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| Sunday, 21 August 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Lances and
Kafranja - culture survives all
by Elmo Leonard
Killai sahodhi?, literally translated from Portuguese, as spoken five centuries ago means "how is your health"? And when we asked this question from people of European descent or Burghers living in the east of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa, Kalmunai and Akkaraipattu, they replied, boom sahodhi, meaning `I am in good health.' But nothing is further from the truth concerning the physical and mental framework of these people, since the Asian tsunami of December 2004 took away many of their clan and rendered others homeless. Also known as Batticaloa Burghers they are housed in the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya and make up 208 families; they share the same camp with 60 other Tamil families who were also displaced from the annihilated Dutch bar where they lived. Four families share one classroom, partitioned with bed sheets while the few common toilets are always occupied. Others, whose lives were disrupted live with friends and relations.
The men are away at daytime, selling their skills who are largely carpenters, welders, printers, mechanics, blacksmiths, bicycle repair men, and the like. Others work for a salary as tailors, painters or labourers. Our guide, George Bertram Simonsz, 62 said: "I will do any coolie work to live." Some are "auto" or three-wheel drivers. Few men or women are engaged in government service or in the private sector. Many of their womenfolk are engaged in tailoring at home or at tailor shops. Some of them have received sewing machines and they love to turn out uniforms for schoolgirls. Others use the mortar and pestle to turn rice into flour as we did in Colombo 50 years ago. With the flour, they make string hoppers or hoppers for fast food outlets. Six to eight at night is study time for schoolgoers, under lights highly inadequate for reading. Eight p.m at night is community television time. Shortly, these people will be shifted from the frying pan to the fire. Their new temporary homes of 250 square feet with walls and roof of zinc are already built in Tharaimadu, six kilometres from the Batticaloa town, where public transport is nil, and cycling is a must. The cost of putting up one such temporary structure on 10 perches of land is Rs. 45,000. In six months or a year, they will be moved to a yet unidentified permanent setting and their temporary houses will be demolished, so they were told. They came to know why they cannot be housed permanently in the same setting. Then, their permanent houses could be built alongside their temporary structures, affording them more living space. But no reasonable answer was given to them, they said. No one told us during our stay at the refugee camps that there are another 25 Burgher families living in Kallady Batticaloa in four other camps. These camps also house Tamil families who were residents there, when the tsunami struck. One camp is in an old paddy stores, partitioned with sarees, sacks and tents, we are told. Perhaps these people were too occupied with their problems, they forgot to speak of their other brothers in Batticaloa. We slept on mats in a large classroom surrounded by men and boys who were the sole survivors of their families. There were also two Tamils with us, one had married into a Burgher family. In the mornings, everyone went to school or work but Newton Ragal, he has resort to consuming liquor. We insisted that we pay for the food we received while bicycles, guides and translators were at our beck and call. Over 100 years ago a group of Burghers from Batticaloa moved 70 kilometres south to Akkaraipattu to engage in carpentry work. Because their ancestors came by sea, they camped at Mannankulam along the beach. The Asian tsunami destroyed all 26 of their cement and mortar houses, claiming seven girls, three boys, a 30 year old woman a young and an old man. After the tsunami, they were moved to the Rama Krishna Mission and for the past seven months they are housed in 16 temporary shelters, each 15 feet long and 10 feet wide. Their surnames include, Barthelot, Hendrick, De Lima, Andrado, Outschoorn and Balthazaar. Agnes Hendrick, 55 was born in Akkaraipattu and had five children; she looked ten years older. About 25 years ago on the Pandiruppu beach near Kalmunai, 33 kilometres south of Batticaloa some Burghers from Batticaloa settled down. The December tsunami destroyed all 29 of their houses. These people who make up carpenters, welders, blacksmiths and tailors are housed in temporary shelters with zinc for the four walls and roof. Among their names were Balthraza, Barthelot and Razario. The Burghers of the east together with those 50 families in Trincomalee, a few in Jaffna and an unknown number who lived along the coast of Mullaitivu which is under Tamil Tiger control, intermarried, their parents acting as marriage brokers. They are forgetting their Craole Portuguese and adopt Tamil, it being the medium of instruction in schools in the east. Intermarriage is frowned upon and their culture is continued in their dances of Lances and Kafranja, their marriage ceremonies and Portuguese and Dutch recipes of food and drink. |
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