FEATURE-Lucky tsunami survivors begin moving to new homes
29 May 2005 01:38:28 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Bill Tarrant HIKKADUWA, Sri
Lanka, May 29 (Reuters) - Stumbling in the tropical heat after a
40-hour flight from St. Louis in the United States, volunteers from the
evangelical charity Service International have been put right to work
building homes for Sri Lankan tsunami survivors. Working
alongside rehabilitating heroin addicts from a Sri Lankan Christian
activist group, they are building simple 336-square-foot cement block
homes in Hikkaduwa, a budget beach resort on Sri Lanka's
tsunami-battered southwest coast. "Our dream is to build 100
homes," said Ed Fasnacht, Service International's supervisor for the
project. "There's 55,000 homes that need to be built, so there's plenty
of room for everyone." The cement block homes with asbestos roof
tiles are going up in the midst of temporary wooden shacks, which house
the survivors now. Across the street is one of the many tiny, tattered
tent camps that dot Sri Lanka's coastline. This neighbourhood,
where 14 of the 21 tsunami victims were children, is home to a group of
Tamil Hindus and Christians who come from the lowest strata of society.
But they are among the first of Sri Lanka's half-million people
displaced in the disaster to get permanent homes. And so the last shall
be first. The project illustrates certain features of the
recovery effort after one of the strongest earthquakes in history set
off a colossal tsunami last Dec. 26 that killed an estimated 228,000
people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations. Five months after the disaster, the reconstruction effort has barely begun.
Progress has been uneven, leading to concerns about how equitable the
effort is. And it is being spearheaded by private aid groups, many of
them little-known outfits such as Service International working with
local counterparts. Billions of dollars in private aid raised
across the world -- from girl scout raffles, bowling leagues, Rotarians
and Unitarians, Jewish bake sales and Islamic charities -- are being
channelled to a veritable Noah's Ark of aid groups. HOME AT LAST FOR SEA GYPSIES As in Sri Lanka, one of the most disadvantaged groups in Thailand has been among the early settlers into permanent quarters.
With money raised by Thai students, the Moken, a tribe of sea gypsies
who had mostly lived in self-contained houseboats, have shifted into
new homes on stilts, with thatched bamboo walls and insulated tin roofs
outside Ban Nam Khem, a coastal town nearly obliterated by the giant
waves. "We're happy with the new homes," said Sewbee Leeskoon,
52. "The walls are nice, the roof is strong and we really like the
balcony because you can see everyone now." In an adjacent
neighbourhood, another band of sea gypsies has begun moving into a new
one-storey apartment complex with its own clinic, kindergarten and
meeting hall. Thailand's ITV television network funded this project. Indonesia, where the tsunami is feared to have killed 160,000 people, has yet to start building permanent homes.
At least a third of the nearly 600,000 displaced survivors are living
in squalid tent camps. Another 60,000-70,000 are in military-style
barracks. The rest are staying with friends and relatives, where
five months after the calamity they are wearing out their welcome and
drifting into the camps. Kuntoro Mangasubroto, chairman of
Indonesia's reconstruction agency, complained bitterly about how slow
lawmakers and bureaucrats in Jakarta have been to allocate money for
the recovery. "They have no sense of urgency," he fumed in an interview
with Reuters. But Fasnacht at Service International said it's
not all that unusual. The group, which has worked in Kosovo, also sent
volunteers to Florida after four hurricanes hit the state in a matter
of months last year. "We're still struggling to get permits to build homes there," he said. OUTSOURCING AID EFFORT
The Sri Lankan government is effectively outsourcing the recovery
effort, leaving nearly $3 billion of pledged reconstruction aid in
donor hands. Its job is to provide the land, hand out permits
and ensure building codes are met, said Mano Tittawella, chairman of
the island's reconstruction agency, in an interview. Carlo
Ratti, a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may pose
a challenge to Sri Lankan building codes with his design for a "tsunami
safe(r) house. MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, in partnership
with a Buddhist NGO, plans to build 1,000 of the houses, whose open
design would not block the flow of water were another tsunami to hit.
Service International has put up 10 houses designed after a typical Sri
Lankan village home and is building 10 more, after its local partner --
Voice of New Life Without Drugs -- managed to secure building permits
from the provincial government. They plan to keep doing that --
with different groups of volunteers who pay their own airfare, food and
lodging -- for months. "We eat the elephant one bite at a time," said Fasnacht, a father of four from St. Louis.
Nilmini, a mother of three, is one of 40,000 Sri Lankan tsunami
survivors still in tent camps, down from a half-million just after the
disaster. She's hoping to get a cement block house and would be just as happy if it was far from the sea. "I'm scared of the sea and my children are scared of the sea. They won't go near it," she said.
Various donors will build 55,000 houses for those like Nilmini, who
lived by the beach. Rebuilding on the shore is now banned as a
safeguard against any repeat tsunami. Tittawella said he expects
to have most of the displaced in permanent homes by early next year,
although some experts think that this is too optimistic. But
Nilmini frets that after baking in her tent for so long, she will soon
have to cope with a flooded camp now that the monsoon has started. Her
husband, a barber before the calamity, is not working. "I'm
worried all the time and sad. I worry whether we'll ever get a
permanent house." (Editing by Simon Gardner and Sanjeev Miglani; via
Colombo Newsroom, +94-11-243-1187)
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