Solis Camp and Telwatta (2/12/05)
Ok so things changed a bit.
We now leave on Monday for the East and we went down South on Thursday night late instead. I went with the media team (of which I am now part of!) down to shoot in a few camps in Matara and Kolutara again. The more I see the more humbling it gets for me. We see people still going on day after day doing what they can to make ends meet and go back to a knocked down home with no roof. The "lucky ones" get to go back to a camp or tent city. Personally I think the IOM does a pretty bang up job in their camps, they find sites, build them with a plan (layout, drainage, sanitation etc.) and work very hard to keep every person in the camp engaged in its day to day running. They train the occupants to clean, maintain and elect a group of leaders, a board so to speak to deal with problems and to act as liaison to the IOM. The goal being to turn the camp over to its population as soon as it’s feasible. They incorporate a community center/children’s center in the camps too. One camp we went to the other day was doing very well (that’s why we were there after all) and to be honest I had a blast! The kids loved my cameras and playing with my sunglasses, we played some badminton (very hard with camera bags on) and they were having as much fun as I was. We even chased a monitor (big, BIG lizard) out of the camp. Ok so, they saw it, I began to take pictures of it and in the process we chased it, it ran deeper in the camp. Not a good thing, it tried to get into peoples emergency shelters (lots of small kids and elderly people around) some of the elderly woman got involved as it came towards them. (do not engage an elderly Sri Lankan woman wielding a coconut husk broom, you will get your ass handed to you. Which is what they did with the Monitor, it ran further into the camp and that’s where the kids and I cornered it. This is also where I thought this was a bad idea suddenly. I know it was a bad idea to begin with but now it was stupid. The kids and I backed up and let it climb the brick wall and get into someone else’s yard. So I learned few things here: there are monitors in Sri Lanka, they are in fact big, they move fast, kids will follow you no matter how stupid your actions are…I think they were waiting to see what I would do if I caught up to it more than anything, these buggers can climb up brick walls and jump and of course not to play with broom having Sri Lankan senior citizens.
Jokes aside, the camps are not a fun place for these people. They are not good places to raise a family. The camps tend be crowded and have no privacy. The NGO’s try very hard to make them safe, clean and as comfortable as possible. At the end of the day they are emergency shelters made of heavy tarp, aluminum, wood frames and a quick poured concrete floor, the door is a cut section of the tarp. Some camps that I have been told about (mostly the state run ones I am told) are full of drunks, drugs and in most cases women and girls are not safe so they won’t stay in them. The IOM staff at the camps work hard to establish and maintain a feeling of community within the camps. They are doing a hell of a job too.
In other camps that we drove by (non-IOM) the sites seemed to be rather loose, un-planned really. Others were not protected; some were straight up along side the road. So close that if the move of the day spilled out much off the road in the wrong places you have some serious problems. Generally thought this is not the case. Most places are set inside the road a bit and lay out to a grid etc.
We stopped and shot at the train in Telwatta. This was the train that everyone has seen pictures of, it was torn off the tracks and twisted up and thrown, all from the water. When everything was done, the authorities believe that over 800 were killed in and on it. There had been about 1000 tickets sold for the trip but only 802 bodies were found in the cars. The track has been re-laid and the cars put back on to the track but it can’t be moved as some of the wheels were torn off. So it’s sitting in front of the station it was stopped at when the wave hit. The rather morbid reality of it is that the trains have been repaired enough that trains run in and out of this station now. There is also a large tent city surrounding the area as well. The videographer and I climbed inside and shot what we needed to shoot but I won’t lie, it was pretty strange. It was cleaned of debris but the cars are twisted and in some areas torn, mud is caked all over the walls and chairs. All along the walls in the mud are scraping marks left by hands clawing at the mud. I would like to bet from after the fact but it wont erase the eerie feeling it gives you to look at. Some kids saw me climb in and followed me. I would bet that this was a fairly common occurrence, people climbing in to the cars and looking around anyway. They were good kids, they hung out and watched me shoot and tried to stay out of my way if I looked like I was avoiding them in my shots. They really wanted their picture taken though. So I did. Then they wanted chewing gum…gave them my last pieces of Dentyne. It was either that or a crushed protein bar. Personally the protein bar tastes pretty damn good but I don’t think it was going to go over as well as the gum did. I had seen the train from the road two or three times now and had wanted to get over there and shoot, but I was always a bit nervous to do so. Now I want to go back and shoot again. The creepy feeling and reverence of what happened would still be there but I would be able to look around a bit more clearly.
Afterwards our van broke down in another camp, when I say broke down I really mean broke. All day long we had been hearing not happy noises and occasionally stopping to look what it could be. I was in the way back of the minibus so I was trying to gauge which side to sit on when the wheel falls off since only the front seats here have seat belts. My bet was the brakes were shot and the sound was the pad grinding away but it wasn’t only happening when we were braking but it seemed louder, someone else said was betting on the tranny going. Turns out the bearing had melted away on the front passenger side and we were riding on the spindle. I did that once in the Plymouth, not cool, only I paid a lot more than we paid to get it fixed. So we sat there waiting for another car to come the hour and a half from Colombo when up walks a mechanic. He lives in the camp we were visiting, lucky for us he was ok with the camp. He pointed out the problem, jacked the car up and proved it. He sent his son for his tools and went for the parts. As we waited for the parts to show up and while he was fixing it a service was being held in a TINY (8 foot octagonal) open aired chapel. I sat down at a train station about 60 feet away with the rest of the crew and we listening to hymns being sung in Sinhalese just after the sun set. They sang and prayed with a tiny candle lit and we watched the van being fixed. It was pretty beautiful really.
That’s where I should end this.
