Sri Lankans who lost all discover shelter at school

BY KIM BARKER

5 Jan 2005: PANADURA, Sri Lanka - (KRT) - The two teenage girls sleep with 38 other people on the floor of classroom 6-B, near school desks holding all they recovered from the wreckage of their lives: some clothes, some towels and two waterlogged folders holding medical records. "For a baby," one reads. Infant pictures are pasted on the other.

Sadeeka Kalpani, 18, is eight months pregnant. Jayangani Peiris, 15, is to deliver twins in about two months. They are always together in this refugee camp, often appearing swollen and uncomfortable.

Sometimes, they totter to meals or tea, their bellies far in front of them. But mostly they sit in the shade of their classroom and worry about what might happen.

"There's no shortage of food," Kalpani said. "But we worry about the future of our babies. They don't have anything here. We don't have baby clothes, or baby food, or a mosquito net for a baby."

About 2,200 people live in this refugee camp at St. John's College, the largest makeshift shelter in Kalutara district, just south of the capital Colombo. Many who live here, as in the rest of the Sri Lanka, lost everything when the tsunami crashed into the coast Dec. 26.

A day in the life of this shelter shows just how difficult it is to care for so many people with so many needs, from the pregnant teens such as Peiris and Kalpani to the children with scrapes to the elderly who stare into space. Some children go to the bathroom in the courtyard and run around naked or nearly so. Everyone asks visitors for money. One girl painstakingly writes out her address in English for journalists, as if she wants them to visit. But her house is no longer there.

This place provides food, shelter and water. But other needs, such as counseling or financial help, will have to wait.

St. John's, usually a Christian school for children, now looks like a small city. Clothes dry on banisters and desks. Boys play cricket in the yard. Refugees wait in line for haircuts, meals and tea. When new donations arrive, people stand in line for them.

Doctors stop by for checkups. The army stops to make sure there are no problems. Politicians stop to ask questions.

Life here can be measured in announcements, made over the school's public address system every five minutes by D.B. Gerald Fernando, 63, a retired government worker. In a monotone, he tells people what to do. For the barber, go to one end of campus, starting at 12:15 p.m. For clean water, go to the other end.

Pregnant women should line up for water thermoses at 1:30 p.m. and sheets at 4:30 p.m. Lights should be out by 9:30 p.m.

People such as Renuka Gamampila stop by the camp, full of hope and fear. They ask Fernando to announce the names of missing relatives. Gamampila is searching for her sister and waits for 10 minutes after the announcement. No one comes.

"We've been told she's alive, but no one can find her," Gamampila said.

All day long, Fernando calls out the most important piece of advice he knows: "Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands." So far, there have been no cases of diarrhea here, no scabies, no chickenpox. The medical staff tries to be vigilant.

"We've been lucky," said Dr. Anil Dissanayake, regional director of health services in the Kalutara district.

By last weekend, about a week after the disaster, the St. John's camp was somewhat organized, unlike many others in the country, set up in temples, mosques, churches and schools. St. John's is less than an hour's drive from Colombo, so trucks can easily drop off food and clothing. The school principal, A.D. Karunarathna, treats the refugees like new students, registering each person and making a file.

"I decided we had to do everything we could for people," Karunarathna said. "We had to treat them with respect. Most of all, we had to listen to them."

The problems are overwhelming. Although almost 30,000 people died in the tsunami in Sri Lanka, only a few perished along the 18 miles of coast here between Moratuwa and Kalutara. But 4,000 homes, mostly concrete boxes and wooden squatter huts, were flattened. And 14,000 people, many the families of poor fishermen and woodcarvers, lost everything.

When the water came, Kalpani was in her kitchen, cooking string hoppers, a Sri Lankan dish, to sell on the beach. She shared the two-room house on the beach with nine relatives.

Peiris had been working in the family shop a mile away, pickling relish to sell.

About 9:30 a.m. on that Sunday, someone ran down the beach, shouting that the water was rough, and that people should leave their homes. Kalpani walked as fast as she could, holding her belly, to a temple on higher ground. She wore a dress, no shoes and a Buddhist copper charm believed to protect against evil.

"Most people were running past me," Kalpani said. "I'm pregnant. So with the greatest difficulty, I walked away really, really fast."

After Peiris heard about the water, she started shouting for help. Two women helped carry her to higher ground. She watched as the water swallowed homes and spit out pieces of roofing and furniture.

"I was thinking about what might happen," Peiris said. "I thought I was going to die, and I thought my babies were going to die." Both teens' husbands survived the waves.

About this time, Karunarathna, on Christmas vacation and miles away from the coast, heard about the disaster. Aware that his large school was on high ground, he called the school's custodian. "Open the gates," he said. "Open all the doors. Let everyone in."

When Karunarathna arrived at the school the day of the tsunami, he was shocked by what he saw. Thousands of people huddled together. There was no first aid, no sleeping mats, no coordination. People were frightened. The sun was starting to set. Karunarathna bought bulbs and wiring, and strung up makeshift lights.

He met with health officials and printed up a form for families to fill out. Each person was given a number - Kalpani was No. 40, Peiris 203.

Karunarathna worried about other problems: The school had only nine toilets for 32 classrooms. Within a day, outhouses were set up. Water and food started arriving. And by the end of the week, people seemed to suffer more from the weight of not knowing what would happen than from lack of food.

Peiris and Kalpani sat in their dingy classroom, on the third floor of the school, in the shadow of students' old drawings of food groups.

"The future is so uncertain," Kalpani said. "I hope things get better, but until everything calms down, we have to stay here. We don't want to. We have no choice."