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TSUNAMI-IMPACT: Sri Lankan Widowers Share a Common Grief

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MULLAITTIVU, Sri Lanka, Feb 16 2005 (IPS) - Ramasamy Rajakumar spends his afternoons in the company of a few men who are united by a common thread of grief. They all lost their wives when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck. Some, like Rajakumar, also lost two children.

This gathering of the new widowers takes place in the midst of the destroyed homes in this town along Sri Lanka’s north-eastern coast. Sometimes, they seek shade in the ruins of a Catholic church, also a victim of the tsunami.

The conversation among the men is still punctuated by words of sadness and the guilt of having survived the natural disaster, which struck over seven weeks ago. Fifty-five-year- old Rajakumar also reveals his disgust with the sea when probed about his work as a fisherman.

”I lost my family and I have no reason to fish again,” says the bearded Rajakumar, in measured tones. ”What is the point of surviving?”

Such feelings of grief are not new in this town, currently a stronghold of the Tamil Tiger rebels. Mullaittivu also has been the scene of some bloody battles during Sri Lanka’s over two-decade-long ethnic conflict, which has killed nearly 64,000 people.

Among the conflict’s painful legacies are the widows it produced in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, home to the country’s Tamil minority and the bastion of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – which has been battling the Sri Lankan troops in a bid to carve out a separate state.

By the time a ceasefire deal was struck between the LTTE and Colombo in February 2002, this Indian Ocean island had an estimated 40,000 war widows. Of that number, nearly 30,000 women came from Tamil communities in the north and east.

But the tsunami has left in its wake a large number of men who have lost their wives and children in this Tamil Tiger-held area. It is these men, like Rajakumar, who echo the sense of despair.

”The tsunami was worst for me than the war, because it killed my family,” says Anthony Arumurajah, a 45-year-old fisherman who also hails from this town that has been reduced to rubble. ”I have nothing left.”

Arumurajah has conveyed his feelings through a calendar he printed to mark the loss of his family. On this broad single sheet of glossy paper are the photographs and names of the dead – his wife and seven children. In the background is an image of a giant wave, rising.

According to government estimates, over 3,000 people died in the Mullaittivu district, while a further 2,640 died in Jaffna, a district to the north. In all, nearly 38,000 people were killed along Sri Lanka’s coast when the tsunami struck on Dec. 26.

Only Indonesia had a greater death toll, close to 200,000, of the 11 other countries in South-east and South Asia that were ravaged by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

”There are a greater number of husbands and fathers who survived because they seemed to have had the ability to swim or escape, while their wives and children were swept away,” Daya Somasundaram, professor of psychiatry at Jaffna University, tells IPS during an interview.

”In some cases, there are fathers who survived along with their babies,” adds Somasundaram, who is part of a group formed in Jaffna to respond to the psychosocial effects caused by the tsunami. ”This is forcing the men into roles they are not accustomed to.”

Evidence of this sizeable number of widowers is emerging in the refugee camps that have been set up across Sri Lanka’s battered northern provinces. This image offers a contrast to the scenes that were dominant in the refugee camps during the war – those of the war widows.

One such camp at the Thanniyootu Hindu Board Tamil Mixed School reflects this reality. It has many widowers among the nearly 300 families being offered shelter.

Among them is Sebastian Croos, the 45-year-old leader of the camp, who lost his wife but whose four children survived.

”My children only have me to depend on,” says Croos. ”It is going to be difficult, but I am determined to help them.”

Other male survivors in refugee camps in towns further north, like Point Pedro and Valvedditurai, reveal similar sentiments about coming to grips with the life of being a widower.

That is compounded by the fact that most of the survivors in such towns along the coastline of the Jaffna district are refugees from the war. Their homes are inaccessible because they are located within an area that the Sri Lankan government has taken over to situate its military muscle – hence described as a ”high security zone” – in its war against the Tamil Tigers.

The challenge for those like Croos will begin when the refugees at the school move out in a week to become part of the second phase in the post-tsunami relief efforts – helping the shattered communities to recover their lives.

But the road ahead for Croos is littered with new hurdles. For one, the Tamil Tiger rebels who run this camp have still to offer the refugees at the school a permanent place to start rebuilding their lives.

Then there are the disruptions in the community spirit and life caused by the tsunami that has to be overcome. ”Because the devastation was so sudden and so overwhelming, fundamental organic bonds were broken that Sunday,” says Somasundaram, the psychiatrist.