Take care everyone.
David
We now leave on Monday for the East and we went down South on Thursday night late instead. I went with the media team (of which I am now part of!) down to shoot in a few camps in Matara and Kolutara again. The more I see the more humbling it gets for me. We see people still going on day after day doing what they can to make ends meet and go back to a knocked down home with no roof. The "lucky ones" get to go back to a camp or tent city. Personally I think the IOM does a pretty bang up job in their camps, they find sites, build them with a plan (layout, drainage, sanitation etc.) and work very hard to keep every person in the camp engaged in its day to day running. They train the occupants to clean, maintain and elect a group of leaders, a board so to speak to deal with problems and to act as liaison to the IOM. The goal being to turn the camp over to its population as soon as it’s feasible. They incorporate a community center/children’s center in the camps too. One camp we went to the other day was doing very well (that’s why we were there after all) and to be honest I had a blast! The kids loved my cameras and playing with my sunglasses, we played some badminton (very hard with camera bags on) and they were having as much fun as I was. We even chased a monitor (big, BIG lizard) out of the camp. Ok so, they saw it, I began to take pictures of it and in the process we chased it, it ran deeper in the camp. Not a good thing, it tried to get into peoples emergency shelters (lots of small kids and elderly people around) some of the elderly woman got involved as it came towards them. (do not engage an elderly Sri Lankan woman wielding a coconut husk broom, you will get your ass handed to you. Which is what they did with the Monitor, it ran further into the camp and that’s where the kids and I cornered it. This is also where I thought this was a bad idea suddenly. I know it was a bad idea to begin with but now it was stupid. The kids and I backed up and let it climb the brick wall and get into someone else’s yard. So I learned few things here: there are monitors in Sri Lanka, they are in fact big, they move fast, kids will follow you no matter how stupid your actions are…I think they were waiting to see what I would do if I caught up to it more than anything, these buggers can climb up brick walls and jump and of course not to play with broom having Sri Lankan senior citizens.
Jokes aside, the camps are not a fun place for these people. They are not good places to raise a family. The camps tend be crowded and have no privacy. The NGO’s try very hard to make them safe, clean and as comfortable as possible. At the end of the day they are emergency shelters made of heavy tarp, aluminum, wood frames and a quick poured concrete floor, the door is a cut section of the tarp. Some camps that I have been told about (mostly the state run ones I am told) are full of drunks, drugs and in most cases women and girls are not safe so they won’t stay in them. The IOM staff at the camps work hard to establish and maintain a feeling of community within the camps. They are doing a hell of a job too.
In other camps that we drove by (non-IOM) the sites seemed to be rather loose, un-planned really. Others were not protected; some were straight up along side the road. So close that if the move of the day spilled out much off the road in the wrong places you have some serious problems. Generally thought this is not the case. Most places are set inside the road a bit and lay out to a grid etc.
We stopped and shot at the train in Telwatta. This was the train that everyone has seen pictures of, it was torn off the tracks and twisted up and thrown, all from the water. When everything was done, the authorities believe that over 800 were killed in and on it. There had been about 1000 tickets sold for the trip but only 802 bodies were found in the cars. The track has been re-laid and the cars put back on to the track but it can’t be moved as some of the wheels were torn off. So it’s sitting in front of the station it was stopped at when the wave hit. The rather morbid reality of it is that the trains have been repaired enough that trains run in and out of this station now. There is also a large tent city surrounding the area as well. The videographer and I climbed inside and shot what we needed to shoot but I won’t lie, it was pretty strange. It was cleaned of debris but the cars are twisted and in some areas torn, mud is caked all over the walls and chairs. All along the walls in the mud are scraping marks left by hands clawing at the mud. I would like to bet from after the fact but it wont erase the eerie feeling it gives you to look at. Some kids saw me climb in and followed me. I would bet that this was a fairly common occurrence, people climbing in to the cars and looking around anyway. They were good kids, they hung out and watched me shoot and tried to stay out of my way if I looked like I was avoiding them in my shots. They really wanted their picture taken though. So I did. Then they wanted chewing gum…gave them my last pieces of Dentyne. It was either that or a crushed protein bar. Personally the protein bar tastes pretty damn good but I don’t think it was going to go over as well as the gum did. I had seen the train from the road two or three times now and had wanted to get over there and shoot, but I was always a bit nervous to do so. Now I want to go back and shoot again. The creepy feeling and reverence of what happened would still be there but I would be able to look around a bit more clearly.
Afterwards our van broke down in another camp, when I say broke down I really mean broke. All day long we had been hearing not happy noises and occasionally stopping to look what it could be. I was in the way back of the minibus so I was trying to gauge which side to sit on when the wheel falls off since only the front seats here have seat belts. My bet was the brakes were shot and the sound was the pad grinding away but it wasn’t only happening when we were braking but it seemed louder, someone else said was betting on the tranny going. Turns out the bearing had melted away on the front passenger side and we were riding on the spindle. I did that once in the Plymouth, not cool, only I paid a lot more than we paid to get it fixed. So we sat there waiting for another car to come the hour and a half from Colombo when up walks a mechanic. He lives in the camp we were visiting, lucky for us he was ok with the camp. He pointed out the problem, jacked the car up and proved it. He sent his son for his tools and went for the parts. As we waited for the parts to show up and while he was fixing it a service was being held in a TINY (8 foot octagonal) open aired chapel. I sat down at a train station about 60 feet away with the rest of the crew and we listening to hymns being sung in Sinhalese just after the sun set. They sang and prayed with a tiny candle lit and we watched the van being fixed. It was pretty beautiful really.
That’s where I should end this.
Take care everyone.
David
posted by davidlang at 1:04 PM
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