|
|
Dassanayake will now make a personal journey to his
homeland to deliver the assistance and make it felt in dioceses where he has spent his life.
Dassanayake talked about the terrible loss of life on that day, and especially the deaths of so many children who were on holiday and playing on the beach.
As he said, "I know the people in the area very well. I
was the pastor in Galle for a long time. The wave came from Sumatra, and it wrapped around the southern end of Sri Lanka and swept up onto the western side of Sri Lanka. The entire city of Galle was washed away.
"Normally, on Dec. 26, what they do by Sri Lankan custom, the children go to see the parents, because the parents live in various places, so all get together, and they have a lunch. The children go to play on the beach. It is difficult to get them into the house, because they are so playful. The first wave came, and everybody went to the beach to see what had happened. Then the second wave came, and that was about 30 feet high. It was the second wave that killed most of the children.
"We have 12 dioceses in Sri Lanka, and most of the dioceses were hit by the tsunami. In each parish, we have about five to six churches. I had been working in the Galle area in five or six parishes. Galle was the worst hit of the parishes where I have worked.
"There was a church where they were saying Mass in Matara, just to the south of Galle, where I have also been working. The wave came into the church and took the faithful away.
"The death toll for Sri Lanka is now thought to be about 38,000 people, and one-third of those were children.
"I want to thank Father Duff, and especially all of the parishioners, for their generosity, their love and their kindness," said Dassanayake. "Everybody is coming to me every day and asking me, 'How are you? Are you OK?' They all try to comfort me.
"I also want to thank the people of this country. This is a great nation and a great country. The U.S. and Canada have been active in the relief activities in Sri Lanka, and they are doing such wonderful work there.
"I have now seen in the local papers that the U.S. Army
has come into the Galle area, and there are doing great work for the people. The United States has sent a hospital ship that has been in the harbor at Galle.
"So far, the disease in the wake of the tsunami is under control, because so many are being treated in the camps mainly by U.S. and Canadian doctors and nurses who have come to Sri Lanka. But there are some places in the country that are difficult to get to."
Dassanayake is the youngest of 12 children, and the uncle of over 40 nieces and nephews. His mother and the entire family survived this disaster. Most of them live in the foothills, and did not even see the wave, which he said was still 10 feet high more than a kilometer inland.
The 17 million people of Sri Lanka are of various faiths, he said, mostly Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, and this disaster has brought them together to help in the relief efforts.
"We are kind of family, because we don't care if you are Buddhist or Muslim or Catholic, we do something if we can," Dassanayake said.
The government of Sri Lanka estimates that there are over 900,000 people living in relief camps as a result of the calamity, while the boats of more than 170,000 fishermen have been destroyed.
"I talked with one person who said that for more than a kilometer, the sea was empty, it seems," Dassanayake said. "They saw all the people there going here and there, and within four or five minutes, the first wave came. Then the people went to the sea to see what had happened, and the second wave came that was about 30 feet high.
"Even some of the people went fishing when the water withdrew and the first wave came, and some people were taking video pictures. We have had no experience of this, we have never seen this before."
From an article published by the government on the official Web site: "It has to be admitted Sri Lanka was not prepared, not for a catastrophe of this magnitude.
We islanders lived with the notion that ours is a blessed land, not prone to disasters, we were complacent and imagined ourselves as Mother Nature's favoured people.
"Our well-known civil conflict since 1983 has accounted for more that 60,000 lives. On the 26th of December, nature proved to be a great leveler. More than half the numbers killed during the 20-year conflict, perished in just 20 minutes before nature's fury.
"Since the Dec. 26 disaster there has been a unity rarely witnessed here in Sri Lanka, people of all walks of life galvanized into activity. Sri Lankans worked as one people to help their fellow men who nature had so cruelly felled and denuded in a matter of minutes. For once Sri Lankans had shed all differences of cast, creed and religion. Nature had taught Sri Lanka a lesson that 'everyone in our society is equal before nature's rage.'"
Among the features of the government plan to rebuild Sri Lanka is the construction of 15 new townships along the south and east coasts of the islands.
