Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey: 2/21/2005

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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 driver honks at 4 a.m. to make sure that we are awake. We have been up for ten minutes, and are almost ready to go. Two-and-a-half sleepy but traffic-free hours later, we arrive at Colombo’s Ratmalana airport. By 9 a.m. we have touched down in Jaffna. We divert Lingam to the largest grocery store in town to stock up on cheese, yogurt, and black currant juice, before heading down to the Vanni. As we are pulling up to the border crossing, Lingam takes two dvds from beside him and sticks them under the floor mat with a wink.

Once again Lingam manages to get us through the border crossing with minimal delays. While waiting, Annette and I see a truck full of coconuts that has been completely unloaded for inspection, and is now being loaded again. Trucks have to be unloaded and reloaded twice at the border: once for the Sri Lankan army, and again for the LTTE. Given the hassles, it is surprising that NPA is so willing to send up building materials from Colombo. The fact is, though, they are used to dealing with trickier cargoes. The NPA demining team uses C-4 explosives to periodically detonate the piles of mines that they find, defuse, and collect. The permits required by both sides to transport explosives must make transporting timber posts seem like child’s play.

We catch up with Tony as he is coming out of a meeting called by the Northern Task Force for INGOs working on shelters. How did it go?

“The Task Force continues to be pleased with our work. We seem to be the ‘golden boys’ of shelter building. Some of the other INGOs are not faring so well.”

What’s the latest deadline for completion of the shelters?

“At first the Task Force stated that the new deadline was March fifteenth, but when it became apparent that some groups did not expect to finish by then, they extended it to the twentieth.” At the current pace, all of NPA’s shelters should be finished by March 15. Annette and I hope that by the time we leave the Vanni on March 5, we will have been able to begin construction on at least one of the eight preschools and community centers for which NPA is responsible.

We check in with Roy at the camp sites, lay out another ten shelter locations, and head back to Kilinochchi.

At the one internet café in town—the Vanni Net—which is run by the LTTE, we are surprised to see that a photo of our snow-covered house in New Hampshire is now being used as the background image for the “desktop” on one of the four computers. We must have inadvertently left the image on the computer when Duncan emailed it to us to prove that our house is still standing—or perhaps the LTTE is screening all of the email that comes and goes, and they put this image in a prominent place just to be sure that we know.

As I am clacking away on the keyboard and hoping that today the internet connection will remain stable, two young women, one in a Tiger uniform, seat themselves at the computer next to me. A few minutes later I steal a glance at their screen, and see that they have googled “PC-based automation.” I try not to let my imagination stray toward the many sinister uses to which that information could be put. One of the women turns toward me with a cold stare. I force a flimsy smile, she hesitates, and then smiles back.