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One year after the tsunami: A personal reflection |
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Anna Bartlett, UUSC programs assistant, visited tsunami-affected areas of Sri Lanka in December 2005. While traveling to Panama, a town not far from the southeast coast of Sri Lanka, I was struck by the emerald green of the rice paddies that are the livelihood of the community there. Peacocks, monkeys, and egrets basked in the sun while sitting on the dikes that separate the fields and run along the irrigation ditches. It is a lush and verdant scene, but if we were to go back one year, we would see a much different picture. When the tsunami came, it washed away the paddies, the dikes, and all the irrigation systems and left in its place fallow fields filled with salt and sand that were uncultivable. The community’s source of income and livelihood washed away with them. While many NGOs and international relief organizations rushed to assist the fisherfolk in restoring their livelihoods, many of the rice paddy farmers fell through the relief cracks. In keeping with its tradition of working with overlooked and marginalized communities, UUSC saw an opportunity to have an effect in a community that greatly needed support in order to restore livelihood and prosperity to their community. During our visit, we toured the fields with the farmers and heard stories of how the fields were reclaimed using traditional methods of soaking the sand and salt out of the fields using fresh water from repaired irrigation systems. Nearly 50 percent of the fields have been recovered successfully in Panama, but still, half lie dormant and awash with sand. Unfortunately, the irrigation system that feeds those fields is still damaged and the community does not have the resources to fix it. The restoration of livelihood is an intangible goal but one that brings great importance to a community, bringing independence, self sufficiency, empowerment, and capital. Without a means to earn a living and repair the damage done by so disastrous an event, a community can wither and die from hopelessness, desperation, and lack of resources. Livelihood restoration is a complicated process. UUSC is always conscious of how relief efforts play out in terms of gender. I am reminded of this as we talk with the all-male group of working farmers. When asked if their wives work beside them in the fields, they answer, “No, women do not work in the rice paddies.” Careful probing revealed that while some women have small gardens to raise a limited amount of crops to supplement their family’s diet and income, in general, it seems that the women are not directly affected in a positive manner by this project. Unfortunately, this is the norm in disaster relief. Women are often unduly affected by the disaster itself, and have less access to aid as their husbands do, once it arrives. UUSC will work to create a solution to this issue in the coming weeks and months. In the wake of such a large scale disaster as the tsunami, one must take hope in the small victories. Some days, it is rejoicing over the recovery of 50 percent of a community’s rice paddies. Other days, it is simply being happy that the community survived at all. We must be patient with the slow process of recovering and not rush, as that often causes more problems that it fixes. I am very hopeful and confident that the community of Panama will recover in due time, but it will be a very long journey for all the people of the community – men, women, and children. Regardless of the amount of work that still needs to be done, whether it is in farming or gender awareness, this community has made an excellent start on getting back on the path of prosperity, and that is in large part due to their ability to restore their main source of livelihood and existence. It has empowered them to see beyond the hopelessness of the situation and look to the future that will eventually heal some of the wounds that the tsunami created in their community. |
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