ABDF

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Wow, so it’s been a week since I last wrote.  In part, I’ve been very busy, and feeling too lazy to write in the evenings.  Also, the computer on which I send my emails here at the SFS office has become quite buggy, and among other things, shuts down and restarts every few minutes.  I’ve been hoping that it’ll get fixed quickly, but with the other main distraction, the Tamil New Year, I had hoped in vain.  But enough of the kvetch; I’m writing now.

So last Tuesday, the 8^th, I spent the day with Balan, friend and SFS member, in the village of Kaluwankerny, some 10 km or so north of Batti.  It was a special day for the school.  In all of its history, until this year, no student had ever passed the O-level exam.  This is a standard island-wide test at about the 11^th grade.  If you pass it, you go on, with the chance of going to University.  Unless you are very wealthy, if you don’t pass, your education comes to an abrupt halt.  As you can imagine this puts enormous pressure on the kids and has led to the boom in tutoring that I mentioned in earlier dispatches.

Balan’s school, after years of concentrated class work, and extra hours for the teachers, got a 40% pass rate, which for them meant 15 students passed. So this event I went to was a special day of celebration for the school.

In addition, one of my fellow tsunami volunteers, Lorien, had initiated a coconut seedling project for the village and on Tuesday, the final batch was delivered to the school for distribution.  So I was also acting as Lorien’s representative.

I’m glad I was there for Balan.  It was to a large part under his guidance that the school redoubled its efforts to get students to pass the O-level exam.  But I have to say the ceremony was interminable.  Completely in Tamil, except for my two-minute bit (I believe in short speeches) it went on for almost three hours.  And of course, as a special guest, I had a seat on stage, front row, in the middle.  So I had to look interested. I’m afraid I almost dozed off four times; twice during the principles’ 45 minutes ramble.

This is the way it’s done properly in Sri Lanka.  All such celebrations are done before the whole community and everyone of any importance, whether connected to the celebration or not, gives a speech.  The principle, who I had met earlier that morning and in truth was a pleasant enough fellow, gave a typical speech.  He declaimed in a monotone, and stared, not at the assembled students or the teacher he was supposed to be honoring, but vaguely to the left, out the window.  I’m not sure he was even paying attention to himself. Certainly no one else was; the ceremony lost its appeal to the kids after the first half hour; they were chattering away the whole time.  Even the teachers were talking amongst themselves after the first hour.

After what seemed forever, the speeches were over.  The teachers, school officials and I retired to the school’s hall and had a lunch, which was over quickly.  Then I helped Balan hand out the last of the coconut seedlings.  Fortunately there were no speeches, just a line of village women eager to plant their seedlings.

All in all it was a long day, even though I returned home at about 3:30.  To be honest if it weren’t for the fact that this was Balan’s special day, I would have happily skipped the whole thing.  As it was, I am glad that I was able to share in Balan’s triumph.

Last Wednesday afternoon I had my conversation course at Synergy with the kids.  One guy, Nero, hadn’t made it to the previous weeks’ lesson.  The reason is that he had chicken pox.  In Sri Lanka, unlike in the West, chicken pox is an adult disease.  I remember when I got it is a child; I think I was about 5 or six, and recall how very painful all the itching was. I’ve since been told, as we all have I’m sure, that chicken pox is much, much worse to get as an adult.  I can only imagine.  Nero was knocked off his feet for over a week and when he showed up for class Wednesday, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  He had lost a huge amount of weight and looked almost skeletal.  His cheeks were sunken in, and his skin had a wan pallor.  He was still pretty weak, and got tired easily.  I was really shocked.  It made me glad that I got it as a child in the West.  And kids today are even luckier, as they now have a vaccine for chicken pox.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

As I mentioned at the beginning of this letter, this is the Tamil New Year.  The actual day was last Sunday, the 13^th, starting about 3PM.  The Tamil calendar is based on the moon, hence the odd timing.

Every year for the New Year Siva comes to Sri Lanka to visit his family.  Siva Ramammoorthy is the man who built the house I live in, and his family occupies the first floor.  He had to flee Sri Lanka during the 90s and wound up as a refugee in Ireland.  There he became a citizen, and now works with at-risk youth, trying to keep them out of the prison system. He’s very much a social activist, and is especially known in Batticaloa.  Immediately after the tsunami, he came to Batti with a ton of aid, and he with some friends formed the SFS (Sri Lankan Friendship Society), which is one of our major partners here.  I first met Siva in 2005 after the tsunami, when I and my fellow volunteers were looking for a place to live.  Siva offered to let us stay on the second floor of his house on the lagoon, and the rest is history.

