They face a foreboding task. While the onslaught of nightmarish images on cable news channels and front pages has ground to a near-halt five weeks after the deadly waves struck, the misery is little diminished. The death toll throughout the Indian Ocean region has topped 225,000.

“Close to 50,000 [people] are dead in Sri Lanka and about one million homeless,” said Balasuriya. “The only comparison I can tell you is [what if] Minneapolis and St. Paul were hit by a tornado and everybody lost their homes and they are all homeless. It is a total catastrophe.”

He is not alone in his assessment.

Ground Zero
Shreen Saroor is a Sri Lankan citizen who has lived in Minnesota for almost two years. She was heavily involved with NGOs (non-governmental organizations,or what Americans call nonprofits) devoted to women’s issues while in Sri Lanka, and when the disaster struck she knew she had to do something.

“When the tsunami hit, watching that on TV, I thought, ‘Oh my God. What am I doing?’ I felt really bad about sitting there and watching,” she said over the phone from Sri Lanka January 16. Her voice was audibly distraught and she was frustrated by what she had witnessed the previous week and half.

One of the groups she had worked with previously was organized through the YMCA in the city of Batticaloa near the east coast of Sri Lanka—one of the hardest-hit areas. She called the YMCA and asked if they wanted her or her ticket money to help in the relief efforts. They preferred her, and on January 6 she arrived in Sri Lanka.

The next day she visited areas in Ampara district, near Batticaloa. In a report sent home to friends she wrote about the experience.

“Some of the villages I visited … are still in a deplorable condition,” she wrote. “I saw bodies that were buried by the side of the seashore being unearthed by the waves and eaten by crows. I don’t think I can get rid of the smell I wear now for many weeks—or maybe many months.”

Since her arrival she has been traveling to camps and hospitals, visiting villages, and talking to survivors. Initially, she was doing this work as an individual, but shortly joined forces with the YMCA Batticaloa group, which is serving some 5,000 beneficiaries. I asked her to describe her experiences.

“A guy who met with us in a hospital lost 14 family members,” she said. “He was volunteering with us unloading the medicine that I brought. He started talking to me. Then I asked him, ‘What can I do for you?’ Then he said, ‘No one has gone to my village. Can you go and see my people?’ I went to his village where about 3,000 of its people got killed. Half of its inhabitants got killed.”

“That is where I met this mother, who was staring at the sea with untreated wounds. We had to force feed her vitamins and antibiotics because she was not allowing us to treat her even. She had lost two daughters. It is just … I don’t know,” she said as her voice trailed off into silence.

Bureaucracy and Corruption
Saroor has been frustrated by what she describes as a failure to act quickly on the part of the INGOs (international NGOs) and the Sri Lankan government.

“The thing that I find here is that everybody is making assessments and trying to collect statistics,” she said. “I completely understand that they don’t want duplication—but in certain cases people have to act quickly!”

Corruption, she admits, has also been a concern. While making her rounds one day she witnessed food aid from an international body being unloaded near a political party office. She was told government officers were taking the food while nearby people were going hungry. She was infuriated and stormed into the building and scolded the officials.

She also explained in many cases Sri Lanka’s long-standing ethnic conflict, between the Tamil Tigers and the Singhalese-dominated government, played a big part in the politicizing of aid. Both camps have accused each other of blocking and misappropriating aid.

“It is so sad that right now they are playing politics and the south is getting such a lot of attention,” Saroor said. “The east part of Sri Lanka, which got very hard hit by the tsunami, because of the diverse population that lives here—Muslims, Tamils and Singhalese—all three communities together, there is lot of complications. Who controls what? There are a lot of politicians who do whatever.”

And whatever is too often nothing at all. She said it was very difficult to see the effect this had on the most vulnerable of survivors—the children.

“I saw a 12-year-old boy building a step up to the house,” Saroor said. “He told [us] that he has about seven siblings and he wants to bring all of them back. And his mother is alive and his father is dead. And this little child was trying to do something to the house so that they could come back. I was feeling so bad about him because I saw politicians going up and down in the town—12 or 13 SUVs with bodyguards and all sorts of things. And none of those people have reached in those areas.”

And despite the images of aid and reconstruction we witness in the media, according to Saroor, the reality on the ground is different.

“The sea has brought piles of sand so that roads were completely blocked,” she said.

“When I went there I didn’t see any earth-moving machines or nothing. I was shocked because of what I saw there in Minneapolis [on TV] is totally different and I was here after a week. And still nothing has been done. It’s people—affected people—who were working and trying to clean the roads,” she said.

“Sometimes you feel that you are so frustrated. I know quite a lot of INGOs are working very hard on this but also their work is not enough. I was watching TV and I know how much money had went into all these INGOs and how much they are spending here.”

International media have echoed many of Saroor’s complaints. A January 24 Reuters report noted Western aid officials feared tsunami relief may not reach hundreds of thousands in Sri Lanka because of government mismanagement and graft.

Grassroots Response
“I kind of hope we are like some guerillas out there, and that we are going to go to someplace to fill a need that is not being filled. That’s my hope,” said Mike Erkel during a phone interview less than 48 hours before his departure.

Erkel, who lives near Mille Lacs Lake, is a former Special Forces medic who did a tour in Vietnam and has recently worked as a physician’s assistant. He is part of Balasuriya’s first team in Sri Lanka.

“Last time I went over there I went with an M-16,” he said. “This time I am going over there without it and it feels a lot better to be going over there without it.”

Erkel hopes his small group can fill in some of the gaps described by Saroor.

