Living in a state of shock

By Rainer Lang, Diakonie Emergency Aid/ACT International

Sri Lanka, January 14, 2005 - Unable to hold back the tears, the man stands crying in the street in the Sri Lankan town of Dambulla. He lost his daughter in the tsunami of December 26.

His daughter did not die in Dambulla, the town where the family has lived, located in the center of the country where the waves did not reach. Tragically, her parents had sent her to visit her grandparents living in heavily-destroyed Matara on the south coast. "Now she is dead," he says, sobbing and shaking his head. "I don't want to go home. There is my wife sitting and crying, and I cannot do anything," he adds, walking away after a while.

Right now, Sri Lanka is a nation in emotional shock. Lilly Theresa, a 17-year-old in the town of Trincomalee on the eastern coast, has not been able to talk since the disaster. She lost four brothers and two sisters. The Reverend Terrance Sylvester is taking care of her. The Methodist pastor is coordinating the relief work of the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka (NCC), a member of the global alliance, Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, in an area where half a dozen villages were completely washed out. Sylvester lost 24 members of his congregation, more than half of them children.

Padmal Widanagamange tells how he survived a train accident at the coast near Galle in which at least 1,700 people died. It is said to be the worst accident of its kind in history. The 26-year-old Buddhist has been visiting his neighbor, a Methodist pastor, to be consoled in his grief. "The pastor has always helped me," he says.

While he talks, his eyes constantly move around, unable to fix on anything. He looks like he is in a daze. What he describes is like a nightmare. When the tsunami came, the train stopped. He looked out and saw a car with a baby in it floating toward the train and a woman clinging to a palm tree. Trained as a lifeguard, he jumped into the water and brought both of them into the
train. At the same time, people living nearby were fleeing into the train.

Then he saw a huge second wave approaching. His compartment was pushed off the tracks and began to roll in the water. Underwater, he tried to cling to the train. After resurfacing, he saw trees and debris being washed by the water toward him, killing people. He went underwater again, where he thought it would be safe.

"After that, the water was clear," he says. "With the railway guard I could help 25 people out of the train." But the young man could not save his sister, his uncle and his aunt. Later, he was able to find his sister's and uncle's bodies, but not his aunt's.

With all of these memories, Widanagamange cannot be alone. And he cannot even distract himself by working, because the factory near Colombo where he worked as a garment worker was destroyed.

For the general secretary of NCC, Jayasiri Peiris, with countless cases like these in their area of response, it is important "to listen to the people who are in a state of trauma." He points out that, besides new infrastructure, pastoral care is another type of help people need. "We have to give the people solidarity," he says.

NCC has appointed a pastor to head up the trauma counseling part of its program, which will begin this month. The Council is planning workshops and has set up a special branch within the NCC for medical and psychosocial work.

Peiris warns against forgetting the spiritual dimension of the work of the churches. Along with reconstruction, helping survivors look for new employment opportunities and rebuild their communities' churches must include an element of trauma counseling, the Anglican priest says. The need for helping the traumatized was also pointed out by the government in a meeting with church leaders, according to Peiris. And the churches said they were willing to take up the trauma work - work that should be done ecumenically, the priest says.