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The issue of housing is the number one identified need amongst all the affected people & it seems dependent on a number of key factors. Previous access to social & political capital, land ownership (already a contentious area particularly when women's right to claim ownership on land is often contested by male relatives), availability of land, circumstance i.e. whether you are in a location where a third party has committed to building permanent/temporary houses. The rule is that everyone has the right to borrow the equivalent of €1880 from the government to purchase land and a house. Estimates of the cost of an average permanent house came in a €6000 directly after the tsunami, the reality therefore is that most people will not be in a position to buy there own house. If it happens that your house fell within the government designated buffer zones running along by the shore while you still own the land you cannot rebuild on that site.

The UNHCR & Government Temporary Accommodation Project (TAP) have given responsibility to a specific number of large NGO's for organizing temporary accommodation through the affected coastal regions. In one area in the south a fishing community is to be moved 11 km inland to a new township. The arguments for this are that the previous standard of living was so low as to make recreating the shanty town an exercise in pointlessness. The high density living conditions here meant corresponding social problems. The arguments against this relocation include the fact that people locate themselves on the basis of economic factors in relation to their livelihoods and their proximity to infrastructure, the dependency syndrome already created by the tsunami, which has dulled the initiative of some people, will be further encouraged by displacement. This will leave the poor at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats, this move will break their social networks - kinship, social capital, trust, affinity, reciprocity networks. These communities are rich in networks and destroying these could have a disastrous outcome. One question that hasn't been answered is whether the social problems will also be relocated or whether their will be an investment in redeveloping communities to correspond with the infrastructural development. Will the men & women of these communities be supported in specific income generation activities, or left to recreate the social problems that existed before the tsunami?

The tsunami didn't discriminate and therefore those people who had built up significant assets also fell victim. A report from the SL Sunday Times, April 17th details how individuals who had prospered before the tsunami are now unable to get bank loans to restart their business despite government instructions to the banks to grant loans for the re-establishment of the lives of those affected by the tsunami. In practice the banks require individuals to show assets of Rs. 60 lakhs (€45000 ) to obtain a loan of Rs 20 lakhs. M.Abu Bakker previously the owner of an iron workshop makes the following point "There are many businessmen now ready to lend money at an exorbitant interest. We are desperate and have no other option. Our biggest headache is that we are not clear where we are to reside. We feel like trespassers as we slink back into our destroyed houses which were our homes for years."

Phrases like 'people are picking up the pieces' or 'people are getting on with their lives' relay little of the current reality in Sri Lanka.

While people all over this region aspire to 'picking up the pieces' and 'getting on with their lives' the grimmer picture that emerges almost 4 months after tsunami reveals the scale of the challenges they now face in making this happen.

Visit to Jaffna

The EMACE Team traveled to the tsunami affected areas in Jaffna along with the local area field officer. We were joined on our visit by the Deputy Director of Education who took us to some of the devastated school sites, as we hope to support five schools in the Jaffna region with furniture and essential facilities including laboratories, science rooms etc.

Sewagurubidyallam School in Arthikovilady is located right along the shoreline, prior to the tsunami it would have been a beautiful location for the school. Now this wrecked site, a school where 900 pupils had attended presents an incongruous image juxtaposed with the beauty of the Indian Ocean.

Classrooms literally torn asunder, blackboards wiped clean by the wave remain pinned to the end walls, the other walls felled and fallen in upon the mangled remains of desks and chairs. Trees now dipping their branches into the classroom void that was once protected by a roof supported by walls.

The children from this school are now being educated at a temporary site nearby while their school is relocated & rebuilt at a new site far from the shoreline. The majority of these children are from a neighbouring village where their fathers worked as fishermen. They have lost 75% of their boats and are currently without an income. The difficulty of working in a location that is so densely populated is that some people have not yet had their needs met beyond immediate food and shelter. We will look at a proposal to try and assist this community with an income generation project.

5th April 2005

The EMACE team visited a women's project in Kalutara on Sunday 4th March. Swarna Ekanayake, the Chairperson of EMACE (pictured on the home page of the site) and a dedicated community worker facilitated a meeting with a group of 30 women interested in income generation projects. She has to do some capacity building work with this group but they have been selected as the second group to benefit from the money raised through the Irish EMACE Appeal.

The accommodation situation in Kalutara is very problematic. There are two families still sleeping in the local temple, they moved out of the local tsunami refugee camp as they had concerns for the welfare of their children. The work has begun on the transitional housing in that area but in the interim, people have to accept sub-standard living conditions.

