spring2life take2

When seeing Tyler Monson’s “Portland Public Toilet” and Carl Weese’s “Public Accomodations”, I immediately remembered my encounter with the “future of the bathroom” in Colombo last year. Enjoy!

And be reminded: you can click on every image to enlarge it.

When visiting one of the rainwater harvesting project sites, questions came up of how to supply those parcels with water, where there is only a hut with a thatched roof – in these places usually the most needy people live. After some discussion back and forth an archaic solution was brought up and displayed in a similarly archaic way: by drawing it with a stick in the sand.

On another topic: Tyler Monson has given me notice about a glitch in the post “More Things Green”: green the image was indeed, too green. I’ll correct this. Thanks, Tyler!

This image might make a nice complement for “Tidiness”, here, albeit not as clear in its meaning.

Approaching Lady Manning Bridge, built by the British in common wealthy colonial times to connect Batticaloa town with Kallady, one has to pass a number of military checkposts, indicated by the camouflage tin sheets. Fortunately enough the lady’s back provided a shield for my camera which would have otherwise drawn unnecessary attention from the soldiers onto it. My friend had to learn this the hard way in Colombo, when security staff on the boardwalk outside of the American Embassy’s wall noticed him looking through the viewfinder… We were happy that they were content to get a photocopy of his passport.

of the road. The president, then freshly re-inaugurated? Would Sri Lanka be a Muslim state, he probably would have to fear for his accumulated riches.

This blog is somewhat deprived of words at the moment, and I felt somewhat sorry for this.

But discovering that some of the blogs I do cherish most are without words – give or take a quote and/or a heading, a filename, a date – I concluded that there’s no need to feel sorry. If my workload shifts, words may come again, but at the moment there are none.

Enjoy the images anyway – and don’t forget: You can see all of them large just by clicking on ‘em.

Waiting for some others shopping is not a problem as long as I have a camera with me – even when I can’t do things along my own schedule and my pace, sometimes the images just flow in, like here in Kattankudi.

No words friday – comments still enabled, Thomas

Around noon, when students leave school and usually are not too hard pressed to arrive at home, a foreigner with a big camera is a welcome event that usually leads to a lot of grimaces and giggling and curious chimping about the outcome of the picture-taking activities.

This is the just finished assembly hall in the small town of Oddaimavadi in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, about 20km north of Batticaloa. As this is a mainly Muslim village, the hall but also the superiors’ offices are painted and decorated green. Immediately the german translation of Liza’s lesson in ‘My Fair Lady’ came to my mind: In German, instead of ‘The Rain In Spain’ she has to rehearse ‘Es grünt so grün’, meaning ‘it greens so green’. Colorwise it’s almost overkill.

Sometimes the differing nuances are already in the captured frame, so here again I needed only minimal adjusting in bibble5.

An image that I felt a spontaneous affection for when reviewing. And for me it fell exactly in the frame, no corner or side that I’d like to crop away.

Another variety of a food stall in one of the Batticaloa side roads. Even shops that don’t sell alcohol try to put up fencings and grates to protect their goods.

Found on Batticaloa Main Street, a place where at the moment the rainwater has flooded many shops. Have a look here at a BBC image collection. The number of refugees in makeshift camps meanwhile exceeds 320.000. But as both the number of TV cameras and the economic value are low, the world doesn’t even have a look.

5 years after Tsunami, the beach promenade of Batticaloa is all new and shiny. The only thing lacking are the tourists, who come only in smallest numbers, as infrastructure is still limited.

Update: As my hoster has copied this blog to a new machine with a different IP, som inconsistencies in posts and comments can happen. Withing maximum one week all changes in the DNS should have been propagated, until then I will try to keep the blogs in sync.

if such a playground is here in the right place. At least my kids would probably prefer to climb on trees, wade in creeks, run through the fields, play hide and seek in the bushes.

