The children! who can forget the children

~ Loved ones have not stopped looking for their ‘missing children of the tsunami’ three years on.

Many families across the country are preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ and new life while other families await a fresh beginning with the dawn of a new year. In some homes though there are only tears and despair bordering on hopelessness, with a frenetic search on. For many the leads have run cold but there is an all-consuming fire within their bodies and also their souls.

They cannot rest, they cannot eat, they cannot work and they cannot sleep for terrible thoughts overwhelm their very being. A single word, a telephone call or a soothsayer's directions on the whereabouts of their children see families hiring vehicles and going in search, a search which has so far ended in vain.

These are the children officially grouped as "missing" in the tsunami, with only their parents and close relatives left to ponder their fate and keep looking, three years after the worst natural disaster the country has faced in recent times. And the parents that we traced were all one in their thinking - they believe, they are almost sure their children are alive.

Are they being forced to work as servants? Are they being sexually abused? Have they been "adopted" by childless couples? The unanswered questions are numerous and the fears engulfing the families difficult to overcome. Keshini Chathurika Perera was a beautiful 14-year-old, who along with her elder sister joined a family pilgrimage to Kataragama, at dawn on that fateful day of December 26, 2004. All 16 of them were in a van, singing and laughing, passing through Seenigama, close to Galle, when the tsunami came. Six are missing from that group.

"But the sisters had held hands and run to safety before the waters hit them. The elder sister had fainted and had been taken to hospital and is home now. The younger one is missing," says Keshini’s father Ananda Perera quickly adding that a woman in Kalupe is sure that she handed over Keshini to a policeman attached to the Meetiyagoda Police Station who then put her into a Canter truck.

"She was wearing a brown blouse and a black skirt," the woman told us when we met her the day after the tsunami, says Ananda going back in time to December 26. Those were her very clothes. The moment Ananda heard of the tsunami, he rushed to the area the same day, using by-roads as Galle Road was impassable. The night was long and tiring - going from place to place and gathering together one family member after another they located 10 including their second daughter.

It was the next day that they came upon a woman in Kalupe who even without seeing a photograph was insistent that the girl was fine and had told her she was from Gampaha. "She had been eating a biscuit," says Ananda, trying hard to stop the sobs wracking his body, adding that the woman had in fact taken the telephone number of the policeman, who when contacted had informed the parents that he dropped off both people and dead bodies at Batapola and Karapitiya Hospitals. The trail runs cold from the time Keshini was loaded onto the Canter. The family has gone from temple to temple and soothsayer to soothsayer, while also approaching official bodies such as the Police Women's and Children's Bureau and the National Child Protection Authority.

Handahan kiyanne lamaya innawa kiyalai, says the distraught father, explaining that all horoscope readers are certain that the girl is alive. The desperate family has even “recalled” dead relatives who in spirit form have indicated that Keshini is not among them.

The task of carrying out the "poojas" dictated by soothsayers to get 16-year-old Supun Madhubasha Silva who too is missing after the tsunami fell to his adult cousin U. Ubesiri. "I injured my knee," he laments still willing to do more to find Supun. Ubesiri was required to make midnight visits to a cemetery where cremations had taken place for seven consecutive days and bury four limes in the still smouldering ashes.

One soothsayer described Supun's birthmark on the stomach and also told us that one of his toes had got smashed in an injury, says Ubesiri. Supun and his family from Meerigama had been on a visit to an aunt in Balapitiya, when they all decided to go see a bride for the aunt's son. Having worshipped at the Seenigama devale, they had seen the waters coming and accidentally turned the van into a barbed wire enclosed land rather than the road.

Supun had urged his mother who shouted, "Puthe, Puthe", to run to safety, that he could manage. His family members- father, mother by climbing a roof and younger sister by precariously hanging on to a TV antenna - escaped while a few relatives died in the tsunami. Supun is listed as missing. He was a strapping youth, sighs Ubesiri.

Two pretty dresses bought from a well-known dress shop in Colombo hang in an almirah awaiting little Hiruni Tharushika. She was seven at the time of the tsunami and would now be 10. Her elder sister, with whom she shared the room, jealously guards her possessions and will not allow any of her stuff to be given to the convent.

Hiruni along with her father, mother and sister was on the fateful train that was hit by the tsunami. They were on holiday on their way to see the corals at Hikkaduwa. From the moment the family realized that the little girl was missing, the father has been searching every single day, beginning that day itself. He haunted the mangled train wreck until the compartment in which they travelled was lifted up but did not find her body there.

