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the brink of starvation The house is no better. It is a shack put together with planks and a tin roof with holes. Under the tin roof is drawn tattered plastic sheeting to prevent the rain dripping in. The hall is tiny and the house comprises one more room and a kitchen where one is hardly able to turn. Just outside the kitchen is the toilet and sans a water supply of any form, even a well, the mess is indescribable. This ramshackle house in Bekkegama, Walana, Panadura is home to six adults, including Samudra Kumari lying on her bed staring into space. Earlier it had been a family of four - father Simon Gamage, mother Sirimathie Pieris, daughter Samudra and son Tharanga. For them, the tsunami dealt a different kind of blow. "My old mother and brother were living in a room attached to my other brother's house in Egoda Uyana. My brother, a well-known singer, who owns the house is very wealthy. The tsunami did not affect them, only a little water came into my mother's room. But my brother chased them off. They had no place to go. Even though I am living in this condition, how can I allow my aged mother to beg on the street," weeps Sirimathie. Now with two more mouths to feed, the family is at the edge of starvation. "My husband and son have gone in search of work. They do anything to earn a few rupees. But times are hard," sighs Sirimathie when The Sunday Times went to their home on poya morning, February 23. Sirimathie and her family had been living on rent in the house now owned by her brother, when it belonged to someone else. "Then my brother connived to get us out and bought the property," says Sirimathie, explaining that they managed to scrape together Rs. 65,000 and give the owner of the shack they are living in on three and a half perches of land. That was in December 2002. They live without lights and water and sometimes are unable to buy a little kerosene for the single lamp they light in the night. Candles are a luxury they cannot even dream of. "We have to bring water for cooking and drinking from half a mile away and drinking water from a different well elsewhere. To bathe and wash clothes we go to the pokuna, beyond the temple on the hill," says Sirimathie who from dawn to late night, tends her disabled daughter while doing every chore in the house, including the daily washing of a huge pile of clothes. "Samudra cannot control herself and urinates and passes excreta wherever she is, soiling her clothes," says Sirimathie. The workload does not end there for Sirimathie - she too chips in towards the family's meagre finances by pedalling a rickety old sewing machine to stitch a few pieces of clothing for sale. Sirimathie's husband works as a labourer and on "good days" earns around Rs. 300 and on others nothing. "My son works at a printing place and brings home about Rs. 4,000 a month, while we get Samurdhi of Rs. 700 on our card a month and Rs. 150 for my daughter," says Sirimathie listing their income. Samudra takes only tea and milk and solids in the form of rice and dhal her mother patiently feeds. She cannot walk, moving around by dragging herself on her haunches. Neither can she talk. "She needs nutrition and we try to buy two packets of milk a week somehow," says Sirimathie. For this impoverished family, milk at Rs. 150 a packet is a huge cost. The others in the family, of course, eat when they have and starve when they don't. That morning they did not have even a crust of bread for breakfast. "Api roll wevi yanne. Thiyena eka kanawa nethnam nikang innawa," says Sirimathie's mother who is 85, with a shy toothless smile. They battle on with stoic resignation, in the face of penury. They have the belief that tomorrow will turn out to be better and however difficult times are, they do not let the tiny lamp flickering in front of a small Buddha statue on the wall in the cramped room they call the hall go out. |
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