Mennonite Central Committee

Mark Oxley spends time in Ampara refugee camps

December 31, 2004
Mary Oxley

This is from a Dec. 31 update from MCC worker Mary Oxley, whose husband Mark traveled with a medical team to devastated areas in the Ampara district along Sri Lanka’s east coast.

Mark is traveling back overnight after a productive day on the East coast. The day was spent with both teams working out of three different refugee camps; one in a World Vision Resource Center, one in a school and the other on a Hindu temple — all contacts from the Methodist minister in Thirakovil, a small town on the East Coast. At each camp in turn, the teams set up makeshift medical centers with three or four of the doctors consulting, one dispensing medicines and two or three of the volunteers translating (the majority language in this area is Tamil). After brief instruction from one of the doctors, Mark was set to dressing wounds and bandaging. Mark said a lot of the complaints were stomach upsets after swallowing sea water, and cuts and bruises. Mark also said that aid now seems to be coming through although according to the Methodist minister, there are some remoter areas that can only be accessed by boat which still haven’t been reached. The minister is confident that now that aid is coming through, the community will be taken care of. However, he is concerned that in a few weeks, the help will dry up when the needs continue to be ongoing. He has asked if this particular medical team would keep in touch and return if there is the need.

This afternoon I was involved with our church here in the buying of further relief materials. The church, St. Andrews Scots Kirk, Colombo) had received a request for 1,700 mats, sheets, toothbrushes, toothpaste and towels from Community Concern, a local organization which works closely with the beach community in our neighborhood (Dehiwala, Colombo). The supplies were desperately needed for 2 refugee camps set up for those who were affected in our area. Once bought, we delivered the materials to the Community Concern offices.

A member of a development organization that Mark Oxley works with in Sri Lanka is now part of the management team of a consortium of 65 nongovernmental organizations set up following the disaster to coordinate work and to provide accurate information of needs and the current situation. They have set up a Web site with links to the United Nations and government and a national help line number. One of the key aims at the moment is to give people accurate information about the possibility of further quakes and waves. The warnings issued yesterday that caused such mayhem turned out to be false and are undermining people’s confidence in returning to their homes. Chandran was up in Madampe yesterday which is about 10 miles inland and unaffected by Sunday’s waves. However, he said that there was even panic there when rumors of further waves got around, and people were running in the streets, desperate to get back to their families. In Colombo, people are also on edge because of the rise in looting. It has been suggested on a number of occasions that the rumors of waves have been deliberately fabricated to get people to move out of their homes and clear the area, leaving it free for looters to move in. Everyone is certainly very much on their guard as far as their properties are concerned.