Many are the clues to indicate that she is alive. "A couple of people have seen her and described her clothes in detail to us," sighs father Nihal Wanniarachchi, while mother Latha sheds a silent tear. Although deep within their hearts they are sure that the little girl is alive, their house in Kirullapone is being white-washed and on December 26 they will have pirith and a heel dane there.

In Hiruni's case too the clues that she may be alive are many. "The many posters we put up resulted in a phone call from Sirithunga mudalali of Aluthwela, a rice mill owner, who had rescued a little girl stuck on the branch of an uprooted mango tree," says Nihal, adding that he described the clothes she was wearing. The girl had then made her way to the Telwatte temple. The trail tapers off but later a newspaper article on the missing girl brings out more information, with another person telling the family that he was in an oruwa, with two boatmen and Hiruni.

From the Telwatte pansala, men, women and children had been ferried across a small area covered by water to the Matiwela village, where most victims had sought shelter. The family's hopes were raised and doubts that she was dead allayed, when they got another call from Moratuwa, claiming that a six-year-old boy who had been caught in the tsunami had been taken by a boatman in Matiwela. That boy had said there were two girls with him, one of whom could be Hiruni.

The search continued with Nihal tracing the boatman, 'Muudu Raththa'. "He lives in Matiwela and is about 40 years old. When I asked him he said that he took two children and handed over one to the correct relatives and the other, a girl, to 'some people'," says Nihal.

However heart-rending death is, for these families it would bring some kind of peace to their tortured lives. Considering it their karma they will mourn for their daughters and sons and hold bodhi poojas and alms-givings. Though the sorrow will linger, they will move on.

However, for all the families over which the dreaded word "missing" hangs, there is a pall of gloom which will never be dispelled.
Latha echoes their sentiments: "We cannot give up. If we found her body, we would have accepted what fate or nature dealt to us, however cruel. We would have mourned, done meritorious acts."

In their heart of hearts and in their bones, all these families feel that their children are alive………and the search will continue."The search will only end when I find her or when I die," says Nihal.

The lucky one

It is now a distant memory for nine-year-old Janith Mendis, who was busy making a small kennel for a puppy at his uncle's home in Moratuwa. His family too was on the train and his father and sister died amidst the mangled compartment which toppled for the force of the tsunami. His mother’s whereabouts are not known.

"I clung on to the top of the compartment tightly and later stumbled up to the temple," says Janith who was just six years old in 2004. After that, begins the saga which may very well have given a raw deal to this boy. His simple explanation is: "Eka gederakin wena gederakata genichcha." (He was taken from one house to another.)

The "people" in the last house, "aunty" and "uncle" , did not ill-treat him and during his stay with them he ate "wattakka and buth". Fortunately for Janith, the youths trained by his father who was a skilled wadu baas (carpenter) from Ihala Indibedde had gone on motorcycles in search of the family on hearing that they had been on the train, checked out hundreds of bodies at the Batapola Hospital before coming across those of Janith's father and sister.

Papuwe saha kane roma walin api Inniaswa hoyagaththe, says Nirosh Anthony explaining that they identified him from the hairs on his chest and ear, while the girl around seven years at that time, was identified by her clothes. The golayas (former apprentices) then headed by Nalaka Mendis (not even a relative) brought the bodies back for the last rites.

It was once again by chance that Nalaka met someone who came to Ihala Indibedde on December 29, to pass on the information that a boy from the area was at the Telwatte temple. Apita hoduwawak awa, says Nalaka who sent motorcyclists including Nirosh ahead of him while he went in a van. The leads came fast……..the monk had handed over some children to be looked after by villagers and a policeman living in the village in turn had given the boy to a family.

That family was amidst a funeral, not anyone who had died in the tsunami. When the search party from Indibedda asked for the boy, after initial denials that the boy was with them and much hedging, the family had said the boy had been taken to a relative's home in Mulkirigala.

Going in hot pursuit, after notifying the Meetiyagoda Police, Nalaka had arrived in Mulkirigala, to find out through contacts that the boy had been seen in the home mentioned, but when they arrived he was not there. After much persuasion, agreement had been reached that the boy would be produced at the Meetiyagoda Police Station. Finally Janith had been handed over through court to his uncle on January 1, 2005.

When asked about his family, Janith says those days he thought of them often but now wediya mathak wenne ne. Little does he realize that life could have taken a different turn, compelling him to live among strangers, if not for his father's faithful apprentices and relatives, who went that extra mile and did not give up against all odds. Otherwise, Janith too would be another statistic under the "tsunami missing".