Tsunami Disaster & Tamil Eelam
Report from the NorthEast
Arjunan Ethirveerasingam
18 February 2005
We have just returned from our first day surveying Tsunami damage in Kalmunai, a
small town on the Eastern Coast of Sri Lanka, and it is very hard to keep from
breaking down. The mind cannot conceive of the human tragedy that occurred here
on 12/26/05. The pictures on TV, the words of the commentators, the words that
you read: none can ever do justice to the vastness and thoroughness of the power
of the waves’ destruction both in physical and emotional terms.
A torn piece of sari flutters in the evening breeze. Warm and inviting the
evening breeze caresses the skin, soft and soothing after the intense heat of
the day. A peaceful tropical evening like any other except that the world is
silent. The sounds of children playing, the smell of dinner cooking, the
families out for an evening stroll down the beach, the groups men gathering in
informal groups to drink tea and talk politics, the pick-up cricket matches in
the sand, the young lovers stealing away for secret rendezvous… they are all
absent and the silence is deafening. No one remains. The few survivors left are
living in the inland camps run by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization and
International NGO’s. Far in the distance a few dogs scurry around and one or two
people pick through the remains of their home.
The only sounds are the crashing of the waves and the sounds of our footsteps as
we pick our way through the desolated remains of thousands of houses and the
dreams and lives of their inhabitants. From 500 yards out signs of water damage
begin to appear on buildings and in yards and the ground is covered in debris
strewn by the rushing waters. And then the houses disappear. Only the faint
outlines of the foundations and partial walls remain. For the next 300 yards we
walk past a landscape so utterly transformed that it is unrecognizable, every
building is flattened.
I had visited Kalmunai in 1998 during the war and had spent an afternoon and
evening on this very beach talking to families and playing cricket with the
children, but nothing is familiar about the scene now. What were once tightly
packed houses lush with trees and flowering plants is now a barren wasteland of
bricks, rocks, concrete, household items and flattened Coconut and Palmyhra
trees. A child’s flip-flop lays on the sand, alone, its match not visible. A
child’s Harry Potter backpack, a young girl’s purse, a pair of pants, and more
beautiful remnants of colorful saris lay strewn on the ground and snagged in the
trees and bushes. But not a wall stands in the last hundred meters of houses as
we approach the sea. Bricks have been broken into small pieces, large pillars
lay flat, entire foundations of buildings lay on their sides uprooted from the
ground, a ten foot portion of a well lays horizontally on the surface looking
like a large pipe rather than a well.
I turn away from the group I’m traveling with. My friends from Operation USA,
Carinne Meyer and Nimmi Gowrinathan, spread out to survey and photograph the
destruction. Carinne & Nimmi are two of the most amazing human beings you will
ever meet. They are two intelligent, powerful, motivated women who give of
themselves to the point of exhaustion. I see them through eyes that are welling
up with tears. Carinne begins to slowly, caringly photograph the destruction in
front of her showing the kindness and consideration that rule her being. The
world must see this, must know the extent of what has happened along the entire
coast of the NorthEast and South of Sri Lanka and the rest of the Indian Ocean.
People will never grasp what happened on 12/26/04. The mind cannot wrap itself
around the enormity of this event. And the enormity of it is in danger of
numbing the world to the continuing pain and suffering of those that remain.
My digital camera won’t work. I keep buying new batteries that are made in Sri
Lanka or India and they only last for a few pictures before they die. I put it
away and continue to walk through the debris. My body feels heavy and tears are
streaming down my cheeks. I cannot stop them. I don’t want to stop them. I stop
and lean against a coconut tree and cry. I cry for the children and their
mothers, the fathers and the grandparents, the strong, the weak, the good and
the bad… all gone… in an instant a beautiful day ended and so did the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people.
I also cry for those left behind. The unknown fisherman we met on the shore who
told us of the death of his daughter and the trauma of losing everything that he
owns. He does not know what to do with himself. His boat and gear are gone as is
his house and daughter. The rest of the family is in the camp, looking to him
for the answers he knows he will never have and a future he cannot contemplate.
His father and grandfather were fishermen and it is all that he knows.
I cry for Prashanthan, a teacher at the local school who I met in 1998 and whose
sister we are staying with, he lost 7 members of his extended family (2 of which
were children) and many students from his school. He tells us of the days after
the Tsunami, of having to pick up over a hundred bodies himself, of burying them
in a mass grave, of finally getting to the point where they had to just douse
the bodies with kerosene and burn them where they lay because there were too
many to bury.
The numbers stagger the mind. It is inconceivable to think that in less than 10
minutes over 200,000 people died. There are millions of personal stories of the
events of that morning, stories of loss, of death, of lives saved and lives
destroyed. Lives and stories that are of no greater or lesser value than yours
or mine but lives that we will never know about. The media never came to
Kalmunai. There was no “story” here, no blond, blue-eyed baby who had lost his
parents, no tourists as there were in the South of Sri Lanka; just tens of
thousands of lives that have ended and lives that can never be the same no
matter the amount of relief that is donated. In some Tamil areas of the
NorthEast the government of Sri Lanka has yet to send any aid or assistance at
all and the people must rely on the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) a
local NGO with offices throughout the world that is funded by the Tamil
Diaspora.
We came from the sea and the sea has risen up to take us back. After 45 minutes
of aimless wandering through the destruction I head for the ocean and the
crashing waves. So peaceful, so powerful. I let the water wash over my feet. It
is the first time I have touched an ocean since the Tsunami hit. Touched the
water that gave life and took life. It has not changed. It remains. Moving
constantly, sustaining the planet, giving life and sustenance to millions. The
sounds of the waves crashing at my feet seem calm and soothing but they bring
terror to the children of the area. Many of the parents have told us that their
children wake up screaming in terror in the middle of the night. It seems
unnatural that something so beautiful and life giving could have been
responsible for so much death and destruction.
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