Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey: 2/12/2005

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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

Our days are becoming more predictable. We arrive at the office by eight and meet with Roy and Vimal, who are coordinating work on site. We spend the rest of the morning doing office-based project management and engineering, and chasing down materials in and around Kilinochchi. In addition to frequenting the various offices of the LTTE’s Forest Protection Division, we have become regulars at the local suppliers of cement, concrete block, tin sheets, and sawn lumber. All of the NGOs building shelters are competing for these materials. Our strategy for success is based on being well-organized, and putting in lots of “face time.” Patience is also most helpful. During the particularly excruciating and inexplicable waits at the cement supplier, I find myself repeating the mantra of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha: “I can think, I can fast, and I can wait.”

Annette and I usually head out to the camp sites with Easan or Lingam after lunch. The thirty kilometer drive starts to seem shorter as it becomes more familiar. We know the location of every toddy shop, speed trap, and demining camp. The incredible birds, however, are still foreign to me. I resolve to purchase at my next opportunity a book to identify them.

At the transitional camps, we spend much of our time laying out the groups of ten shelters associated with each toilet complex and washing area. We have been trying to train our local coworkers to do this, but they seem to lack the confidence to make judgment calls about shifting this group of shelters over to avoid a berm, or spacing another group to avoid a clump of trees. We are also keeping an eye on the quality of the work, making suggestions for improvements, and responding to endless questions.

Important information has been slow to come from the task force overseeing the camp construction, and at times the guidance we receive is contradictory. Today Suda, the head of the task force, arrives with stocky cohort who is accompanied by a soldier wearing a flack-jacket and toting an AK-47. Suda introduces the man to us as Mr. Mongalesh, head of the Sea Tigers in that area. Mr. Mongalesh has a long, thick scar arising from the corner of his mouth. I wonder how many people he has killed. The soldier accompanying him is his bodyguard.

Mr. Mongalesh’s visit stirs up the carpenters, especially as instructs them to orient the shelters differently. We had been told several days before by a government surveyor that the five shelters in the two rows of each group of ten should face each other, to foster a sense of community within each group. Mr. Mongalesh contends that if the houses are facing each other, the families will fight. He thinks they should all be facing away from each other. It all depends on one’s perspective…

We tell Suda that we would like clarification from him in writing of the orientation of the houses. Mr. Mongalesh says that he is pleased with the quality of the work, and the pace at which the crews are working. The carpenters are relieved to hear this, because in the local hierarchy, the head of the Sea Tigers trumps the head of the task force. I myself am glad to hear that the pace of the work is satisfactory. The day before, Suda had reiterated to Roy that if all of our shelters were not completed by the twentieth of February, the task force would reserve the right to have other NGOs finish the shelters in our camps. Knowing that Suda was bluffing, and that the shelters in our camps were as far along as any, Roy responded “Great!”

Every day we spend time pulling out at least one truck from the soft sand. Usually it’s a truck delivering concrete blocks that gets stuck, but occasionally the timber trucks get mired as well. The sandy roads that serve the camps were not intended to take the heavy traffic, and if a truck should be bold or foolish enough to venture off the road to dump its load…the onlookers have little sympathy.

Standard procedure for pulling out a stuck truck is to shovel away the soft sand from in front of the wheels, find another heavy vehicle to pull, and use a length of heavy, fraying wire cable as a tow rope. Most of the hour or two that is required to free a vehicle is spent wrestling with the wire rope. Our contacts in Colombo tell us that they will be shipping us a proper towing chain, but each day that delivery is delayed for one reason or another.

We have only freed one of the three trucks when the sun sets. Annette catches a ride back to Kilinochchi with Ed and Tony. Easan and I stay on site in solidarity with Roy and Vimal. I lean on a shovel, contemplating the situation. A crescent moon hangs over the palm trees, stars appear, and a cool breeze blows in from the sea. I experience a “How did I end up here doing this?” moment. Finally Roy decides that the trucks should be unloaded where they are in order to improve our chances of freeing them. As he and Vimal round up laborers, Easan and I decide that it’s time to head home.