Beyond Tsunami

Lutheran, The, Mar 2005 by Miller, David L

ELCA mission partnerships rebuild troubled lives and ruined villages on the Indian coast

A young policewoman kneels at the altar rail of Trinity Lutheran Church, Nagappattinam, India. Pastor Richard Anbunathan places his hands on her head and blesses her. Five minutes later, she is out the door and back to work.

The woman, a Hindu, comes here every day, seeking prayer so she can face the apocalyptic devastation and human suffering that await her on the streets. She hasn't the luxury of turning away. Not even sleep brings respite. Grotesque images haunt her dreams: the battered, bloodied and bloated bodies of men, women and children-hundreds of them.

She comes here because Trinity offered sanctuary after the tsunami. Here the haunted and homeless were housed and fed, clothed and comforted, without regard to religion or caste. The same is true at dozens of other congregations and ministries connected with the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India.

More than 6,000 were killed in the Nagappattinam region; more are missing. Of the 600 who died in the harbor area, 280 were children. It would have been worse had the tsunami come on a week day when school was in session, a point punctuated by many up and down the coast.

Three weeks after towering waves pummeled waterfront markets, homes and the fishing port at Nagappattinam, dozens of boats-some 50-foot trawlers- lie randomly strewn along dirt streets. Some were thrown over twoand three-story cement buildings and smashed to the ground. Others are crunched and piled precariously together, clogging the harbor.

In a seeming daze, people walk from food and medical distribution sites past jagged piles of the detritus of ruined shops, houses and lives. Their lives may be more broken than the buildings.

Survivors show obvious signs of post-traumatic stress: They fear the water. They fear the night. They have trouble sleeping. They don't want to close their eyes. When they do, they "see the water coming." Loud noises set them off. Children cry. Others wander aimlessly or sit and do nothing.

Church leaders will focus resources on restoring the lives of such people and communities in the coming months and years.

Lutheran congregations swung into immediate action following the tsunami. Church members helped recover, identify, clean and bury the dead. They offered immediate food relief and shelter. They surveyed village needs and then provided prepared food, clean water, clothing, bedding, stoves, cooking utensils, dry rations, school supplies and temporary shelter for more than 3,500 in three primary areas: Nagappattinam, which suffered the worst damage in India; Cuddalore and Nagercoil.

"No one went hungry," says T. Aruldoss, bishop of the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church, which serves the region around Nagappattinam.

Lutherans also recovered orphans and housed them in church orphanages to protect them from sexual exploitation and forced labor. Near Tranquebar, the site of the first Lutheran mission in Asia, just one of the 20 orphanages of the Tamil church is serving 90 tsunami orphans.

The Tamil church is one of four regionally based Lutheran bodies affected by the tsunami in India. These groups work together through the UELCI, an 11 -member council of churches. The UELCI partners with several international agencies-including the ELCA, Lutheran World Relief and the Lutheran World Federation/World Service-to provide relief and rehabilitation in affected areas, says Chandran Paul Martin, UELCI general secretary.

Soul care

Survival needs demanded the UELCI's attention immediately after the disaster. But church leaders soon noticed the enduring psychosocial trauma among survivors. Those needs are apparent on the dirt streets of Chithrapettai, a fishing village just south of Cuddalore.

Anbumalar, 14, smiles easily and often as she shows visitors her "tile home," a cement structure that withstood the 30- to 40-foot "second wave" that smashed the village. A smaller wave first sucked furniture and belongings from houses and sent the villagers running for high ground. They had about three minutes before the second wave crashed over the palm trees lining the beach.

Three weeks after the tsunami, Anbumalar and others busily clean and repair the standing homes. But it grows apparent that no one is living in these houses. Toward sundown, villagers retreat to high ground near a temple to prepare a meal in a common makeshift kitchen, before bedding down there for the night.

"The tsunami came during the daylight," explains Anbumalar, who like most here uses only one name. "If it comes at night, we can't escape."

Through its National Lutheran Health and Medical Board, the UELCI established a clinic near Cuddalore, which serves as many as 500 patients a day at the site and through outreach teams. In late January, the clinic launched a program to train 2,000 volunteers from coastal villages in public health issues, focusing on helping those suffering from post-traumatic stress.

The degree of psychological trauma-sleeplessness, dizziness, anxiety disorders-surprised the clinic staff, says Issac Rajesh, a public health specialist at the clinic. "We need to find some ceremony, some way for them to say, 'it's over,' " he adds. "They need to appease the 'sea god' and find a way to reconcile again to their way of life as something meaningful and livable."