Morgalogue

Hambantota and Kalmounai are small towns that, a bit like Lockerbie or Dunblane, become defined by tragedy. Despite there being nothing much to see, before or after ‘History’ left its mark, you can’t view them in their rightful ordinariness again. After all the tsunami dead and missing were added up, first hand reports compiled and carnage quantified, these 2 unlucky spots came out head and shoulders above everywhere else on the island. It’s a label I’m sure they’d rather forget, but when everything from the school to the graveyard has a placard erected, marketing the generosity of a different country or aid organisation, it doesn’t seem likely for some time yet.

We were there under the heading of ‘infrastructure development’; my organisation cannily pandering to international donor bias towards anything ‘Tsunami-related’. They want to tackle the issue of waste management, something nearly always put to the bottom of the development pile. Sri Lanka, like most Asian countries, have a pretty terrible culture of dumping festering rubbish everywhere and perhaps it’s a chicken and egg thing, but not much in the way of organised collection or even bins. My lot want to capitalise on the void of policy to create some sort of smart, environmental, national strategy that incorporates re-cycling and biogas generation, to take some financial pressure off the government. As a component of this, we were looking at hospital waste - the kind of stuff we blast out of existence at 2000 degrees – here, commonly burnt out the back, or in some cases sent off to the dump with potato peelings, where armies of wiry, little guys in flip-flops will have to shovel it about. Syringes, swabs, chemicals, blood packs, placenta, it’s manky, hazardous shit in any country. We are to use the funds to design and run pilot schemes in these ‘most needy’ areas.

Ok that’s the technical bit over with, I know SOME of you want this sort of data. The team for this mission was myself, young Chinthaka also of Energy Forum, a visiting medical specialist from India, Dr Hemanth and Susantha, the legendary rally driver you may have met in Trip 2. The tour bus was our trusty Japanese mini-van with its novelty suspension on loan from a local bed-manufacturer. It was the usual 4.30am start. I decline a 7am spit-curry, the physical memory of trip 2 is only days old and I just can’t face it. I lie and make up a big, elaborate story about how I was up till 3am with food poisoning to pave the way for a diet of Western food on this trip. Sri Lankans make the most pained expression when you don’t buy into their culture for any reason – “why not ? …” they say in an utterly defeated looking way, spoon poised, ready to heap the curry onto your plate. I’ve given up on careful explanations … I’m not happy about it, but outright lying is working in the short term.

First stop Hambantota, on the Southernmost tip of the island. Dr Hemanth is a welcome antidote to the general well behaved-ness of Sri Lanka and over dinner I’m amused to watch the medical man smoke 10 fags and knock back 4 double whiskies - just what the doctor ordered. (beat you to it, Jake). Chinthaka and Susantha (25 and 27) never drink, though are at least, never disapproving. They’ve got a kind of religious self-assuredness but without the piety. Chinthaka has been seeing his fiancée for 4 years and has not yet been allowed to spend the night with her. He’s a modern guy and a Uni graduate but I don’t sense a shred of rebellion. Here Dr Hemanth and Chinthaka both baffle me with talk of arranged marriages etc … perhaps they’re right. I’m clearly falling behind in this department.

Next morning we head to the hospital to inspect their waste procedures. My presence is pretty inconsequential … I have to write the funding application so it’s important for me to see it all but The Doc does all the talking. The hospital is predictably grubby and under-resourced but not the worst we were to see. Thanks to the last 6 months spent working in medical product design, I am used to imposing myself upon the private anguish of patients and their families. To show pity or embarrassment does you no favours, I’ve realised. Like a doctor, it’s best to look directly and stride about with calming confidence. That said, there’s a lot more eyes directed towards the big white guy … and a lot more sadness to take in.

We are shown about by an elder sister in a fantastic pre-war, matron uniform. She has a kind manner and looks like an aged pixie with little pointy ears. Without embarrassment they show us the oil drum out the back where they burn ‘the stuff’. A wild looking guy is prodding the toxic ash with a stick.

We head off to recce some other sites for the project. First, an amazing old guy and his family who have an informal business sorting rubbish from the tip and selling it to recyclers. After the tsunami they were homeless and have since constructed the most elaborate dwelling out of junk. It’s as a children’s book illustrator would draw it. A gingerbread house with boxes, signs, debris, bits of bathrooms and cars instead of gingerbread. We also visit the tip. Here we find another surreal scene – Wild elephants up to their ankles in rubbish hoovering for scraps. The composition is as familiar as a classic Attenborough – a pack of the noble beasts feeding together, a flock of birds frolicking around them – but the grazing pool has been substituted for a lake of litter. We stand in the long shadows watching them. 

The strangeness doesn’t stop there. The tip is at the end of a long, straight road to nowhere, built to service the Tsunami resettlement villages. They look set to become a historic planning anomaly. Immediately after the disaster it was assumed the government would enforce a 2km exclusion zone for re-building around the coast, as time went on though, the horrific memories faded, land rights never materialised and this was all but forgotten. These 800 or so identical Lego bungalows were built 4km inland from town, I guess under the assumption that town would meet them halfway. It hasn’t. The fishermen apparently now walk the 8km everyday. It’s strange to look at … a little Wimpy estate. Never have I seen anything look so transplanted. It reminds me a little of early photos of Glasgow’s 1960’s resettlement projects.

I don’t know how the subject of ‘Aid’ plays out other countries but in relation to Tsunami aid there is actually quite a large public resentment towards NGO’s now. I’ve been a bit cynical in this post about the insensitivity of the ‘A kind donation from the people of …’ signs. They really wind me up. I think if you give someone a present you don’t need to leave the gift tag on - but anyway,  I really don’t want to sound like a-know-it-all about the efforts of these big organisations. The impression I get, for what its worth, is that they came, did good relief work and then began the natural process of re-building. Then all of their programmes became much longer term - infrastructure takes time. There was more than enough money coming in so they happily expanded in scale and now, rightly or wrongly, they are ‘developing’ large parts of Sri Lanka. I’m sure no-one is ungrateful but you can’t blame them for wanting to do it their own way. Now the media have also turned against them. Again, our interfereing, colonial track record probably doesn’t help matters. It’s not an easy issue, the government should have somehow been more effective but the point is, when do you stop ? The question seems to be being answered for us.

We had to get going. We had a 5 hour drive East to get to Amapara and the military imposed curfew began in 6. We’d spend the night there and make the trip to Kalmounai in the morning …