German Memory in Asia - My Jungle Memories in a Tsunami Mission

When we were at the tail end of our journey back to Kilinochchi, I observed there were some people crying under a mango tree in the front of the hospital premises.


Their story was too pathetic. One person had lost her sister and the other one her entire family. I realized the tragedies beyond consolation and words so trivial. The German Praktikum (Internship) students too were listening to them patiently. I didn't know how they would adjust themselves to the future. We reluctantly left them to join our team who were about to leave.


Our six-vehicle convoy sped along the path, which we came by an hour ago. We passed through the devastated Mullaitivu area again, without stopping, as we had to reach the Jaffna Peninsula at our earliest possible. But the silently waving Indian Ocean in the distance brought so many memories back to my mind once again.


After a few miles of traveling I joined the German T.V. in their vehicle, as they wanted to go early to Dambulla Hotel, which is in the midst of dense jungle. With a better-fixed satellite antenna it would enable them to quickly transmit the documentary rather than with their mobile-antenna devices which they were carrying all the way with them.

They had had a bitter experience when they used mobile-antenna devices the previous day night at the Pandyan Restaurant in Kilinochchi. The transmission was disturbed a number of times and they had lost the prime time News hours in Germany to telecast the documentary which they had taken in on the way to Kilinochchi about the war-torn jungle terrain of the Island.


I became very friendly with the German T.V. personnel on our way back to Kilinochchi. We met the LTTE media coordinator and had a brief conversation with him. After few minutes the TV crew left towards their southern destination. I arranged a vehicle and traveled to the Iranaimadu Tank, one of the largest reservoirs in the Island, a place in the world, where I was enchanted by the serene beauty of its surrounding greeneries and circling of birds over it since my CARE days.

When I was traveling, I passed the area where once the LTTE's Economic Development Wing was based. During my CARE days, I visited it a number of times on project issues on how to resettle the displaced refugees in the jungles. I could still remember the number of field visits, which I paid in dense jungles.


It was a habit of mine on my visits, to take some magazines either TIME or Newsweek and read them on the bunds of the reservoirs. I experienced a different perception of life when I read about the space-age society of the outside world from the environment of the nearly stone-age society in the jungles and their surroundings. I had visited several times the Iranaimadu tank and experienced the difference.


When I reached the tank the circling around of birds over it once again enticed me.


I found myself lost in a different world, which was free of all worries and troubles!