Marutamunai tsunami carnage is captured on camera.
The village of Navalady’s main Hindu temple is dedicated to Kadalaadciyamman, the “Sea Queen Mother.”
Known as both a fierce and protective goddess, local fishermen once sang songs to her as they launched their boats into the Bay of Bengal from the beach on the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka. Now, the temple lies in shambles, destroyed by the December 2004 tsunami. It sits unrestored looking out upon the ocean water that caused its demise. Kadalaadciyamman betrayed her people, failing to protect them from the sea’s deadly grasp.
The whole world was stunned that December day when the deadliest tsunami in human history swept halfway around the globe. Monster waves, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake near the island of Sumatra, snatched thousands of people out to sea, while thousands more drowned on the beaches and in their homes. At the University of Colorado, Boulder, anthropology professors Patricia Lawrence and Dennis McGilvray watched the catastrophe unfold and felt their hearts sink. The two had devoted decades to studying the beautiful and complex country of Sri Lanka, a small island off the southeastern coast of India.
They knew, with nothing to buffer the island from the tsunami’s full impact, the small, fragile villages of the island would receive the devastating force of the waves head-on.
They knew that communities would be erased, boats smashed, houses and temples obliterated.
Among the few anthropologists anywhere with experience on the island’s East coast, they knew that the lives of people they had eaten with, learned from, and worked with for years would be irrevocably shattered
The question then became how they could help these people rebuild their lives.
First observations
Lawrence has spent years on the Tamil-speaking east side of Sri Lanka, which took the brunt of the tsunami. Her work focuses on issues shaping women’s lives.
She arrived on the island just ten days after the tsunami to find that many survivors had lost their entire families. Often it was fishermen whose wives and children were at home eating breakfast when the tsunami swept through, dragging them out to sea. One depressed survivor said that, without his family, he had no one to earn a livelihood for
Grieving is especially hard when there are no bodies to lie to rest, no remains to mourn over, Lawrence explained.
A Hindu temple leans on its side in the wake of the tsunami.
The professors spent the initial days after the tsunami simply absorbing the amount of damage and destruction on the island. After observing, they turned their thoughts to how the island’s recovery would be impacted by the complex multicultural puzzle that existed there.
“Disaster struck the same time at different parts of the island, each with different cultures,” McGilvray said. The event created a sort of a natural experiment, he explained.
The island’s situation is unique, he said, because unlike the US and Europe, where sociology, economics, psychology, and political science dominate policy decisions, in Sri La Lanka anthropology and history have significantly shaped public debates over nationhood and ethnic identity.
Considering the island’s dynamic at the time, and with 30 years’ experience studying the cultural differences of Sri Lanka, McGilvray saw a unique chance to contribute to the relief of human suffering. He decided to write a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to explore how or whether the island’s intricate cultural patterns would impact the recovery process.
Population dynamics and tsunami destruction in Sri Lanka
The minority Tamil culture — on the east coast of Sri Lanka — is both matrilineal, tracing family ties through the mother, and matri-local – women own property and, after marriage, the groom moves into the bride’s family’s home. Tamils mostly live in the small Hindu and Muslim fishing villages and agricultural communities that dot the east coast
On the southwest side of the island live the patrilineal, Sinhalese-speaking
A Muslim woman and child stand next to a partially reconstructed structure, a common sight throughout the slow rebuilding process in Sri Lanka
majority. About three quarters of the total population, they are primarily urban, with an economy that depends on tourism, hotels, factories and offices.
Sprinkled among the Tamils and the Sinhalese, are a third minority group — the Tamil-speaking Muslims. Coexistence between the groups, however, can hardly be termed peaceful.
Many Sinhalese are Buddhists or Catholics and there are both Hindu and Christian Tamils. Muslims speak Tamil but have a distinct ethnic identity. Then there are the violent, aggressive Tamil guerilla secessionists, the Tamil Tigers, who control a large stretch of the northeastern coastline also ravaged by the tsunami.
Such cultural factors could promote or hinder the social resilience of local communities in ethnically distinct regions McGilvray said.