But taking into account that this area was probably only recently de-mined, it makes perfect sense. Don’t worry, profits in mine production were and are high, and supporting humanitarian organisations is a wonderful activity to deflect from the moneymaking and warfaring – on all sides.

Rural Reality in the village of Periyapullumalai, Sri Lanka, quite far away from our (made in China) style of life.

Enjoy.

Wordless Friday, okay?

It was only when the boys got distracted by viewing the images on the screen of my friend’s camera, that the little girl, easily the youngest of the group, was allowed to pose for the camera.

Next month’s wallpapers are available as usual from here. I found this scenery in one of the smaller alleys of Galle Fort, the former Dutch fortress that had secured that strategic port.

Nowadays instead of sailors the tourists are welcome guests, but in the monsoon time of last November we walked pretty much alone there. Definitely a kind of situation I cherish.

Found in Batticaloa downtown. Sometimes all the shapes seem to fall right into place.

Maybe the most unexpected encounter during my traveling through Sri Lanka where those caskets on the platform of Batticaloa train station. As the east coast companies offer substantial lower prices for finishing and decorating, it pays for Colombo funeral parlors to send the casks on two 12h+ train transports to Batticaloa. In comparison to the casks, the full metal cash box looked much more as it would belong to there.

Found in the evening in Kattankudi (where these sad images are from). Being a Muslim traders’ town, Kattankudi is buzzing with activity until late at night, totally different to Tamil Batticaloa, where shops close usually before 20:00 hours.

Sometimes, like here, the horizon has to be in the middle. And, another deviation from standard rules, only the lower half of the brightness scale was used. While the latter might need some modification for printing, viewed on a computer screen it seems just right.

Oh yes, and these fisherman are a recurring theme for me. Every image is different, so I never got bored visiting them early morning on the beach.

Oh yes, and as bigger is better, at least when viewing photographs on a screen, just click on the image to see it larger.

The end of the civil war in May 2009 not only brought a drastic increase of security and freedom to move in the streets for the people of Batticaloa, but also, only one year later, a largely disproportionate number of new banks as well as investment companies trying to make their luck in this up to then forgotten region of Sri Lanka. I can only hope that the land owners are wary enough and check the oh so clever proposals. And just have a look to the 1:1 crop (when clicked on) of the main image: No shoes, paddles, and kids that help to earn the family income. That is more the normality of life on the east coast.

The Neccder billboard to the right, admonishing to protect the wetlands, is just a nice descant, a reminder of yesteryear.

Sometimes a scenery like this flies by, and I am glad that my feelings made me frame and record this scenery as it presented itself. Something in me just said “this works”.

Jewelry business was not flourishing too much during the civil war – not only due to the lack of money, but also because the Tamil Liberation Army had forbidden the dowry system. The dowry system was and is very problematic for the status of women in the society: The necessity to provide a huge dowry often makes baby girls less welcome. And as a better education makes a young woman suitable for grooms with an equal status, additionally to the costs of the education the expenses for an even higher dowry have to be taken into account.

I was not astonished when Tamil friends admitted, that “this was one good thing” the LTTE had tried to introduce.

One of our pumps, built during the last project, was not correctly fixed with some kind of anchors in the sand. It still provides clean water, but is now uncomfortably low for usage. The lady however was still glad to have it, as carrying water cans is impossible for her.

Found in one of the side streets of Batticaloa. In contrast to the blue sky of this image, taken in November last year, Batticaloa and surroundings suffered from torrential rainfalls, cutting off traffic and transports and forcing tenthousands to leave their homes, and many to stay in provisional shelters. Since some days only the situation has improved, and now the damage gets calculated. I hope to receive some images of the situation within the next days.

The American Dream is somewhat faded, but still alive here in Batticaloa.

Some things, it seems, haven’t changed since the British left Sri Lanka in 1948, the stationmaster’s bell among them.

Sometimes the Hindu shrines are very inconspicuous, like this one. The only signs of reverence are the white blossoms, better visible after clicking on the 1:1 crop to the right.

