The first week we spent quite a bit of money buying relief supplies. By the second week a new phenomenon started – lots of people came to us saying “we have money and we will buy what you want directly.” We were thus able to use their support to buy things and supply it to the relief centers. A group of industrialists led by Mr. Parthasarathy of Tirumalai Chemicals also pitched in, in a big way. They began to directly source relief supplies from factories at a very cheap rate and even arranged for donors to directly pay for these. This allowed us to really scale up our relief supplies strategy. During the first week, many of our neighbors had given us space in their houses to download the materials and helped with sorting, loading etc. By the second week we were able to get godowns to smoothen this process.

This week was also the time many new organizations started their relief work in these villages in Cuddalore and Nagapatinam districts. Even as we continued our work in these villages, we began to expand our work to newer areas where lives had not been lost but there was still a lot of damage to livelihood and houses. In 2 clusters near Kovalam and Kalpakkam, AID started working independently, even as we continued our direct field involvement in other areas, along with the other organizations.

Till the second week, what to do was very clear. How to do it was the problem we were addressing. It was a question of organizing and scaling up.

The Third Week – Confusions Galore

The debris clearing work had been almost completed in most villages. We focused on relief supplies, health and education support as we had done earlier. Even as we were planning with the villagers on Temporary Shelters, the government and other organizations began to get some constructed in Nagai and Cuddalore. Many of these shelters were constructed without consulting with the community. The common quote was “there is no time to consult with people now!” As a result a few shelters were un-used and had to be re-built. Wherever we found other organizations constructing shelters, we decided to help them instead of duplicating the efforts – in most places we also tried to ensure community participation in the location of the shelter.

Schools had re-opened. But children were afraid to walk along the beach to the school. We began a lot of serious counseling work. We prepared and distributed small booklets on the science of Tsunami explaining why Tsunamis are so rare in Tamilnadu and why it will not come back again and why they need not fear it. We also organized a lot of games and sports for children and youth in the village. We also started toy centers for children in several areas. We also started cultural activities and kala jathas to get people to go to the beach, touch the water etc. Many of these programmes that we introduced at this stage will be continued for a few months more at least and maybe even longer.

Peter from AID Orissa started repairing boat engines and also trained a number of youth in these villages in repairing engines. He also taught people to make mud blocks for house construction. We are planning out a larger intervention along these lines – setting up a number of small enterprises that both help with the reconstruction and also provide alternate jobs to people.

In Cuddalore and Nagai, serious work on a participative assessment of damages in each village was begun by DYFI and PSF volunteers with help from some AID volunteers. This is being consolidated. The data from this assessment will give us a very clear picture of what is lost in each village and who has lost it. This data is being discussed in each village with the villagers. There are a lot of organizations coming in with money to help. The government has also got a lot of funds for rehabilitation. There are no clear plans that the government has yet set out. The need of the hour is clear transparency and a consultative process for rehabilitation. People in each village need to know the amount allotted to their village and for what. They need to be involved in decision making. Ensuring transparency is critical to effective rehabilitation.

The first phase of relief is slowly coming to an end. The logical conclusion of this first phase is doing a through damage assessment and forming village committees that involves all the affected people. The village committees need to understand the extent of damage and must participate in the decision making and the reconstruction process. This is the work that is in progress in all the villages in Nagai and Cuddalore.

Apart from this, the tuition centers for the 10th and 12th students were expanded quite a bit and most villages now have these centers. In addition, with help from the TNSF trainers, many local support centers for primary children have been started. UNICEF has come forward to help TNSF with this initiative. A child and women’s health programme has been started in many villages.

In the villages where AID had started independent work – Koovathur and Kelambakkam - and where there is much less attention and fewer organizations coming to help, we started constructing temporary shelters, apart from the other regular activities like relief distribution, games for children and youth, health camps, etc.

Strain of continuous work at the clusters in Nagai and Cuddalore began to show up in the local coordinators. We held several meetings to quickly resolve these internal conflicts and to continue with the immediate relief work. One of the problems was that the local coordinators found it difficult to handle the large number of non-tamil speaking volunteers from very different backgrounds and different styles of working. So we started restricting the volunteer flow to these areas and started diverting them to Koovathur and Kelambakkam where AID was working independently and which needed more people for construction activities.

We also began to identify other groups and organizations – particularly Dalit villages where supplies had not reached and began to provide them with relief supplies. We also established contact with a number of good organizations to work on long term rehabilitation.