May 20th - We continued our work at the site, getting to know both the workers and refugees better as time went on.

Entries: Zohra, Keith

Everything is happening so quickly it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Yet we all get so much time to relax and kick back every evening – strange how that works.

I want to write about so much and reflect on several ideas in writing, but I don’t even get through just putting down all that happens everyday. There are 15 minutes to dinner, but I really just have to get all this out. I don’t know whether to go forward or backward…

Today I felt like being away from the rest of the group while I painted the frames. So I took my sandpaper and paint and walked away to the house right near the camps, farthest from the one where we all kept our water cooler, bag packs etc. I started painting and soon I found myself missing my friends and picturing them
here with me. My thoughts were interrupted when I was surrounded by children from the camp. Suddenly I was amidst about ten children – children who ran away from the waves of the tsunami and survived while their homes were swept away. Children who were smiling at the thought that their “amma” and “tata” remain,
still, by their side It was completely overwhelming.

One of the girls seemed to know some English, so I tried to converse. She is taking her A’ Levels in commerce, business and accounting in 2006. Her name is Suba (means morning in Urdu/Hindi). She linked me with all the other children. Started singing for them, songs like “Kabhi Kabhi,“ and “Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai,” acting out some of the dance moves from the film which they picked up on immediately. I was ready to do anything to find some common ground between us, and I succeeded. I knew that Bollywood would do it! Suddenly I was Rani Mukherjee, (or Tina, as she is called in the movie) and the boy closest to me pretended to be the hero of the
film (yes, me lover), the great Shahrukh Khan (or Rahul!) So here was a bollywood film set, while I painted intermittently and had paint stains all over my bare arms and in my hair – I FELT REAL

My co-actor brought me a stool when he saw me struggling with a door frame above my head, and I climbed up while he held on to it to make sure I didn’t topple. I was going to ask him to lift the container of paint in order to dip my brush without having to climb down and then back again. I turned around and before I
opened my mouth he was already holding it up for me – no words were exchanged. The connection was indescribable. They serenaded me with Sinhalese songs while I painted their new homes; they taught me Sinhalese words for all the members and relations of the family. Then they showed me a drum set that the boys had created from the remains of their set that got washed away. They used a carem board with a tennis ball as the bass, string, unused pipes and a wooden frame divided into 6 sections, with each section having the surface of a different material (tin, plastic, even sandpaper) in order to produce 6 novel sounds. The drum sticks were the easiest part – there were twigs all over the place. Two boys started playing together and asked me to sing. Immediately they adjusted to the beat of my song and got it spot on. They ever added improvisations at the end of the chorus and verse! I was sure that these kids were extremely bright. During another song one of the boys started jamming all out like a rock guitarist. I wished so much that I had a stringed instrument to give him. After seeing his talent at the drums I was sure that if I handed him a guitar he would teach himself to play it in no time. So I asked Suba to tell him that after his brilliant job at arranging the drum set, perhaps he should give the guitar a shot using materials from the site – some wood, some string, some nails for starters. Then one girl told me how she hates the sea, and that their house was right on the shore.

She said they do not eat fish anymore, but I didn’t really understand why. Her father’s boat got washed away, so did her uncle’s. Now they are both doing off paint jobs in order to earn for the days meals. Her father later told me that he once sailed all the way to the port in Karachi, my home city. He ran into his hut and brought out a crumpled piece of paper and told me that it had the phone number of his fisherman friend at Karachi Port. I saw a smile stretch right across his face while I read out his friends name and phone number. I turned around and found myself facing a door frame. The frame enclosed 3 generations - a smiling woman with her baby grand daughter in her arms, and her beautiful daughter by her side. It was one of the most vivid images that I carried back from Sri Lanka. I repeatedly thank good fortune for saving all three of them.

-Zohra

Today’s schedule was similar to yesterdays. We went to the housing site and dug more holes, which were a lot easier to dig than yesterday because of our new techniques. But I was still really tired and sore from yesterday’s labor. Before work, we visited a Buddhist temple. The temple itself was absolutely gorgeous. All major Buddhist temples have a huge dome with a relic inside. Also there is a huge tree that that the Buddhists pray to at each temple. There were kids at the temple and they were fun to interact with and say hi to.

Even though I was really sore, we were able to complete the holes for half of the houses in the village today. My favorite moment from today was when I took a break to talk to the kids living in the temporary shelters. A few of them lost their drumset in the tsunami and created their own out of cardboard and pots. They performed for me and then asked me to perform for them. I couldn’t sing in Singalese so I sang the first song that came to my head, “Somebody Told Me” by the Killers. I had a blast because they didn’t care that I was completely off-key. Sumit then came and sang a Hindi song with them.

Before lunch, I saw my first real glimpses of tsunami damage when we went with AFLAC officials to go label boats that they donated. The beach that we went to was close to the work site in Wadduwa, which is on the western side of the country. This area was not affected very much by the tsunami. The south and east were hit much harder. The extreme damage in the east and the presence of the terrorist group the Tamil Tigers in the east makes it too dangerous for us to go to. But even here the damage was awful. Houses 100 – 200 meters in from the beach were completely leveled even if they were made out of bricks and concrete. I was shocked that even an area that wasn’t hit that badly had that type of damage.

After lunch, we went back to the site. I continued digging holes and interacting with the villagers, some of whom watched me dig. I hope that they appreciate the work that we put in and see us as more than spoiled rich Americans. I love to play with the kids and just see their smiling faces. All of the workers are really nice to us and help us. They gave us cocoanuts before we returned to our hotel.

My view of the trip has already changed. I now see that 16 of us as a group cannot accomplish much physically while we are here. We aren’t qualified construction workers and cannot actually do a lot of work there. Now that I’m here, I realize that the greatest effect that we can make is back in America. We can tell people at Penn and in our communities exactly what we saw there and what needs to be done. Hopefully we can inspire people to help to improve conditions there.

-Keith, 7:05pm