'We suspect the benefit we offer is not labour but money, yet we want to do more than send a cheque,' writes Molly McCloskey, in a diary of her two weeks as a volunteer worker in Sri Lanka
When I heard about the tsunami I was in a country nowhere near Sri Lanka, but the only news station I could get on cable was, oddly, Tamil TV. I could understand nothing except the place names and the ever-mounting death toll scrolling across the bottom of the screen. (In Sri Lanka it would reach 35,000.) The place names were familiar to me. The previous winter I had spent two months in Sri Lanka, in Galle, one of the areas hardest hit. I had stayed in a house owned by an English couple and had been cared for by a local family who worked at the house.
It was January 1st before I got through to the caretaker, but he told me everyone in the family had survived. It was one of those very bad connections that makes the person on the other end sound - disturbingly, in this case - as though he's underwater.
It has taken me a year to get back here - I'm working on a housing-reconstruction project - but it's not as though I'm too late. More than 90,000 people are still living in transitional camps - the conditions of which vary - in plywood and corrugated-tin structures, and five times that are believed to be staying with friends or relatives.
I found Global Crossroad online. It's an international volunteer organisation based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I chose it because the level of detail the website provided on its reconstruction project - down to the composition of cement and the diameter of bamboo scaffolding poles - inspired confidence. Also, I chose it because the project is based in Galle; our accommodation is in Unawatuna, the beach where I used to go snorkelling with the young boy whose family had looked after me in 2003.
DECEMBER 15TH
The Global Crossroad van picks us up in Colombo and we head south on the coast road. Clusters of destroyed homes alternate with rows of temporary shelters and areas miraculously untouched by the wave. The stranger sight is the houses on the sea side of the road: from the front they appear perfectly intact, but the sides that face the sea are missing, as though something emerged from the water and took large bites out of the back of them.
Unawatuna, though, is just as I remember it. Bob Marley's greatest hits are still playing, two years on. Unawatuna fancies itself a Little Jamaica, and it has clearly recovered its partying spirit.
In our group of 10 volunteers is an English tree surgeon, a Filipino intensive-care nurse, a marine who was in the first wave of soldiers to land in Iraq, an English carpenter, two gap-year students and three Indian-Americans: a public prosecutor, a physical therapist and a doctor. At 41 I am the oldest by 10 years.
DECEMBER 16TH
At the building site, which is on land purchased and donated by Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association, eight houses are in various stages of completion. We're told to pick a task, and I pick plastering, which I've never done before. Others paint, mix concrete, level floors or sift sand. A small crew of Sinhala-speaking labourers instructs us, mostly with hand motions. The skilled labourers earn 650 rupees a day (about €5.30) and the unskilled 400 rupees a day. Small boys run hither and thither, sometimes helping, sometimes just acting adorable. At first my plastering is hopeless, but by the end of the day Chooti, of whose technique I'm in awe, is giving me the occasional nod of approval.
Later, around the dinner table, I know we all want to ask David, the marine, about the war, but none of us is yet sure how. Instead we talk about why we are here and how much of a dent our work might be making in the vast need that is still Sri Lanka. Nobody has any illusions: Global Crossroad has built 25 permanent houses; Sri Lanka needs an estimated 96,000.
We suspect the benefit we offer is not our labour but our money. Each volunteer, on top of his or her airfare, pays $1,099 (€910) for a two-week stint, $400 of which goes to building materials and the remainder to food, lodging, logistical support and Global Crossroad fees. But none of us wanted to simply send a cheque for $1,099.
DECEMBER 18TH
A number of us begin to dig and level a large area for another foundation. We stand in a long line, swinging picks and hoes. We try to think of appropriate songs to sing. I suggest Sam Cooke's Chain Gang. But the other volunteers are too young to have heard of Cooke. A rumour has begun to circulate that Dr Morali, one of the directors of Global Crossroad, is due to arrive here from the US any time. He's on a recce.
DECEMBER 20TH
We saw - five centimetres in and a triangular cut - long thin boards that will be wedged together as roof supports. The glee I felt in our first couple of days begins to wane, not because I mind the work but because the method is unbelievably slow. Shouldn't Global Crossroad invest in a few basic power tools? Not to put anybody out of a job but to free up labour to build more houses, faster. Levelling earth for a foundation is occupying six of us. We paint with brushes instead of rollers. When I suggest to the local foreman that rollers would do the job in a quarter of the time, he tells me that Sri Lankans are used to brushes. "But," I say tentatively, "Sri Lankans aren't painting . . . We are."
As we troop up the path each morning toward the building site, past neighbours whose children call cheerfully to us, it is impossible not to wonder how Americans would feel if Sri Lankan volunteers came to build houses for them in, say, New Orleans. As we are volunteers (and not, for instance, well-paid UN employees) we don't qualify as what Naomi Klein has called "disaster capitalism". But the feeling of being a well- meaning colonial is unavoidable. I keep wishing for greater local involvement.
I ask our co-ordinator, a Sri Lankan man, why the houses can't be allocated now, enabling their future residents to help on the building site, and he says that their names might not be removed quickly enough from the government's housing list and people might therefore end up with two houses. While this is no doubt a danger ("improper identification of beneficiaries" has been one of the many problems in rebuilding Sri Lanka), surely a bit of effort could mitigate the risk. When Dr Morali arrives, I will ask him about this.
On the plus side is the knowledge that we are at least presenting a different face to the local people than the one they are used to seeing. I know from my two previous visits that many Sri Lankans view Westerners as self-indulgent hedonists and Western women as interested primarily in sex. (Sri Lanka, like Jamaica and Kenya, is a destination for white female sex tourists.) So I take pride in this display of our capacity for hard work, and I like that the local workers treat us not as women but as fellow labourers.