Siva brought two people from Ireland, Pauline and Ciaran (pronounced Kieran) who are sister and brother of his (Siva’s) girlfriend.  This is their first time in Sri Lanka. They are staying up on the second floor with me.  I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them, they’re both fantastic people, and very up for adventure and not at all intimidated by their surroundings. I’m adding them to this email list, so a big hello to them, although they won’t see this until they gat back to Ireland.

As I said, Sunday was the start of the New Year.  In the morning we didn’t do too much, but many people came by the house; visiting friends and family is a big part of the holiday.  And Siva is very well known throughout the District, in part due to his social activism, both before he was forced to leave and since.

At about three we took a ritual bath.  One by one we stood at the well, in front of Siva’s amma (mother) who is the matriarch of the family.  She placed pieces of leaf on the top of each foot, and on top of our heads.  Then there was a splashing on the head of oil (don’t know what kind) and finally three dousings with well water, while amma gave us her blessing for a successful New Year.  Each of us in turn received this, and then we scampered upstairs to take a real shower and put on our new clothes.  In common with many cultures worldwide, on New Years you put on a set of new clothes.  I didn’t have a full set of new clothes of course, but I had gone to town and bought a new shirt, which I put on.

Gathered back downstairs, we each received from Siva’s amma a small bundle.  It was a packet consisting of a beetle leaf which had inside a handful of seeds, a flower, and some money.  Each of these things represents good things for the New Year; the beetle leaf is luck, the seeds, growth, the flower, happiness, and the money, wealth.

Then the whole family got into a borrowed van, and we toddled off to the Kali Kovil for puja.  Kali is a fascinating goddess; she is both mother and destroyer of the universe.  Usually depicted coal black, with many, many arms and a ferocious grimace, she wears a garland of either severed heads or skulls.  Her many hands hold various symbolic items; a drum for time, a skull for mortality, a lightning bolt for knowledge, etc.  She is often pictured seated or standing, with one foot resting over the body of a dwarf, which represents ignorance and the triumph over it.

Yet despite this intimidating appearance, Kali is a very popular goddess, perhaps only second to elephant-headed Ganesh.  For Kali is seen as destroyer, but it is understood that without destruction there can be no renewal and growth, no change in the world, and no change in one’s fortune. So perhaps you could best summarize Kali as Change, sometimes for ill, sometimes for better, but Change nonetheless.

The kovil complex itself consists of a large walled area.  In the center is the main temple, with the statue of Kali inside, hidden behind a screen.  To one side is a smaller temple to the god Ganesh, but in a wide semi-circle, with the Kali temple in the center, are a series of small alcoves, each containing a small statue of Kali as she has appeared through the eons to come to the aid of mankind in different forms. The area is cool and shady and generally very quiet, except for street noise, which can get to be quite annoying.

Puja is what Hindus call worship.  Our western analogy would be to go to church service.  However in Hinduism, you can go to kovil at any time for worship as an individual.  There are regular times of worship, led by a priest, but one can also worship at off-times, as it were.  Individual puja itself is relatively quick and simple and varies from person to person, but usually consists of a small offering, often of flowers, a prayer or two, and then smudging yourself on the forehead with a paste, often made of sandalwood. As you exit the kovil, there is a brass bell you ring, and frequently worshipers will then circumambulate the kovil in a clockwise direction.

After kovil, we dropped some of the family back off at the house, and the rest of us continued on, driving to friends’ houses for a visit.  We primarily visited the houses of SFS members such as Aneesha, Balan, and Sasi.  At each house we were presented with snack foods and soda, and got very full very fast. The visiting kept going on until about 9 that evening, upon which we returned home. By the time we got home, I was pretty tired and quite frankly visited out.