The winter monsoon time also provided some dry hours with a clean, deep blue sky, creating an image impression that reminded me very much of scenes photographed in the U.S., getting the best, deeply saturated colors out of Kodachrome, then often at the expense of the shadow areas.

At least the ads for Kodachrome are still intact in Batticaloa, unfortunately I had no opportunity to ask when they sold their last roll of it.

The Online Photographer today’s post dealt with the different “sweet spots” of the cameras. The image of the dead gecko certainly profited from a broader sweet spot of the camera used: Not wanting to destroy the nuances with a flash, high ISO as well as image stabilisation was necessary due to the unavailability of a tripod.

The result I think is convincing, enough detail becomes visible when you click on the 1:1 crop to the right. The ants of course show motion blur, but the image is not meant as a documentary, and so this in my eyes adds to the message.

As near the equator the length of the days is approx. 12 hours during the whole year, at least part of the business life in Sri Lanka have to happen during the dark hours. Since the end of the civil war it is possible again to go out shopping in the evening, something that was either too dangerous or even forbidden for long periods of time.

Found in Koduvamadu. You can find it here on google maps. Yes, it’s probably in the middle of nowhere. The amount of attention as well as improvements might be proportional to the geographical situation.

Continuing yesterday’s fences with a door.

After Friday’s tragic post it was hard for me to find an adequate topic for today.
The fences in Sri Lanka are continously fascinating me (therefore there’s already a gallery of them), and this last visit I found not only those dangerously looking fencepost-tops, made from palmyrah stalks, but also a young palmyrah plant, showcasing this perfect star-shaped leaf, which’s caulis later can be used for the fencing.

And as always – click on the images to see them much larger! This should work throughout the whole blog and also the galleries.

Roughly like in the lead picture must have been the situation that LTTE killers found when they entered Kattankudi’s Meer Jumma Mosque during prayer time on August 3rd, 1990: Devotees prostrate in their friday prayers in front of them. And then they opened fire and threw hand grenades, killing 103 in this and the neighbouring Husseinia Mosque.

I have to admit that I was speechless and it took me hours to re-gain composure, and now selecting those images with the bullet marks again makes me shudder.

So why did I decide to publish these: I am convinced that truth has to be told and that peace can only be achieved when injustice is recognized by all sides, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of South Africa being seminal examples for this. The problem in Sri Lanka is, that this does not happen. When I spoke with members of the Muslim community after the visit to the Mosque, I saw a lot of unstilled bitterness.

In the tsunami of 2004, Saintamaruthu had lost its health care center, leaving thousands of citizens without local medical facilities. Overcoming a sequence of difficulties, setbacks and delays, by donations of the GFK and the citizens of Nuremberg and the management of UN-Habitat, a new health care center was erected and now is serving its purpose. When I visited the site, the weekly breastfeeding promotion consultation hours took place – with visible demand.

Again found in Batticaloa. Networking and Operating System support is really competent, and a broad range of software is available, too.

Found in one of the main roads of Batticaloa

Not far from last post’s school I found this mural/collection of ads on the remaining walls of a house destroyed in 2006′s tsunami. I like the lead image for its repeating patterns and their blending into the wall. The image to the right fascinates too because of that whole universe that opens up behind the corner and the stairs.

The Al-Wahidhiyyah Arabic College in Kalmunai is a small privately funded school for boys. Like the Christian Parochial Schools, nowadays rare in Europe, this school teaches along the official government curriculum, but gives special religious lessons. The boys were interested to use the little English they knew, and really open and friendly. I hope they keep this attitude and not only learn the words of the surahs, but also their deep and in many aspects very tolerant and open essence.

Update: I was thinking about Aaron Vincent Elkaim’s photographic essay about remnants of Jewish life in Morocco. Definitely worth seeing, not only for the photography but also the context and content.

Well, on New Year’s Evening, a widely thrown out net could be a suitable starting point for a long, personal reflection about the coming year. And with that image I wish all of you, around the world, a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Koduvamadu/Periyapullumalai, Sri Lanka, 2010. See also here, 2009.