“We are dealing with a fairly remote population from what I understand from what Evan tells us. We are going to be dealing with people who aren’t commonly reached by the usual methods. The extremely poor. That really appeals to me.”

He explained how he is trying to mentally prepare himself for the weeks to come.

“I have been in probably more stressful situations than probably anybody going on this thing. This does take a toll on you as well. It’s going to be real tough,” he said.

“It is going to look like a nuclear war when we get over there is what I expect. Where it hit these beach areas, some areas it went in six to seven miles inland and just devastated everything. There is going to be a lot of post-traumatic stress in the people over there. There is going to be higher incidence of alcoholism, suicide and drug abuse. All these things—take your pick.”

He is acutely aware of the post-tsunami dangers for Sri Lankan and aid worker alike. They will have to contend with a plethora of issues—tropical diseases, sanitation and security concerns.

“A couple of the big fears in the back of my mind: One is that there are one-and-a-half million landmines in Sri Lanka. In one particular area where the tsunami hit it washed out a lot of these landmines and they have no idea where they are,” he said.

“Not to mention there is every type of known poisonous snake in Sri Lanka. And I am hoping we don’t come back with malaria or dengue fever or japanese encephalitis. There is a whole wide variety of just about every type of tropical disease that you can get. It is a tropical paradise, but with that also comes tropical diseases.”

The Price of a Mercedes Benz
Pat Sundberg, an RN and Licensed Vocational Teacher from Isanti who is also going with Balasuriya, shared some of Erkel’s concerns.

“The travel doctors said the biggest problem would be accidents. Then I watched “The Amazing Race” [television show] last night and it was in Sri Lanka and the cars were driving in all sorts of directions—not in lanes—just all over the place. (She laughed) And that’s not much of a fear. I guess when you get to be my age you have to die of something somewhere sometime.”

Sundberg said being a part of a small group provided a chance to go in and directly help other human beings.

“I guess I don’t have huge expectations. I know it is a group of people who are willing to work all day until they are tired and they flop into bed. But if it’s just to comfort some children, if it’s just to comfort or work with families who have lost loved ones, if it is to nail up a house—it doesn’t matter to me,” she told me by phone, also less than 48 hours before her departure.

She hopes being in a small group, unattached to INGOs like the Red Cross or Oxfam, will be the key to helping. But she is also cautious.

“It is a risk to go with somebody who is not with an established organization. I think that small organizations sometimes have an advantage with local connections so that they are not involved as politically as some. That is where you go on a little bit of faith.”

For Balasuriya, there is no question his group will fill a need larger INGOs and the government either can’t or won’t.

“Because we are grassroots and we will go right to the source we don’t have to go through any red tape. We don’t have to go through bureaucracy. You know how that is. They trickle down—we are grassroots. We have lots of dedicated people going with me. And we are going to give it our best shot,” he said.

“And the Red Cross, they got so many places they got to take care of. We are totally focusing only in Sri Lanka, certain areas, and we are going to go straight into the areas. And hands on—we are going to do it right away. Big groups always have a problem. They don’t distribute right. Remember last year in Iran, they had an earthquake? They got pledged billions. You know how much they got? 17 million. So pledging and real donations are two different stories.”

Erkel sees the effectiveness of the small group in concrete terms.

“For the price—I think the entire cost of this entire operation is the cost of a moderately priced Mercedes Benz—we can go over there and hopefully really help some people and maybe save some lives.”

Part of a Larger Whole
“The collapse in international attention does not bode well for sustained aid,” warned a report issued by Oxfam one month after the disaster hit.

“On paper, 93 percent of the U.N.’s humanitarian appeal has been funded,” the report said. “In reality, governments have donated only about half the total amount needed. Though more than $4 billion has been promised for reconstruction, will these promises mean more than the broken promises of aid after previous disasters in Iran, Mozambique and Central America?”

In order for people like Saroor and Balasuriya to continue to provide relief directly to the people of Sri Lanka, funding is critical. But funding for groups such as these comes almost exclusively from private donors. Yet the part they play is vital. The smaller groups and individuals are often able to fill in gaps the bigger organizations miss.

“I have been working with volunteers, and they are young people, and we are doing whatever possible. We are not supported by government or NGO’s—we are just collecting individual contributions and trying to do something you can do without any red tape. If somebody needs something we just buy it and give it to them,” Saroor said.

“We don’t do the heavy things because we are not funded by any big people. So it is just individual contributions that’s coming in. We visit camps and try to give them money if the child is sick or to get some food. If we see a pregnant lady we help her to get proper food.”

For the Minnesotans now at work in Sri Lanka, it is a belief in their grassroots efforts that allows them to face the formidable task at hand.

“Today 31 U.S. soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Iraq and it really grieves me and it really makes me feel sad. Then Bush is asking for another 80 billion dollars. Can you imagine what we could do to help the tsunami victims with 80 billion dollars?” Erkel asked incredulously.

“I really think that maybe we need to try to reach out to the people of the world in a different way and maybe by going over to help some people maybe we can improve our image—try something a little different in this world.” ||

If you would like to make a donation to the Sri Lankan aid groups mentioned in the article please contact the following:

Shreen Saroor
qadrishreen@hotmail.com

Tsunami Relief Action YMCA Batticaloa
26/4 Boundary Road South
Batticaloa, 30000, Sri Lanka
ymcabatt@sltnet.lk 
Tel: 0094-65-222-2710

Evan Balasuriya
HelpSriLanka.us
evanmpls@qwest.net
Updates and photos of Balasuriya’s group will be available at the website.