It is
strange that the most vivid memories that stay with you are the ones which have
caused you the most torment. I can
remember it as if it were yesterday. At
4.30am on the 26th of December 2004, my
phone started to ring….. It was my mother on the line from Colombo
frantically saying that there was ‘severe flooding’ in the east of Sri Lanka and
my grandmother had been affected. The
rest of the day will always be a blur to me on a snowy Boxing Day morning as
reports came in of the tsunami.
I
took one of the first flights out to Sri Lanka still unsure as to the
gravity of the whole situation. The effect of the tsunami were realized when I
boarded a half empty Sri Lankan airlines plane to Colombo.
It seems that there were at least 150 last minute cancellations. Touching down early morning in Colombo, I was struck by
the air of gloom that seemed to be in the air of the airport as staff seemed to
be moving around filled with some sort of despondency, almost glad to see the
arrival of someone to their country after the rapid departures of so many
people. The atmosphere in Colombo
was tinged with an element of sadness, as everywhere from rickshaws to private
houses were flying the traditional white flag of mourning.
After an arduous 12 hour drive to the east
to search for my Grandmother, what confronted us was beyond description like a
scene out of a movie. The sheer brute
force of nature was easy to see. One can
only contemplate that in the face of such raw energy it was very apparent that man
is but a helpless creature. In an almost
catatonic state, people were sifting through the destroyed remains of their
homes. The detritus of disaster occasionally offered up possessions like
mangled bicycles or touching mementoes of a life before the horror swept
through. All too often, the smell of the decomposing remains of those who were
not quick enough to escape the deluge, were yielded to those entrusted with
search and rescue. On one occasion, they
had run out of burial cloth and had to make do with bed sheets and other bits
of material. Eventually the number of
bodies became so great, that excavators were used to dig the graves and dump
trucks were used to bury the bodies. On
average, everyone in the first couple of days of the disaster must have
individually handled 100 bodies, from young children to pregnant mothers to old
people. The damage was so tremendous
that even 5 weeks after the disaster struck, remains were being discovered.
The East of Sri Lanka bore the brunt of the
tsunami with the village
of Marathumunai being the
first to be hit. In one part of that
village, almost 3000 people were killed as the only evidence of the existence
of the village being the slab of concrete that signified the floors of their
houses.
This unprecedented disaster robbed the
country of children and elders. It was striking in all the villages one visited
along this 25 mile coastal stretch in the east of Sri Lanka at how few children there
were. Parents told stories of how they tried to hold on to their children, but
were forced to let go when the waves crashed into them. Young bodies were
tossed helplessly and washed up days later, crushed under the force of the
water. “I could not hold on to him,” one grieving father at one of the camps
cried to me. “I should not be alive. What kind of father am I that I live while
my child, who looked to me to protect him, lies buried somewhere?” One of the
first rescue workers on the scene told of how he found the small bodies of 4
children clinging to their father underneath the rubble of their house. Elderly
people also were a rare sight. They, too, were unable to run fast enough and
were either swept away or crushed in their beds. Whole generations were
lost.
There
are stories of courage in the face of adversity though, like the story of a courageous primary school teacher
who tried to get his 40 charges to safety by helping them on to the roof of
their school house. The wave claimed the lives of all the children. When the
teacher was found he was clutching a child under each arm, unwilling to
relinquish his responsibility to the children he loved even when his own life
was at stake. Villagers still speak of him in terms of a saint. He could have
easily escaped but resolutely stood and faced death rather than abandon those
he had sworn to protect.
It is said that every Sri Lankan has been
affected directly or indirectly by this tsunami. There are whole families that have been wiped
out (30 – 40 members) or where the grandfather and the grandchild have survived. I was
able to find my grandmother, but lost 5
members of my extended family. My aunt who was 6 months pregnant
miraculously survived because her husband managed to get to safety to avoid the
rising water, losing his life in the process.
Today 4 years on, I find it hard to tell my 3 year old cousin that his
father died in order to save him, when he asks me about him.
There is
something humbling about visiting a refugee camp to hand out relief aid, and
the person who receives it is a relative of yours or a friend whom you played
with when you were young. How can you
explain giving out clothes and food as charity to the people that you
know? It is also very distressing. How do you comfort them? How do you explain to your family that some
members had to die and others did not?
How do you comfort parents who had a choice to make between which
children to save?
Yet, amongst all that
carnage; examples of mercy were evident. The number of tremendous people who
had gathered to provide support and assistance at such a time of need was
evident of a higher spiritual cause that united
us in the humanity of mankind. The response of the local
people and organisations was amazing, as
everywhere you went, in their own way people are trying to help.
For once regardless of ethnicity, religion or language, people were
uniting to help each other. ‘These are
my fellow countrymen. The wave was
indiscriminate in its action, so why should we discriminate in our response’,
was the most common expression.
These
lessons of generosity, humanity and humility are lessons
of a higher spirituality. I remember thinking to myself that these words gave
light at a time of darkness.
However 4 years on whilst many agencies are
wrapping up their tsunami programs and going home, the work has not yet
finished. Not everyone has been given a
house and a new livelihood. To make
matters worse, the conflict has meant that attention has been shifted away from
the tsunami reconstruction.
4 years on, we remember that for a very
brief period the tsunami had achieved in a couple of minutes what people for
the past 57 years had failed to do ‘Unite the Sri Lankan People’
4 years on, it is this that we need to
remember when we remember those who perished.
Cities can be rebuilt. It is the
wounds of the heart and the mind which needs to be addressed. Perhaps those who perished can serve as a
reminder of the unity of diversity that we need to practice. For it
can only be with this unity that will help to lift Sri Lanka from the hole it has fallen
into. It will require the combined
effort of everyone to heal the internal scars that has affected the nation.