Summarizing what is all our work about in one picture: Providing clean drinking water to families who couldn’t afford up to now. See also here, here, or here – many of the posts in the Batticaloa category target this subject.

These images are exemplary for the joy I have in photography afterwards. When visiting beneficiary families to inspect the rainwater harvesting tanks, photographs first of all serve documentary purposes. Making images for another purpose has to remain subordinate, especially when there are some 30 more places to visit. But during the talking with the families about their experiences, wishes and recommendations, opportunities for “the other” photography sneak in. And the quality of these images I can only evaluate at home, when there is sufficient time. And sometimes there are images that I really enjoy.

I could have known that Dec. 24th would need a post prepared well in advance. So here is, for the given reason, the image of a mother with her son in the village of Koduvamadu, a place where our project has built rainwater harvesting tanks. I like the open and optimistic smile of the lady, despite her difficult situation. Well suited as image for this day.

A Merry Christmas to you all. May love and peace be with you.

Christmas without doubt is the most child centered event in the western culture. This fact of course makes it an easy target for economic exploitation, something which evokes grimmer feelings the elder I grow. But this increasing distance in age and the experience with my own kids also grows genuine interest in kids’ lives and in their prospects. Securing our common future begins with respect even for the small kids. And when we take their lifespan as criterion, some decisions and some lifestyle just disqualifies itself.

When evaluating possible project sites for rainwater harvesting tanks, we were visiting several villages. For a very simple reason the women were most interested in these units: They are the ones who toil and sweat when the traditional well provides no water during the two annual dry seasons, and they suffer with their kids and elders when they fall sick with infections due to dirty drinking water.
So when we had meetings, the women sat in the first rows, and they spoke first.

As we are nearing Christmas (C-4 to quote Earl), I decided to switch subject.

Found next to Beira Lake, in the center of Colombo.

Colombo, Duplication Rd.

I found those two matching garage doors not far from each other in the small town of Oddaimavadi on the east coast of Sri Lanka.

Found in the southern town of Galle in Sri Lanka. As it was the very begin of the tourist season, the beach still belonged to the locals.

Galle, Sri Lanka. The shutter did actuate itself.

Note the excellent pelvis move of the gentleman in white. Only seconds before he had somewhat posed when descending from the bus, but then the driver got annoyed. You can listen to some seconds of the original sound here:

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Colombo mural, Duplication Rd.

Found near Thurstan Rd. (if the GPS coordinates are correct) and on Galle Rd., Colombo.

Lack of colonial knowledge makes me wonder about the connection between authorized vehicles and barefoot staff.

R. A. de Mel Mawatha, Colombo. Those oversized billboards already at home create a feeling of them being somewhat out of place. In places like Colombo, this becomes overwhelming.

Found in Jayawardane Mawatha, Colombo.

Just taking up the relationship between religion and money, started in the comment section of yesterday’s post: Despite of the strong influence of the Buddhist religion in Sri Lanka, the originally christian custom of giving wrapped presents for christmas has gained strong foothold here as well. Just think of the christmassy decorated tusks here. F.Y.I. tusks are an important religious symbol in Buddhist Sri Lanka, you find many of them in the Tooth Temple in Kandy.

But in the end, it’s all about money. Very simple.

The Jesus sticker on the wall in yesterday’s image sparked a short conversation with Martina about the presence of private religious symbols in the streets of different countries. Carl Weese from time to time shows such shrines in the U.S., mostly in suburban gardens, if I remember correctly.

Despite being a Buddhist country, where the religion plays a major role in politics (and most of the time an unhealthy one, unfortunately), symbols and shrines of all religions can be seen in the street. Those two I found in Duplication Road, separated by only a small distance.

Both trees I found in Duplication Road, Colombo 3.

