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50 3 Short-Term Camps Chaos and the Crafting of Order In mid-2005, Ari and Wije told Siri and me what it was like to grapple with the magnitude of the relief efforts in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. Ari and Wije were government poverty alleviation workers (samurdhi nyamakas or SNs). Ari noted, “There was no organization at first because all the SNs and GNs had also run from the tsunami! After two or three days we got organized to control the distribution by the government.” Wije said, “At first, individual people were bringing help to temples and other camps. They were distributing without knowledge of who was who. So there were troubles.” Ari chimed in, “Then the government took over the distribution of aid. The aid was delivered by the SNs. They distributed from GN and SN houses or from other appropriate places.” Wije said, “There were about a thousand people at the temple in Maaduwa because it is a high place. The Red Cross was there giving medicine.” Ari continued, “The SNs were delivering dry goods, canned food, clothing, rice, milk powder, flour, biscuits, sugar—all sorts of dry rations.” Wije added, “For about a month we distributed things like this once a week.” Ari added, “People from Badulla, from Kandy, and from other big cities came with bowsers to deliver water. The water here was salty and not safe to drink. But the wells are okay now. We cleaned them.” In the aftermath of the disaster, people provided for the needy. The sheer magnitude of emergency activity was mindboggling. Religious leaders and government servants Short-Term Camps | 51 quickly stepped in to manage camps and direct other relief efforts around Naeaegama. In the hours and days following the tsunami, responsibility for the provision of food, medicine, and sanitation passed from seaside neighbors, to Sri Lanka’s private sector , and finally to the government. As time passed, the impromptu camps in temples, churches, and schools quickly grew more structured. With the formalization of these institutions, power hierarchies evolved and identities grew polarized. Many people worked tirelessly to aid the tsunami-affected people in a remarkably successful relief effort. But various policies inadvertently marginalized the people they were set up to help. This raises the question of whether a more collaborative system might not have been possible. Did the authorities seek equity at the expense of participation ? Both are values worth preserving—but the latter may have been sacrificed to achieve the former, when perhaps both could have been achieved. Establishing Order from Chaos After a church service in Batapola, a town about six miles from the coast, Brother Bandupala and ten congregants told me about the immediate aftermath of the tsunami . Bandupala said, “The shops and roads were closed. There were huge crowds of displaced people here in Batapola. A lot of buses from here went to bring people from the seaside. They came here because bridges had been destroyed on the Galle Road.” Many different individuals, groups, and organizations stepped in to help the needy. Community and Informal Help As they fled from the intruding ocean, people made their way inland to public gathering places. At the Welikovila temple in the village next to Naeaegama, the chief monk, Ananda Thero, was an energetic, charismatic, forceful man in his fifties who had won respect in the local area with his take-charge manner. Ananda Thero told Siri and me in 2005 of the camp that had materialized at the temple after the tsunami. He said, Early in the morning on the twenty-sixth, I got a phone call from a villager who said that the ground was shaking; that person could see his TV moving. I told him, “My land isn’t shaking. Maybe you needed an exorcism ceremony.” But that was probably the earthquake happening in Indonesia! Later that day, when people first came yelling about the troubles at the beach side, I didn’t believe them. Then a lot of people came telling the same story. They came crying , they came carrying fish, and they came yelling that “the sea is flowing into the land.” Then I went to the Galle Road myself. I saw the mud, I saw the damage, and I saw the broken walls and buildings. I went by foot, jumping over the dead bodies. When I came back to the temple, I sent some people further back into the hills and put other people in the upstairs part of the...

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