Our visit to
Batticaloa district
After lunch on Saturday February 19, 2005 we proceeded to the
Thilakavathyar Illam for girls in Cheddipalaiyam in the Batticaloa
district. This home had not been affected but house over 70 children.
As in the boys home the boys were not necessarily orphans, some of the
children having one or both parents still living. We spoke to the
girls. The children were of varying ages going up to A/level class.
Back to Batticaloa,
we then visited the Ramakrishna Mission Boys home, where we met with
Swami Jeevananda. The boys were at evensong and we were therefore not
able to speak with them.
After dinner we
went to Gopal’s Rest Inn where we were spending the night.
The following
morning on Sunday February 20, 2205 after breakfast we first went to St
Vincent’s School which continued to house a camp and where Manitha Neyam
distributed kitchen utensils and exercise books. Thereafter we went to
the Kallady Muhatthuwa Vipulananda Vidayalayam to distribute children’s
packs. This school had 1044 students going up to A/level class (other
than Maths). 54 children of the school as well as the Deputy Principal
had been lost to the Tsunami. 37 children had lost one parent and 4 had
lost both parents, while only 650 children had come back to school, some
families having moved away from Batticaloa.
Thereafter we went
to see the temple at Thiruchendur, where the foundation had been torn
from below the Thevasthanam, and then passed the Dutch Bar to the
Gayathri Temple, where the Kumbabishekam (consecration ceremony) had
taken place just some weeks before.
As in Mullaitivu
and Killinochchi, the coast road had been washed away and only a 4 wheel
drive vehicle could get through.
And then we
visited Navalady, where nothing was left standing. Most of the school
had been destroyed and in the areas that still stood the sand had been
washed away from below. A part of the newly build house still stood,
but the two children who lived in that house were missing, while their
mother was found battered and bruised. Their grandparents who lived
next door had also died. The irony was that while the family had run
away from their home to escape the waves, others had found refuge in the
same house and survived. The water that had come from the sea had
ravaged the shores and washed its habitants to the lagoon on the far
side.
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