Strange enough, in my previous visits, Colombo seemed in a photographic sense very unattractive to me. Not that I am searching those blue sky touristic images, but the dust and noise (and grime) had always left me quite desolate and more or less unable to see. This time it was different, and whilst the lack of project burdens and responsibilities may play a role in this – being there as an NGO expert is somewhat different from being managing lead partner of a international cooperation project – I think my mindset has changed in the 18 months since my last visit: Having read Robert Adams, having looked at many photographs of Minor White et. al. (which had seemed ‘difficult’ to me beforehand) and having developed a less ‘cramped’ attitude of seeing and replaced thinking with knowing maybe were the key factors here. Technically I have not changed much, same camera, same software, same lenses. Oh, regarding the latter there was a change: I need less. The 16-80 mm-e became sufficient for 90% of the images, to be replaced with a fast prime only when it became really dark. Super wide angle and long tele zoom have been left mostly unused in the bag.

Found during a morning stroll through the streets of Colombo.

Not really christmassy, this year’s december wallpaper shows monsoon clouds over the beach of the Bay of Bengal. But then, it is tightly connected with christmas, as the houses in the area were given to the victims to the tsunami of Dec. 26th, 2004.

In this resettlement area of Thiraimadu, Batticaloa, funds of the City of Munich were used to give houses to 42 women headed families that hat lost family members and posessions in the Tsunami. It was a joy to learn that those families do well, and especially that they care very much for the education of their children, even if the available funds for daily life are minimal. At least for them the terror of the tsunami was to a small bit compensated by the donations of Munich’s citizens.

On the way to the airport our car had to wait quite often in traffic jams, and freed of all duties and preparatory thoughts now, I used these opportunities to capture roadside sceneries.

During framing those I had not much opportunities to deliberate about composition – it was more immediate reacting – but reviewing the images I was fascinated of some of the color arrangements, positions of people or the amount of small details like in the first of today’s images.

Writing this, I am sitting already in the airport on my way to home. These were intense weeks, less so in the photographic sense, but full of discussions on how to tune the setup of the new water supply project in order to achieve best acceptance and sense of ownership of the beneficiaries. There are many things to take into account, not the least the difficult mindset of people that had been pushed around for many years during the civil war in Sri Lanka.

For some time I will be posting some more pictures from Sri Lanka, but there will be an abrupt change when I do the switch to images from Germany – snow and temperatures below 0° C will give a different impression.

Without any double-butted alloy frames, rock-shoxx suspension forks or Rohloff gear-shifts, those men transport loads of more than 50kg of firewood on their (India-made) bicycles over paths that would make nice competition dirt tracks on the northern hemisphere. And if necessary they cross flooded parts of roads, where only the really sturdy vehicles will go. Kudos!

Again a field visit today, meeting the people of a small village in the Valachenai area, north of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. When traveling back, this bus crossed our way.

The assembly took place in the classroom of the local school, and especially the women – in the middle the chairwoman of the Woman Rural Development Society – actively participated in the discussion, as this project plans to release them from hour-long walks to get water during the dry season.

Yesterday I did a field trip with my colleagues from Sri Lanka, checking the rainwater harvesting tanks they have set up in the current project. Of the beneficiaries usually the husbands were working in the paddy fields, while the women and kids were at home. One lady was busily repairing her universal tool, used mainly for cutting mangos from the trees, and she agreed having her portrait taken.

It was not raining when I took these images in one of the fish markets of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Unfortunately now it is – just natural, it’s monsoon time – and even more unfortunately is that my room has so many leakages in the ceiling that I barely know how to position my bed to find a dry place to sleep. The moskito net is unusable due to its position, the luggage already closed so that I can leave the room reasonable quickly if the situation deteriorates.

Checking the image files, I found a matching scenery for yesterday´s timber trader, this time from Colombo.

Found in Oddamavadia, east coast of Sri Lanka. Same time, same moskitoes, fleeing.

Found these today during our travel from Colombo to the east coast of Sri Lanka, and was captivated by forms and colors.

