Cuddalore Five Years After the Tsunami

The 12-year-old Sabinath cannot remember everything about the day the tsunami devastated his village in the south Indian district of Cuddalore.

He no longer remembers who exactly died or how many houses were destroyed by the waves. He’s been asked to tell the story so many times in the past five years that his answers have become automatic.

But he does know the name of a German organisation that was there to help: "German Agro Action".

The school that Sabinath attends in Mettupalayam was built by German Agro Action and its local partner Life Help Centre for the Handicapped. Classes are held in English at the school which has some 280 pupils from 15 of the surrounding villages.

800 people died

Some 800 people died in Cuddalore when the tsunami struck on 26. Dec. 2004. The disaster encouraged the city of Bonn to become Cuddalore’s partner city.

The former district collector of Cuddalore, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, said the moral support was extremely important. “It was very touching for us to see that thousands of kilometres away, people in Bonn were thinking of us. They donated with all their heart. It was a great example for Indo-German friendship.”

But not all the well-intended donations found their way to those in need and the help was not necessarily appropriate.

Days after the tsunami had struck, mountains of clothes piled up in Cuddalore. Second-hand trousers, skirts and T-Shirts for example but not the kind of clothes usually worn by the traditionally-conscious fishermen and their wives.

Later, boats and nets arrived from several NGOs. There was not enough coordination to ensure that all help made sense and reached those who needed it most because there was simply too much pressure.

700 new development projects

After the tsunami struck, over 700 projects were set up in the largely-underdeveloped region.

Dr Arumugum Gurusamy, the head of the German Agro Action office in Chennai, explained that the tsunami had some positive effects despite the tragedy.

"Soon after the tsunami there was an article in our local newspaper titled ‘The Tsunami -- A Golden Opportunity.” The people who had lost their lives had in a sense given a good opportunity from a developmental perspective. Without the tsunami the development would have been happened but not with this kind of face."

Without the tsunami, the 12-year-old Sabinath would not necessarily have gone to school. His fees, food and fares are paid for by NGOs that consider education the key to self-help, especially as, five years after the tsunami, there are very few aid organisations left on the ground.

Author: Priya Esselborn
Editor: Anne Thomas