Arriving in Ampara
There
is an atmosphere of eerie calm in the village of Marathumanai. In this
one small village on the east coast of Sri Lanka in the Ampara District,
3,000 of its 21,000 inhabitants were swept away by the giant tsunami on
the morning of the 26th December 2004.
Nearly 2 weeks later, as local NGOs deliver food donated by neighbouring villages, the remaining inhabitants form orderly queues, quietly collect their ration and walk away with astonishing dignity. In an almost catatonic state, people sift through the destroyed remains of their homes.
The debris occasionally offers up possessions like mangled bicycles or touching mementoes of a life before the horror swept through Marathumanai. All too often it yields up the decomposing remains of those who were not quick enough to escape the deluge.
Volunteers
The acrid smell of death alerts rescue workers that there is a body nearby. It's strange that no crowds gather for this grim recovery. Local volunteers - young men - prepare themselves for the grim task ahead by donning latex gloves and makeshift masks. They work efficiently and with great delicacy - they have, after all, already too much experience to be anything less than thorough.
As
they excavate they find the decapitated remains of a woman. By chance
they see something else close by. Closer inspection reveals the remains
of a child, no older than a year old.
They reverently wrap the bodies
in pristine white shrouds and carry them to a nearby mosque for the ritual
wash and later burial. One of the relief workers breaks down and weeps
unashamedly. He sits amidst the debris and sobs uncontrollably. Another
volunteer tells me that he has yet to recover the remains of his wife
and child. He imagines that this is how they will be found - if they ever
are. "We carry bodies away every day," the volunteer tells me, "but those
young bodies are the heaviest burden."
The destruction is so complete and the people so broken that it is hard to know where to beginOne of the few international relief organisations who are making deliveries in the area is Islamic Relief. A British Non Governmental Organisation, Islamic Relief have worked in areas like this before. I was in Iran with a team from the Birmingham based agency at the same time last year and witnessed the destruction of a city and the desolation of whole communities.
It was not enough to prepare me for what I saw when I came here. The destruction is so complete and the people so broken that it is hard to know where to begin to pick up the pieces. Experienced emergency relief workers from Islamic Relief's Birmingham Headquarters, however, work side by side with local partners to assess the greatest areas of need.
The area is predominantly Muslim but there is a large proportion who are Tamil. Islamic Relief is working to help both community and this fact has not been lost on the people of Sri Lanka. Amjad Saleem is a civil engineer from London whose family are from Sri Lanka. He immediately offered his services and local knowledge to Islamic Relief because he knew he would be able to work amongst mixed communities. "The wave was indiscriminate in the lives it claimed, why should we discriminate in the way we help?" he says.