Livin’ La Vida Aid-a

Week two in Sri Lanka and I was asked by one of the Chowk editors what living conditions were like for aid workers. I ‘talo-fied’ the question. I feel sort of ashamed answering, really. My living conditions are great. I am eating well, there is vilayaty booze all over the place, cigarettes, and a plethora of white skin which means that there is all the aram and asaaish that money can buy. It is after all, a South Asian country.

I had heard from people when the reconstruction of Afghanistan was going on that it was the place to be. Interesting people from all over the world (developing world) were there in droves and the locals made sure they had a good time. Billions in aid money has poured into Sri Lanka. It’s not the aid money we are seeing but the people with strong currency that has poured into the country as well. They like their beer chilled and their fish grilled (with some lemon butter sauce on the side, make it fast).

These are generalizations that do more harm than good, especially since I am traveling with a white male who does none of these things and in fact, I am the one who is more particular about what I eat and which mode of transportation I will take, however, most of the people we have hung out with here so far are the tourist types that one tends to stay away from. It is sad and I thought I would never admit to this however I find them all very comforting.

Granted I am in Colombo which is on the other side of the most affected areas. I am not sure what the on ground situation is on that (east) side. I am in the hub of paperwork activity where the people I meet have meetings with the prime minister and such. I am not necessarily out of my element but at the same time feel very strange that I have yet to see a refugee camp or people who have been affected adversely by the tsunami.

In answer to the editors question: I am living very well however, it is extremely frustrating as well.

The aid workers I meet are also living well. All of our stories are very similar. We were in our home countries, heard about the tsunami, saw what was happening on television and felt compelled to do something and started going through our networks of people we knew and tried to get positions in Sri Lanka or Indonesia to be able to do relief work. In a way it made me happy to know that D and I were not the only ones who were having a hard time finding placement. We were told over and over, you will be helpful, thank you for coming but at the same time, it was frustrating to find an organization that would take us.

We though at one point that all we would have to do is land here and we would find something. Not so. Aarti, the British woman we work with at EMACE was here on vacation with a plan to teach English for several months and stay in Sri Lanka. She was here when the tsunami hit and has friends who work for the UN and several other big name organizations. She had a hard time finding something as well.

I have yet to figure out why this is the case when every single NGO I speak to has plans for reconstruction. They have been at great expense, moving their own people to do work that the volunteers are begging to do but are not being given the opportunity to do. It is a perplexing situation and one that has no answers. Another situation that has no rational answer to it.

Aarti, D and I have regular bitching sessions where we wonder why the hell we are here doing what we are doing. It has been two weeks but I am looking elsewhere, specifically in the east where there was most damage (I’ve always been more of an east coast girl as is). I spoke with a woman in Kalumunai today who I had made contact with in America and she, Sarah Baden says that everyday they are involved in different tsunami related activities. Just hearing that has been reassuring.

There is tsunami related work going on, there are relief efforts that D and I can be a part of. EMACE is a lovely organization however they are a little schizophrenic in terms of what they want us to do and none of it at this point seems tsunami related. We are here to help with tsunami efforts and even though we are getting good training in terms of working in development in a third world country, this is not the time to be doing so. We head east in a day to assess the situation and to see if indeed our being there as volunteers will be helpful. It’s a 10 hour train ride since many of the train tracks along the coast have been destroyed.

In Colombo these are the things that we hear and read: The Sunday observer was carrying a story this past week about how the NGO’s are going around maligning the government on aid money that has disappeared. With good reason I would say since the most recent news, one that the government is refuting is that the Center for National Operations, the tsunami relief headquarters has lost the list of donors. We are not sure how the list is lost, but it is lost. The Sri Lankans I speak to just nod their heads. They are not surprised. It is too much money with no one to manage it. That is the biggest problem right now.

No one is there to manage the money. Plans are being drawn up every day by different people. It doesn’t matter when the money is not reaching the places it needs to. No one really has any idea where the money is. I keep asking about the money that has come in from the States, UK and Japan but no one can really tell me where it actually is. It would be nice if it wasn’t all so political and if the money could be made available to all the different NGO’s that have viable plans drawn up, architects and workers ready to go. They need money for the materials. They aren’t sure who to go to and by virtue of this being a third world developing country, everything works with who you know.

There is no official working plan to build houses. Everything gets sidetracked by the 100 meter rule, a great rule if there ever was one. Fishing communities, the ones most affected had shacks and shanties built along the coast line since the sea was their livelihood and they were basically squatting. They now not only have to live 100 meters away from the sea and they have to prove that they deserve the government money. They were squatting. They have no papers to prove where they lived. Again, the poor get screwed. The poor and those people that the government does not want to recognize: Tamil Nation in the north and the east.

It’s great to sit on the sidelines (even further than the sidelines) and watch people sling mud at each other and compete at who can do a better job and who deserves more credit. Who we don’t hear from are the victims themselves. The victims who are tired of staying in camps and shelters and are waiting for the bureaucracy to be over and done with so that they can have lives again. It will be another three months at least even before the rebuilding starts.

The life in Colombo is easy. Instead of bitching, moaning and complaining, D and I are going to pursue other options and see if there is anywhere else that we can go. It is not about finding a hard situation so that our stories can be better. It isn’t even about finding the more dire, badly hit area so that we can feel like tsunami heroes.

We came here with no expectations but we feel at the least, we should be working with the tsunami victims or with an organization that has made it a priority. We’ve tried office work but besides being stuck in paperwork, we have done nothing. We feel silly being here. We are going to head out east and see if we fare any better. Our desire is about helping people and doing something tangible. We are best trained for that given the networks we are coming from. We are hopeful.