He took his first research trip to the island seven months after the tsunami. Driving in a Toyota van with other National Science Foundation-sponsored researchers for a “tsunami tour,” he was struck by the unpredictable, erratic patterns of damage. On the western side of the island, the destruction was severe, but spotty; the coastline and the houses appeared relatively intact. The eastern side was a more sobering story
“Every house was down; in some places the only use for the rubble was to make a roadbed,” he said. “Most was simply uninhabitable.”
However, the massive destruction did not extend far inland.
During her field research, Lawrence focused on talking to tsunami survivors. From her conversations, she found that recollections of the disaster were detailed and graphic.
“Many stories mentioned the entanglement of bodies in barbed wire,” she said, adding that even ten days after the tsunami, people were still in shock and needed to grope for the words to express what they could not yet believe had happened.
Aid and recovery
In many aspects, the tsunami was unlike other disasters. Physical damage was highly localized along the beaches, with no contaminated water supply and hospital and supply routes open and accessible. In addition, international money poured in.
“Every relief organization wanted to go. It was the most successful –- if you can use that word –- of any disaster relief effort in the world,” McGilvray said. The NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) practically stumbled over each other, quarreling among themselves over which village to save –- and take credit for saving –- and there weren’t enough villages to go around
Despite such fanatic action, the recovery effort still looked similar to many others: thousands of tsunami survivors were left either homeless or with inadequate housing. Tiraimadu, the island’s largest refugee camp had some 7,000 people at one point and was riddled with problems, Lawrence said. Survivors’ hopes of ever receiving permanent housing were also slim.
Aid and recovery after the disaster were also clouded by the island’s preexisting cultural complexities as well as organizational downfalls.
“Over a three-year period, more than twenty international NGOs were involved in aid,” Lawrence said. “But often they pulled out before building the permanent houses they promised as a result of delays and miscommunication with the government of Sri Lanka, which was pouring aid into the majority Sinhalese south and delaying aid for the minority Tamil population in the eastern war zone.”
To make matters worse, pro-government paramilitaries roamed around carrying guns and grenade launchers. Treeless, the area demolished by the tsunami flooded during the monsoons and during the summer’s hot winds, sand whipped through. Small, tin-roofed sheds that many survivors were still living in became virtual ovens in the tropical heat.
Homes destroyed by the tsunami stand neglected on the beach
The hodge-podge of house colonies that the government and relief agencies did build were in isolated or inhospitable areas. A reflexively created buffer zone prohibited construction along the beach, although, like most anywhere, beach property values were higher. The beaches were also closer to markets and schools and generally more suitable for development.
For their part, the Tamil Tigers, despite their early reputation for violence, had a plan to get relief where they wanted it. They chose who they’d permit in –- very much in the style of military authorization –- and assigned tasks. There was no waste and no silly competition, McGilvray said
According to Lawrence, the inequality and inefficiency of relief efforts had a simple explanation.
“Politics trumps everything!” she said.
She explained that regional and ethnic politics took precedence when, for example, early relief efforts on the majority Sinhalese while efforts were delayed for Tamils and Muslims.
Moving Forward
After two and a half years of research, Lawrence and McGilvray’s team, which includes Michele Gamburd from Portland State University who studied the Sinhlese /Buddhist southwest side of the island; Allan Keenan, a political scientist working with The International Crisis Group; and Randall Kuhn, a demographer/sociologist at the University of Denver, gave the NSF their final report.
A Muslim family stands outside their newly constructed house
Some Sri Lanka residents, still quite frightened, have moved further inland. Others have relocated to three-to four story urban-style flats built by NGOs –- instantly adopting a style of living with no space for traditional customs like weddings, funerals and domestic rituals. Many men have gone abroad for work to places like Toronto, which now holds the single largest concentration of Sri Lankan Tamals in the world outside of the island.
Building near the beaches has resumed. Lawrence has made more return trips to listen to people’s stories, hear their grief and witness their losses. And, despite promises, the island still has no tsunami warning system
