Well-Being For All

World Accord sends Canadian Youth to Sri Lanka...twice! Part 2

The Spirit of Hope: Sara Maki’s Tsunami Journey
*as seen on World Class documentary

Part 2:

In Sri Lanka…

To appreciate the social, historical and political context that I was about to enter, I did some background reading and research on Sri Lanka. I read about the historical context and the ancient legacy of Kandian Kings living in the Sri Lankan highlands and erecting cities 2,000 years ago. I read about the rich religious tapestry of Sri Lanka and its claim to house “Buddha’s tooth relic” in a sacred temple. As I read about the British colonial encounter to establish the tea trade in Sri Lanka, I began to understand the more recent history of the ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Sri Lankan Tamils that had only recently reached a cease fire through a peace accord in 2002. I entered Sri Lanka with a heavy heart, feeling that Sri Lanka was not only plagued with a history of oppression and misfortune, but was now faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of recovering lives and livelihoods after one of the most devastating natural disasters the world has ever seen. With the death toll calculated at nearly 33, 000, the number of displaced persons at nearly 750,000 and several thousand registered as still missing, this disaster did not discriminate against class, race or religion and affected the entire country. The projection for full recovery of economic status and social infrastructure was between 5 to 10 years. I was prepared to be met with grief, shock and despair.


My project

As I began to do my volunteer work in the field which comprised of collecting personal stories and accounts of the tsunami for documentation, I was exposed to the western coast of the island, following Colombo south to Matara, and saw row after row of temporary blue tents, rubble from houses and grave sites. I was shocked at the amount of devastation still visible six months after the tsunami. I wondered with all of the relief, funding and mobilization happening at the international and national level, why hadn’t more been done? While I worked in the office of SAPSRI on the annual report and project proposals, I could see the massive input of effort and response of this NGO and many others. I did not see the correlation of effort and funds on paper matching up with the reality in the field. And perhaps this is the biggest challenge in international development work: so often theory is not reality.

In Sri Lanka, I slowly learned that there were many impediments to effective and timely response. Citing security concerns, in the wake of December 2004 the government imposed a “buffer zone” of 100 metres for the southern and western coasts and a 200-metre area for the eastern coast. What this means is that all people who have for countless generations lived on these beaches must move further inland, jeopardizing their traditional livelihoods. There were so many NGO’s working independently in specific communities that a coherent and coordinated effort on rebuilding was difficult. This led to some families receiving two or possibly three new houses as there was little intra-organization information sharing and transparency. Compounding that, only selective regions were experiencing reconstruction, most notably in the Sinhalese dominant area of the south, while the Tamil populations in the north were left with much less support and representation.

posted by World Accord Staff @ 4:12 PM