Inside Menik Farm A Student’s Tale Of The

Continuing Hardship In The North

By Raisa Wickrematunge

Collapsed houses after a storm ripped through Zone 1 of Menik Farm, damaging 942 shelters. Although the houses were quickly rebuilt, the inmates continue to beg for a chance to go back to their homes, Children's toys lie forlornly in the aftermath of the storm , Schoolbooks scattered and torn. The school inside had collapsed and Several people were injured when the roofs collapsed on their heads

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Indian-born Raksha is a student of the Graduate Institute in Geneva, where she is preparing to write her dissertation. She was in Chettikulam the day after a cyclone damaged 942 shelters in Zone 1 of the Menik Farm IDP camp on March 31. News reports said the situation was under control, with all the shelters speedily built, but Raksha was there to witness the direct aftermath of the storm.
‘It was a bad situation,’ she says. She visited the nearby hospital where she found people who had been injured by the sudden gusting winds. An electricity pole had fallen on one house, and a mother and daughter found themselves ‘stuck’ together and electrocuted, she said.

Another male patient had been admitted after the roof collapsed on his chest, while yet another was getting stitches in his head.