Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey: 2/16/2005

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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

Tony declares with satisfaction that by this evening, we should be able to watch the BBC on satellite television. Annette and I reckon he thinks that a television will make our stay at the NPA house on “mosquito alley” more enjoyable. We haven’t missed television, in spite of there being little outside the house to do in the evenings. The only nightlife that we know of in Kilinochchi is the small movie theater just down the road from our house. We understand that the theater shows Bollywood films dubbed in Tamil, and Tiger war movies.

Annette and I usually don’t arrive home until about eight in the evening. After supping with our housemates on curry and rice prepared by the NPA’s housekeeper/cook, we may project a movie onto the living room wall, we may hang out and read, or we may go directly to bed. I fear that the television will be an intrusion on our routine.

When we return home after dark this evening, the installers of the dish antennae are still struggling to complete their appointed task. At about nine o’clock, the television crackles to life, just in time for us to hear BBC reports on the political meltdown in Nepal, and a UN investigation of forced child conscription by the Tamil Tigers. Watching the report on the Tigers from the midst of their heartland is odd. Tony says it’s common knowledge that the Tigers forcibly recruit boys and girls as young as twelve. He explains that this is one of the reasons we see people in their early twenties holding positions of authority—they have been trained by the Tigers from an early age.

One of our housemates, Tom Gillhespy, had played for me portions of a Tamil war documentary on his computer.

“You know about the Black Tigers, right?” he asked. “They are the suicide Tigers. Apparently their families are quite well-respected and looked after. These films are made by the Truth Tigers. I guess they are essentially Black Tigers as well, because they are deployed in groups of three or four to record video footage on the front lines. When one of them is shot, another of the group picks up the camera and continues filming.”

The documentary was erratic, but harrowing in parts. Interspersed with battle footage were diagrams of advances and retreats, interviews with soldiers (Black Tigers?), and excerpts from speeches by “Mr. P” (none of us can remember his name), the leader of the Tigers. Many of the soldiers were teenagers.

Perhaps not coincidentally, on the same day that Tom showed me portions of the Tamil war documentary, Eero, a deminer from Finland, showed a video clip taken from an Apache attack helicopter in Iraq. The contrast between the two videos was striking. Through the night-vision camera on the helicopter, the battle appeared to be a very life-like video game: line up the bad guy in the crosshairs, press the button, see the explosion, and watch the bad guy writhe on the ground. The Tamil video looked much more like a slice of real life.