to be poor

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taking up the topic of my recent post "eyes", just a bullet list of what it means to be poor in batticaloa, sri lanka (but feel free to put in any other place):

• the husband (if present) works as a day labourer, earning barely enough to feed the family
• the kids leave school early to add to the family's income
• you live on your own plot, but twice a year it gets flooded and turns into a swamp. so the romance showing up in the lead shot is just a temporary one
• your daughter carries the daily laundry quite a distance. to wed her, you should save for a dowry, but don't know from where to take it
• your plot of maybe 100m² houses well and toilet pit, not a really healthy arrangement
• when you are not in a specially affected group like the tsunami victims, you probable are poor and stay poor

by careful usage of funds, our project could increase the number of donated toilets, and some families in puthur, batticaloa, now have decent hygienic facilities. to help them to help themselves, the beneficiaries were paid in installments and themselves contracted the work. this also created a good sense of ownership - and kept the costs really low. and the toilet now is the most solid structure on the plot, much better then the house...

fortunately enough, un-habitat's programme "cities without slums" will tackle this situation in order to achieve a structural improvement.

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eyes

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no words at the moment - time presses. i hope the picture speaks for itself

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blog action day: poverty

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the non-availability of clean drinking water clearly is one indicator of poverty. in this area of batticaloa, sri lanka, the soil does not provide drinking water from wells through the whole year. as the next permanent well is 5 km away, the typical wedding present for a couple residing in this area consists of a bicycle and a set of water cans.

through European Union funded project activities, ferrocement rainwater harvesting tanks now will complement the traditional dug wells and alleviate the household chores, freeing valuable time especially for the women.

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offloaded

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thanks to the help of the unhcr, these civil war refugees are offloaded again next to the remainders of their village that they had to leave 2 years ago when the sri lanka government had decided to "liberate" the east coast. aah, it's so easy: the government decides to displace, and the international community does not have many options but to assist so that government's actions don't result in a humanitarian catastrophy. so the refugees come to camps, and when government allows, the UN can bring them back to what war has left from their belongings. and when this picture looks as if a lorry had just dumped a load, well, it was almost like that.

after having lived in a shelter, one family one room, cooking outside, platform to lift the beddings above the water that in rainy seasons is on floor level, most of the refugees are glad to go back. so they queue up under a glazing sun in the transport area, bear the screening by the army and the special task forces and then get transported back in buses, their belongings brought after inspection for weaponry on some tractors.

and there is no question that the unhcr does a good job here. after returning with a tarpaulin kit as a first measure of protection, shelter building groups will come and assist the refugees in repairing damaged houses or set up provisional ones. quick impact projects afterward may come to their support and may create new means of earning a livelyhood.

but all this poverty is not a result of a natural catastrophe, but results from the inability of government and insurgents to negotiate a peaceful solution for the conflict. this is the shame.

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batticaloa fishermen, again

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martin doonan posted some days ago about blog action day and this years topic of global poverty. as poverty is what i am constantly confronted with when on mission in sri lanka - and what guides my actions, too - i gladly took up his reminder and registered. so you will see in the following days many pictures around this matter.

those fishermen in batticaloa i visit regularly since 2005, just see here, here or here. many of those lost relatives and all their belongings in 2004's tsunami. the curve of their net and their silhouettes are an ongoing fascination for me

the man in this portrait is actually a beneficiary of our project, and i hope to get more details about him soon. up to then take this as an expressive face with trails of deepest injuries.

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