On Monday Siva took everyone in the van to Pasakudah.  Some of you may recall Pasakudah from my emails after the tsunami.  It is a gorgeous, picture-perfect beach north of Batti.  Before the civil conflict, there was a strip of vacation hotels on the beach which catered to vacationing Sri Lankans.  Considered one of the finest beaches on the island, to this day many Sri Lankans, Singhalese and Tamil alike will sigh and say “Ah, Pasakudah…” with a dreamy expression on their faces.  During the conflict the hotels were utterly destroyed by the back-and-forth fighting.  To go to Pasakudah now is an experience in contradiction.  Standing on the beach looking over the water you behold a large crescent-shaped beach with crystal water and gentle waves lapping the shockingly white sand.  Then you turn and face inland, and you are confronted by the empty, overgrown, shell-pocked shells of the hotels.  To me it’s a symbol of what was, what could have been, and what has been wasted.

We stayed at the more popular, accessible stretch of beach, a half mile from the ruins.  Pasakudah is very popular with the locals; its orientation and shape mean that the waters are shallow for more than a quarter mile out, and the waves normally less than a foot high.  And surprisingly, very few Sri Lankans can swim.  Even the fishermen.  As a result, few Sri Lankans will go more than waste deep into the water, which is very warm and clear.  Of the group, only Siva, Pauline, Ciaran and I knew how to swim, so we had great fun teaching the kids a few rudimentary strokes.  I myself taught Murali, friend and SFS member, how to float on his back in the water.  As both white people and swimmers, we attracted a lot of attention, with many of the local guys trying to imitate our swimming strokes.  Men, by the way, wear shorts or swimming trunks; women swim fully clothed, usually in a sort of sundress or Punjabi (that’s the tunic with baggy pants you sometimes see).

It was a ton of fun, and we could easily have spent all day in the waves with the kids, but we of the pasty complexions (mean the two Irish folks and I) quickly began to burn.  By evening we were all practically glowing. My burns were primarily on my face, back of the neck, and forearms.  We applied lots of aloe vera on ourselves, and to go to sleep I took a pill.  Even though the day exhausted me, my burns were such that I wanted to make sure than when I fell asleep, I stayed so until morning.

Luckily by the next day almost all the discomfort was gone.  I was fortunately burned more dramatically than seriously, if you take my meaning.

Many of you don’t know, but there’s been a slight change in one of our projects. I have mentioned before our electrification project at Peace Village, a small tsunami resettlement site.  There were some 20 houses that needed to get hooked up with the electrical grid.  Our funds would have only covered 16 of the houses, so I urged the village head men to seek someone to provide for the remaining houses.  With a bit of advice from me, as well as a pep talk translated by Aneesha of brain curry fame, they found a Norwegian group that was happy to electrify all 20 of the remaining houses.  And since part of the ABDF mission is to act as a conduit for other organizations in Sri Lanka, I think it was well done.  Plus, I’m always happy to spend someone else’s money rather than our own.  That frees up the money for other work.

So now our electrification project has turned into a road-building project.  When discussing the village, I had always mentioned that the other big problem there is a lack of real roads.  Currently the roads there are packed dirt, which isn’t very functional, especially when it rains and the water pools into for long lakes of sludge.  Ultimately, I would love to see real, actual, blacktop lanes.  However, the cost is prohibitive, both for the village and the ABDF.  So that’s a long term goal for the village.

In nearby Kattankudy, the local hospital was completely wrecked by the tsunami, and the Norwegian Red Cross is now rebuilding it.  The work involves demolishing the ruins, the rumble from which would normally be used as landfill and buried.  The Norwegian Red Cross was approached by the villagers of Peace Village, and agreed to let them have the rubble for free to construct gravel roads, provided the villagers haul the rubble away.  This is where we are stepping in.  Some cartloads have already been taken to the village, using money collected from the villagers.  However at that rate it will take a year to cart all the material, and the Red Cross is almost finished with demolition work, and wants to clear the hospital property ASAP.  So rather than use the ABDF funds for partial electricity, we’re going to pay for over 200 cartloads of the rubble to be taken and used for roads.  This is starting today, Thursday.  We think that this should be enough material to gravel down the two main roads that cross through the village.  Gravel roads are a short- to medium-term solution at best, but they can last up to five years, and provide greater drainage and stability than mere dirt.  This is will allow the village elders to figure out the next step and start to save money.

It’s ironic, because Ollikulam, the hamlet which now contains Peace Village, was formerly a Muslim community.  In the early 90s when the LTTE turned against their Muslim supporters, the place was ethnically cleansed, along with several nearby Muslim villages.  The Muslim residents of Ollikulam fled to Kattankudy, where the only land available was along the beach.  These folks, of course, were decimated by the tsunami and now the survivors of both tragedies are moving back to their original town in their second round of displacement.  Their lands long since settled by Tamil refugees from Singhalese areas, the old properties were unavailable, so community leaders bought the 10 acres now known as Peace Village.  It’s a shame it took the waves to get these people back home.

