Ours was the second team from ADRA (the Adventist Development and Relief Agency) to reach Sri Lanka; a medical team had been in the area before us. Pictures can never fully capture the experience of being on-site, so, in spite of my reviewing many photos prior to the trip, I was not ready for what I saw upon arrival in Pottuvil. When we reached the coast, the extent of the devastation was readily apparent, and there had already been two months of cleanup. I ran on pure adrenaline for the first three days. My mood ran from complete despair through admiration to optimism. I learned a few valuable lessons on that trip:
- Nothing good can happen if you do not have good local people on the ground.
- Not everyone is good.
- Follow the money.
- Leave your preconceived solutions at the airport.
- Listen.
- Make a difference one person at a time.
- The road to hell is paved with good intentions!
There is no question that I saw many examples of greed, corruption and profiteering, but I also saw many examples of giving, caring and personal sacrifice. The trick to helping is to always work with people exhibiting characteristics of the latter group.
One From the Latter Group
On one occasion, two of us were busily building doors to stop the monkeys from stealing the offerings at local shrine when a man brought us a melon. He spoke almost no English, and we couldn’t even identify the language that he was speaking, but I’m sure he was basically saying, “Take a break you crazy white guys. Don’t you know it is the hottest part of the day? We don’t need two dehydrated old men passing out on us; we have enough to deal with right now!” Sagara helped us for the rest of the day.
At the end of the day we learned that Sagara had aquired a simple machine and was attempting to make cinder blocks, one at a time, to support his family and to help rebuild his community. Sagara was a laborer who had lost everything but his family—a family that grew by one on the day of the tsunami as his wife gave birth amidst the chaos. Now, they were all living in a tent in his mother-in-law’s yard. My mind started whirring, plotting, and planning. After doing a quick needs-assessment, asking many questions of many local people, and, most importantly, listening carefully to their answers, our group discussed the idea of supporting Sagara so he could increase cinder block production.
Sagara had asked for nothing. He had given freely of himself. He was not aware of our plan when he arrived for a meeting at his neighbours house. We simply started asking questions of Sagara with the help of a translator, and, after four hours of talking, had a plan that would see him triple his production, employing 12 local labourers. As a bonus, Sagara would be now be producing “Super Blocks” because I passed on what I had learned from Sandy R. in Mech 269 when I was a student at
Old College. (It still amazes me how misunderstood concrete is, but that is the topic for a duller blog.)
I went back to Sri Lanka some months later to see if what we had started had gone anywhere and to start more projects if the people we chose during our first trip proved to be the right people with whom to work. The change in the area was amazing. The results of international aid were evident everywhere--some positive and some negative. Buildings were going up all over, damage had been cleaned up, and many people were far better off than before the tsunami. Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky.
Of Locals and Labour
The best example of aid damaging the local economy involved the rice farmers. Most of the rice crop had been harvested before the disaster struck, but huge amounts of rice flooded into the country from abroad. The media carried footage of people without enough to eat so well-intentioned but misguided foreign agencies did what seemed right—they sent food. But the effect of that food hitting the market was that the price of rice was cut in half while the price of labour doubled. Aid agencies paid more double the going rate for labor, so those who would normally work for a local rice farmer were intisted into taking jabs in construction, and the rice crop for the following year was reduced drastically. Some local farmers lost their farms. In time, the markets sorted themselves out, but in the short run many suffered not from the wave but from the good intentions of other countries. The moral of the story is: if something is needed, buy it locally if you can!
Did we back the right horses? Mostly, yes. We had wells drilled that were producing clean water for residents of newly constructed communities—a very important project and a huge success! Some of the political relationships we had to cultivate produced less bang for the buck, so we minimized our exposure on those fronts. But overall our involvement was a success.
Changing Lives
For me, the greatest success was Sagara. When I returned, he was producing blocks—and lots of them! He was filling orders of 80,000 blocks, 3 blocks at a time. Still, the success was not in those numbers but in Sagara himself. Upon my return, Sagara was still living in a tent and a grass shack. When I asked him why, as a mason and block maker, he had not built himself a house like all his neighbours had, he replied, “I will build my house, but right now my country needs me to make blocks.” He was providing employment for his countrymen, producing a much-needed local product with local technology, and supporting his community by donating bricks for school projects. His loan repayment funded six small agricultural projects which helped some very poor families to get back on their feet.
When I left, Sagara said to me, “Before the tsunami, I had a black heart, but, because of all the help after, I am now a good person. I don’t have a black heart any more.”
Well, I have put off buying airline tickets for the Bolivia trip for as long as I could. I guess you just can’t outwait global uncertainty and political unrest. At some point you just have to dive in. I feel for the travel agent because booking tickets is a bit like navigating a corn maze; there are many possible ways to reach the destination, but only one “best” way.
There is never a direct flight from where I am to where I want to be! It is not so much the flying I dislike but the waiting in airports between flights. It will be a real treat to travel with a group this time--much of my traveling is on my own—partly because I have a fear of falling asleep in an airport and missing my flight, or of getting on the wrong plane and winding up “going to Winnipeg.” The chance of these things happening when you are with a group is greatly reduced, and if these things do happen, at least you have company to commiserate with.
The standard route to Bolivia from Calgary is on American Airlines. You spend 22 hours hop scotching across American cities to end up in Miami, then La Paz, before finally ending up in Santa Cruz. Now, I will do almost anything to avoid the Miami airport due to some bad experiences with rats, faulty plug-ins, too-short or too-long turn around times, invariable the wrong gate listed, and significant running. I sometimes question if going to Bolivia is worth suffering through the Miami experience—but here I am about to go again, so I guess I have my answer.
I presented the trip’s daily itinerary to the group last week. It looked a bit skeletal. I am amazed at how much meat has been added to the bones in the week since then! I met with Jake and Marg Hoogland this week, and the event calendar filled rapidly—as I knew it would. Marg and Jake have been living and working in one of the homesteading areas in Bolivia for 3ish years now, and it will be a real eye-opener for our group to experience those surroundings for a couple of nights. I am sure it will be a highlight of the trip for many. I am also convinced that Jake will have no trouble filling all the time we can devote to the area.
Next week I hope to talk to Maria Jose from CERENID to flesh out the rest of the schedule. I have never worried about a trip plan that was too thin, I only hope it doesn’t get so fat that it needs two seats on the plane! One thing for sure, Olds College/A Better World Bolivia Ag Tour 2009 will not be boring!
This is the time of year for joy and peace, but, for me, it is also a time of reflection. The world is full of moments of tragedy and triumph, both natural and man-made in origin. Each of these events resonates with us differently, and, I believe, each event shapes us to some degree. I cannot explain why the tsunami of December 26, 2004 impacted me so much at the time, and I could not imagine how it would change my life--land locked as I was in central Alberta--but it did! Because of the tsunami, I met Eric Rajah and 
