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Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Driving along once picturesque Galle Road from the capital, Colombo, to the southern town of Galle and beyond used to be a pleasure. Fishermen preparing to venture into the sea or trying to drag a huge fishing net out of the sea were a common sight. After Dec. 26 the appearance has changed. Instead of fishing boats, the wreckage of these boats and houses are scattered on the coastline. The boat-repairing workshops and small buildings have vanished. Only a few demolished walls are visible where once stood the biggest boatyard in Beruwala, some 90 miles south of the capital. The entire town of Beruwala has suffered extensive damage. The situation is the same in Galle, which has a famous fort built by the Portuguese who ruled the island -- then called Ceylon -- before the British took over. Sudath, 40, sat on the beach with his back turned toward the sea. He comes to the beach every day and sits at the spot where he had anchored his boat on Christmas night. Next morning the tsunami broke it to pieces. Now he does not look at the sea, he hates it. "What will I do now?" asked Sudath. "I have three children, a wife and a mother to feed, but my boat is gone." The family now lives in a refugee camp set up in a church. Their home was washed away along with the boat. The waves carried away everything that the family had painstakingly collected over the past 90 years. "My mother and daughter have no clothes to wear," said Sudath's wife, Chandrani. "We are managing with clothes brought to us by Sirasa TV." Some 900,000 people are in refugee camps, deprived of their homes and livelihood. Nearly 173,000 fishermen, who have spent their lives along the coast and lived off the sea, now detest it. The giant waves smashed their boats, swallowed their houses, and shattered their dreams. "I wanted to send my son to the university in Moratuwa to do engineering," said Arnold Perera, another fisherman. "I can't find him. The sea took him away." Shivali, 16, supported her family by collecting seashells. Now she does not go close to the sea. "I saw the waves coming. Those were much taller than me. Before I could tell my mother, the wave hit her, and she crashed into the wall and died." Seer fish, which brought prosperity to this region, is now the most hated object. Not just the fishermen, but even others living along the coastline and dependent on the $18 million fishing industry of Sri Lanka have developed a dislike for seer fish. "This nation is suffering from collective hydrophobia," said Eric Fernando, a director general in the Presidential Secretariat. "Every one of the 20 million living in Sri Lanka is traumatized by what happened on Dec. 26." A journalist who asked for a room facing the sea in a five-star hotel in the capital was shocked to see the young receptionist's reaction. "That girl just could not believe that I wanted a room facing the sea. She told me that she hates the sea now," said S. Murari, special correspondent of the Deccan Herald newspaper, who arrived here to cover the disaster. Besides reconstruction the biggest challenge that Sri Lanka faces is dealing with the mass psychological trauma that the nation suffers from. "We need trauma counseling. We don't have trained people here. Very few are here. We have already sending small teams to some places, but we are now training some people. Emergency training is being given to doctors to go out and do this. We have also asked for international assistance for that," President Chandrika Kumaratunga told United Press International in an interview Monday. Rumors that the fish available in the market is contaminated and could cause viral diseases have complicated the situation. Fishermen whose boats survived the tsunami and have gone fishing are unable to sell their catch. In
a move to convince the nation that the fish is safe to eat, a group of
fishermen from Mirissa town have sent a basket of fish to President
Kumaratunga with the plea that she should eat their fish. IT could not be
confirmed if the president ate the fish.
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