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Sri Lanka Journal |
Arabella's Diary
Saturday 12 March 2005We move on to Ratagama camp in a big flat field, about 60 families in large blue tents, but some good outside space. The Clown's show goes down really well for about 40 children and 20 teenagers and young men, and the parachute games, including parachute football and cat and mouse go down a treat. Kumara drops us at the internet office where we spend an hour, then a half hour lunch, then another 2 hours on the internet getting this diary up to date and dealing with business matters generally. Now we are heading off to another camp. Will write more tomorrow.
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After a lunch break and more (yet more!) hours in the internet office,
Kumara drives us about 12 kilometres inland to Redypura Camp. Here,
there are 55 families from Perelaya (which was completely destroyed in
the Tsunami) and Simogama.
These people want to be rehoused inland - they have a very high proportion of young children, and more tiny babies than we have seen in any other camp. They are all really scared of the sea now, and want to protect their children and have them inland. Even the fishermen in the group would rather live inland, to ensure that their children are safe, and commute daily to their boats. The Clown does a show for about 60 children and 40 adults, followed by an extremely energetic parachute games session - a huge success. Afterwards they invite us to stay for a cup of tea, and they talk to us about their problems. The 55 families are living in tents. It is a good camp site - there are showers, decent toilets, a good already-existing building that is used communally, etc. Their kitchen however is mininimal and totally inadequate for 55 families - 2 tiny open fires on the ground on which families take it turn to put their pots. They desperately need a gas cooker and gas cylinders. We haven't got the money to buy them one, but we are going to talk to MC and hope that Neil's Trust will be able to help with this. This camp also apparently has huge problems with the neighbouring villagers, who do not want the camp to be there. The land the camp is on belongs to the Government, but the village apparently saw it as their "open space" and there is very bad blood between the village and the camp. The head man of the camp tells us that death threats have been made against him. Hopefully we can go up with MC and her best translator tomorrow, and see what the situation really is, and see if anything can be done to help the situation. 
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CWI Tsunami Tour