DECEMBER 21ST
David has opened up. My favourite of his many understatements: it's tough being a liberal in the military. He is against the occupation (his word) but says he wants to go back before the US pulls out. "It's hard to explain," he says, "but I feel an obligation. If I don't go, then some guy up my street will have to go, and that doesn't seem much like bravery on my part."
That night, walking around the village of Unawatuna, past the shops selling elephant T-shirts and carved Buddhas, I feel an intense sadness, coming not from myself but from all around me. I'm not someone who's particularly sensitive to collective "energies", but this is almost overwhelming. It's as though 100 funerals are taking place at once and the grief has acquired a critical mass. The air feels thick with loss, the people so muted compared to how I remember them. It doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that it took me six days to feel it.
DECEMBER 23RD
It's hard to feel, looking around, that things are what they should be here, a year after the disaster. The tsunami resulted in the largest international aid operation in history, driven by what Jan Egeland, head of humanitarian affairs at the UN, described as competitive compassion. (And the immediate achievement was impressive: after the tsunami there were no epidemics or deaths from starvation or thirst.) But now, when you speak to Sri Lankans, the most common question you hear is: Where has the money gone?
A report from Sri Lanka's auditor general cited widespread misappropriation of funds, waste, corruption and blatant violation of procurement codes. Non-governmental organisations have caught flak in Sri Lanka, too, for their lack of local knowledge. But many of the houses I saw that have been built - both temporary camps and permanent structures - were built by those NGOs that have stayed the course, among them Project Galle, Concern and Global Crossroad. The Red Cross is committed to building 15,000 homes but had to wait until July for the government to allocate the land.
Locals show photos and describe, with a certain pride, where they were when it hit. It is the pride that comes with having survived something horrific. When I go to dinner at a local family's house, the boy casually puts on a home-made DVD taken just after the event. As well as the endless structural devastation, it shows, in close-up, numerous piles of dead bodies. One day on the way into town, we pass a guy on a bike with a pink T-shirt that says, simply, tsunami.
DECEMBER 24TH
At breakfast there is a flurry of shouting in the kitchen, then silence. The service grinds to a halt. I duck my head into the hatch and call to the proprietor. "Sanjiva, can we have some milk?" And Sanjiva says: "I have nobody. All gone." He slap-skids his palms to indicate gone. "I pay them, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I pay them, they leave. I am all alone now. I have nobody. What do you want? Milk? Okay."
Part of Sanjiva's stress arises from the fact that he hasn't been paid by Global Crossroad for the past week. We all know this. Our local co-ordinator knows this. There's a disagreement going on with HQ in Baton Rouge. But, we keep repeating, when Dr Morali gets here, everything will be okay. Continued overleaf
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DECEMBER 26TH
At 9.24am, in Galle, as in the rest of Sri Lanka, the traffic comes miraculously to a standstill; every pedestrian stops in his or her tracks. The two minutes' silence has begun. Or sort of. From the bus station, to the left of where I am standing, a loudspeaker is intoning something in Sinhalese. And someone's mobile is trilling. Behind me a truck driver has failed to kill his motor, and it idles in the still air. Still, it's an extremely moving two minutes, and when it ends the air feels changed, lighter and clearer, as it would at a higher altitude. Later, the public prosecutor in our group tells me that the loudspeaker was broadcasting proceedings of the ceremony in Peraliya.
At 7pm I walk down to the beach. Coloured and white lights run up and down the strand (a couple of kilometres, at least), strung on palm trees so that it looks like 100 Christmas mornings in a row. A single line of white candles, placed in the sand, runs the length of the beach. Buddhist prayers are coming over a loudspeaker hooked to the pillar of our guest house. I walk to the far end of the strand, stunned, moved to tears by the display, this seemingly dissonant combination of the festive and the tragic.
Three and a half hours later the loudspeakers are still blaring, speeches now instead of prayers. The people around me appear shell-shocked. Tuk-tuk drivers slump in their seats. The loudspeakers are so loud it is impossible to talk. This is going on in villages all over the country and will continue through the night. I think of how continuous noise is one of the instruments of torture. I think of a toothache and its trick of reducing all of life to a single point. I think of tomorrow, when all this is over, and I vow that never again will I underestimate the beauty of a world in which loudspeakers are not blaring.
DECEMBER 27TH
The roofs have gone on two houses. Those that were shells when we arrived now look like homes. I join the diggers every other day and actually like the work. But our progress is so slow as to seem symbolic. A JCB, I've learned, can be hired for €11.50 an hour. Not likely to happen this week, anyway. Word has filtered through the group that there is no more money on hand for materials. Part of the disagreement that has Sanjiva out of pocket. (They say Dr Morali is landing in Colombo today. Talk of his imminent arrival has intensified. That morning, in a rare show of emotion, one of the co-ordinators clasped my forearms and said: "When Dr Morali comes, everything will be arranged.") We have three more work days left and don't want to sit around doing nothing, so all the volunteers decide to chip in and buy enough paint to finish three houses.
DECEMBER 29TH
Dr Morali arrived last night. This morning Sanjiva is happy. Our local co-ordinator is happy. They have the look of people who have just been paid. Dr Morali comes to the building site, and the volunteers get to fire questions at him. He wants us to film testimonials, possibly for the Global Crossroad website. Half of us, including me, decline. But, off camera, I raise the subject of the JCB and whether it wouldn't make sense to hire one for a few hours, when it comes to earth- moving time. Never have I spoken so passionately about a JCB. In fact, never have I spoken in any tone about a JCB. Dr Morali is nodding and saying: "Yes, that's a good idea, we must do that." He is, it seems, what I've been waiting for.
Molly McCloskey's latest novel, Protection, is published by Penguin Ireland, £10.99