No Rest for Tsunami’s Survivors

In the aftermath of the tsunami, the restless boys in the crowded classroom play cruel tricks on other refugees: “The water is coming! The water is coming!” they shout, then laugh as women run in fear.

For 82 homeless bankers, teachers, fishermen and shop owners in this makeshift camp, there is no escaping the flies that crawl across their sweaty faces in the 85-degree heat. At night, mosquitoes come in airborne squadrons, prompting parents to use their bodies to protect their children.

No one has privacy. Women crouch low as they change clothes to avoid the prying stares of strangers. Though exhausted, few can sleep on the concrete floor amid the crying babies and coughing old men.

As refugee camps go, the old George Martin Samaraweena Memorial School is still better than most of the dirt-floor tent encampments along hundreds of miles of battered coastline on this impoverished island.

After so many days and nights of refuge, the camp will soon close. The new teaching session at the 90-year-old school for boys is to begin Jan. 25, and refugees have been warned they will have to move.

Although the government has promised other quarters a few miles down the road, many survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami say they are tired of moving and weary of enduring their new lives without homes and the loved ones who died in the water.

“We will go when the time comes,” said former shop owner Danapala Dvithana, lying on a matted bed at midday. “The boys must go back to school. Life must go on in Sri Lanka.”

Dvithana is lucky: He and his grown son and daughter have claimed a corner spot where the thin lattice of boards lets in the cool nighttime breeze.

Tales of Loss

But like nearly everyone here, Dvithana lost loved ones to the tsunami, which killed 275 people in this tiny fishing village. His wife and 17-year-old granddaughter were swept away as they were walking to the doctor’s office.

Dressed in a white, Western-style shirt and a bright plaid sarong, his gray hair combed sideways across his head, the 64-year-old Dvithana told how he was trapped inside his home until his son cut a hole in the roof and pulled him to safety.

Suddenly he began to weep, saying he wished he had been the one to go out that day, so that the sea would have taken him instead.

“I had a dream about my wife,” he sobbed. “She came and spoke to me. She told me that it was all right that it was she to die and not me.” He has tried to comfort his daughter about the loss of her child.

“She can do nothing but cry,” Dvithana said. “Even her own father cannot console her.”

Nearby, Hindura Chandalatha feels guilt at surviving. Clad in a green dress decorated with images of fish, she told of losing her 19-year-old daughter, who had gone with a friend to a nearby Buddhist temple to celebrate the new moon.

The daughter’s friend survived to tell a story that broke Chandalatha’s heart: After the first big surge came and went, the daughter, Lhwanusha, told her friend that they had to return home because she had to try to save her mother.

But the second wave swept the girl away. Her body was found along the shore, not far from her home. Although Chandalatha, her husband and three other children survived, she cannot forgive herself for not saving the one she lost: “I miss her so much.”

As the residents tell their stories, life goes on at the Samaraweena school. An old woman sits upright at a desk, her head wobbling in her hands, fast asleep as another sweeps the grit and sand around her feet.

Young boys shriek as they run about the basketball-court-size room, doing flips in the air as they land in a pile of donated clothes. For weeks, residents have cooked government-donated rice, bread and curry on communal open-air fires, mothers scolding their children that they shouldn’t complain about the monotonous fare and should be happy to have anything at all to eat.

For the last three days, as though answering the children’s prayers, a local tourist has dropped off packages of precooked food as a break from the government fare.

To try to simulate a bit of privacy in the vast open sleeping space, several families have arranged desks in protective squares. But there is nothing they can do about the noise.

“At night, you can’t sleep with all the talking and commotion,” said Indu Kumuduni, 33, a mother of one. “But you have to endure it. You can’t call out and tell people to be quiet. We are all under so much stress here. It might take only a little thing to set people off.”

And every day brings new heartache. On Thursday, four more bodies washed ashore, setting off a buzz about who their relatives might be.

Conflict in the Camp

So far, the bickering has been limited to petty face-offs between residents who are members of Sri Lanka’s two rival political parties. Officials have placed army guards at most camps. And at the Samaraweena school, a village alderman is on hand most days to help settle disputes.

Residents say that living in such close quarters has shown them how to better coexist with their neighbors. Some have even made friends they hope to continue seeing.

Many are afraid the camp’s closing will separate them for good.

Dilke Nirosha, 30, has a more personal reason for wanting to remain here. She lost her 6-year-old son, Ranushka, to the floodwaters. The boy had been watching her wash clothes next to a stream by their oceanfront home. Nirosha turned to watch the oncoming wave, then suddenly her child was gone.

Four months pregnant, she swam in waters that rushed over her head, calling out his name. She finally saved herself by grabbing a tree branch as she swept past.

Like the others, she cries when she talks about the dead. Her son, she said, would have started classes at this very school in a few short days. If her new baby is a boy, she wants to name him Ranushka in honor of her lost child.

“This school has given me a roof over my head,” she said. “And when I am here, I feel closer to my son. I don’t want to leave.”