Finding inspiration from disaster

Near Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka, a dilapidated train lay at its final depot stop. Chandra Weerasinghe, 56, could see that the windows had been broken from the interior, and the dirt surrounding the tracks seemed eerily flat and smooth.

As passengers began to exit the train and go about their days on Dec. 26, they saw a tidal wave in the distance and instinctively ran back into the train for protection.

“They thought it was safer,” Weerasinghe said, casting her eyes downward. Once water began flooding the cars, people broke the windows to get out, only to be swept away in the powerful current.

The water-logged bodies that washed back to the site began to decay the next day, so the area around the depot was dug up for a mass grave. Piles of shirts, pants and socks dotted the burial site. Survivors told Weerasinghe the water was so forceful it ripped people’s clothes off their bodies before sweeping them out to sea.

Standing at what was left of the train station almost a month after the disaster occurred, Weerasinghe looked out to the sea. Waves rhythmically rolled in and out, just like the peaceful, calm ocean she knew before she left Sri Lanka for the United States. But the reassuring sounds she heard weren’t anything like the ocean described by tsunami survivors.

“The day the wave came,” she said, “they heard a very fearful sound from the sea.”

“That is my country”

More than five months after the tsunami, Weerasinghe vividly remembers the morning of Dec. 26, the same morning the Sri Lankan passengers boarded the train outside Hikkaduwa. She was working the fine jewelry counter at Famous Barr in Columbia when a regular customer came in and told her Sri Lanka had experienced a natural disaster and thousands had died. Her thoughts immediately went to her loved ones — her sister’s family lives in Colombo, far from the tsunami’s destruction, but her brother’s family lived along the country’s southern coast.

“It made me miserable,” she said.

It wasn’t until the next day when Weerasinghe finally heard from her sister and brother and knew they had survived. But hundreds of thousands of others had homes and loved ones washed away and lost forever in a matter of minutes. Almost 50,000 Sri Lankan people died, and more than 1.5 million were displaced from their homes. Sri Lanka was just one of many countries struck by the natural disaster.

“From that day on, I was so upset,” she said. “That is my country.”

After a month of preparation, Weerasinghe, a Sri Lankan emigrant who came to the United States in 1997, set out on Jan. 27 for a three-week trip to her country. After 24 hours on board three different planes, she arrived early in the morning and set out to spread messages of hope and willpower to her people.

She talked with survivors who had lost one or all of their family members and saw flat, barren land in areas that had once been prosperous neighborhoods. She saw hundreds of people living in tents. She encountered countless people who were also there to help, but she could speak the language and felt a special connection with her people.

As she drove through the countryside, Weerasinghe distributed clothes she had brought from home, milk formula, food and money she withdrew from an account she still held in Sri Lanka. But she thought her words of encouragement could help even more.

“I gave them hope, that is the only thing I can give,” she said. “You have to have that. The things I give — material things — those are over in a minute. But the hope I can give to them will be what they remember from time to time.”

Returning home

For Weerasinghe, an optimistic attitude is the key to living.

When she was 34, her husband suffered a stroke and died. He had been a prominent publisher, but because she was a young woman and a widow in Sri Lanka, she could not look after her husband’s business. His co-workers took over the company, she said, and cheated her out of her husband’s money.

“I suffered a lot after my husband died,” she said.

She left her two young daughters with her sister, and came to America to further her education. In 1999, Weerasinghe became a U.S. citizen. She’s now working on her second degree at MU.

Her experience in coming to the United States after her husband’s death left Weerasinghe with a strong sense of determination. She had learned the importance of hope and resolve firsthand, and she was compelled to share her story with the tsunami victims.

“She lost a lot, and she identifies with loss of family and loss of material security,” said Sally Foster, a close friend.

Foster had dinner with Weerasinghe a few days before she left.

“It was a doubly meaningful thing, because she was going to help,” Foster said, “but she was also returning to her home country for the first time since she had taken U.S. citizenship. I felt on a couple of levels for her, that with the huge issue of the disaster she was also trying to help her family and the Sri Lankan community.”

The MU trauma team from the International Center for Psychosocial Trauma visited Sri Lanka and Indonesia about the same time Weerasinghe returned home. Barbara Bauer, a Columbia psychologist and member of the team, said fears surrounding water were common.

“One of the problems was people didn’t want to bathe,” Bauer said.

The sound of a flushing toilet reminded some victims of the sounds of the coming waves, she said. “There were a lot of residuals from that traumatic event.”

Weerasinghe saw these effects firsthand.

On the southern coast, she watched a group of fishermen mending their nets to return to work for the first time since the disaster. For weeks after the tsunami hit, the fishermen had no business because people wouldn’t eat fish.

“They were afraid the fish were eating the dead bodies,” Weerasinghe said. And even though it required facing their fears of the water that used to sustain them, victims on the southern coast told her they realized life must go on.

“Some people say ‘We live here and die here, and we have to go on with our lives,’” she said.

In conversations with survivors, she found that a month after the tsunami hit, they were just beginning to talk about it. And she knows through letting them tell their stories, they can begin to heal.

“In the U.S., (Weerasinghe) confronted her own sorrows as a widow and as a person who was somewhat isolated,” Foster said. After gaining a sense of community in Columbia through religious and social organizations, Weerasinghe found that a people could help themselves by simply recounting his or her story to others.

“It’s very acceptable in American culture to be pretty revealing and self-disclosing about things,” Foster said, “and that doing so can actually make a person feel better. There’s a certain psychological benefit to singing the blues, and she’s felt that benefit herself.”

Weerasinghe listened to individuals who had lost their entire family. Some had watched their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers wash away to sea.

“They were depressed,” she said.

But she thought by sharing her story, she gave them hope that they could make it through and go on with their lives.

“Property can be lost at any time,” she said. “But in their troubles, they are not alone.”

Lasting impact

Almost five months have passed since Weerasinghe returned to Columbia, and unpacked suitcases still lined her living room and basement in May.

As she goes back to her routine of classes and two jobs, she was glad she could share her story with her people and help.

The process of rebuilding Sri Lanka and its people’s lives will take decades. And even though Weerasinghe’s three-week stay was short, she shared her message of hope with as many survivors as she could.

“I try to do a little part,” she said. “I can’t help all of Sri Lanka. My attitude is if you can help the people in trouble, you help. It’s a small part. I did what I can do.”