Tsunami: one year on

It will have escaped no one's notice that this month is the first anniversary of the tidal wave that swept the rim of the Indian Ocean devastating so many communities and taking so many lives. The event touched all of us in some way and the shocked world gave freely to help the survivors. There were reports from London of homeless people contributing their few coins to the collection boxes. KS hears from one man who went out to Sri Lanka to get involved with recovery efforts and we catch up with how the region is getting back on its feet one year on.

A helping hand

London resident Damien Gallagher gave up his job as an internet consultant, “threw caution to the wind” and moved with his partner to Sri Lanka to see what they could do to assist efforts to recover from the tsunami.

It turned out to be string of coincidences that led me to the land once named Serendib by early Arab traders. Sri Lanka had never featured much in my thoughts until I replied to an email at work seeking a volunteer to build a website for a small charity set up in the wake of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami. A couple of months later, in mid-September, I was on a flight with my partner and our one-and-a-half year old daughter, headed to make what small difference we could to the stricken people of that small island.

The Sri Lankans were happy to see us. They are a welcoming people and, even though they’ve seen their fair share of Western aid workers, our arrival caused a real buzz. We had set up base in Ambalangoda, a town on the Southwest coast, not far from Galle whose flooded bus station became one of the lasting images of the force of the tsunami on British television. The scenes — of buses being dragged through the streets, of people desperately clinging on, of others being swept away — become powerful ghosts in the mind when walking those neighbourhoods.

At first, it was difficult to know how to approach people. Acutely aware of their trauma, I was afraid of coming across in the wrong way but the Sri Lankans consistently astounded me by their openness and generosity. They wanted to tell their story and even laugh about it, though a few also cried. Some openly asked for our help and it was, perhaps, the hardest thing to have to say “No” to so many people who had nothing.

The pragmatism (at least on the surface) of the Sri Lankan character somewhat surprised me because it contrasted so highly with the physical scars all around us. A great many build-ings had chunks missing while most of those close to shore had been swept away completely.

Twisted and torn hulls of boats still lay, here and there, within strata of debris lining the high tide mark, comprising everything from bits of masonry to household objects to infinite pieces of coloured plastic, all rounded, worn, made timeless by the sea that had once claim-ed them. And in all this chaos, great chains of refugee camps, made up of wooden huts built by aid workers who arri-ved soon after the event. Squeezed together, overcrowded and mostly without sanitation or electri-city, they formed a picture of life forced back by several decades.

If I had come to Sri Lanka with the idea that we were going to help rebuild, I quickly realized just how naïve this was. The sheer scale of the problem means that only an all-encompassing initiative would make a difference. This is just not happening at the moment with mainly small foreign charities and individuals trying to help on the ground while the money — huge sums donated internationally — is simply not getting through.

The problem with this small-scale aid is that one can quickly stir tensions by being seen to help certain people while others go without. These operations also suffer from a huge lack of coordination, leaving the whole process open to abuse and error while the culture of handouts is in danger of creating a worrying dependence on aid.

So many months afterwards, the need is changing from hous-ing to employment, education and self-sufficiency. This all raised difficult quest-ions, for us, as to who to help and what to give. Having little local knowledge, we teamed up with a Swiss lady who had been in the area for several years and helped us find the right projects and individuals. The £2,000 we brought out went surprisingly far. Among other things, we were able to provide tables and cupboards for 17 refugee families, fund the repair of two homes and buy equipment to enable other individuals to get back to work.

Now, far away from Sri Lanka, I've only my memories
to bring me back to that extraordinary time. As a friend out there had noted, although they may see us as the rich West, the Sri Lankans definitely smile more that anyone back home. This sentiment comes back to me as I remember the moments that have stuck so deeply in my mind. One of them is the children — joyous, full of laughter and an open, loving generosity unheard of in the young of the West. The tsunami, terrible as it was, may now be a chance for that genera-tion to put things right.

Text & photos: Damien Gallagher