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After
tsunami no sun rise yet for the east Situated also by a lagoon that bypasses the town from under a bridge, there was water everywhere. Anna Mary clung on to her child, and to the trunk of a tree. The waters receded, almost as swiftly as they came out of the sea, but within those few fateful minutes she had lost her son, her daughter and her father. A familiar story recounted in two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastal areas where officially a 32,000 people - according to estimates some 40,000 -- lost their lives. But each story is a poignant reminder of the agony that is being endured still in the minds of the thousands who survived the nation's worst natural disaster. Anna Mary, now in a refugee camp at a primary school cannot complete her story. When asked one final question: "Will you go back to where you were"? She just shakes her head to indicate a 'No'. Her little village in the popular beach of Kallady and the nearby Navalady is non-existent. A typically coastal village of mostly fisher folk families, Navalady lost half its population of 2,000 in less than five minutes. An eyewitness who climbed atop a coconut tree as he saw the giant tidal wave approach, "like big black smoke", says it was the third wave that was the killer. A month later, all that remains is the debris. Nothing, but a sturdier built Hindu kovil stands, broken in parts, its chariot nearby. In the refugee camps, fear remains the key. For the many thousands of survivors like Anna Mary, there is an urgent need for counselling to help them deal with their fear and trauma. But there is a dearth of trained counsellors locally and the government is sceptical about using foreign counsellors given the cultural disparities. A Samurdhi worker, a government official attached to the poverty reduction programme says people have died even after the tsunami. He relates how a 58-year-old woman died after drinking the contents of a young coconut from a beachside tree that was struck by the tsunami. Aid workers say the sea is contaminated. They don't eat fish anymore, not just because the fish may have nibbled on floating corpses. Batticaloa's Coroner Baptist Fernando says he had to issue 1,800 death certificates from the town and immediate surrounding areas, including Navalady alone. Another 486 bodies were unidentified. Then, he says " there are the cases of post-tsunami victims who have died of pneumonia by drinking black sea water." He cites the example of five people from Kalkudah, further north who were sent to Polonnaruwa in the interior for treatment after the tsunami. They died after returning from hospital. This phenomenon has given rise to concern. At the town's pubs, the talk is whether this was a natural disaster or if it was a man-made one. An expatriate believes it is the latter. He goes on to say that it could have been an undersea test that went wrong and accused a super-power of being behind it. He gives detailed accounts of how airlines lost navigation data on December 26 and likens what happened to ' the Bermuda triangle ', and others agree with him. They demand that bodies be exhumed and be tested to check for radiation or suspicious chemicals. Coroner Fernando says he found no evidence of radiation in any of the bodies when he performed post-mortems, but admits that none of the bodies, or samples of the ' black water ', which he says, killed even tsunami survivors, were sent for testing. Given the need to quickly issue death certificates so that families can bury or cremate the dead, the job of the Coroner would have been, at best, a rushed job. To cope with the demand, emergency death certificates were issued. The cause of death was given simply as: "Died due to drowning (sic) in the Tsunami Tidal Wave water which occurred on 26-12-2004 at 9 a.m. in the Eastern Coast ". A senior policeman agrees that there are grounds to exhume some of the bodies. " While the relief measures must be looked into, so too", he says "must they call in the Government Analysts to test these waters". Robin, a former Motor Traffic examiner and volunteer aid worker however is more concerned about the immediate priorities of tending to the thousands of displaced still lingering in the refugee camps. He was very critical of the Government's lacklustre approach to relief work. He praised the role of Buddhist monks and majority Sinhalese from neighbouring areas who came to the assistance of the beleaguered Batticaloa folk despite the enmity, an offshoot of the twenty-year-old separatist rebellion in the region. "But the Government is not to be seen", he laments and goes on to lash out at the fact that Colombo has appointed an insignificant Deputy Minister from the north-western coast -- the other side of the island - to be in charge of relief operations. "All he does is come and ask if everything is alright, and then adjourn for the night to Polonnaruwa, three hours from here", he says. There is some truth in what Robin says. There is no sign of any Government action in this eastern sector of the country. Ray de Mel, a Colombo-based tea director who is in the area with some businessmen from the capital to see for themselves the devastation, also blames Colombo's elitist Presidential committees for not reaching out. Ahmed Moulana, a tour operator says the Government has lost an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the minority Tamils. In Kalkudah and Pasikudah, north of Batticaloa, the devastation is similar. Except that not many residents were affected because the areas are tourist destinations. Those who died were some tourists and small-time kiosk and boutique employees catering to the tourists. A soldier when asked for directions, points the way, and says, sarcastically thinking another group of sightseers has arrived, "over there, but there is nothing to see". All that remains of the Sun Tan Hotel, the first of the hotels to spring up when the area was identified as a hot tourist spot 35 years ago, is the rubble. New tributaries have sliced through from the sea into land, and the sea, which stretches at ankle height for a mile, is now no more. The whole landscape has changed. A lone Japanese worker is seen yanking out some twisted weeds, and a caterpillar bulldozer is moving some earth nearby. That is about all the clearing up that can be seen. At this rate, it will be quite some time before these two beach resorts are rebuilt and are operating again. That would summarise a lot of what is happening or not happening, in the eastern province of Sri Lanka. Quite in contrast to the southwest coast which is more accessible to the powers-that-be where there is visible activity. In Colombo, Government Ministers put up a brave front expressing confidence that relief work was going well. But, sad to say, that is far from the ground-reality. |
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