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People have stories. Places too. If a man’s life is a short story, then the life of a place is necessarily an epic, for territories have people, trees, winds moving amoung them, histories, tragedies, celebration and time tested methods of coping with calamity. In streams swirling with flood waters, in the dry river beds of seasonal streams, the flavour of a ripe fruit, weaving through conversation, there are songs that contain the transcripts of struggle, defeat, resignation and in some cases, contentment.
The epic tale of a place is never obtained through random visits. The particular variations of the wind and water movement and what these do to the land. Trees, the crops and the people the subtle maneuvering of political, inter-family feuds, customs, ritual practices, versions of the cosmological etc., don’t appear like starving people on the side of main roads, proclaiming, "Here I am, come write me". Still, places do speak to those who are willing to stay awhile. You are not going to get the fully fleshed narrative of people, event and location, the land certainly spins a sketch of things, as they have been and casts a decent enough shadow on things that are to unfold. This is a story that I heard, as I roamed around Tanamalwila and those "off-road," "off-grid" villages, too often displaced and misplaced from the memories of officials, aid works and political parties. It is, as I said, an incomplete story. Want a comprehensive picture? Sorry. Even the Sociologist with his/her modern tools of Rapid Rural Appraisal, I am willing to wager, will be way off the mark. But let’s hear what this place has to say. According to them, my first name is ‘The Land is Barren’; my second name is ‘The Animals are dying’; my last name ‘Hunger: Famine Imminent’. Surly, I am some-thing more than all that? I am the South East Dry Zone (let me call it SEDZ since people seem to be fond of acronyms), the heart of Ruhunu Rata; Sri Lanka. My children have fed this country for centuries, they have fought for freedom in this land, they were slaughtered again and again. Drought? Yes, I have known that condition. Its signature has been carved on my breast in radiating cracks; I have seen my thirty children walk, weep and die.
"Yes, water is an issue. How can it not be for anyone, even those outside the SEDZ? Want me to put it in a nutshell. My children knew all about water conservation , water management. And long before the International Irrigation Management Institute and its latest water –guzzling avatar, International Water Manage Institute, turned up and headquartered in our island. At the top end, we had what we call the polkatu wewa (i.e. the smallest wewa), then the kulu wewa (i.e. the shape of a winnowing fan), then the gam wewa (i.e. the village wewa), followed by the maha wewa or the big wewa and then the of course the mighty ocean. I am also called the Wellasa, the hundred thousand tracts of paddy land. My being was dotted with thousands of village tanks. Sorry, "tank" doesn’t really convey the idea of a wewa. A wewa is not just a place where water is held. It held together a community, the flora and fauna of a particular area. It provided water for agriculture, for the cattle, for bathing purposes, washing etc. When a wewa breached, my children wept, for it signalled the death of a community.
Culture? I am different from the rest of the island. My people have their own beliefs and practices. They didn’t have to wait for Schumacher to write his essay on Buddhist Economics in ‘Small is Beautiful’ to live their lives in ways that nurturing, to each other and the environment. "Drought? As I said, it is not foreign. The month of August is always like this. All the seasonal streams dry up. That is why they are referred to as ‘Ara’. We have coping mechanisms. Like most people. Time was when my people had stocks of rice that would last them for several years. Things have changed. But we have by and large managed. One way or another. Still, it is true that it is a particularly intense sun that has shone on our lands. We are a few weeks from a serious tragedy. Unless it rains soon.
What was the real story of the drought, and relief measures? The dry season is ‘normal’ it has to be stressed. This is the time when people clear the land. If the rains come early, the seeds get washed away. This has happened and people have seen their ground nut cultivation get destroyed. What has happened is the rains have been late. So there is a water problem. According to some people this snowballed into an avalanche.
In the midst of political manoeuvre racketeering and the intensification of old rivalries and the opening of new wounds, there are things that stand out, and speaking of that which is noble in human beings. In Tanamalwila some youths did not forget the salient fact that animals too are suffering and that human being need animal for their own survival and sense of ecological balance. In some places, people organized themselves to do the sustainable thing-they decided to offer their labour to construct or rehabilitate their village wewa (irrigation) works. Where the state doesn’t do, the people must, is what Peter Wise, who has lived in the area for the past thirty years building wewas and planting trees had to say. While NGOs raise their profiles and politicians fight each other for greater leverage at election time, the SEDZ is a place where humanity continues to fight back. Much like the children of an earlier era. Let the others read an inch map of the areas affected by the drought and do the hard thing of walking the less walked byroads. Let them read the face of the truly thirsty and let them not judge by appearance of their house the condition of its inhabitants. Whatever happens, let’s make sure that human dignity is not bruised.