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Driving away their tears
By Passanna de Silva
It was a cloudy Sunday afternoon when a group of volunteers, local and foreign, young and old assembled in Mount Lavinia. They were headed to Wadduwa visiting tsunami camps with the aim of bringing back smiles on the faces of the displaced people. The reaction of hundreds of displaced people in a camp in Moratuwa that they had visited the day before, taking with them entertainment in the form of various performances and games was so overwhelming it showed them how they could help in pushing back bad memories of a tragic disaster.

They were now determined to continue spreading the “fun bus” concept to other parts of the country. “People with some kind of great zeal,” I thought looking at them. Neither the rains nor the jetlag after travelling from the other end of the world had hampered their spirits.

Eshan Goonesekera, a photographer by profession, living in Britain for the past three decades begins to weave the story of the “fun bus” concept which commenced its journey on November 18 with its first visit to a Moratuwa camp. He is a member of Teardrop Relief, a UK registered charity founded by a group of young Sri Lankans to help the country in the wake of the tsunami.

They worked with the Sri Lankan High Commission in the UK and SriLankan Airlines to source and send hundreds of tons of medicines and children’s products soon after the disaster. But as months passed they decided to concentrate on orphans and displaced children as their individual involvement with orphans and orphanages in Sri Lanka dated back to a decade ago.

Keen to do something novel, they decided to team up with Impakt, a name familiar to many international relief groups working in Sri Lanka. They already had a similar project which they called “fun days” where they went from camp to camp performing and entertaining the children, sans a bus though. Impakt Aid is a registered non-profit making, non-religious, non-political trust in Sri Lanka working in the south west and southern coast.

Meanwhile Arabella Churchill, granddaughter of former British premier Sir Winston Churchill after touring Sri Lanka in March and May this year and touching the hearts of children and communities in Batticaloa and Trincomalee with games and performance sessions, was returning to Sri Lanka again. Her trust, the Children’s World International having operated a ‘play bus’ in other parts of the world for the past ten years provides relief in the form of traumatic healing after disaster. “Almost all disasters have an after-effect of lowness of morale and lack of hope for the future. That is where the work of CWI could be of value and would be of benefit to the children and their parents,” she says.

Arabella Churchill had met Teardrop Relief and ImpaktAid through a mutual friend. Eshan exclaims, “…we were taken aback with who she was at first” but the three organizations share a “symbiotic relationship” and have set themselves a common goal; to heal the wounds of trauma in the displaced through fun, play and games providing a delightful, exciting and stimulating experience for the children and their guardians.

Two old and beautiful red London Route Master buses have already been transported to Sri Lanka with all the necessary equipment and toys and are awaiting custom clearance. One of the buses will be converted into a double decker mobile play centre and manned by a team of children’s entertainers _ face painters, balloon artistes, jugglers and clowns. On board the ‘fun bus’ will be an inflatable bouncy castle, a trampoline and a paddling pool that can be assembled instantly in close proximity to the ‘fun bus’, a host of colourful entertaining toys for the children, colouring books and crayons that can be given away. The second bus is to be used as a medical mobile unit providing a workplace for mobile trauma and medical teams as well as screening for sight and hearing.

“Several people questioned us as to why we have not thought of building houses with this money but we wanted a project which would benefit a lot of people rather than one family or a few people,” says Eshan. “People must understand that having fun is the real healing of trauma and it certainly lifts the morale in the camps” adds Pamela, a Canadian, one of the livewires behind ImpaktAid. Arabella will personally run the “fun bus” project for one month. In the first twenty days they hope to entertain over 3,700 children.

Pamela and Jerry Porodo from ImpaktAid relate how at the very outset there was tension, friction and fights among the displaced children in the camps that rose out of sheer frustration. Initially the children were scared of bubbles, of face painting, practically everything but now the moment they see their vehicle enter the camp they come running, they say.

What is really heartening for Arabella, Pam, Jerry, Eshan and the rest is that the mothers, fathers, grandparents and the guardians of these children too have joined in the fun. “The mothers continue to play the games, we have taught, with their children now and that makes us feel as if we have achieved something,” says Pamela.

The local volunteers are all young. Once the Teardrop Relief and Children’s World International teams leave the island, the local volunteers would be trained to take over the “fun bus” along with the ImpaktAid team.
The “fun bus” is sponsored by Mount Lavinia Hotel and negotiations are in the pipeline with the national carrier to sponsor the medical mobile unit.

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