Mosquito breeding: the official way

By Hiranthi Fernando

Take the residents of Dewala Road, Mirihana. For six months of the year, a stretch of about 70 metres of their road is constantly under water. The road has no drainage and the water only dries up when there is a prolonged dry spell. One shower of rain and the road becomes a pond, a breeding ground for mosquitoes, say residents. 

Recently, fears were heightened when a child from the area was hospitalised with dengue. "Before the elections, Kotte Mayor Chandra Silva visited the spot with the engineer and promised to attend to the road. However all that is forgotten now. The spot is close to the main road and it would not be an extensive job to cut a drain and connect it to the drains on the main road," one resident said.

The situation was as bad at Bhatiya Mawatha in Dehiwela. "Though the health authorities are giving so much publicity through the media to dengue control, Dehiwela-Mt. Lavinia Municipal Council officials are doing little," says Ms. Premaratne, a resident. 

Some residents are using a vacant block of land at 32/11, Bhatiya Mawatha as a site for wastewater disposal and as a garbage dump. The owner is said to be abroad. The matter has been reported several times to the council.

This block of land is littered with old tyres, cans and containers, broken plastic buckets and discarded mattresses — all of which contribute to the breeding of mosquitoes. "Huge habarala bushes cover half this area and swarms of mosquitoes come out even during daytime. This has become a major health hazard to the residents of Bhatiya Mawatha," Ms. Premaratne said.

The Sunday Times Action Forum also found several unsightly garbage heaps in the suburbs of Kotte, Nugegoda, Boralesgamuwa, Dehiwela, Ratmalana and Kohuwela. At Kotte, large heaps of uncollected garbage lie beside the road, within sight of the Central Environment Authority offices. 

At Boralesgamuwa, too, the garbage is piled by the road. At Sirimal Uyana, a residential area in Ratmalana, garbage lies uncollected. A garbage heap can be seen just opposite the Kohuwela Police Station. What are the authorities doing about the problem of uncollected garbage? Or will they wake up only when a dengue epidemic flares up in the area? 

The light has not gone out!

By Renuka Sadanandan

W.K.D. Shantha Manel is blind. But in her short life of 31 years, she has known sight. Known the wonder of nature's creations. Laughed and played through childhood and young womanhood. Yet the fact that her vision was abruptly and horribly snatched away from her must haunt her today, as it has done these past twelve long years.

The only immediate sign of the tragedy is the faint scarring of her delicate features. Her eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, so one cannot immediately know she has no sight. She smiles readily and only the ceaseless twisting of her fingers reveals any nervousness.

One in a family of five children (four girls and one boy), Manel grew up in the security of a small village. Her home in Mawalgama was a happy one. Her mother died when she was just nine, but the sisters shared the housekeeping chores and the strength of a loving father kept the family together. Manel went to school at Kosgama Maha Vidyalaya and studied for her A'Ls choosing subjects such as Sinhala, Geography, Political Science and Economics. She had hopes of becoming a teacher later.

The cruel, mindless act was to strike her on September 22, 1988, a day that began like any other in her life. In the early evening, her father had gone to visit her elder sister and Manel and her younger sister were at home. The front door was not locked and the only light was from a lamp in the room. It was the frenzied barking of their dog Whita which first indicated something was amiss. Still not sensing any danger, the sisters moved towards the door. It was only when a gruff voice called out to their father and the door was kicked that they felt fear. Then came, what Manel describes as 'Bath' for it felt like a flood of something striking her. She did not know it then but she had had acid flung in her face.

The details of the tragedy are movingly described in her book 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me'. Written after kind friends in Austria made her a gift of a computer, it tells of her life before and after the tragedy and her struggle to come to terms with her loss. Also the attempts made to restore her sight, that have been unsuccessful thus far. She recalls the moments of the tragedy as if it were yesterday. 

She and her sister had fled blindly into the night, seeking their neighbours, who then rushed them to the nearest hospital. The sister slightly hurt too, was admitted at Avissawella, but Manel, seriously injured had to be taken to Colombo, first to the Accident Service of the General Hospital and subsequently transferred to the Eye Hospital. "It was only when I heard the people speaking over me that I knew what had happened to me. Till then I was in shock." Then the blinding pain began, as did the sickening fear that churned her insides. Would she ever be able to see again?

How did she bear the pain? 
She says her first thought was to shield her beloved father.

"Most of the time I didn't want to show my feelings because my father was suffering so much over what had happened to me. I tried to spare his suffering. But it was doubly difficult, as I was hurting so much. I kept wondering why this had happened to me." To this day, she cannot fathom who could have done this to her. There had been a boy in her school who had threatened to commit suicide if she did not return his love.

Were there other enemies? 
"How can I say if I didn't see who it was," she asks. "It was dark outside." No arrests were made, but the horror lives within her while the perpetrator walks free. After months in hospital and endless examinations and tests, came the moment of truth, when a doctor told her that even if she did not recover her sight she could go on studying by learning Braille. "The words were like an electric shock to me," she recalls. There was pressure from well-meaning family members to put her in a home for the handicapped but her father was outraged. He insisted that the family would take care of her.

She returned home and tried to find a way of going on, facing the future. Writing in her book of the sad homecoming, she says poignantly, "I entered our home as a blind girl. My home, my garden, my flowers, my trees, my lovely Whita did not appear for my eyes." 

The first few years were the most difficult. Occasionally she would have flashes of hope that she was regaining her vision. All sorts of treatment were tried, including having to drink cow's urine, but it seemed nothing helped. Her father was a changed man, unable to bear the tragedy.

Manel learnt slowly how to move around the house, to feed and dress herself, to identify her clothes by the feel of the material, to help in the kitchen by doing simple chores like washing up and scraping coconut. She learned too, she writes, to accept the failures, the constant bumping into things. "I had learnt in the hospital to forgive the person who did this to me. How could I ask for God's blessing if I cursed the man?" Then I felt relaxed, I felt free, she says, free of the burden of hate. But the fear of being alone, was always with her. She felt vulnerable, that in her blindness someone could attack her again.

After three years at home, Manel moved to Marcsri, the home run by Rita Perera for the handicapped and there she met the Austrian lady who was to become her Good Samaritan. Gertraud Rafenstein, who has since begun her own home for the rehabilitation of the disabled, 'Providence' in Bandaragama, took her to many eye specialists, among them Dr. B Stephen who unlike the others gave Manel some shred of hope. 

One operation was done and for the follow-up Gertraud arranged for her to be taken to Austria. Meanwhile Manel followed vocational courses at a centre for the handicapped in Seeduwa and became proficient in Braille.

Christmas 1997 saw Manel in the skies winging her way to Austria full of hope that the doctors there would be able to work the miracle. But her hopes were once again destined to disappointment. The operation did not produce the desired results. 

What did happen though was that, kind friends in Austria who had cared for her throughout her stay bought her a computer, specially designed for the blind. The computer was to literally, open a new chapter in her life. The result was 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' - Manel's story in her own words. It is a story of courage, of agony and heartbreak, but most of all of hope, that tomorrow will indeed be a brighter day.

The book now in print and available at Providence is not, however, the end of Manel's story. She reads books in Braille, sent to her by a library for the blind in the UK and works on her computer using programmes like MS Word. Her greatest wish now is to find some kind of work, a job that will enable her to stand on her own feet and achieve some degree of independence. 

Manel's strength is her indomitable will and strong Christian faith. Though she has not and will never give up the hope that one day her sight will be restored, she now only asks that she can achieve something useful with her life.

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