May 11, 2009: I didn't notice anything different about her, at first; 10-year-old Priyana is a beautiful, perfect little girl, and her face lit up as she smiled at me.
Then she moved her hands. Thick bands of scar tissue circle her tiny wrists; her right hand is bent at an impossible 90-degree angle from her forearm. When she wrapped her arms around her mother's waist in a hug, her hands hung limply.

I don't know what affects me more: her injuries, or how she was injured. She and her 24-year-old sister, Vithiya, were playing a game when they were caught in the crossfire in January. Shrapnel shredded through Priyana's wrists and thigh, and Vithiya's right leg.
On the run, they couldn't make it to a hospital for nearly two weeks. By that point, it was too late to repair Priyana's hands.

Today, her mother, Rani, is caring for two injured daughters, alone. Her husband and another daughter died in the conflict zone; her other two daughters are still missing.
As Rani tells me their story, Priyana is playing with a purple hair ribbon, holding it awkwardly with the only two fingers that work on her left hand. Despite everything, she smiles. I don't know whether to smile back, or cry.

While the world's attention is on the final stages of the war in the north, the country's second humanitarian crisis plays out here in the camps, where nearly 200,000 people were evacuated from the conflict zone by the Sri Lankan government. Like Priyana, everyone is damaged in some way, but they want to move on. Many of them have been displaced several times during the 25-year conflict; everyone knows someone who is missing, or who died in the conflict.

It's overwhelming. Most of the displaced people ended up here in the giant Manik Farm camp in Vavuniya, in this sudden city of tents and shelters cut into the jungle.
There are people everywhere, moving, sweating in the 38C heat of the midday sun. Men digging trenches for pit latrines. Women lining up to collect water. People stirring bathtub-sized pots of vegetable curry and rice over an open fire at the communal cooking area.

Earth-moving machines rumble in the background, clearing land for more tents, creating roads. The felled trees are piled off to the side, then hauled back into the camps to be used as firewood for cooking. In every direction, there are rows upon rows of tents or temporary shelters.

Nearly 120,000 people arrived here in the space of two weeks, stretching the resources of the camp and medical facilities to the limit. Aid workers and government workers were all scrambling to put up enough tents, dig enough latrines, install enough water stations, trying to keep one step ahead of the flood of war-weary people streaming into the camp.

Today, we're still catching up; some people are living in tents with two or three families while we build more shelters to house everyone, and we are working to replace the emergency trench toilets with something more private and secure.

But across the country, there is hope, hope that maybe this time, the 25-year-old war is really going to end. Sri Lankans, from the poorest parts of the capital city to the tourist beaches in the south, are donating food, clothing and emergency supplies for the people in the camps. Ethnicity and religion have been pushed aside, and people are reacting on a human level to the plight of ‘our brothers and sisters in the north'.

But it's a race against time. Fighting continues in the ever-shrinking conflict zone. Tens of thousands of people are still trapped. Any day, we expect they will finally escape and arrive here, to where we are all frantically clearing new land, putting up new tents, digging new latrines.

The people still trapped have been living the nightmare of war for months now. There are more girls like Priyana out there, desperate to escape, just wanting to be little girls again. I only hope we're ready for them when they arrive.

Facing the future, alone


May 8, 2009: Cradling her two-month-old son in her arms, Laxmi smiled as the baby yawned and reached for her.

‘I am happy we are safe,' she said softly, sitting on a mat in an emergency tent. ‘I only wish my husband could have met his son.'

Just 20 years old, Laxmi's long, dark hair is in two child-like braids, but when she smiles, her eyes are sad. When the conflict intensified in Northern Sri Lanka last year, she and her husband and father were trapped in the conflict zone along with tens of thousands of others, prevented from leaving by the LTTE.

In December, when she was seven months' pregnant, Laxmi and her family made a desperate attempt to escape to the safety of the government-controlled area.
Her husband didn't survive.

Two months later, huddled in a rain-filled trench in the conflict zone while fighting raged nearby, Laxmi gave birth to their son.

Today, Laxmi is one of the more than 177,000 people living in tents and temporary shelters at the sprawling Manik Farm transit camp for people displaced by the conflict. She arrived on April 27, after government forces evacuated more than 120,000 people from the conflict zone in less than two weeks.

Laxmi's story is all too familiar. Single mothers and broken families are the legacy of this 25-year conflict, which many hope will finally come to an end as the government makes its final push against the LTTE rebel group.

Some women, like Laxmi, lost their husbands in the conflict zone. Others became separated from their husbands or family members as they escaped. Still others, like the elderly woman living in the tent across from Laxmi's, are grandmothers who suddenly found themselves the sole providers for their orphaned grandchildren.

Without family, single mothers rely on the kindness of strangers - their new neighbours in the tents, shelters and schools where they are now living. In the Manik Farm camp, Laxmi wakes at 5 a.m. to go fetch water from the water points, leaving her son with another woman in the tent. Laxmi's father goes to wait in line at the food distribution centre to collect their meals three times a day, or inquire from the camp authorities about missing relatives.

While CARE is working with the government, the UN and other aid agencies to meet the immediate needs of those who were evacuated to transit camps - providing food, shelter, safe water, emergency supplies, latrines and bathing facilities - long-term support will be needed, particularly for single mothers like Laxmi.

‘The urgent need now is helping people in the camps, but this is only the beginning,' said David Gazashvili, CARE's Emergency Team Leader in Vavuniya. ‘In order to help people recover from this war, we need to make sure everyone has something to go home to, and that they can support themselves and their children.'

CARE has extensive experience in Sri Lanka working with conflict-affected communities, providing support for farmers, rehabilitating infrastructure like water tanks used for irrigation, and helping create opportunities for people to earn an income or find jobs when they return home. Savings and credit groups particularly target women, helping them pool their resources to purchase clothes and medicine for their families, or invest in small businesses.

The government plans to return families home by the end of the year, once mines have been cleared and basic infrastructure repaired or rebuilt. For Laxmi, her worry for the future overshadows the difficulty of living in the camps today. Her husband earned their only income. His parents live in Trincomalee, on the coast, and she hopes they can help, but she doesn't know.

‘I was only married one year,' she said softly. ‘Married one month, pregnant the next month, and now, I am a widow.'

Lagt på hjemmesiden 12.05.09 IMJ