Kerala - Kollam   

146 tsunami victims to appear for SSLC exam

By Our Staff Reporter

KOLLAM, MARCH 8. Sheer dedication on the part of a group of teachers has enabled 146 standard X students from the tsunami-devastated Alapad panchayat achieve what appeared to be impossibly difficult. On March 9 they will be appearing for the SSLC examination from their own Government Fisheries HSS, Azheekal, as the centre.

If during the days immediately after December 26, the day the tsunami hit Alapad, they had lost all hopes of being able to appear for the examinations this year, today they appeared cool and well prepared to confidently sit for the examinations. That confidence was brightly lit on their faces even 10 days ago while they were collecting their hall tickets.

Among them are two girls who lost a parents each in the tsunami. They are Jaya who lost her father and Molly, who lost her mother. Some of them had lost their close relatives, others saw dear ones being washed away and most of them were in the trauma of having a narrow escape from the killer waves. In fact all of them were in a state of shock since the tsunami.

The case of a boy, Anu, was particularly disturbing. He was in a critical post-traumatic stress disorder situation. He was caught in the killer waves and had seen two of his friends being washed away. Anu had a narrow escape. But from the very next day sleep turned a nightmarish experience for he used to regularly experience a hallucinatory feel of being caught in a tsunami.

Makeshift hostel

But the students have now overcome all that shock. It was a makeshift hostel for the final year students which started functioning from mid-January at the school itself which helped bring about the welcome change in them. While the idea for opening of such a hostel facility within a Government school would have generally got lost as a move in vain, the teachers of this school were determined.

It was the initiative taken by the headmistress of the school, P.K. Baby Laila, which enabled things to materialise in this manner. She had the full support of the school's HSS section, acting principal, Harish Kumar, and the entire staff. In addition to meeting many of the academic requirements of the students, the hostel also functioned as a second home and a counselling centre to the students. In fact many of them found solace in the hostel.

Special efforts taken by Ms. Baby Laila and the teachers has today enabled Anu to overcome the traumatic situation in which he found himself. Similarly Molly and Jaya found comfort and relief at the hostel and this provided them with the mental strength to prepare for the examination.

Ms. Baby Laila told The Hindu that everything possible by her team had been done so as to ensure that the students do not lose an year because of the tsunami. And for that matter, if it was not for such an initiative many of the students would have been forced to skip sitting for this year's SSLC examination. Though Ms. Baby Laila lives in Thiruvananthapuram, since the opening of the hostel, she had been living with the students at the hostel itself.

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