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| Sunday, 3 March 2002 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Within Vanni's desolate walls by FRANCES BULATHSINGHALA
In Yogapuram, we come to a cadjan built 8 x 8 hut, a carbon copy of the thousands of others clustered throughout the region hidden in the Vanni wilderness. 35-year-old Sivaneswari, was cooking her meagre meal for her two sons and her husband who works as a bicycle repairman. Although our attention was immediately diverted to the extremely large gaps in the cadjan and palmyrah combined roof of her home, to her it was obviously a way of life. To have the rain pour in and the sun scorch through the ramshackle roof was nothing shocking. This is how they had lived for a large part of seven years. "Most people choose palmyrah leaves to cadjan leaves as it is comparatively cheaper because coconut trees are rare and its cadjans therefore expensive. When purchasing the leaves you have to buy per tree. A palmyrah tree with about twenty leaves will cost about Rs.100. To construct an adequately thick roof there need to be at least 250 leaves. To construct a one roomed hut at least around eight hundred leaves are required", explains Sivaneswari. It is then that I notice how fragile the palmyrah-leaf 'walls' of her home are. She had left her hometown Jaffna, seven years ago with her family and finally had arrived at the Malawi region after long intervals at camps for the displaced in the Jaffna peninsula. She explains that her husband works at a bicycle repair shop close by for around eight hours a day and take in repair work in his free time while at home as well in order to make some extra money.
Although the Yogapuram Vidyalaya provides education only up to grade seven, this young woman has not given up on every mothers' dream '; a bright future for her sons through education. However it is a known fact that only a very few percentage of children in the Vanni can study up to GCE Ordinary level. There is an extreme lack of facilities - the main dearth being the shortage of teachers - with around 60% vacancies in most schools. We met Eswari Monday, February (11) morning at the Perimanamkulam army checkpoint for civilians. This passage enables travel to Malawi via the former extremely arduous 80-mile route which is now replaced by the much shorter route via the Mankulam road. She was among a throng of others - seated for hours in the scorching heat awaiting military clearance to travel to the Vavuniya hospital for a last chance of survival for her one-month-old child. Having obtained a ten day pass from the LTTE to travel to Vavuniya from the Kilinochchi region she had been waiting for over five hours from six in the morning for the bus service chartered by the Vanni Bus Organisation to take herself, her husband and her child. Her child she explained was suffering from bouts of high temperature for over five days.
"Although medical practitioners have been appointed to most of the rural hospitals in the area, there are only the basic of facilities available as yet", points out Eswari as a way of explanation as to why her husband used the last thousand rupees in the house to embark on the journey. "Only two buses are run by the Vanni Bus Organisation- one which travel from Kilinochchi at 10 am and the other at 2.00 pm. There is no other transport for us to come from the uncleared areas to here". Most people walk a major part of the journey from the Puthukudirippu, Malawi and Kilinochchi region, a distance well over 80 miles which takes weeks. "If we are lucky we can come halfway in either the few lorries which transport goods for short distances or depend on the kindness of those who have bicycles to help us get to at least a short distance". The girl child, her first born is undoubtedly the pride and joy of the young couple despite their difficult lives. For her farmer husband who manages to fill the family coffers to an extent that keeps complete starvation at bay, his newborn daughter is the vessel of hope - a sentiment which have been swept away for himself and his wife by the tides of war. In Vidathalthivu, Registered Medical Officer, Kathirkamu Dharmalingham, the only doctor for the entire uncleared Mannar region, plays a role akin to that of God. He is the only doctor for the District Hospital in the region and in the Vidathalthivu hospital, the two hospitals, which have now commenced work in the LTTE, controlled Vanni territory under the directive of Minister of Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugees, Dr. Jayalath Jayawardena. For the area of Vidathalthivu he has to account for nearly 75 patients per day - as of 1 February 2002. They come to him from Periamadu to Andamkulam - from Vidathalthivu to Illapakaderei to Arthimotai - areas falling into the war jargon description - 'uncleared area' in the Malawi, Vanni region. RMO Dharmalingham points out that the two biggest health problems that the people of the area face are malaria, diarrhoea, scabies and malnutrition. He points out that he has for the past two and a half weeks treated nearly two hundred malaria patients, half of these total children. According to him the spraying of Malatian to eradicate the epidemic had begun only with the revival of hospitals in the region. "For over ten years there were only mobile clinics conducted by Medicine Sans Frontiers and the ICRC, once a week. This hospital, like all the other hospitals in the area was abandoned due to the conflict situation over the years", he says explaining that the Vidathalthivu hospital was abandoned in 1999 after the Ranagosha operation. "All sixteen members of the staff fled during the escalation of fighting and work at the hospital was not recommenced due to it being situated in an artillery range", adds Dharmalingham. When we visited the Vidathalthivu hospital last Wednesday it was late in the evening and the two roomed space chosen by the comparatively large hospital premises to be partially furnished with five beds, two screens and a couple of benches was empty. "It is expected that rehabilitation work both at this hospital and at the District Hospital will commence with Government funding and with the funding by the foreign missions represented in the area. There is no shortage of medicines. It is the staff that we lack. "I was initially at the Vavuniya Iranaillupaikulam Central Dispensary and Maternity home before taking up the post as RMO for the Vellankulam, Vavuniya Central Dispensary in 1998. Knowing that I was going to treat patients who had not been able to consult a doctor for a long time, gave me a lot of satisfaction. I have also suffered from the war - I was glad to serve others who were suffering more than me in a war torn situation". |
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