional to the number of passengers they pick up, are happy to play their part. Occasionally we read sobering reports about children killed by racing buses, or of people hanging out the bus doors being sideswiped to their death. If the drivers of these buses are lucky, they survive the enraged mobs that respond to such tragedies. The buses are invariably torched.

As we continued our work in the South, and began working with Project Galle to deliver supplies to camps, we found ourselves traveling in the white vans favored by the small-scale NGOs who were working in the area. Many of the people working for these NGOs were volunteers who had traveled to Sri Lanka specifically to help with tsunami relief. We also began to notice the appearance of shiny white Toyota Land Cruisers with large antennae and bold stickers announcing such heavy-hitters as UNHCR and USAID. These vehicles were conspicuous not only for their size and shine, but also—at least at first—for their rarity. By the third or fourth week of our work in the South, however, as the large INGOs began to establish infrastructure in the affected areas, such vehicles were a common sight. The people with whom we were working did not look particularly favorably on the SUV fleet, thinking perhaps that the money going into vehicles might be better spent in other ways.

And now here Annette and I are, being driven in a shiny white air-conditioned Toyota Land Cruiser to our construction project in the camps. At least an SUV feels appropriate to the roads we are on—between the vehicle-eating potholes on the A-9, and the sandy beach roads that connect the camps, we make good use of our vehicle’s attributes. And thanks to the A/C, Annette is coming down with a cold.

The progression of vehicles that we have experienced reflects our search for ways to use our skills most effectively. I am not surprised to find that it is professional aid organizations like Norwegian People’s Aid who are best able to make use of our professional skills in engineering and construction management.

The professional climate here has implications beyond vehicles for the work that we are doing. The deminers working for NPA are mostly ex-military. They tend to be good problem-solvers, and they have what might be described as a “mission-based” mentality. While I don’t consider the Beam Team to be particularly “military,” I do think that we share some of the same qualities and expectations.

NPA is also using technology to better advantage than the organizations with whom we worked in the south. Mapping software combined with GPS data from the field is crucial to locating, delimiting, and clearing minefields. The maps that have been created of the transit camps have proven to be very useful. We communicate from the camps using satellite phones, because there is no mobile phone coverage here in the Vanni. On a lighter note, in the evenings here we have the option of listening in surround-sound to a wide spectrum of digital music, or projecting dvds onto the wall of the living room.

There are other implications to the professional climate here. Because of the long civil war, many NGOs are well-established in the north. Their personnel tend to be full-time relief workers, whether they are helping people displaced by war, or by the tsunami. This is a job for them, and they are being paid for it.

This atmosphere is in contrast to the south, where many of the relief workers in the aftermath of the tsunami were well-meaning amateurs who took time from their lives to volunteer, and where many of the affected people had been living a comfortable life supported by tourism. The tsunami victims in the south generally responded to our efforts with great appreciation and affection. I have not seen such obvious displays of appreciation in the north. This may be because the people here are shy, or it may be that when a tidal wave follows a generation of civil war, you simply don’t have the energy to be explicitly appreciative of outsiders who are trying to help. It may also be that we are seen simply as professionals with a job to do, and not as volunteers who could be living more comfortably elsewhere.

While we have found here a great fit for our professional skills, I have to admit that I have not felt quite the same sense of fulfillment—or is it ego-gratification?—since beginning to work in the north.