Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey: 2/14/2005

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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 on the drive to the camp sites, I ask our driver Lingam about something that I had heard recently from other locals.

“Do you think it’s true,” I asked, “that if the tsunami had not come, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army would be fighting now?”

“Of course,” he replies. Apparently the political posturing in November and December was escalating rapidly toward violence. Lingam tells us that insofar as it has postponed a resumption of the tragic civil war, the tsunami was a blessing.

When we arrive at the camp site, we learn that a body has been found by locals clearing rubble near the beach. It is thought to be a sister of the woman we have hired to cook lunch for us each day at the transit camp sites, and whose husband looks after the materials that they have allowed us to store in their yard. The tsunami took seven members of this family.

After checking on the progress of the shelters, Tony and I decide to visit to a camp about two kilometers distant, to check out kitchen additions that are being built by another INGO on their shelters. The drive takes us by two graveyards. One is for “Black” Sea Tigers, those who have completed suicide missions. The cemetery is large, spare, and formal. It is surrounded by a six foot high masonry wall, and it includes within it a raised platform that appears to be for ceremonial burials. Rows of fluorescent lights line the neat rows of simple gravestones.

“No remains under those stones,” Lingam tells us. It takes me a moment to realize that a suicide mission would not leave any remains.

There are two groups of grave stones. I guess that the larger group—over one hundred—is for men, and the group of about twenty for women. The most chilling aspect of the cemetery is the grave stones toward the back of the each formation that do not yet have names on them.

Several hundred meters past the Sea Tiger cemetery, we pass a makeshift graveyard for tsunami victims. Each grave site consists of a mound of sand—the larger ones contain more than one person, a simple marker made of sticks, and a cardboard name card. Some graves are decorated with flowers or strips of cloth. A group of about a dozen men are gathered in a distant corner of the graveyard. They watch as three men dig a new grave in the sand. A body bag that appears to be full lies under a tree nearby.

As we continue on, Tony tells me that many of the tsunami victims, particularly those that were being found several days after the tsunami, were burned where they were found.

“They used five kilos of sugar and five liters of kerosene. It worked quite well. They would spread the sugar on the body, pour on the kerosene, add some pieces of wood, and Zippo it.”

We see at the next camp that both steel- and wood-frame shelters are being built. The wood-frame shelters are somewhat smaller and not as sturdy as the ones we are constructing. They do, however, include small shed-roofed kitchen additions, about five feet by seven, off the side of each shelter. We discuss the pros and cons of attaching the cooking area directly to the house. We have noticed that in the holding areas where tsunami victims are currently living, and where many have cobbed together temporary shelters, they have tended to build small cooking lean-tos that are a short distance from their temporary homes. This makes sense to us from the perspectives of heat and fire-safety. We decide to ask local women about their preferences for a cooking area.

On the drive back to “our” camps, we see that the burial of the latest tsunami victim is completed. The body bag is crumpled under the tree, and the men are walking and biking slowly down the road.