Sri Lanka and Paris

Where to begin? Since I left Iraq I’ve been back to Turkey, to Sri Lanka twice and am now residing in Paris until the end of the summer. Pas mal, eh?

At the risk of turning into a spokesperson for the Paris tourist bureau, this place is simply amazing in August. I really never knew. There is live music all the time. They’ve even turned the banks of the Seine into a carnivalesque beach scene, complete with beach chairs, sand, dance lessons, rock climbing and more. In front of the historic Hotel de Ville is a full-on four court beach volleyball championship going on every night. And across the banks are groups of revelers dancing salsa, tango and folkloric until midnight every night. C’est fou!!! I could go on…
And amid all the madness, and sometimes drunk with fatigue, I am managing to write almost daily. In fact, I try not to let myself out of my room until late afternoon otherwise I’ll never come back in. Plus, I’ll spend too much money. Paris is crazy expensive. But my Lord it’s fun!!! And many thanks to my generous cousin and family who have given me a room for the summer. Surely I couldn’t do it without them.

But before Paris there was another trip to Sri Lanka. One of these days I will upload photos - and I really thought today would be the day - but technology is always working against me (sorry, carol). So there’s the rough 101 text on Sri Lanka, as I see it:

My first trip to Sri Lanka was spent entirely on the western and southern coasts, primarily in a vegetative state as I recovered from Iraq. I wasn’t at that moment ready to engage the post tsunami society head on. My second trip was meant to be a bit more directed. The month and a half stay this summer was spent almost entirely in Arugam Bay on the eastern coast, a surfer’s paradise that was devastated by last December’s tidal wave. Six months later, I was hoping to find a reconstruction effort in full swing, with hardly a remnant of the wave’s destruction visible from the road. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sri Lanka is still in a state of stasis while officials from various agencies and NGOs decide how to rebuild the island. Much of the confusion comes from a law the government now threatens to enforce, that forbids people from building within 100 meters of the shoreline on the west coast and 200 meters on the east coast. As the government negotiates alternative plots of land, either buying from farmers or using land already in government hands, people wait for something permanent. And they wait for handouts.

“It’s a wound they don’t want to heal; if it did the handouts would stop,” said one cynical Colombo native. It is obvious that the landslide of handouts directly following the tsunami has greatly impacted the island. It’s The Golden Wave, as many islanders call it, as it has brought untold riches to some, nothing to others. A man who had no boat now has three. A man who lived in a shack now has two homes. Indeed the uneven dispersal of funds has created not just enmity, but all out fighting between communities and within communities. And all this before international aid money or government help has even reached the people in any substantial way. The Sinhalese government claims it hasn’t received the promised funds. It is possible they’ve only received a portion, as aid should be doled out slowly, generally over two years and only as it pertains to an established plan of action, to avoid graft and corruption. Yet the funds it has received can hardly be located. Though there are hundreds of brand new luxury vehicles touring Sri Lanka that never before existed. None of this is lost on the Sinhalese people.

The added delicacy of the situation on the eastern coast, particularly in the north, is that it is home to the island’s roughly 30% Tamil population, and its armed resistance faction, the LTTE. The LTTE has been fighting for equal access to jobs, education and the legal system, among other things, since 1956 when the then prime minister declared the official language of Sri Lanka to be Sinhala; those speaking only Tamil would have to adapt. The declaration took what was by most accounts an equal society and overnight divided it into first and second-class citizens. There was a ceasefire declared between the government and the LTTE in 2002, but many Tamils and Sinhalese feel it was a contract between two factions of government officials against armed conflict, with little resonance for the rest of the population. Injustices and inequality still exist today, they say. The idea of separate but equal had its lifespan in the US, in the end prompting the notion that separate was in fact not equal. In Sri Lanka it’s a concept whose time has not yet come. Armed conflict is certainly not the answer (and the LTTE have certainly used their share of car bombings, shootings, etc) but the two sides have yet to find a common ground. In the meantime, aid becomes a political tool.

As the east coast sits among its post tsunami rubble, often lacking even for food and fresh water, the government fears that any funds given will go into buying arms. One of the few NGOs I encountered that got the thumbs up from every person I spoke to was the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), funded in large part by international donors through the LTTE. TRO are careful to distance themselves from the LTTE saying their funding may have come in some part from the rebels but the aid organization is certainly not filled with rebel members. But the possibility of an LTTE aid organization has kept most larger and international NGOs from officially recognizing the TRO. At the time I was there the Sinhalese government was supposed to recognize them as part of a joint mechanism strengthening the ceasefire. Many citizens care little about the politics of it all. “If the LTTE are the only people who support us now, then we will have no problem supporting them later,” said a man of the TRO, as he stood in the rubble of his home, which was finished just 58 days before the tsunami brought it crashing to the ground.

Regardless of who the TRO members actually are or where funding might eventually go if it were ever given out, the truth is that tensions are mounting on the east cost of Sri Lanka and any ceasefire seems in name only. There were 61 deaths in 32 days the month I was there, almost six times the average. I asked the 28-year old head of an LTTE office if he thought it was a sign of things to come. He and the men seated around him nodded in unison. “Things will certainly get worse before they get better.” Their take is that the government is creating the violence and is the only one to benefit at this point in time from an ongoing war. The government claims the lack of stability from terrorism is preventing proper reconstruction of the area, despite their best efforts.

And I haven’t even begun to describe the mess of aid workers, volunteers and locals. Stay tuned for a much longer piece soon. And of course, photos…