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Cobblers in Galle who survived the tsunami are back to mending shoes
A stitch in time
By Sanjee Goonetilake
One month and two weeks after the tsunami, Galle is still a ghost town. The rubble, the bombed-out looking shops and the tired shop owners gazing into the horizon. The common man wanders through the junkyard to find the occasional pavement vendor trying to set up a stall on the rubble amidst swarms of flies.

Raju is a shoe repairman who has been sitting in front of the stadium facing the harbour for the last 15 years. According to him, there are 22 cobblers in Galle town who survived the tsunami. People in Galle believe that all of them are from an Indian Tamil community but according to Raju, there are also other ethnic groups working there, including several Sinhalese from inland Galle.

Sunday morning: Raju sighs as he talks to Vajira, a seamstress who has always gone to him for her shoe repairs. "Oh Madam, all those tools gone, I can still replace them one by one, but the most expensive one is the shoe mould and without that we can't do anything." "How much is one?" she asks. He sighs. "Too expensive." Hiding her curiosity, she asks "Tell me how much is that?" "About Rs.850 to Rs.1250,” he replies. She returns home in a pensive mood.

Monday morning as she goes to the bus stand, Raju says excitedly, "Madam, we found one mould in a drain and now all of us share it. Isn't that great?" Vajira is a humble woman with a heart of gold. Although she herself may not be able to spend for 22 cobblers, she asks Lal, a man with a printing press for posters who has no work these days to do a little research on the number of cobblers who lost their tools in the tsunami. Lal himself has a family to support and a printing press in ruins on the main street, but he spends nearly two days gathering information.

According to Lal's reports, the cobblers who survived the tsunami are anxiously waiting to resume their livelihood, having lost their homes to the surging waters. Since most of these people are probably unregistered, they may never receive a plot of land or other tsunami relief goods. Raju is just one of them and is a willing participant in the research. Lal and Raju eventually find out the cost of a total tool kit - around Rs.3500. That would be for all the tools including the nails, the hammers, the wax, the knife, the rubber sheets, the nylon thread and the mould.

The mould is not available in Galle and either someone has to make it at a special atelier or look for it in Pettah. It is then that some people, let us call them the Good Samaritans’ walking around in Galle heard about these small people. And several others pitched in. Amongst them was a contact of an Austrian Buddhist monk and some people of Galle who had received funds from Northern Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

Then came the umbrella search. None of the main street shops had more than two or three big umbrellas (the kind the shoe repairers needed to sit under) since all the shops had been washed away. The Samaritans had been to one shop owned by a Muslim family. The owner had died in the floods at his Megalle home and his shop was a complete wreck. Once a shop with a 15-member staff, now reduced to six people.

The Samaritans decided to buy the umbrellas from there and several hours were spent locating other shops in the street to complete the order for 22 umbrellas. On Wednesday evening, Lal and Vajira received money to buy the tool kits. They went to a hardware shop also on the main street owned by a Muslim family. The shop was dark and sad looking but some one was trying to brighten it with a bucket of paint. An old man with wistful eyes and a white beard had agreed to the quote and the goods were ready.

That night Vajira received the news that the hardware shop had caught fire. And when a hardware shop burns down, there is no stopping it, with all those paints and oils. The fire brigade, the police and the army had tried their best but to no avail. There is no denying it, after floods come the fires; Galle needs a sophisticated fire brigade.

The Samaritans had already sent the message to Raju that the toolkits would be ready on Saturday morning. They asked the old Muslim shop owner if he would be still willing to buy them the goods from Colombo and in this way they could support the shop. But the old man had too many things to attend to and probably also was still in shock. The Samaritans decided to send Raju with Vajira's uncle to Colombo to look for the toolkits.

Friday: Raju, Vajira's uncle and a helper visited Colombo. They toured all the shops, found the most economical quotes and bought the entire toolkit. Raju had never seen such sophisticated tools for a shoe repairer and was delighted to select the perfect toolkit. In the meanwhile the Good Samaritans received the permission of the monk at a Meditation Centre at Dickson Hill, to use the temple premises for the distribution of toolkits.

On Saturday morning at 9 a.m. Raju distributed the 22 tool kits which Lal, the tsunami-affected printer had put together. At 10 a.m. the cobblers arrived one by one. They were shy and surprised. Seeing them I was filled with a strange sense of wonder at the acts of small people and the unity in how people perform such actions. There were no speeches. Just the act of giving. They were just told that the people of Galle were very grateful for their services and that they really missed not having them around.

One cobbler, Sundaram told us that he was born here and that for him, he was more Sinhalese than most Sinhalese. He had been washed away by the tsunami and he had been cared for by a Buddhist monk called Dhammika. Sundaram was very reluctant to receive any kind of aid in the form of food or money but was delighted to receive the tools of his trade from unknown people.

Many of the cobblers were full of praise. A man needs his toolkit to start life again with dignity and it made them feel like human beings, not beggars. Next time when you pass along the Colombo-Matara road, do stop by to say hello to these cobblers who are fully operational and let them fix your shoe or umbrella. And if you are living in a coastal city affected by the tsunami do think of people like them, those gods of small things. If you look for them, you can see them everywhere.

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