COLOMBO, 12 January 2005 — A tsunami victim from Weligama, 18 km from Galle, gained consciousness while she was shrouded in a white cloth and presumed dead in a hospital. But finding all her children dead, she now feels it is better to have been dead than alive.
When K. Uditha Nilanthie, 37 of Kamburugamuwa in Weligama, regained consciousness she found her face covered with a white cloth and she was laid down on the hospital floor with bodies.
“When I removed the cloth from my face someone shouted that there was a woman alive among the dead. I was taken to the ward and put on saline drip,” she said describing an experience she would never forget.
Nilanthie lost her children — G. Chaturika Nisansala, 10, Erik Chaminda, four, and Chamindu Ushara, two, to the killer waves. Her house was also destroyed.
“We lived near Matara Road in Kamburugamuwa. When we were in the house we heard people shouting about tidal waves. We got out, and before we could talk waves reached our compound. I held on to all three children. But when the waves overwhelmed us, we got separated. I remember floating and being smashed against trees,” she said.
Nilanthie said it would have been better if she had died with the children.
“If it had taken me a little more time to regain consciousness, I would have been buried too,” she said.
Another survivor, Upali Gunasekera from Matara, was saved by a crocodile when he was swept away by the surging sea. “When the tide was pulling me, I clutched a floating stool with one hand and a chair with the other to keep myself afloat. Another wave rocked the stool off my grip and as I pulled the chair to my chest I saw a log moving toward me. I hung on to the log for dear life,” he said.
But there was something strange about the log. It had a scaly surface and was no ordinary log. It was a crocodile.
As he began to despair, he felt his belly being nudged and he was pushed a good half a kilometer toward the embankment. There he lay for some time through sheer exhaustion, having been in the water for seven hours — no mean feat for someone who goes about in crutches on dry land.
And then he heard voices, “Yakko, he’s not dead. Pull him out.”
The Daily Mirror reported a heart-rending story of 14-year-old Amila Sampath, an orphan at the tsunami relief center at Koholankala, Hambantota. “On the morning of Dec. 26 mother gave my younger sister and two younger brothers and myself rice for breakfast and, telling us to attend Sunday school, went to the fair to sell vegetables,” he said.
This had been the routine every Sunday, but on that particular day it was to be different. “We received news of the tsunami later. We waited for mother to return till the evening. She never came back. A year-ago father died at sea. We still expect mother to come back,” he said.
With Amila are his brothers Anuruddha Sanjeewa and Anushan Sandu and sister Anukala Sarihani with grandmother Nikilapillai Selvanayam.
Amila said: “Since father died at sea, mother earned money by selling goods at the Sunday fair, to send me and my two brothers to school. Sister is still at pre-school”, he said, adding that their uncles helped them in various ways.
Meanwhile, analysts have said that Sri Lanka must control the flow of overseas aid into the country to prevent its currency from further rising against the dollar and the yen. The rupee appreciated further yesterday, recording a buying rate of 97.59 and a selling rate of 99.54 against the dollar.
Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said aid running into hundreds of millions of dollars may further increase the demand for the Sri Lankan rupee, strengthening the currency and hurting exports. The Sri Lankan rupee was the world’s best performing currency last week against the dollar and yen.
