Batticaloa, September 23: After the Tsunami struck, the survivors were collected from villages surrounding Batticaloa and brought to a large Technical College. From there they were divided according to their local districts. Some went to the Batticaloa Music College, where they stayed for three months.

It was in this shelter that Xavier first heard the charge of discrimination. One young woman approached Xavier and boldly told him that a group of families from the nearby village of Poonichimunai were being made to feel unwanted. Tired of the hostility, they had decided to return home, even though many of their houses were still damaged or waterlogged.

When Xavier’s colleagues investigated, they found that the Poonichimunai families had been on the move most of their lives. They had originally worked in the tea plantations, but were forced to leave in the late 1970s by the first ethnic troubles. They then arrived in the town of Kattankudy, near Batticaloa, which is mostly populated by Muslim Tamils. Here they found work in the hospital, but were forced to leave again in 1992 when tensions flared between Muslim Tamils and Hindu/Christian Tamils.

Finally, they ended up on low-lying public land in Poonichimunai that no-one else wanted – and decided that this would be their final stop, come hell or high water.

HHR decided to launch a sewing program for young women from these families, using its donations from the United States. HHR purchased five sewing machines and rented a terrace from a private home. 40 girls applied, and 28 were selected.

Eleven have persevered and made it through to the end of the six-month training course, which is now days from finishing. We’re here to meet them because Xavier and his team would like to extend this program and help the women to sell the clothes they have made. This seems the best way to encourage them to continue sewing and turn HHR’s emergency support into a sustainable investment. But HHR will have to convince its Dutch donor that it would fit their requirements.

Of course there is also the other possibility – that the women would not want to continue working together.

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They clearly like each other. They hold hands and giggle under the stern eye of Murugamoorthy, their sewing teacher. Murugamoorthy has her own extraordinary story to tell. She was a police officer before she was arrested, along with her husband and sister. While she was in jail, a brother committed suicide and her mother died. HHR supported her under its program for rehabilitating torture victims, and she was an obvious candidate when they were looking for a sewing teacher.

We move around with our cameras and finally settle on Lingeswari, whose husband disappeared in 1990 after he was arrested. She displays a pile of shirts, dresses and pillow cases that she has made over the past few months.

It is true that these women were not sewers before the Tsunami, but it is also clear that they cannot return to the life they led before the disaster. Several girls made baskets from a special wood that is no longer available because the forests were washed away by the Tsunami. Several more can no longer work in the fields because the soil is salinated. Two of the nine do not have legal titles to their land, which means they could be displaced yet again. Only three of the nine families have received money for damage to their houses, as promised by the authorities.

It is true that these women were not sewers before the Tsunami, but it is also clear that they cannot return to the life they led before the disaster.

By my count, nine of the eleven women are clearly worse off than before the Tsunami. Two might be better off because there is plenty of work for their husbands, a mason and a carpenter. But there is no question of excluding them from any follow-up project after they have worked together for six months.

Whatever the merits of these individuals, there is a strong argument for building reconstruction around such women’s initiatives. One recent sample survey by the Suriya Women’s Development Center in Batticaloa found that 80% of those who had died in the Tsunami were women and girls, and that those women who survived found themselves with families that were swollen by orphans and relatives.

As so often happens in disasters, many women have also reported that their husbands – depressed and unemployed – have turned to drink and become abusive.

Donors could do worse than invest in women.

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The Poonichimunai group has worked hard over the past six months, and seem ripe to work in a cooperative. We try to prime the pump by asking who among them they would entrust with money, and who would be the best salesperson. I purchase a charming pillow case from Lingeswari to set them thinking of markets. I also make an elaborate show of asking for a sales receipt.

We then start bargaining (there is really no other name for it). How would they feel about receiving some capital to buy cloth and threads, the use of the sewing machines for a year, and some training from the government cooperative department? They can keep the sewing machines if they can turn in a profit after a year.

This seems like a sweet deal, but they are less enthusiastic than I would have expected. They mutter among themselves. Yes, they would like to work together. But they were promised their own sewing machines by HHR. They’re afraid that if they go home without a machine, and nothing to show for the six months of training, their husbands will insist that they work in the house.

This strikes me as ungrateful. But Sananthanai and Parasuraman, Xavier’s assistants, see it differently. They haven’t come here to twist arms, and they feel privileged to help these women. They also understand that HHR has made a promise, whether or not it was intended.

Xavier understands that the worst possible thing that HHR can do is try and force the issue. They need time to discuss it among themselves and at home. But an idea takes shape. HHR will buy sewing machines for all of the girls and make a special investment in Lingeswari, who is the only woman to have lost a husband to the conflict. She will be given cloth and a deluxe machine. Her brother (who works for HHR) will take her clothes and try and sell them in the markets, along with any other clothes made by the others.

Once they start earning money, Lingeswari’s friends will hopefully see the advantages of forming something more structured like a cooperative – at which point HHR will seek to call in someone from the government’s cooperative department to provide advice. HHR’s lawyer will also inquire about securing permits for their land.

Our job at the Advocacy Project will be to help HHR produce regular reports on the project, and make sure that they reach the Refugee Foundation in the Netherlands. We will also promote the work of the sewers in the US. This will call for some imagination. Perhaps there might even be a link with New Orleans.

I hope this will satisfy our Dutch friends. If not, someone else will hopefully take a gamble on the sewers of Poonichimunai.

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