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For fishermen, a paralyzing fear

Sri Lankans who pulled their livelihood from the sea will need time and counseling, but the psychological wounds may never heal

BY TINA SUSMAN | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

January 6, 2005

KARAITIVU, Sri Lanka - Only the crows, the dogs and the dead are left on this village's pummeled beachfront, and if the words of local fishermen are to be believed, that won't change anytime soon.

Too frightened to return to the sea, they are presenting a unique challenge to the government and to relief workers hoping to jump-start Sri Lanka's recovery from the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed about 30,000 Sri Lankans and left survivors with a widespread phobia of the water around them.

"We have to change their attitudes," said a local government official, Vanniyasingam Vasuthevan, admitting that counseling is needed but acknowledging that there aren't enough experts in Sri Lanka to handle the problem.

Aid workers agree, saying that while emergency supplies such as food, clothing and water are arriving, psychological needs are not being met.

"We're seeing a real gap in post-trauma counseling," said Cassandra Nelson of the aid group Mercy Corps.

"To get back to normalcy will take time because psychologically, they have to get over it. Then they have to rebuild their lives," said Janardhan Salghur, an emergency relief coordinator with the aid group CARE International.

Fear is not the only mental side effect of the tsunami. So is depression, particularly among those who have lost families and livelihoods, said Nelson, adding that at least one suicide had been reported at a camp for the homeless in eastern Sri Lanka's Ampara district. Two other survivors are on a suicide watch, she said.

But the paralyzing phobia of the ocean waves could be the biggest hindrance to the revival of towns like Karaitivu, about 200 miles east of Colombo, where most heads of family are fishermen and where the Fisherman's Bank is one of the few buildings with a wall still standing. Once a town of 12,000, at least 2,200 people died. Of the 78 fishing boats that once lined the sand, 25 remain.

"Without this fishing, our lives and our families' lives will be question marks. We don't know how to live hereafter," said Nowzath, 24, who like many here uses only one name. Nowzath is not a fisherman himself, but he has a newfound fear of the sea. His father, who fishes, lost both his boats.

Like many Sri Lankans, regardless of their educational background, Nowzath, a college student, refused to be comforted by assertions that the Dec. 26 calamity was a once-in-a-lifetime quirk of nature. If it happened once, it can happen again, he insisted.

Karaitivu's palm-fringed beach, which once served as both the fishermen's place of work and their families' place of play, is now a graveyard, dotted with white flags marking locations of those still to be pulled from the endless fields of rubble.

Wednesday, the body of a baby girl was found beneath slabs of broken concrete, virtually unrecognizable except for the cloth wrapped around her tiny midsection. It was enough for one man to realize it was his 11-month-old niece.

There was no time for ceremony. The baby's body was quickly buried on a beach nearby, alongside similar graves.

In fact, the entire town resembled a graveyard, so complete was the carnage.

Not a single building appeared to have escaped unscathed, and virtually every house that sat on the beach or within a quarter-mile of it was obliterated.

A plastic skeleton, presumably salvaged from a doctor's office, dangled from a post, adding to the ghoulish atmosphere in the mournful town, where dogs rummage for food scraps.

C.S.S. Vairamuthu, a fisherman for 30 years, cried as he described watching a crow picking at the remains of one body.

"There is no way of getting into the sea again," said Vairamuthu, whose wife and four children were killed and who fears another tsunami. Asked what he would do next, he gave the answer heard so many times from Sri Lankans in similar positions: "I can't even think of the future."

As he spoke, a friend looked at the water and expressed concern at the choppy conditions, even though they did not appear out of the ordinary.

Comments such as Vairamuthu's are especially worrying to aid workers, who not only want to see Sri Lankans get back to work but also get out of the camps for tens of thousands of displaced.

With their homes destroyed and most who lived near the water insisting they won't go back, the concern is that they won't want to budge and will become increasingly dependent on assistance, slowing the country's recovery.

Already there is worry over what to do on Jan. 10, when schools are set to reopen following a midsemester break already extended because of the tsunami. Scores of schools are housing the displaced, and nobody knows where those people will go.

Relief workers say the government must provide temporary housing safely set back from the sea, follow that up with permanent housing on state land, and start enforcing laws against building too close to the water. The government has said it will enforce those long-ignored laws and relocate survivors who lived illegally close to the water.

But no matter the housing situation, survivors will need counseling and possibly training to make a living other than through fishing, said Murugesu Murugaverl of CARE, noting the mere sight of roiling waves will be too much for many to handle.

"Most of them lost their families. How can they be expected to go back and see that and restart their work?" he asked. "It's impossible."