Egoda Ayuna and Moratuwa
Someone pointed me towards a place that has high speed internet connections so i can actually send my images and use my own laptop.
yesterday I went about 20 Km south of Colombo to an area called Moratuwa to see what the group P.E.A.C.E. has been doing there. Look up P.E.A.C.E. online google it.
This area was a fishing villiage mainly. I am not going to waste my time trying to describe what i saw other people are better at that. What i can say is that the water was moving with enough force to bowl over concrete phone and power poles, bend rail lines and wipe strips off houses away. Most of the houses were reduced to their foundations. The debris was everywhere still, clothes, wood, bricks, glass, hunks of random things too. Its been over a month now and there is no one to clean the area up. the people want to rebuild but the government wont allow them to build anything within 100 meters of the shore in case this happens again. The worst affected were often the poorest too. they may have only had a small lean to like shack but its gone. many people in these areas lost any means to make a living too. fisherman without boats, vendors with out bicycles to pedal there vegetables etc from area to area, carpenters with out tools. P.E.A.C.E is working with as many people as it can handle to provide them with items to help them work again. new bikes, new tools etc. they are not really organized for this sort of thing but its what they are doing. they are adapting as best they can. Really these people are working their butts off.
I shot for several hours then headed back to Colombo, edited and tried working on captions.
Today I am making calls and transmiting the images. this weekend i am trying to head further south and see the areas that were really hit hard. OH yah, Moratuwa was not hit very hard by comparison. the further South and East the worse the damage.
more later.
yesterday I went about 20 Km south of Colombo to an area called Moratuwa to see what the group P.E.A.C.E. has been doing there. Look up P.E.A.C.E. online google it.
This area was a fishing villiage mainly. I am not going to waste my time trying to describe what i saw other people are better at that. What i can say is that the water was moving with enough force to bowl over concrete phone and power poles, bend rail lines and wipe strips off houses away. Most of the houses were reduced to their foundations. The debris was everywhere still, clothes, wood, bricks, glass, hunks of random things too. Its been over a month now and there is no one to clean the area up. the people want to rebuild but the government wont allow them to build anything within 100 meters of the shore in case this happens again. The worst affected were often the poorest too. they may have only had a small lean to like shack but its gone. many people in these areas lost any means to make a living too. fisherman without boats, vendors with out bicycles to pedal there vegetables etc from area to area, carpenters with out tools. P.E.A.C.E is working with as many people as it can handle to provide them with items to help them work again. new bikes, new tools etc. they are not really organized for this sort of thing but its what they are doing. they are adapting as best they can. Really these people are working their butts off.
I shot for several hours then headed back to Colombo, edited and tried working on captions.
Today I am making calls and transmiting the images. this weekend i am trying to head further south and see the areas that were really hit hard. OH yah, Moratuwa was not hit very hard by comparison. the further South and East the worse the damage.
more later.
posted by davidlang at 1:00 PM
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