Tuesday, the 15^th I went down to Kattankudy to view the hospital site, and then to Ollikulam to see what has been done with the loads already brought over.  At the hospital site, I happened to run into one Mr. Haroon, who is a local city council member. He was curious about me, as are all Sri Lankans about foreigners.  So I explained the project, and invited him to come with me to Ollikulam, to which he agreed.

At Peace Village we met up with the village headmen, a nice group of gentlemen.  We sat in the shade of the mosque, sipped 7-Up, chatted about the village, and watched a group of boys play cricket.  We were there about 2 hours; it was very cool in the shade, relaxing to sit and stretch out our legs, and watch the game.  It was quite too; the only sounds you heard were the normal small sounds of village life, the birds chirping, and the shouts of the boys at cricket.

I want to insert here a very grateful thank-you to the ABDF from Peace Village; they say that if we hadn’t agreed to electrify the 16 houses, they’d never have gotten the gumption to find a donor for the remaining four, and thus they’d never have gotten the Norwegians to hook up all 20 houses, leading to their road-to-be, leading to the street lights, as you shall see.  I tried to tell them that they deserve the credit, as they got up and went out to find the donor for the four houses.  I think they got the point, but they still think we the ABDF were the trigger.

As we headed back to the motorbikes, Mr. Haroon turned to me and said in his excellent English, “You know, I’ve just decided that I will buy street lights for the lamp posts. I counted posts, and think they need 15 of them.”  I was very surprised and pleased, as no one had mentioned this need. There are no street lights in Peace Village, and at night it’s pitch-black.  It’s actually more of a security problem than anything, as the place is in the countryside and open to anyone who walks through.  There are anti-Muslim elements still active in the District, such as the LTTE and TMVP, and a history of Muslim massacres during the 90s.  So street lighting will improve security immeasurably. I really hope he comes through, and since he gave me his card, I know how to bother him until he does.

So: Yay!  Another good thing for these people!  Of course, all I can take credit for is inviting Mr. Haroon to see our project; I think it was the quiet atmosphere of a happy, functioning, peaceful, village that actually did it.  But that doesn’t matter; it makes no difference who does the work, as long as it gets done, yes?

I got a call yesterday from Aneesha, who told me the village headmen now think of me as their good luck charm.  This is meant mostly in jest of course, and I’m flattered, but it also means that I’m now part of the web of friendship, obligation, responsibility, and privilege of the village.  And for someone from the individualist West, it’s kind of an intimidating thought.  I mean, it’s not like I’m a village official or responsible for the village or anything, but it does mean that I should go down once or twice a month, sit with the elders, have some tea, and keep up with village doings, even if there are no ongoing projects.   At least I hope that’s all that means.  I do expect them to propose more projects, once the road is successfully finished.  In fact, I’ve encouraged it.  Of all our projects thus far, the Peace Villagers at Ollikulam have been the most responsive and timely.  If I need information, they get it to me.  If I have questions, or need to go down for pictures or whatever, they are always accommodating. This tells me that they are in great need, are willing to work at filling the need, and value our help very much.

Ha!  Take that, Muslim extremists! Americans are perfectly happy to be friends with Muslims, and extend a helping hand with no strings attached! The good people on both sides, the residents of Peace Village on one, and the ABDF and it’s supporters on the other, will shine a light on the lies and show them for what they are; smoke and mirrors to divide people. And on both sides the light will help dispel the fear and distrust engendered by the extremists of both.  So take that!

Harumph!  I got all high and mighty there, didn’t I?  But I am serious, and I believe that it’s the small things like this that will help both sides bridge the current chasm between us. And now when some extremist iman comes to preach in Ollikulam and tells the folks there that we Westerners are the Great Satan, the people will look at each other and say to him “That’s not true, they’ve been helping us more than you have.”

So bravo to The American-Batticaloa Development Fund, and bravo to all of you who have given support!  See?  It’s working!

So I’m going to close this now.  I have a meeting in 20 minutes, then I’ll try to head into town to email this out, as the SFS computer isn’t quite fixed yet.  At worst, I’ll send this tomorrow morning.

xoxoxoxoxo

B.