'Away from the noise of the aircraft'

The story of an Internally Displaced girl in Sri Lanka...

"If I ever get a chance, I will go back to Muttur just to bring Meena." Nishadini, aged 10, says while she looks at me and smiles.

We are in a camp for displaced people in Sri Lanka's north-east Batticaloa. I watch her straighten her dress, the joy and hope that flushes her face in stark contrast to the scars war has left in her life.

"We left home so suddenly that night, and I couldn't bring her with me," she continues.

Meena is a doll. But for Nishadini Meena is her best friend, a symbol of something permanent among the many things and people that have been tagged 'temporary' in her life, which has been marked by conflict.

"We laid in the bunker in our garden for a very long time," Nishadini says as she tells me about 'that night'. "Whenever we hear the noise of aircraft overhead that's what we do - we quickly run and lie in the bunker and wait till it becomes quiet, but that night it just wouldn't be quiet."

That's when her father realized they were no longer safe and that soon they would be without food and water. He decided to take the family and leave.

"We left past midnight so that we would not be seen and we didn't wait to pack anything. We didn't know where we were going, we only wanted to be safe," she says.

They traveled from Muttur, east of Sri Lanka in the Trincomalee District, southwards to Kadirveli School (Batticaloa District), living there for three months alongside other displaced families - then the shelling began there.

Next, they walked to Vaharai (further south in the eastern province) and took refuge in the hospital premises for five days - but the shelling found them there too.

They finally began to walk to Batticaloa town crossing the lagoon and the jungle.

"We walked for five days without food and rested very little. When we found a little water, we drank. We all lie down the moment we hear a plane; when we get up so many people lay dead. We would just leave them there and keep going," Nishadini shakes her head.

Nothing has been more constant in her life than displacement. When her family was made homeless in the previous war she was still growing inside her mother. When the 2004 Asian tsunami caused havoc again they had to move on, Nishadini was only seven.

She has spent more time in schools as a displaced child, than as a student. She has stayed hidden in the jungle longer than she has had a permanent home and she has seen more lives destroyed than lives protected.

"I used to be so scared to go to school," she recalls. "Some days armed people in masks would come and ask us to go home saying school is closed. One day they shot and killed our class teacher. Another day a shell fell into the school and killed lots of children."

Here in the Iyankerni IDP Camp in Eravur Pattu she is away from all that and in a 'safe' place once again. She has begun another new life with her mother and father and four siblings, though her house is a temporary shelter and her school temporary too.

I look at the little girl once again. Everything about her seems in place - her pigtails, her dress and the 'pottu' that decorates her forehead - though she is called 'displaced'.

"Do you like it here?" I ask.

"Yes," she smiles from one ear to the other, "I have new friends, we have food and more than anything else, there's no aircraft noise here."

Nishadini is one of thousands of children displaced in the North and East by the ongoing civil war. With no end to the violence in sight, World Vision and other NGOs are working to the best of their ability to ensure the protection of affected families, and provide the displaced communities with water, food and medical assistance.

In Vaharai, where the government is promoting resettlement, World Vision has been asked to help restore schools, as 10 out of the 15 schools in the area are currently unuseable. World Vision also plans to co-ordinate with the World Food Program to implement a food programme for families returning to Vaharai.

Hasanthi Jayamaha is a Sri Lankan journalist who works for World Vision Lanka in Colombo.

For more information, pictures or interviews please contact Hasanthi by email: hasanthi_jayamaha@wvi.org or mobile: +94-11-2691233 Ext - 336

Or Andrea Russell, regional crisis and relief manager, Asia Pacific by email: andrea_Russell@wvi.org or mobile: +91 99892 38223

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