The Monsoons are Coming

I’m sitting at Top Secret on a Sunday afternoon. It is a beach bar and restaurant, Galle Road, Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. D has gone to Tangalle further down the coast for a meeting. The ocean is on my right, people sunbathing, surfing, relaxing. Natalie on my left, moves restlessly from chair to chair. She works for Adopt Sri Lanka in Galle, 25 kilometers southeast of here. Her boss is an obnoxious ex-pat who owns lots of big hotels. He yelled at her last week and she almost resigned. She’s been working non stop since the tsunami. Last night, Top Secret was crammed with people-mostly relief workers and those that mix with them. They flock here on Saturday nights for the fried calamari, cheap local liquor, volleyball net, drugs and the sorts of activities the above will lead to. I too am listless today, sitting here wondering what I should write about since in the ten day gap since my last diary was posted, so much has happened.

D and I, didn’t go east as planned. We got an email that changed all that. We are in the south west. Hikkaduwa is a tourist town where the small shops, guesthouses and restaurants are still waiting for the government to compensate them. They’ve rebuilt with whatever savings they had and with the financial help of the tourists and ex-pats that frequent this town. D and I are working for VolunteerSriLanka.org. The idea is so simple and effective, or it would be if our ‘office’ wasn’t non functional for the last two weeks. Our jobs are this: People register with our website, filling out a form letting us know their skill set and we visit and talk with the camps (mostly volunteer run…I still have no idea where the government fits into this country or any equation having to do with the country). We talk to the camps about their volunteer needs and very simply, just match the two parties together. Volunteer to camp, camp to volunteer. Surprisingly, no one else is doing this now (unless they charge you 1400 USD), not so surprisingly, operating out of Colombo (three hours away by bus, miles and miles away in any other sense of the tsunami), was not so effective. So here we are, opening up an office in Hikkaduwa and doing what we can till Wednesday, March 23rd when, hopefully, we will have a computer and thus our database of volunteers and some semblance of an office up and running. We need to wait, not just for the computer to make it down from Colombo but also for the owner from whom we are renting the office to clean and rebuild since there was tsunami damage.

2 weeks ago, this place was swarming with volunteers. One example is the Pereliya Camp also known as the train crash camp, started and now run by Oscar and Allison, film makers from NYC (they, especially he, are indeed the divas they sound like). They had 70 volunteers milling around two weeks ago with not enough to do. A week ago they had 5. Today they have 3. Their operations manager, Donny, a big, bald Australian guy has left. He couldn’t take much more when he witnessed a lorry running into a tuk tuk (rikshaw) and when he went to help, the tuk tuk driver died in his arms. Richard, another Pereliya volunteer, was hit 4 nights ago by a motorcycle. The motorcycle was carrying a man, his wife and their two kids. They were driving like maniacs. They were escaping a tsunami they were convinced was coming. One of the kids died and Richard is in a hospital, spine broken, skull fractured, other parts of his body in pieces.

Ten days ago, my 2nd day in Hikkaduwa in my first visit to the Pereliya Camp, 2 kilometers from here, we came upon water in the street (Galle Road is the main coastal road. You drive and the sea is 100 meters away if not less). We soon realized that the water was from the sea. Whatever natural barrier that existed pre-tsunami was no longer there. An hour later, on our way back, the water level had risen. We heard the next day how it came up to about 2 feet and flooded the camps on the other side of the road. Locals were standing on the beach, a vacant look on their faces, staring at the sea. “Tsunami coming” is all they said as they rocked back and forth, hands tucked into each other.

The next day when I drove by I saw a barrier had been built with bulldozers of rock and sand. The government came in to do their job. No more flooding took place. Yesterday, when driving by I noticed yellow tape cordoning off the area. I asked and in hindsight, really didn’t want to know. When the government bulldozers came in, they managed to dig up a mass grave. The barrier is made up of rocks, sand and decomposing bodies. It smells to high heaven. Wait till the rains come. People (this is hearsay) have been finding jaws on the beach. Our tuk tuk driver told us the story and used this as yet another story to point out how fucked up the government was. Most locals, the ones I have been able to communicate with, feel that way.

Speaking of locals, some of my most favorite and disturbing hours are spent in bitch sessions. They are needed and the phrase that I hear most people use and now have stopped cringing at and in all likelihood will start using myself in about two weeks, if not less is, “these people”. Bitch sessions consist of relief workers sitting around, exchanging one frustration after another. The average time is that of three cigarettes and one Lion Beer per frustration. The way they figure is that it is better than really banging your head repeatedly on some tsunami ravaged rubble. You’ll still wake up with a headache—scars invisible.

Back home, on hearing talk like this pisses the hell out of me. People, foreigners in another country pushingpushingpushing to make local lives better. I hear more stories of aid workers being scammed than of anyone who has said thank you. As soon as you think that, you think, you are not working here to get any thanks. You are here as a human being (while of course, you lump all Sri Lanka’s into an ‘other’ category) because you felt so compelled to help other human beings. You don’t want thanks but there are Sri Lankans that are just sitting there while you build a house for them. No one wants to voice this out loud but I cannot help think that this thought must recur to all of us: Why are we here doing what we are doing when the people you are doing it for seem to give a rat’s ass? And then you think: You have to build since the government isn’t doing shit and the monsoons are coming. The monsoons are coming and the disease that thankfully has been almost non–existent will make an unwelcome and decidedly horrible appearance. People are in tents. Most of these tents are not water-proof. There is poor drainage in all the areas. The government, I can’t say this enough times, is not doing anything. Not only are they not doing anything, but if you try and get a volunteer visa, they won’t give you one. They know that volunteers are running camps and working all the time, yet, they will not give you a visa as a volunteer.

I have no idea how to proceed in these conversations anymore. I tried in the beginning. But now it is just too much and I am just too tired to sit and have post colonialism 101 with a bunch of drunk, tired, misguided (mostly white), yet in the end, big-hearted people. Many times the conversations end in silence, the last beer drunk, last cigarette smoked. We have to wake up early to put siding on a set of temporary houses. Locals will watch and then move in during the week as the shelters come along. The monsoons are coming. We have work to do.