By Melanie Brooks, CARE International
Cradling her two-month-old son in her arms, Laxmi* smiled as the baby yawned and reached for her. “I am happy we are safe,” she said softly, sitting on a mat in an emergency tent. “I only wish my husband could have met his son.
Just 20 years old, Laxmi’s long, dark hair is in two child-like braids, but when she smiles, her eyes are sad. When the conflict intensified in Northern Sri Lanka last year, she and her husband and father were trapped in the conflict zone along with tens of thousands of others, prevented from leaving by the LTTE. In December, when she was seven months’ pregnant, Laxmi and her family made a desperate attempt to escape to the safety of the government-controlled area.
Her husband didn’t survive.
Two months later, huddled in a rain-filled trench in the conflict zone while fighting raged nearby, Laxmi gave birth to their son.
Today, Laxmi is one of the more than 177,000 people living in tents and temporary shelters at the sprawling Manik Farm transit camp for people displaced by the conflict. She arrived on April 27, after government forces evacuated more than 120,000 people from the conflict zone in less than two weeks.
Laxmi’s story is all too familiar. Single mothers and broken families are the legacy of this 25-year conflict, which many hope will finally come to an end as the government makes its final push against the LTTE rebel group.
Some women, like Laxmi, lost their husbands in the conflict zone. Others became separated from their husbands or family members as they escaped. Still others, like the elderly woman living in the tent across from Laxmi’s, are grandmothers who suddenly found themselves the sole providers for their orphaned grandchildren.
Without family, single mothers rely on the kindness of strangers – their new neighbours in the tents, shelters and schools where they are now living. In the Manik Farm camp, Laxmi wakes at 5 a.m. to go fetch water from the water points, leaving her son with another woman in the tent. Laxmi’s father goes to wait in line at the food distribution centre to collect their meals three times a day, or inquire from the camp authorities about missing relatives.
While CARE is working with the government, the UN and other aid agencies to meet the immediate needs of those who were evacuated to transit camps – providing food, shelter, safe water, emergency supplies, latrines and bathing facilities – long-term support will be needed, particularly for single mothers like Laxmi.
“The urgent need now is helping people in the camps, but this is only the beginning,” said David Gazashvili, CARE’s Emergency Team Leader in Vavuniya. “In order to help people recover from this war, we need to make sure everyone has something to go home to, and that they can support themselves and their children.”
CARE has extensive experience in Sri Lanka working with conflict-affected communities, providing support for farmers, rehabilitating infrastructure like water tanks used for irrigation, and helping create opportunities for people to earn an income or find jobs when they return home. Savings and credit groups particularly target women, helping them pool their resources to purchase clothes and medicine for their families, or invest in small businesses.
The government plans to return families home by the end of the year, once mines have been cleared and basic infrastructure repaired or rebuilt. For Laxmi, her worry for the future overshadows the difficulty of living in the camps today. Her husband earned their only income. His parents live in Trincomalee, on the coast, and she hopes they can help, but she doesn’t know.
“I was only married one year,” she said softly. “Married one month, pregnant the next month, and now, I am a widow.”
* To protect the identity of people in this story, some names have been changed.