4 years on...

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 26^th 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.