Your assistance has allowed us to go ahead and order the furniture for Sri Sithy Vinayagar, M.V. (school), Batticaloa. More importantly this project put us in a stronger position in terms of attracting other partners to deliver furniture to other schools. We have now had discussions with a major NGO (non-government organisation) and they have agreed to consider the phased funding of 9 more schools within EMACE project areas. They are keen to operate through EMACE as they believe that operating through local structures (e.g. local NGOs) is the most effective way to deliver an appropriate response.

The Tsunami Scare

'Last night at 12 AM I ran to answer the ringing phone. I met the news 'another tsunami is coming' with disbelief, nevertheless we nervously waited by the phone and television for more news. Watching the news special broadcast in Sinhala, English & Tamil it became apparent that the chances of the tsunami reaching us in Moratuwa were slim. The people here though have very recent memories of the destruction and chaos, groups of people slept on Galle Rd, keeping their distance from the shoreline. They know that the sea is unpredictable'

Edited Report from The Island Newspaper, Sri Lanka, Friday 25th March-Business
By Chittaranjan de Silva

'Temporary shelter has become a top priority for the tsunami affected masses with government's efforts to provide permanent shelter running into snags….it would take three years to build permanent houses for the tsunami victims with the allocation of a housing loan increasing to around Rs.500, 000.

The disaster has left almost 100,000 homeless, so Sri Lanka is required to cram 20 years of construction into one year. Demand for construction has increased the demand for labour, which has resulted in rising labour costs.

Sourcing raw materials for building purposes has its own problems with such issues as availability of river sand causing stumbling blocks. There are other problems but the key issue is land availability, this is the main issue likely to delay the construction process. Some people are still housed in tents with others occupying temples and schools.

In most places, running water and sanitation is insufficient, while tent life can be a nightmare especially during monsoon season. The need has arisen to resettle the tsunami affected even in temporary houses since they cannot lead their lives in cooped-up camps. The temples which are housing refugees are not constructed to house hundreds of people. The chief priests are also finding it difficult to administer to people in large numbers and the day-to-day religious activities have been affected as a result.'

Mithree Women's Society

The EMACE team returned to Matara to handover the money in the first of the post tsunami income generation projects to be delivered. In this area assets like houses and fishing boats were lost or heavily damaged. Prior to the tsunami people in this area were generally poor and engaged in small fishing and microenterprise activities.

A group of 12 women are registered as current members of the women's group and therefore eligible to avail of the revolving low interest loan. Micro credit programmes act as a humanitarian tool facilitating enterprise and avoiding any tendencies towards a 'dependency psychology'. Other women are now registering with this group and once affiliated they too will become eligible to avail of the revolving loan system.

€564 have been distributed to this first group & while research (GTZ)* has indicated that large volumes of funds are required for a long time for institutional and capacity building of microfinance institutions to provide effective services to the entrepreneurial poor, social returns may exceed the costs, and may yield good financial returns in the long run.

EMACE have identified a total of 16 established women's groups in the South and North East of the country who are ready to avail of this service. To date we have sufficient funding to deliver an effective response to 8 groups.

*G TZ / SIDA, "Developing Microfinance in the North and East of Sri Lanka" November 2004.

First project - income generation

An area where significant funds are being directed is towards income generation.
The people here rely on small industry to put bread on the table. When this key source is taken away, the whole family suffers. Currently there is a 6 month post tsunami Government benefit but people are anxious to start supporting their families, to save money towards building their houses etc. We are directing a significant amount of the money raised to this cause, to allow people to rebuild their lives.

The first project will be delivered at Matara through a women's group. The industries there include making lunch packs (like sandwich bars in Ireland but with rice and dhal etc. here), dressmaking, yoghurt making etc. We hope to build capacity through this group so that they can work directly with identified women's groups in the refugee camps(tsunami camps), setting up further income generating projects. We are visiting there on Wednesday to formally arrange the first project. We have identified many more income generation projects throughout the affected regions & these will be initiated in the next few weeks.

We drove out of Moratuwa yesterday at 6.30 AM, away from the Colombo bound traffic.  Heading down the west coast towards Galle and Hambantota and already at the outskirts of Moratuwa we could see the effects of the tsunami.  Broken huts and piles of debris scattered along the side of the road.  At Beruwala, we were now driving adjacent to the Indian Ocean, the palm trees pointing out towards the sea.  The effects here even more stark, as if people’s lives had been shipwrecked on shore, all the wooden houses ripped apart and scattered. Here too we began to see the razed foundations, the rubble based houses not offering any support to the walls built up out of them, easy prey for the tsunami.   Inside people worked with brooms, cleaning spaces in the debris. On towards Kosgoda and the now familiar site of people getting on with their lives, the quotidian events carried out amidst scenes of devastation.  Now the tents appearing in frequent groups, sometimes in large ordered camp spaces, sometimes pitched at the side of the road in ones or twos. The banners of international aid agencies, marking out their presence in different spaces.  At Ambalagoda, known for mask making and local wooden crafts, 200 people stood queuing for their weekly post tsunami ration.  This is set to last for 6 months, after which people are expected to get on with their lives, find new ways of income generation. 