To post these I have to sit fully dressed on the balcony of our guesthouse, while the monsoon rains pattern on the roof and the moskitoes are agressively searching for fresh blood. Short post, for a given reason.

Well, I dropped the idea to fill the next posts with pres. Rajapakse’s pictures – too depressing. Those street sceneries I found in the town of Galle, on the southern end of the island. People here really can have a sense for harmonic colors.

To take up the topic that I’ve started with a project contribution on Martin Storz’s Public Eye Blog: Yesterday was the inauguration ceremony for Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapakse. There are some doubts about the elections and their preliminaries, and whilst many of the people in Colombo welcome his presidency in the light of him having ended 30+ years of a bloody civil war, concerns about the way this country now is governed by the Rajapakse family remain. For more details just have a look at the wikipedia. Optically his inauguration was impressive, to say the least. Thousands of his portraits were distributed throughout the city of Colombo, together with flags of Sri Lanka, – a personality cult hitherto unknown in this country – and chains of lights now illuminate his posters at night (and I didn’t bring a tripod!).

Today’s images are only a starter, I have yet to decide if I make up a small gallery of the best of the rest, or if I serve them one-by-one.

Update: I just had to learn that the English Wikipedia, unlike the German Version, does describe Pres. Rajapakse in an almost exclusively positive way, highlighting his achievments in fighting the worlds no. 1 terrorists. This should ring a bell with you… Maybe better also look at the pages of Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders.

To take up Martina’s last comment

: Yes, Colombo takes up many European, or better Western, patterns. Though being an officially Buddhist country, without a separation of state and religion as we know it, especially the business parts of other relgions, like Christmas here, get incorporated and playfully put on stage. Of course this shopping mall is more for the well-offs, but as everywhere, they set the trends. The Sri Lankan influence however is clearly visible in the shapes of the decoration: tusks, as they are venerated for example in the temple in Kandy.

Seen on Duplication Road, Colombo.

Walking the streets of Colombo – something the better-off people in Colombo would always try to avoid – led me into a bounty of sceneries, and even a shy guy like me, who doesn’t want to bother people with his camera out of respect for their privacy, found more than enough food for his lens.

Some of the street scenes reminded me of Carl Weese’s recent cyclus “Two walls”. And the weariness after a sleep-deprived night between Europe and Asia did not stop me, maybe focused my visual sense even more.

Since quite some time I had planned to revisit older images. Yesterday’s train delay, that made me spend a very uncomfortable time in an even more uncomfortable train station at night, finally gave me the opportunity to do this. Besides some tagging in bibble5 (which is not yet as comfortable as I’d wish it to be), I drew out the images for the new gallery “Batticaloa Fences”, which you find here.

And while going through them, I again felt my affection for the place and the images, still strong after the year+ that has passed since then. Regarding the photographs it is based on the strong graphics and textures that some of them have, but also on the content, the situation you must live in to protect your property with flattened oil barrels or fragments of asbestos sheets .

what an amount of books sofobomo yielded this year! i did go through only a small part up to now and already found quite a number of really precious, extraordinary ones. so on top of the personal success of having really created my book, analyzed in part what it meant to me and what it taught me, there is so much food for reading, seeing, reflecting that i am truly overwhelmed. a lot of my free time the next days i will spend going through those books.

the image above, taken in the newly built house of a tsunami victim in batticaloa, left me somewhat speechless in its tight vicinity of the lord of mercy and a war instrument. strange, in many aspects.

to describe traffic in sri lanka along european criteria, there is just one word: insane. even for a seasoned driver, not shy of left-hand driving, it is so much better to have a careful sri lanka driver and a working seat belt.

and when you have the lorry so close in front of you, it is definitely a reassurance that it is “fully insured”

a matching door for the fence blinds shown yesterday, this door is one of the rare cases where the recycling/upgrading path left the original structure well visible and self-contingent, not mixing in or adding other components.

the fence, too, is a case of recycling: the net was beyond repair and unsuitable to catch fishes any more. it still is, however, fit to keep the hen in the garden. together with the pine twigs and the cones optically it makes up for a fine structure.

