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Sri
Lanka Journal:
Entry Number 4
Visiting the Devastation - Part 2
Meeting
the Survivors
Our visit to the Galle Fort lasted about a half an hour.
Rifky is
building a house here which is really a reconstruction of an old house.
The builder was there and Rifky was discussing the plans with him.
Hassan, Mr. Perara and I waited in the hot street. Hassan and I joked
about the near miss car accident. He came up with a phrase describing
just how close we came to an accident. He said "It was 99.9 percent."
This actually was pretty much how I felt.
The 99.9 percent
concept also describes a lot of how people were involved in the
tsunami. One lady was at home but her 80 year old sister had gone down
the road to the store. The wave engulfed her and she died. It seems too
difficult to conceive of having a brother or sister with you for so
long and then just having them disappearing in a catastrophe which took
about 15 minutes to complete. I heard many such stories from families
which remain very close knit with many generations staying together in
the same place.
We left the Galle Fort and went to St. Aloysius College, which is a
large Catholic junior college but there were children of all ages
coming and going in their white and blue uniforms. We went there to
arrange to meet a man from Rotary named Mr. Kudachchi. We learned that
he was at a small hotel nearby with another man from Rotary in Austria
named Gerd K.Gregor. Gerd was here to see about planning on building
houses financed by his Rotary chapter in Austria. We drove there after
letting Hassan off to catch a bus to his home town where we would meet
him the next day.
We picked up Mr. Gregor and Mr. Kudachchi and proceeded along the
coastal highway. Mr. Kudachchi has his own security business but from
dawn to dusk he has been helping tsunami victims since December 26. He
is seemingly tireless and has done everything from showing relief
workers around to delivering food and clothing. From what I could tell,
he just moves from one project to the next. Even though we were not on
his agenda, he managed to meld the tour for his fellow Rotarian from
Austria and us. We all drove together in Rifky"s car.
First Contact
Soon Mr. Kudachchi directed us to pull off in front of a
bunch of
buildings which looked like a school. It turns out they constituted a
bus station which had never been used. These buildings form the center
of a fairly large refugee camp. Most people lived in the large blue
tents supplied by the Italian government. There was a big Italian flag
flying there and everyone kept telling us how grateful they were to the
Italian government. The tents were nice because you could actually
stand up in them. However, they got incredibly hot during the day so
everyone spent most of the day outside.
There was a woman washing
dishes at an open pump. I asked her if I could take her picture. I am
very sensitive about taking pictures of these people since I feel their
privacy is completely gone as it is and there have probably been
countless relief workers, press and others taking their pictures for
two months. She smiled and indicated I could take the photo.
The tent entrances face each other with about a 15 foot space between.
It makes for a long narrow walkway and they have put plastic to form a
covered space. It is like a small village with one very narrow street.
Before we explored the tent area, we went over to the complex of
buildings from the defunct bus stop.
There was a large open courtyard where I think buses were supposed to
park. Several children were playing there. A few boys were playing
cricket - which is a national passion here. The boy who was up to bat
was holding a flat board as a cricket bat. I managed to take his
picture at the moment he smacked the ball. We were introduced to the
leaders of the camp. Each tent settlement governs itself. I thought I
would find relief workers sitting at tables holding clip boards and
organizing everything but that is not the case.
The depths of sadness
We said that we wanted to interview some people who had lost
relatives in the disaster. Everyone looked at us as though we were
crazy since almost everyone there had lost someone in the tragedy. We
were informed, however, that we were the first to actually want to
speak with people about the loss of their family members. The people
were very really fascinated with my mission to speak with people who
had experienced these losses. I felt very awkward since in my
experience talking with family members from 9-11 and before when I
worked in hospice care, I never had a group of people standing around
through the whole process while I spoke with a grieving person. At any
rate, a woman came by and she had lost her six year old son. She did
not speak English but Rifky translated for me. I asked her how old the
boy was. Then I asked if the body had been recovered. It had been
recovered but was placed in the mass graves which had been dug out by
back hoes. I told her I was very sorry about her loss and that I would
remember her and remember her son. She looked a little confused and I
thought she expected something else from me. However, she said that she
was shocked that I had actually asked her these questions. She
expressed a lot of gratitude to me and really became more animated. I
was to experience this same reaction again and again.
Unrequited Grief
Thee people here have, in fact, lost everything. There homes
are
gone and most have lost their jobs. Although they were basically
neighbors before the tsunami, they were now living on top of one
another. There was no way to establish personal space or a sense of
family. In a way, people standing around listening to my conversation
with this woman was not at all unusual. It was the norm here in the
camp. Sri Lankans are very enmeshed in their families and the death of
someone is taken very seriously by the community. It is not unusual for
people to travel from the other side of the country to attend a funeral
of someone they have known only slightly. The family holds an open
house before and after the funeral which can go on for a month.
Everyone has the attitude that no matter how little you knew a person,
death was the end of all opportunity with that person and it should be
marked. This whole attitude is a very healthy hallmark of this society.
The tragedy now is that with people living in communities where
everyone has lost someone, the whole process of sharing grief has been
subverted. What I would soon learn is that there was a hierarchy of
loss which had to do with the numbers lost in one family. One woman
lost all eight of her children, her husband and mother. She is referred
to with some deference in the community. But, then, going by the
numbers does not begin to address the issue of a one child losing one
mother or a spouse losing the partner of 45 years. Grief cannot be
quantified.
Who has permission to be Sad?
I am reminded that many in our American society do not
experience
the loss of someone close until they are in their forties. Then, it is
likely you will lose a parent. My own mother died five years ago at 91
and I was in my 50's. With all my work in this field, I was completely
unprepared for hat experience of real grieving. However, when we pass
fifty years of age, I think we are expected to take this loss in
stride. The temptation here is to concentrate on women who have lost
children and the middle aged man who has lost his wife is expected to
bear that alone. Here in these camps, there is numbness which seems to
have everyone living in slow motion.
My question to myself is,
"Can unexpressed grief be causing this community inertia? Are the
overwhelming tasks of starting from scratch made even more
insurmountable by a sadness which has no where to go?"
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