Sri Lanka It's Happening

January 3, 2005

Returned from a trip to Galle and the amount of rebuilding that needs to be done is mind boggling. Everywhere you see crews working hard at clearing the rubble. Some of these crews are families working to clean up and restore what's left of their homes. Sometimes they are being helped by their friends and relatives sometimes they work alone.

Several teams of volunteers can be seen cleaning up the Galle (Mahamodara) hospital from their uniforms they appear to be girl guides + boy scounts of army cadets they look too young to be army cadets and to be working among all this death and destruction but they are.

The Galle hospital which is mainly a maternity hospital is a place of hope. The buddha statue near it's gate remains unscathed in the face of the wrath of the ocean. It is also a place many acts of heroism. I mentioned one of them the other day. There is another.

In one labour room a cesarian section was beeing carried out on a mother when the sea had seeped into the operating theater. While everyone else was evacuating the doctors and medical staff had continued with their work knowingly fully well that the stop their work half way through would mean the deaths of both the mother and child. Thankfully all of them had survived their ordeal.

Floating on the Indian ocean is another sign of hope. Four of them in fact. Four ships are sailing towards the Galle harbour one of them is a navy gunboat probably searching for bodies the others are vessels bringing relief supplies. Mainly from Sri Lanka's best friend India.

Posted by raditha at January 3, 2005 9:21 AM