The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [67]
The continuous gossip was trying—tales of us running away with millions of dollars in tsunami aid money. These stories grew old. We took comfort in the fact that those who really knew us knew the truth.
I continued to devote most of my time to developing the tsunami center with Dr. Novil. Meanwhile, Oscar worked on plans for the rebuilding of the new Peraliya School with the money our friend Kym had raised for that purpose in Canada. Kym had entrusted the money to an NGO called Free the Children so we wouldn’t have to worry about building matters and accountability.
We had wanted to get started with the school right away, but unfortunately over the months the project had come across many roadblocks. The Italian government had acquired the Sri Lankan contract to rebuild twenty-three schools along the coast, including the one in Peraliya. Oscar had attended endless meetings with the Board of Education to try to resolve the matter, but bureaucracy had won in the end. After failing to convince the Italians to hand over that one school contract, Oscar and representatives from Free the Children scouted in the Tamil areas to the north, which had been devastated by both the tsunami and the civil war. They came up with a new plan to build a school in the Ampara district of northeast Sri Lanka, where it was desperately needed. The children there were among the poorest in the country. We felt it was meant to be.
Our villagers, on the other hand, didn’t see it that way. All they understood was that the rebuilding of the Peraliya School hadn’t started yet. They wondered where all the money had gone. Explaining to our villagers that we were building the school in a village to the north because they were going to get one anyway didn’t go down too well. No amount of translation could explain the situation to them in a satisfactory manner. They felt that we had betrayed them. If only they knew how hard we had tried to make things go their way.
In December, wonderful Christmas gifts arrived: Bruce, Donny, Sebastian, Stefan, and James had all decided to return to Sri Lanka for two weeks over the holidays, and our volunteer gang was reunited. It was thrilling to see them again. We walked around the village and met with a warm reception from the locals. “Hello, machan!” families would call out when they saw Donny. It was so good to see the villagers smiling again and saying, “We love you, we love you.” The chief spotted us walking along the train tracks and raced over to hug everyone.
Bruce pointed out that the color was back: beautiful green grass filled with thousands of purple flowers, small palms, and mango, banana, and papaya trees. Living things had sprouted all over the once polluted destruction. We visited our favorite roti shop and invited everyone to join us for lunch.
The days passed and the cheery hellos turned into real needs as villagers slowly pulled us aside to discuss their problems, which usually had to do with money. The purple flowers were fading fast. On closer inspection, the temporary shacks, which were supposed to be inhabited for only six months, were rotting; the salt air had eaten through the tin roofs. The monsoons had arrived late and flooding had been heavy. It was time for a restoration project.
Meanwhile, Oscar and I wanted to find out where all the promised tsunami aid money had gone, so we embarked on a mission to the U.N. office in Galle to ask them directly. The U.N. representatives showed us paperwork documenting promised money, but the fact was that most of it hadn’t arrived. Many of the early tsunami pledges had been broken completely. Other money was sitting in bank accounts around the world, with people not knowing where to send it. Still other funds were passing