in sri lanka, plots are usually at least fenced with barbed wire. only the wealthy ones can afford real walls, often topped with bottle bottom fragments. To protect the owners from the curious views of the bypassers, the street side of the fences is usually equipped with blinds.

traditionally they were made from palmyrah leaves, but these degenerate within some years, and now people use metal sheets, rarely new. even old oil barrels, cut and bent straight, are used for this purpose. these materials now offer a wide variety of textures and colors.

finally my sofobomo 09 theme has found me: the fishermen of batticaloa. since 2005 i try to spend the early morning hours of my missions to batticaloa on the beach, and over the time i got more and more acquainted with them. since quite some time i planned either a small exhibition or a pod-book on this topic, so using it for sofobomo is just natural.

the next evenings i will spend with bibble5 – the preview 2.1a really rocks – and scribus. my laptop is not too well suited for heavy image editing, this is one more reason to use bibble instead of lightzone. to compile the book should be not too difficult, as the framework is ready: a blurb book is going to be the print target. now it’s high time for doing the final selection.

trincomalee internally displaced persons again, in front of their shed. one of the boys is sick, born with a hole in the cardiac septum.

basic healthcare in sri lanka is free, and in some aspects of really high quality and excellent quality/circumstances ratio. however an operation in this case has to be paid extra, and the 4000 us$ the family is not (and will not be in the near future) able to afford.

for cases like this there is the sri lanka president’s fund. doesn’t sound like a really democratic solution, more like a holdover from good old monarchy, where the sovereign distributes alms, eh? and, the family is not able to apply. they are not educated, they speak the wrong language, they don’t know where to apply.

why they are smiling on this picture? they got a new toilet, and that is a big improvement.

some people are not born poor, but made poor. the idps that now live in navallady, batticaloa, in the former tsunami buffer zone (no permanent house should have been there, the former residents were all resettled) had their homes in the trincomalee district. the civil war came, they were driven out of their houses in the combat- or security zone and now live under most primitive conditions in sheds made of tarpaulins, corrugated tin sheets and leaves. you count the toothbrushes? 8 people live here, in a hut maybe 3,5×5 m².

and i learned a lot about gender budgeting, too (it pays to travel with the boss, who is a psychiatrist by education): if there is a male head of family, there will be: a mobile phone, a tv set (to watch cricket), a small motobike…

but the number of male-headed families is small. the usual story reads more like “lost husband in the conflict, lost the son, fleeing, now living with the small kids here until knowbody knows when, little support, fear, discrimination (by army/police)”. I spare you the details. It is simply incredible.

taking up the topic of my recent post “eyes”, just a bullet list of what it means to be poor in batticaloa, sri lanka (but feel free to put in any other place):

• the husband (if present) works as a day labourer, earning barely enough to feed the family
• the kids leave school early to add to the family’s income
• you live on your own plot, but twice a year it gets flooded and turns into a swamp. so the romance showing up in the lead shot is just a temporary one
• your daughter carries the daily laundry quite a distance. to wed her, you should save for a dowry, but don’t know from where to take it
• your plot of maybe 100m² houses well and toilet pit, not a really healthy arrangement
• when you are not in a specially affected group like the tsunami victims, you probable are poor and stay poor

by careful usage of funds, our project could increase the number of donated toilets, and some families in puthur, batticaloa, now have decent hygienic facilities. to help them to help themselves, the beneficiaries were paid in installments and themselves contracted the work. this also created a good sense of ownership – and kept the costs really low. and the toilet now is the most solid structure on the plot, much better then the house…

fortunately enough, un-habitat’s programme “cities without slums” will tackle this situation in order to achieve a structural improvement.

sometimes when the eyes open, gestalt reveals itself. though i am sweating for many of my pictures, on quite some occasions i just recognize, see. and sometimes, i also like the framing and don’t feel the necessity to crop or modify otherwise. rare moments that i really cherish.