Still waiting in line

Living in line rooms for the past two years their cry on this 2nd anniversary of the tsunami is to give them a place they can call home so that they can live with dignity.

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi

A living hell, that’s how the people describe it. A toddler sits on the floor, with a tin plate with a little rice and vegetables in front of him. His face, especially around his mouth and nose, dotted with black. A slight movement and the black dots take wing. The little boy is sharing his lunch with dozens of flies.

Horrific pictures of Ethiopia seared into the memory flash across the mind. No, this is not Ethiopia or some remote African village stereotyped for this kind of scene.

It is Angulana, not so far away from the commercial capital Colombo.

And Rukshan, eating his rice seated on the damp floor in a tiny10’X10’ wooden line-room that is home to him was just a month old when the tsunami struck. Then he was living with his family at Egoda Uyana. Washed away by the monstrous waves, it had been with difficulty that he was saved from the grip of the vicious sea to spend nearly a month in hospital. From hospital it was to a tsunami camp in a primary school in Egoda Uyana that he was taken.

In July 2005, the whole family was once again relocated not in homes but in another camp of wooden line-rooms in the playground of the Podu Jaya Maha Vidyalaya close to the Angulana Railway Station…….. and that is where they still are along with 179 families, as the second anniversary of the tsunami comes round on December 26.

The grievances, real or imagined, are many among the men, women and children living in this camp. The consensus is that the basic facilities provided by a church group called CRWRC, whom the people assured us was not luring anyone to become Christian, were adequate while awaiting permanent homes.

However, the tsunami-displaced now living here and many more in the area have been out of house and home for two long years, with no hope of getting one soon.

Five-month expectant G.D. Swarnalatha, 31, who was seriously hurt in the tsunami, with broken teeth and an injured eye which needs an operation, is in desperate straits.

“We have been promised Rs. 250,000 if we finalize arrangements to buy a small piece of land. I have done that but the voucher has still not been signed,” laments Swarnalatha seated in front of her room where she lives with her husband and five-year-old daughter. She pushes the rag that passes off as a curtain and lets us peep into her home – the dingy and cramped room where they sleep, cook, stack their precious worldly goods and live their lives of misery. Pokunuwita is the place where they hope to set up a permanent home and start their lives afresh. “Duwage karabu ugas thiyela thama oppu bellewwe,” she says explaining that over and over again they pawned their daughter’s ear-studs to check out the validity of the deeds of lands they have been looking to buy with the money promised by the government. Swarnalatha fears that even after her baby is born, she will have to bring the infant to this room.

All the stories of the families living here are similar. As the knot of men, women and children becomes bigger around us and everyone is eager to get their plight into the newspaper and show the conditions in which they live, The Sunday Times understands that the tsunami-displaced in the camp can be categorized into four groups – the families which owned the homes that were washed away by the waves; extended families living on undivided land whose homes were destroyed; squatters without any claim to the land, whose houses were destroyed; and those who were living on rent whose houses were affected by the tsunami.

B. Nimaleen Pieris, 60, was part of an extended family. Although she owned six perches on the beach and the house where she lived with one son and his wife, her other sons had put up small structures in the same compound. “Although I’ve found myself a piece of land, my documents for the Rs. 250,000 have not been signed by the Grama Sevaka yet,” she says.

Forty families have got their vouchers signed, but even they are reluctant to leave the camp, fearing that the Rs. 250,000 due for the construction of the house may not be passed and they would be left high and dry even without the room which they occupy now.

T. Lilin Pieris, 55, who had been living with her daughter’s family on the beach has been told in no uncertain terms that “duwata salli dunnoth geyak ganna, oyata denne ne. Oyata dunnoth, duwata denne ne”. (If money is passed for the daughter to buy a piece of land and build a house, you won’t get it and if you are given the money, your daughter won’t get it.)

Mother of three, Sudharma Niroshani, 29, sums up the pathetic situation they are in. “We have come here not of our own seeking. We have been forced to live like this because we were badly affected by the tsunami. This is an apaya.”

While the others nod in agreement, Sudharma demands justice from the powers-that-be, appealing for empathy in this humanitarian crisis created by the tsunami. Their urgent plea: Please let us find a home, where we can get about our work and bring up our children with dignity.