Page 52 - Hemas_Piyawara_Book

A brief stop at a boutique in the east for Mr. Murtaza Esufally and Ms. Lakshmi Jeganathan. Mr. Murtaza Esufally and Ms. Azira Esufally chatting to the tsunami affected in the east.

yesterday…….“How do we continue to live our lives? How do we find food for our rend the night air within the welfare camps. Any sound or whoosh like heavy rain
families? How do we cope with the loss of our loved ones?” would send ripples of fear. But many were also silent about these innermost feelings.
They did not want to share or did not know how to deal with them. The children clung
They also questioned why the Almighty had brought such sorrow to them. Was the to their parents and hid behind them. There were no words but their eyes told her
Almighty angry with them? Had they done something wrong? Azira tried to console worrying tales.
them by telling them that it was nature’s deviant behaviour and to explore possible
ways and means to start over again, utilizing the skills they had such as weaving. She adds: “In those early stages, there was no counselling. There was nobody to sit with
them and talk to them about their losses and grief. Schools were closed and adults had
The visits also gave her glimpses of how they lived without knowing the issues that
others were facing and their deepest fears whether the tsunami would assail them no jobs to eke out a living. The children idled and their fears grew.”
again. A Director of the Hemas Group, Murtaza Esufally, and his team trod the roads battered
by the tsunami for days on end in the south and the east.
“The women in the east had seen a different kind of conflict to what was happening in
the north. They had experienced only conflicts between the communities, which had “Our Colombo-centric mindset got a shakedown,” he says, as they saw the state
made them heavily dependent on each other. But now there was this,” she said. of even the ‘not-that-much-affected’ preschools which was deplorable. The
preschools were like little cages in dark rooms with pitiful facilities. They were
The children were terrified when their parents went out of sight, thinking that they poor quality set-ups, cobbled together by teachers who were serving in “awful”
would never see them again. Parents did not know how to deal with such fears. A few circumstances and not given the respect due to them for taking up such an
of them confided in Azira that the children were prone to nightmares. Screams would
important task of guiding the early footsteps of little ones.

44 Hemas Piyawara - A Journey to the Future