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| Sunday, 6 January 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Five loaves, two fish by JAYANTHI LIYANAGE
Sister Bernie at Modera's Samata Sarana firmly believes that the way to people's hearts and minds is through their stomachs Even in today's cataclysm of vice, violence and exploitation of the hapless, hope still shines for humankind. In a milieu where wives are brutally battered, infants molested, ailing elders dumped on roadsides and morasses of abject poverty groan on pavements, the Hand which fed five loaves and two fish to multitudes still exists. As we saw at a home in Mutwal - where the spirit of giving was a daily ritual, as natural as the smile to the lips. Where every morning to night, hands poach and deliver 3,750 eggs to nourish nearby slums. Where shelter-deprived elderly are daily fed, shaved and showered hot or cold. They then depart in the dusk with their night meal packed to hand.
Here, children too poor to afford a formal education are taught more substance than their school-going counterparts. This is a place where minds of street and shanty women are opened to their rights and their rightful place in society. And where young women from the war-ravaged Northern East come at regular intervals to rediscover their direction in life. "Samata Sarana" (Help for All), an approved charity at Aluthmawatha Road, tries to shape a new society for Colombo North Refugees, slum and street dwellers in the multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural melting pot of Bloemendhal Railway Line, De La Salle Beach, Mosque Lane Beach, Kimbulawela Marsh, Mahawatte, Somalia Watte and Weligoda Watte. How? By reversing human degradation with nutrition, good health and by dispelling ignorance. "Samata Sarana" was conceived in a moment of deep prayer to serve the neediest and poorest in society," Sister Bernie Silva, its founder said, her eyes brimming with tears of retrospection. Yet, she did not know where to begin and had no resources. "I confided my wish in my Superiors, the Archbishop of Colombo and my best friend, Rev. Father Joe De Mel. They invited me to Mutwal to see the slums and shanties and we started from there." That was 13 years ago.
We found Samata Sarana a beehive of activity - the air reverberating with the bustle of children. On upper floors, a unique, non-formal school was in progress. 10-Year-old Manoharan bent over his cross-stitch embroidery on a jute sack. "Children sewing gunny bags and doing cheap labour in tea stores have no facility to go to school. I am convinced we give more education non-formally than formally," Sister Bernie was emphatic. Here, the male child too learns home-science while art, music and dance are a must for all. The children study up to Grade Nine and divert to vocational skills. "We train a child so that he could immerse in society as an acceptable person," she said. "We have no filth written on walls or broken chairs. Any foreign diplomat can use our toilets. For me, those are our achievements." "We have pregnant women deserted by their husbands - either gone with another woman or in jail. Our creche cares for babies of mothers going out - probably to wash clothes or for domestic chores in somebody else's house," Sister Bernie explained. "Our pre-school has what a child needs to grow - friendship, joy and laughter." Sure enough, with the clanging of a bell, pre-schoolers dressed in colourful play-suits crowded around us and nearly clambered atop Father Joe. "Tamil children who can't pronounce 'yaluwa' (friend) call me yeeluwa'," he smiled. "That's the best compliment a religious person can get." A father-figure for kids - whose fathers had gone to jail or deserted them; or, like the moon-faced, four-year-old Reana, kids with jobless fathers and skeletoned mothers. On the ground floor, elderly men and women dozed in bed or played carrom. Grandpas were warming up to a game of TV-cricket while grannies counted time for their favourite Shakthi TV-drama. "These people marry young," Sister Bernie said. "When their children get married, the little homes have no space for parents. That's the plight of old people. We have a good clinic staff to look after everybody. Even if they have to spend the night on the pavement, our packed night meal ensures they don't starve." The relaxed environment makes them feel at home. "We even allow them a place on the wall to keep their chunnam !" The Home has a dental, medical and an eye clinic which provides free spectacles for the poor. A partnership with Ceylon Grain Elevators Ltd. has enabled Samata Sarana to maintain its herculean nutrition program. The company donates large quantities of chicken and around 13,000 eggs a week. "We have kitchen helpers throughout the day poaching eggs which our field officers distribute to thousands of slum families," Sister said. A roomy dining area and a spacious kitchen keeps churning out free supplies of home-baked bread and nourishing meals at all meal times. Mrs. Hilary Clinton paid a visit in 1995 and asked, "How do you justify these free meals ?" "We can't teach mathematics to hungry children," Sister Bernie told her. "If one is to be productive, one should be reasonably healthy." Any calamity in slums - be it floods, fire, funeral - Samata Sarana, or the "Paupers' Palace" as the Archbishop calls it, becomes a refuge. Thrice a year, young women from the North East and deep South come and stay at Samata Sarana to sharpen their vocational skills. Living together, they learn to share thoughts and cultures and shake off prejudices. "It's our way of promoting ethnic harmony and giving them skills to generate income," Sister said. These women turn out an amazing range of dresses, embroidery, costume jewellery and bridal bouquets while dabbling in a pot-pourri of dishes of different cultures. "They realise that with same rice and flour, somebody else makes it a little different. When they go back to their villages, they can say, whatever the media or the politicians said, we had a wonderful time !" Sister beamed. One young woman wrote home, "The Chuti who came for sewing is the not the Chuti who is coming back !" 20-Year-old Gowrie from Muttur, who lost her left leg in a land mine at the age of nine, felt the same. "The basic amenities the slum people need are housing, water, drainage and infra structure," pointed out Father Joe. Needs which the State must urgently look into. But Samata Sarana is quick to sense human needs. "When our Christmas Party is over, I tell our driver to drop the old men at the bar for a drink before taking them to wherever they are staying," Sister Bernie laughed. "That's better than letting them steal there on their own and break a leg." You too, can share in their good work. Samata Sarana requests for dry rations, milk, rice, fish, coconut, medicine and almost any thing you would be happy to give them to ease the misery of poverty. It also invites the business community to launch its trainees on a fitting vocation. |
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