On the Road to Galle

Today I made my first trip to the Tsunami area. Still a terrible amount of visible destruction but the area within 40 miles of Colombo is relatively clean and there is construction in many areas already.




The Red Cross is building houses in several areas. I visited some Red Cross funded construction in Beruwela on the Western Coast. I also saw a distribution of relief items like mats, cooking sets, pots and cloth. The distribution took place at a Buddhist Temple which served as a serene venue for the crush of handing out items to hundreds of people from a relief list.

Tissa S. De Silva has six in his family which includes his wife 2 daughters, son and his mother. He had a shop at the beach front that sold items to tourist and local residents. He lost everything too.

Here he is with his house.

Mr. and Mrs. K. Ramasiri, their son and his wife will live in this two bedroom house when it is finished. Mr. Kasmiri is building this house with funds and technical assistance from the Red Cross. He is shown here with the Belgium Red Cross coordinator, Chrisanthe Fernando. Mr. Kasmiri was a fisherman. He lost everything, including his boat and all of his equipment. The local government administrator arranged for him to receive a boat but not nets and other fishing equipment. He will need to be fully outfitted. This will be arranged in the coming months.




K. Sandon Rohitha Di Silva with his wife. They have 2 other children and one on the way. He also ran a tourist shop but since it was built of brick and concrete many years ago it is the only building still standing. There is nothing in it but he hopes to refurbish it one day. Right now he is focused on building a house for his family. Red Cross is helping to build the house. He was lucky enough to get land from his father who had a plot near the sea.

One of the most impressive of the distribution was the cadre of Sri Lankan Red Cross volunteers managing the operation. You could easily see that this group has had some practice at relief work. They were well trained and were all well identified. There was no question they could not answer be it from the people receiving the goods or the visitors on the scene.