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Lessons in waiting
No home for some, no school for others: This is the plight of tsunami-affected families, who are still languishing in Sri Saddarmodaya Vidyalaya and students who are being deprived of an education

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
There is a school and there are children and teachers. But there are no lessons. The staff of 13 come each day to school, sign the book, sweat it out in a tiny room and leave at the time they are supposed to after 2 p.m. One teacher desperately clutches the Grade 5 scholarship examination forms that she needs to get signed soon.

On and off, a student or two and a few mothers drop by, only to be shown a large notice. In bold Sinhala letters, the notice announces: "Kandawura ivath karana thuru, pasela wasa etha." (The school is closed until the camp is removed.)

And therein lies the odyssey of the 225 children, both boys and girls of Sri Saddarmodaya Vidyalaya, the oldest Buddhist school in Moratuwa. This school, now 108 years old, has also been the cradle of education of many illustrious sons of this land including W.D. Amaradeva.

Three months after the tsunami though, as politicians and aid workers spew out the oft repeated cure for the ills of trauma, that children should go back to school and resume their normal lives, with lessons and play, this school remains closed. For the teachers, covering of syllabi not only for the scholarship exam but also for the OLs and other classes hangs like the sword of Damocles, for they have not even started lessons for the new year in a systematic manner. The school has children from Grade 1 to 11 and the students go to other schools only after their OLs.

"Tika davasakata iskole denna," was the request made by the Moratuwa education office on the night of December 29, when taking charge of the school to keep a "few families" affected by the tsunami.

When the staff arrived early morning to stack away and arrange the school's desks and chairs and hand over the four classrooms and the large hall, the doors had already been broken open. The school has four classrooms, the hall, the library, the lab, the Budu Medura and the Grade 1 classroom with all the facilities for children under the educational reforms.

In residence in the school were 87 families comprising 317 men, women and children, displaced from their homes in Koralawella after the tsunami. On January 5, the Grama Sevaka of the area had suggested that the building housing the Budu Medura be opened for the army personnel to rest when not on duty at the school-camp. However, the unkindest cut of all came, when to the horror of the staff, many families were put into occupation of the building housing the Budu Medura that the students and teachers had so lovingly and reverently cared for. Bags and odds and ends were dumped in front of the Buddha image.

"When schools reopened on January 10, thinking that the camp would be in our school for a short time, we pleaded with the Chief Monk of the Purana Viharaya close by to lend the dharma salawa to hold lessons for the students from January 17. He kindly did so but set a deadline of February 28," says a teacher.

The deadline came and they had to move out. No classes have been held since then and all appeals made to the authorities seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

A teacher who studied in the school, graduated and then came back to guide the children in his alma mater, says, "Many eminent people have had their mulika (primary) education here. There are bankers, doctors, people working at SriLankan Airlines and graduates. This should not happen to our children".

Another adi shishya (past pupil), who is also a teacher concurs while all the others nod in agreement. Several protests by parents and students have been of no avail and some of the children languish in the school itself as displaced people and others whose homes were not affected by the tsunami loiter around. Does anyone care?

We can’t live like this
The displaced men, women and children are restive when The Sunday Times visits Sri Saddarmodaya on Wednesday afternoon. "We are pleading with the authorities. We want to move out of the school-camp. We can't live like this. There are 18 families in this small room," laments Devika Fernando, a mother of two children, one of whom is sitting the OLs this year. They are in the building (about 35'x40') housing the Grade 1 classroom and the Budu Medura. "How can my daughter study for the exam in this situation?" she asks in desperation.

The plight of the displaced in this camp is pathetic. "Other people's legs are on top of us when we sleep," says another woman, while Premasiri Priyantha faces double trouble. He, his wife and two children are in the camp where his eight-year-old boy is supposed to be following lessons. "His education has been disrupted and we are destitute. Officials are promising us houses and saying they are under construction but when we plead with them they say….. 'thama evara ne'," he says.

A knot of ragged-looking families, with hordes of flies settling on the children's faces, gesticulate angrily and point out that there are only two temporary toilets for all the 317 people. "The school's two toilets overflow daily because the numbers are large and the Moratuwa Municipality sends the 'gullie' only once in nine days," says Lakmal.

A bowser brings drinking water for them but they have to walk to another property to wash their clothes. "When we keep asking the officials, they threaten to take away our allowance and put us into tents and not give us houses," says another man, adding, "If they give us the building materials we will build the houses ourselves. When there was the scare about another tsunami on Monday night we ran to Molpe where we are supposed to be relocated but there was no point. We were not allowed in. Plank houses are still being built there."

Homeless and without succour, it seems as if these destitute folk are between the tsunami and a heartless bureaucracy.

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