Visitor at the Bridge2Peace Project
At the time that I visited the Bridge to Peace school in Lunugumvehera, Sri Lanka, I was a college student on summer vacation. I had been invited to work on the project by the Anderson family, and to experience the culture that they cherish. Knowing only what I had heard in legend from Nientara I may have expected many things but their appearance still surprised me.
When we arrived in Lunugumvehera, it was just in the nick of time for the opening ceremony to begin, marking the foundation of the physical structure of the school. Such things are always planned in Sri Lanka for auspicious dates and times, and the ceremony had been arranged months in advance. In true Bridge to Peace fashion, a Buddhist priest and a Hindu holy man shared the platform, and a Catholic dignitary was also present, I believe. We lit candles in coconut fiber baskets, and said several prayers. The friendly villagers, local authorities, and volunteers from Colombo gathered around a hole that had been marked for the groundbreaking, and some of the people most actively involved in making the plan a reality took turns having their photos taken. It was an emotional moment for many involved, especially Bernadine and Nientara, who had both worked quite hard t! o make the school come to life all summer.
After a pot luck lunch, in which the local families donated many dishes of delicious curries, the workers began construction of the pits for the foundation. It was clear that the school, unlike so many aid projects started in Sri Lanka, was finally on its way to completion. We walked around the grounds, saw compost piles, fruit trees, and soil to be worked for a garden for the children, and saw the other structures which were already completed. Down the road from the school was a local store where the merchant greeted us with all sorts of gossip and laughter. A reservoir, through the bush to the west, was low with drought, but nevertheless proved a cool place to bathe. Only later did we discover that along with water buffaloes, the water hole has some population of crocodiles. This reservoir system, part of the ancient system constructed by the kingdoms of Sri Lanka, is a reminder of the antiquity and ingenuity of the culture now frustrated by war and poverty. My visit was nearly a year after the tsunami, but still all over the island were the tumbled wrecks of buildings, trains and boats. The human effects were as vast as can be imagined. Every generation of people was affected, and of the coastal villages which were obliterated, many will never be replaced in any recognizable form. The sea, which appears as a benevolent form in the ritual and religious tradition of the coastal fishing peoples, was transformed in their imagination forever. The wrath of the tsunami created a spiritual wound quite as raw as the physical and economic devastation. Further complicated by political divisions and the strife of the Tamil-Singhalese conflict, the reconstruction was going quite slow. It was aided only by the native perseverance of the fishermen and their families. Camped under the coconut trees with little to support them and their labor, they nevertheless managed in many cases to go on with their! lives.
I had little real personal perspective on the sort of many-leveled disruption a violent storm can cause in the very fabric of a society, until the tsunami in Sri Lanka was followed by a storm in my own home state and among people I know as fellow citizens. Hurricane Katrinamade more vivid my understanding of the suffering of those relocated to Lunugumvehera, as now my city is the new home of Katrinaevacuees. The towns on the Mississippii gulf coast and the city of New Orleans were lucky, in some ways, to be spared the additional burdens of the poverty and lack of communication that made the Indian Ocean tsunami a more deadly event. They share the same deep sadness, and strangeness, that any group of people forced to carry on after true catastrophe use to face their changed world.
Charlie |
