TSUNAMI IMPACT: An Easter Sunday Reminder of the Dead

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

DUTCH BAR, Sri Lanka, Mar 27 2005 (IPS) - It’s Easter Sunday morning, three months since the Asian tsunami killed over 30,000 Sri Lankans the day after Christmas. And Ivar Dilama wants to be closer to God.

It’s Easter Sunday morning, three months since the Asian tsunami killed over 30,000 Sri Lankans the day after Christmas. And Ivar Dilama wants to be closer to God.

After mass he leaves his family at the welfare centre that has been their home since Dec. 26 and makes his way to where he celebrated last Christmas.

Only the foundation remains of his house at Dutch Bar, a predominantly Christian enclave on the outer side of the Batticaloa lagoon in eastern Sri Lanka.

”I came here to be alone, I can’t do that at the camp,” he said, seated on the foundation. He could only hold his composure for few minutes before tears started rolling down his cheeks.

”This is what I had, I completed the foundation only six months ago and it was half built. How am I going to do all that again,” Dilama told IPS, while surveying the carnage all around him.

Three months after the killer waves crashed in, very few have moved back to Dutch Bar.

On Dec. 26, the world’s strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the region, with its epicentre under the sea in the northernmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago. The resulting tsunamis wreaked havoc around the Bay of Bengal, from Sri Lanka, India and the low-lying Maldives in the west, to Thailand and Malaysia in the east. Across Asia, about 290,000 people are either dead or missing after the tsunamis.

Here in Dutch Bar the signs of death are still very much evident. Just in front of Dilama’s plot, a wooden cross stands beside yet another mound of rubble. A bible and a picture of the Virgin Mary had been laid at the bottom in memory of someone who died.

”Death is everywhere here,” Dilama said.

Thirty kilometres further down Sri Lanka’s eastern coast in Kalmunai, Jegan Lechchemie still has difficulty finding the words to describe her plight. Clutching the edges of her tent she just stares into space.

In February when she moved into the temporary shelter, IPS followed her from the Welfare Centre at the Kalmunai Sinhala Maha Vidyala. She was excited about the shift and was more concerned that her husband would find it hard to adjust to it. She cleaned and arranged the inside of the tent provided by the Spanish arm of Medicins Sans Frontieres. Within hours of arrival she even erected a doorstep.

Little less than a month after the arrival she couldn’t even get herself to talk.

”We are seeing the emotional impact of the disaster in the survivors now,” Silvia Moriana, MSF head for Amapara said.

But the dilemma of tsunami survivors like Dilama and Lechchemie have been made worse by the pullout of humanitarian agencies like MSF that initially were quick to fill the void when disaster first struck due to the near paralysis of government bodies to initiate any relief action.

Moriana complained that there was lot of double counting taking place in Ampara which along with Batticaloa recorded more than 15,000 of the 31,000 tsunami deaths in Sri Lanka.

MSF was left with 150 unoccupied temporary houses at Thirukovil, one of the largest welfare centres in Ampara after the government authorities gave an inflated figure.

”There are just lots and lots meetings…meetings for everything and things are not moving that fast. There is a lack of information coming from the affected areas.. It is going to be a big problem because now we are seeing signs of the emotional trauma coming out,” MSF’s Moriana told IPS.

Other victims of the tsunami have completely ignored government recommendations of a buffer zone along the beach and have moved to their former homes or business premises. "Things are good here now," said Mohideen Ajimal of Kalmunai who restarted his wholesale fish business at his partly destroyed house near the beach in February.

He has ignored warnings by the government against moving into the buffer zone, in which buildings and human dwellings are prohibited for safety reasons should another tsunami strike. ”The government has said this, it has said that, if we wait for them to make anything clear we will starve,” Ajimal said referring to the confusion with the buffer zone.

Initially after the tsunami, the zone was to be extended to 200 meters in the north-east of the country. However the ruling has yet to be ratified by parliament.

In areas further north under the control of the rebel Tamil Tigers, the zone is officially 200 meters and strictly imposed.

”There is nothing clear,” Moriana of MSF said.

The Sri Lanka Development Foundation last week wrote to the Human Rights Commission charging that the imposition of the zoning law is a violation of fundamental rights. The letter said that families living in tents have been deprived of a chance to reconstruct houses due to the zoning announcements.

”We need a place near the beach; we are fishermen, there is no place else we can go,” said Vadivel Kavalapulle, who is an internally displaced tsunami survivor from Vishnupuram, Kalmunai.

For the time being some have set up tents where their houses once stood and are patiently waiting for the government to clear the air.

”We don’t know where we are supposed to go. The government has said that it would build houses but we don’t know where or how,” Abdul Majeed from Kalmunai said.

Milla Shabu, another fisherman on Kalmunai beach, made up his mind not to wait any longer. Two weeks ago he started reconstructing his watchtower cum home right at the edge of the beach.

He said that he would only move if he is satisfied with the alternate location.