Reflections from a hammock

So, roughly half way through my time here, and I was lying back in the hammock in the YMCA courtyard tonight, nursing a cold beer after returning from dinner with the family of one of our local shelter foremen, and mulling over what I've seen and learnt over the past month and a half. And I do mean seen AND learnt, as everything I've seen since arriving in Sri Lanka has been a learning experience.

There was the initial impact of the heat and humidity of Colombo after flying in at 11.00pm, which hit you like a damp sponge as you walked out of the air conditioned airport. A different kind of humidity to Bangkok, perhaps due to its proximity to the sea, and the heat seemed to hang heavier in the night air than I recall from any previous location of my experience.

Then there was my first experience with Sri Lankan (or is it sub-continent?) disorganisation when the volunteer organisation that I had arranged to work with seemed to simply disappear from the radar. Even after all the different people and NGOs I have come into contact with, and who I have been conversing with over different relief areas, on both the east and west coasts, I have heard no mention of this organisation at all. They were certainly real enough when they sent me the letter confirming my placement with them that got me my 3 month visa, however their seemingly lackadaisical (or is it lazy?) attitude did mean a wasted few days in Colombo when I first arrived, right at the time when assistance of any kind was being sought in so many places around the country.

And then of course there was my first hand experience of an actual natural disaster area itself. Even arriving 6 weeks after the tsunami, at a time when so many NGOs and other volunteers had already done so much work to clean up the mess and address the immediate basic human needs, it was still plain to see just how much devastation had been caused. Whether it was looking across a whole neighbourhood of destroyed houses while still standing some 2 or 3 kilometres from the sea, or walking past the tents scattered amongst the wreckage, tents that were now home to families with grinning children who ran out to wave hello to the seemingly funny white man passing by, it was very clear just how much everyone's life had been completely and utterly changed forever.

Even putting aside the 5,000 or so deaths that occurred in the general area around the Kallar district (25,000 around Sri Lanka in total), those that survived face such a huge challenge simply to go on with their lives. Their world has been turned upside down, literally... their possessions have been lost or destroyed... in many cases their entire livelihoods have been wiped out. They do not - and perhaps never will - look to the sea quite the same way again. Their apprehension is palpable, and their fear totally understandable. Parents now demand that their children are home by dark. Many would cry out in horror if their child even considered going for a swim in the ocean.

But things do change, and time does make a difference. I probably should have noticed it first just from my ongoing interactions with the local kids while walking through the village. Their increasing boldness and willingness to engage in a little more conversation with the international volunteers than their earlier hesitant "Hello" and "What's your name?" of my initial few days; the wide-eyed and innocent smiles on the faces of the children that slowly and almost unknowingly crept across to their parent's faces, at least in some form or other. However it was brought to my conscious attention first by the Don, the children's sociology professor father of Joel, one of the American YMCA coordinators working in Colombo who came out to volunteer for a week, and then by Nigel, one of the "mad five" Northern Ireland volunteers who made such an impression over their week of volunteering. They both eluded to, in their differing ways, that the children were the ones helping to heal the community; that through their innocence and perhaps inherent ability to adapt they were the ones showing their parents how to "move on" with their lives, how to accept that change had occurred and that dwelling on their losses was of benefit to no one, least of all themselves. Sometimes, perhaps, behind the innocence of a child lies the road to salvation. Perhaps.

Of course, balancing this positive outlook on the psychological recovery of the local community is a warning by one of the Australian medical team who left a couple of weeks ago, that depression "lulls" come in three monthly cycles, and so we could expect to see some less positive behaviour as we moved through March. Time will tell, but considering the stories I was hearing from the fist few weeks after the tsunami, when on hearing about the possibility of another tsunami people who had lost everything were heading down to the beach to let "fate" claim them as well, then I can only think that time does seem to heal most wounds, however deep they may have cut.