5 years after tsunami, Sri Lanka still suffers

By DEBRA HAIGHT - H-P Correspondent

BERRIEN SPRINGS - Five years after a tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries, REACH International founder Jasmine Jacob said the need for help remains, but for different reasons.

REACH stands for Render Effective Aid to CHildren and is the organization Jacob founded more than 35 years ago. The organization is based in Berrien Springs and supports orphanages, schools and feeding centers in countries around the world.

Jacob is a native of Sri Lanka and made several trips back to her homeland in the days, weeks and months after the deadly tsunami. The tsunami hit on Dec. 26, 2004, and devastated southern Asian countries including Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Within a week of the tsunami, Jacob and a group of others including her brother, Dr. Ernesto Fernando, an Elkhart, Ind., doctor, were on their way to their homeland. "When we saw what had happened, we said, 'How can we sit here and not go?' " she said.

She said this week that the people in her homeland are suffering more from the effects of the country's long civil war with the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group government forces defeated earlier this year, than the tsunami five years ago.

Jacob said REACH does continue to assist tsunami survivors including a young 13-year-old boy she met on one of her trips back in 2005. The boy survived a train derailment at the time of tsunami, which killed his parents.

"He's now 18 and finished with high school, he is one of the children we tried to help," she said. "He survived by climbing out and on top of the train, he's young and resilient.

"A lot of people found a way to survive after the tsunami," Jacob said. "People scavenged and found materials to build houses. They got many places in the country cleared in three months. Over there, when they lose their homes, they salvage and rebuild, it's much more simple."

"The survivors have been resilient," she said. "The people killed were mostly the parents and older people. Parents told their children to run when the tsunami hit and they got away."

In contrast, the civil war has forced many of the people into refugee camps in the last few years. Jacob said that the orphanage REACH built in Sri Lanka after the tsunami has taken in more than 20 children who had been living in the refugee camps.

"The Tamil Tigers would hide behind civilians and when they were being routed by the government, they planted land mines in the fields," Jacob said. "The government now has to clear the mines before the people can go home. Now the need is for the war survivors."

She described the Tamil Tigers as terrorists who started the practice of strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing themselves up in terrorist attacks.

"The innocent suffered," Jacob said. "The world didn't think the government could defeat the Tamil, but they did ... The Tamil would say they were being harassed when they were the ones harassing others."

Jacob also spoke about the situation she fears is worsening in another part of the world, in the African country of Tanzania. There, witch doctors prey on people's superstitions and have encouraged the killing of the country's native albino population.

"People think the albinos are a bad omen and parents themselves abandon their children," she said. "We are building an orphanage to take them so we can protect them. I hope the problem there comes to the forefront of the world's attention."

"We support orphanages, schools and feeding centers in 27 different countries, wherever children are suffering," she said. "... We keep going. God leads and we go."