Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey- 1/27/2005
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Links from Andrew and Annette:
Pro Photographer Dixie's web site
Mondo Challenge set up Andrew and Annette's trip.
Unawatuna is the village where they're staying and working
In the north, Andrew and Annette are working with Norwegian People's Aid. NPAID is partnered with the German organization called Arbeiter Samariter Bund.
Bensonwood.com
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Andrew
We attend the morning “field ops” meeting at Project Galle. Big Alex has identified several new camps, which tend these days to be groups of families who have moved from the larger camps back to the remains of their villages. The Austrian Army is leaving, and would like to leave their water purifier with Project Galle. Doctors Without Borders is traveling from camp to camp with a mobile satellite phone set-up, giving free five-minute phone calls to villagers. The two nurses report seeing several cases of scabies. There’s a big demand for women’s underwear. We are to encourage people asking for gas cookers to use firewood, because gas supplies are erratic and the firewood is plentiful. Annette and I gradually come to understand that although the government is implementing a system for feeding the villagers, many are still not getting consistent supplies of food.
Annette and I spend the day delivering aid to encampments that had recently been identified as needing food and other supplies. At each camp, we talk with the leaders who have previously been selected by the families in the camp: how are things going, what does the camp need, how are the leaders planning to distribute the supplies that we are delivering, do they have ideas for getting back to work.
We take notes. One group has a single toilet for ten families. If we could provide bags of mortar, they could use salvage blocks to build walls around one of the other squat pans that was not damaged by the tsunami, and double the number of toilets available. A jewelry-maker’s machines were swept away by the water. He was washed to the top of a tree by the water. A carpenter lost all of his tools. We see women spinning coir—the fibers from coconut husks—into rope. We hear that many of the spinning machines were damaged by the tsunami. A group of fishing families has lost boats and gear. They know that replacement boats may not soon be forthcoming. They are considering trying to obtain bicycles and fitting them with boxes or small trailers. They could then fish for sardines from the shore, and transport them to the market, or buy fish wholesale from the boats that are back in the water, and sell them at inland markets.
Between camps, Annette and I discuss the idea of providing micro-grants to get some of these people back in business. For many of them, a hundred dollars would go a long way. Perhaps we could give friends back home the opportunity to sponsor small businesses here. In spite of the tremendous amounts of aid flowing into Sri Lanka, our sense is that it may yet be a long time before many of these villagers have the resources to begin working again.
None of the people we meet are supportive of the current government: “Before election, they come around and promise us many things. After election, we don’t see them. If they come here again, we—” The woman pulls her finger across her throat. Just this morning, Eric mentioned that the government passed a new law that makes criticizing the government an imprisonable offense.
Finding the camps is still a challenge, but I have grown weary of fighting the “we need to start writing down directions” battle. Our driver brings us to the general vicinity of the camp, and our translator begins asking directions. Often the answers we receive are contradictory—perhaps because there are usually several paths to the same camp. We do clear up one point of confusion. I had concluded that “Johnson” was the name of all the corner stores, as in “meet me at that Johnson,” or “turn right at the Johnson.” I was misunderstanding the local pronunciation of “junction.”