By CARE staff in Sri Lanka
Just outside Vavuniya, a rural town some 250 kilometers away from Colombo, the population of a small city arrived almost overnight. More than 120,000 people have flooded into camps around Vavuniya in little more than a week, having finally escaped the conflict in the north. They arrive with almost nothing – starving, exhausted, listless.
Manik Farm, the largest of the camps, has become a vast sea of emergency tents. It is here, in “zone 02”, where most of the new arrivals from the conflict zone are now being accommodated. To speed up the process all agencies have agreed to put up emergency tents, which can be erected in 10-20 minutes, instead of emergency wood and tarp shelters, which take much longer to put together. CARE has put up approximately 600 emergency tents as of today.
Hundreds of hectares of land cleared by large machines are now covered with rows upon rows of emergency tents. After months on the run, of sheltering in mud-filled ditches, the displaced people being transported in public buses are relieved to occupy one of these tents. You can see the pain on their faces.
It’s shocking to see their reaction as they arrive at water collecting points installed by CARE. A bottle or bucket full of water is a blessing for people with increasing need of water; for many people, this is the first clean, safe drinking water they have had in months. As of today, CARE has installed 205 water collecting points in conjunction with UNICEF. But we have to take measures to avoid water collecting points becoming muddy baths because of the newly-cleared ground.
Water is being collected from different sources like wells and streams in and around the area and transported into camps in bowsers. The limited number of bowsers is not enough to fulfill the increasing demand for water, and the dry season is coming. But I can’t pray for rain, because their “homes” will become mire in minutes.
The situation demands all humanitarian actors to double or triple their efforts in a very unpredictable way. Often we have very little time to plan. Everyone is busy with distributing lifesaving food and fulfilling other preliminary needs, but we are also trying to manage responses in a coordinated manner with the government, UN and other aid agencies.
CARE’s office in Vavuniya where the emergency program is being organized has become an extremely busy and noisy place. The yard at the office looks like a timber shed and a workshop the other side. A group of labourers with staff members are fixing water tap stands in one shed. Water tanks and galvanized iron pipes are stacked on the other part of the yard. It looks like a large building material depot.
Most of the schools in and around Vavuniya are sheltering tens of thousands of people who fled the fighting. Students who gave up their classrooms for the displaced people continue to study underneath trees or temporary shelters put up by some agencies. In many instances most of the schools remain closed whilst classes are conducted in other places, especially for those preparing for examinations this year.
In the camp, long queues of people wait under the scorching sun to collect the breakfast, lunch and dinner parcels being distributed by various agencies and local charities. Most of the people are seen out of both emergency shelter and tents because of the heat during the daytime. It was 35 degrees Celsius today.
Challenges remain in terms of the need for adequate sanitation facilities. In the not-too-distant future there will be a need to have a proper plan to deal with the disposal of garbage from the food parcels, which is quickly piling up.
A very young boy, barely 10 years old, ran towards our vehicle once we stopped to observe a camp being constructed by CARE. He asked for something; not money, not food – his parents.
“My parents forced me to leave with the exodus. But they couldn’t get out of the area. Can you please let me know where they are and are they safe?” he asked, pleading. Nearby, a grandmother of 67 years old, holding her granddaughter in her arms, was looking for someone’s help to find the mother of this child.
This is “zone 02”. Week two, after the exodus.