SPOTLIGHT
The road ahead
JUNUKA DESHPANDE
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Ravaged by the tsunami two years ago, the people of Kondul are at the crossroads. What does the future hold?
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Photo: V. Ganesan
Changed lives: Nicobarese children at the interim tin shelters of Campbell Bay.
Kondul is a small island in the Nicobar group of islands. Kondul was one of the islands ravaged by the tsunami of 2004 and made inhabitable. India's southernmost islands still remain invisible to the mainstream media. On the second tsunami memorial day (December 26, 2006), where are the people of Kondul?
I OPENED my eyes and saw the sun dangling strongly on our dinghy wobbling on the waves. The boat stopped in the middle of the sea and the cloud burst on our heads.
We were on the way to bring back the bananas.
The southern most island of our country is an island called Great Nicobar, the island worst affected by the tsunami. The most isolated of the islands, Great Nicobar has a small port, Campbell Bay, also the administrative headquarters and the base for Coastguard and Navy troops. Great Nicobar had many villages along the coast where the Nicobarese had lived for thousands of years. With the coasts getting destroyed, there is hardly any trace of human existence in these villages anymore. People who survived the tsunami have been shifted to transit shelters in Campbell Bay.
No living space left
Kondul is a tiny island near Great Nicobar. The shores have been chopped off, leaving a mass of dense tropical forests in the middle of the island and nothing else. People from Kondul now live in rows of tin shelters in Campbell Bay. They visit Kondul if the sea permits and if diesel is available. One family from Kondul left Campbell Bay to start building a house on their own land. Unable to find the right space and resources, they decided to look for a place on the shore of Great Nicobar, five km across Kondul by sea. Two families have actually started living in Afara Bay, a small bay in Great Nicobar. Kondul still has some banana and coconut trees surviving but Kondul itself is now uninhabitable...
We floated over a floor of waves amongst which stood some dead coconut tree trunks. Robert uncle held one of them and directly got on to the tree from the boat. All those who could not do it, landed on a slippery rock with slush around. We had landed in Kondul. Somebody told me that there had been 13 houses in the slush we were wading through. Looking for the banana trees, we moved towards the other side of the island. Making our way through millions of dead coral, we passed an old school building, a storehouse, a jetty, sub-centre and a police station; all in many pieces.
Paving our way through the jungle, we came to a point where we found ourselves trying to make a choice between the sea and the rock. The land ahead had been razed off by the killer waves. A few of us went to look for another path. Some of us got down in the sea and started walking, holding the wall made by the chopped off land. The waves splashed against the skin, salty and sad.
Henry is the first captain of Kondul. The only house-like structure we could see belonged to him. A pregnant cat came out to greet us. We started collecting the trash around, which could be re-used. Tins, plastic containers, toothpaste covers, drums, metal screws, toys and dolls, pieces of plastic sheets...
Beginning anew
The "New Kondul" is being located in Afara Bay; "Koi-ba-lu" in the local language (konduli). The coconut plantation here before the tsunami belonged to the people of Kondul. Now, Afara Bay is a jungle, with one tent on the stilt — the beginnings of a village.
The people have made the decision to move out of the Campbell Bay transit shelters. The Nicobaris do not belong to Campbell Bay. Their villages are (were) along the coast of Great Nicobar, Little Nicobar, Kondul and Pilomilo islands. After one-and-a-half years of living a new, difficult life in the temporary tin shelters in Campbell Bay, the then Assistant commissioner, consented that if the Nicobari community wanted to go back to their villages, they should. The government has promised to build permanent houses for the people. As I write this, the administration is surveying the southern islands with the village heads for permanent shelters. But people have already built houses using the forest resources as they used to before. Looking at the mammoth devastation and a tribal context, the rebuilding efforts need to be collaborative and not charitable!
Clearing the debris is a Herculean task. The labour of huge machines is being done by a few members of the community. After all, it's their need to live in their own way.
Life in the shelters
A general opinion is that the Nicobaris are becoming richer with compensation money. That observation is so hollow. Poverty is all over the islands, in different contexts. It is true that with a large amount of cash coming in, the dreams and the aspirations of the community are changing but not to the extent that they can be called "wealthy". The amount of cash distributed to affected families is huge. The cash, in many ways, has set itself as a new commodity which today can bring whatever is wished for. But the fact that people have an entire life to be remade using this money is the edge of tragic reality to their story. In Campbell Bay, one has to pay two rupees for a banana. Two little boys loaded a little canoe with a bunch of wild yellow bananas they had found in uninhabited Kondul. The broken canoe wouldn't float. The men came back with kilos of wild green bananas from the forest and loaded them in the dinghy. There was enough wild bananas for all the families from Kondul living in Campbell Bay. The next day in Campbell Bay, we ate those bananas for a feast.
Hard choice
Campbell Bay being a port, many things are easily accessible. People want to go back to their villages, but in the shelters the ration is free. Back in the villages, life is difficult beyond imagination. The problem is two-fold. A community which has never interacted with the outside world, now suddenly finds itself in the middle of it all. There are many roads available for them from here on. If the community starts staying in Campbell Bay there would be lot more "opportunities" for them. There are no issues of physical survival. A lot of money has come in for compensations for the dead, the missing and the spoilt land. The community has to make an aware and informed choice for the future otherwise somebody else is going to make the choice for them and there would be no more bananas left to bring back.
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