Arriving at Thelwatta, the scene where the train was derailed, we met with people whose lives were effectively stolen by the sea. In midst of the debris, a man stood brushing his porch with a coconut broom.  A strange picture when behind him stood a façade, all that remained of his house.   Three carriages of the train remain an eerie relic of what had taken place.  Local people tell you that after the first wave people ran onto the train, a place to seek sanctuary.  Then when the next wave came, they were all swallowed, more than a thousand people were killed on this train.  The railway line laid in the early part of the last century buckled and was literally ripped out of the ground.  Two carriages still lay buried underground.  These people are left with nothing, their loss is immense.  Family, home and livelihood washed away by the sea. 

One of these men a fisherman of the Indian Ocean lost seven members of his family, tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke, busy digging up the rubble of his old house to begin again.  Another woman living in a temporary wooden hut near where she used to live before her house was razed spoke of being carried one mile inland by the tsunami.  She will not be allowed to stay at this site as the Government have imposed a buffer zone i.e. 100 metre area from the sea where no habitation can take place. She will have to buy a new plot of land and the Government will give her a low interest loan to build her house. Thelwatta is a scene of utter devastation & despair. At Ahangama, a strangely intimate view, the inside of a sitting room, all that remained of a house.  Its vivid pink walls on display normally hidden from the outside world.  At Matara, we stopped to meet with a women’s group.   Ms. Swarna Ekanayake, the President of EMACE had identified this group as potential beneficiaries.  They live on a stretch of land that juts out into the Indian Ocean.  In this community, 90 houses stood before the tsunami. Now, the number is less than 10.  107 people lost their lives in this community alone.  We were invited for lunch and ate watching photographs of dead family members resting against the wall.  Afterwards, we stood to face the ocean on a shoreline of absolute calm and serenity, a place of resounding beauty.  Turning back to the land, we were again faced with the ruinous affect of the tsunami.  We discussed investment in an income generation project with the women’s group, this would support the community and allow them to reestablish an income and begin saving for their new homes.  The fishermen here have lost all their catamarans and their bicycles which are a necessary part of the work were also taken by the sea.  We will consider looking at a project to support their investment in new boats.  We will also contact other larger organisations to consider their involvement.  Many other sites were visited including a camp with 31 refugee families in Kirimatiya, Hungama.  They have lost their boats and homes.  We discussed establishing an income generating project with a women’s group here also.  Understandably there is an overriding sense of despondency through the camp.   

As well as the income generating projects, we will look at supporting some of the fishermen to buy new boats, including those at Thelwatta.  Before this happens though Mr. Abeyrathne, the director here will check out with other NGO’s what their intentions are in terms of project investment.  In addition, all proposed projects go through the Centre for Non Governmental Sector to ensure that projects don’t conflict.

We are due to attend meetings with Concern, Goal and UNHCR this week to discuss their involvement.  Unfortunately reports from some of the camps yesterday were that they received unnecessary items e.g. bulk amounts of toilet paper, enough for years of use but at the same time the good work of the NGO’s is clearly evident in terms of direct post tsunami assistance.  The benefits of working with a local NGO was clear to me yesterday.  It means that we have direct contact with the needs of the people and the knowledge to deliver a culturally appropriate response. 

The scenes witnessed yesterday will be stored in my head forever. 

Project idea for funding

 We have been requested to built a training centre for tsunami affected people in Moratuwa township. (21,000 families displace) We have a plan to mobilize women in the area by forming a women's club) minimum 2500 mothers will benefit from the multi purpose community centre. We had lengthy discussion with them, this is the prime need for them to restart their community lives. Further, the centre will provide facilities for the children for preschool, and programmes for youth. If you feel that this is a good project for you to support, we can developed the plans. Project cost is approximately Euro 25,000/- However , we will be mobilizing the community too and their labour will be used in construction.

One euro will feed a family per day

5 Euros will send a child to school with a new uniform

10 Euros will help to buy a complete set of schools needs for a child

50 Euros will help to buy all the cooking utensils for a family

5000 Euros will resettle a family with a newly build house and apparatus

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