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Field Report:

NEW SARID TSUNAMI RELIEF GOODS EMPHASIZE CHILDREN

Vinod Moonesinghe, Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 14, 2005

The SARID Tsunami Relief team had decided to concentrate their relief efforts on Pothuvil, one of the smaller, hardest hit areas of the worst affected Amparai district on the east coast of Sri Lanka (see FIELD REPORT, January 7, 2005 and FIELD REPORT, January 9, 2005).

Emphasis on Schoolchildren

Based on the requests of DIFSO (District Fisheries Solidarity Organisation) who is managing relief distribution in these communities as well as the affected people themselves, we decided to lay emphasis on food and schoolchildren’s needs (the school year started on January 10) in this consignment. These were:

Food stuff: Rice, Potatoes, Dhal, Bombay Onions, Sugar, Tea leaves

Milkfood: Nespray, Lactogen

Footwear: Rubber Slippers in assorted sizes for children & adults

Schoolbooks and Stationary: Exercise Books 80pp, 120pp and 160pp,
Art Books, Pencils, Crayons

Foster Child

We set off for Pothuvil at 10 am on 13th January. We followed our earlier route, through Ratnapura, Balangoda, Haldummulla, Moneragala and Lahugala, stopping at Belihul Oya, just before Haldummulla, for lunch at the Rest House.

At Wellawaya, east of Moneragala, we turned off south to Balaharuwa to check the situation of a child living there, who is sponsored by one of our donors. The child being in good health, we went back north to Moneragala, where we spent the night.

The next morning we set out for Pothuvil, breakfasting beside of the road inside the Lahugala sanctuary, near an ancient hilltop dagoba. We saw no elephants this time, but plenty of birds.

Pothuvil to Arugam Bay

We drove into Pothuvil and up Arugam Bay Road in good time. At the District Fisheries Solidarity (DIFSO) Tsunami Salvation Centre we unloaded the goods, labelled "SARID", we had brought. Across the road was the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP – People’s Liberation Front) office. As we were unloading, a procession of JVP volunteers, perhaps 200 of them, came marching up past their office from their temporary billet at a local school.

We were told that the Co-ordinator (Mr Jabbar) and the Chairperson (Mr. Subaideen) of DIFSO had gone to Ullae, Arugam Bay, so once we had finished unloading, we drove up the Arugam Bay Road, accompanied by the Secretary (Ms Nusrath Begum) and another DIFSO member.

Near the Arugam Bay Special Task Force (STF) camp, we had to park and proceed on foot to where the bridge was. The bridge and the road on the southern side were severely damaged and it was not possible to cross. This bridge was an important one, as the road was the main thoroughfare to Panama in the South, which was now cut off. We were told a temporary road had been cut through the jungle to the other side. However, supplies to Panama still went by air.

We waited for a boat to carry us over the lagoon to Ullae. While we were there a detachment of volunteers came up, bound for clearing-up duties in Ullae. An Indian Air Force MI-8 helicopter took off from the further shore, where it had landed to unload its cargo. Unlike the the police manning the crossing point, the naval personnel, who took us across in a fibre-glass fishing boat, were quite polite & helpful.

Arugam Bay devastated

The Arugam Bay resort, the old surfers’ paradise, was in a complete shambles. Some of the walls of the tourist hotels were still standing, but that was all. The Arugam Bay Main Street had been destroyed completely, being a slough of mud at some points, a chasm at others, with just a little of the tarmac remaining. We saw just one small shop that had survived. Most of the houses in the township were completely destroyed. The local library had just one room intact. It was being used as an alfresco office by some volunteers, the wall giving the volunteers a modicum of shade.

A number of people had put up tents on the sites of their old houses. Several fibre-glass boats were lodged in between buildings, with gaping holes in them, most of them upside down. The devastation was far worse than at Jaladeen Square. Bodies were still being found. We were told there were still several bodies floating in the bay.

Rations books and surveys

A local school, Al-Aqsa Vidyalaya, had been turned into an ad-hoc administrative centre. Ration books had been issued by the Government to Tsunami victims and several people had come here to collect their rations. These, we were told, were not quite adequate. However, the near-starvation conditions of a week ago were no longer there.

Some Government volunteers from Pothuvil were carrying out a survey of the ration collectors. They told us that the houses destroyed had more rooms than elsewhere, because more people lived in a single housing unit here. They were rather hazy about the actual number of refugees.

On our way back to Pothuvil, we came upon a number of volunteers who had climbed aboard a tractor commandeered by the armed forces. They were quite cheerful and looked forward to going about their mission of mercy. Not all of them were young.

The DIFSO Administrative Officer (Mr AG Iqbal) was quite busy back at the TSC. A small hotel owner had come to the TSC to get a Tamil translation of the deposition she had made at the Police Station. Mr Iqbal was the only person there reasonably fluent in Sinhalese and he also asked us for help with the more difficult words.

He told us that DIFSO had managed to hire an agricultural pump to help clean out the wells, but it was not working properly. The DIFSO volunteers were tired out by cleaning out wells manually.

DIFSO was carrying out a survey to find out exactly what would be needed in the immediate future and what would be required in the longer term as earlier surveys had been ad hoc and carried out under pressure.

In the afternoon we drove back to Colombo, going via Hambantota, Matara and Galle because Nirosha needed to go home to help clear up in her tsunami-hit hometown.