© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Tsunami Museum, Telwatta, SRI LANKA

It has been over 7 years since the Tsunami devastated the coast of Sri Lanka. Over 50,000 people were killed and thousands more injured and displaced. Though new disasters and tragedies have occurred in the world, people have moved one to other issues, and the wounds are being healed as businesses, roads and lives are being rebuilt, signs of the destruction that had taken the nation by surprise are still there … none more prominently showcase than the Tsunami Museum in Telwatta, Sri Lanka.

Started by Jacky – an independent volunteer from Holland – she was drawn to Telwatta during her initial stint of voluntary work post the 26th December 2006 tsunami and had returned to Sri Lanka on many occasions between then and 2010. A visual artist and an art teacher, she had taken lots of photographs and through her visual journey had discovered the importance of photos for the Sri Lankans and the impact the tsunami had on the lost of these visual memories as well. Consequently, Jacky decided to start the Tsunami Museum project with  the following aim:

• To visualize the stories of the local people who where affected by the Tsunami. A place where big and small stories can come together and can be shared. Not only the stories of the local people, but also about the people who came to help.
• To create a place where people can see and remember what has happened, because their experiences and the disaster that followed has had a big impact on the lives of so many people and will stay with them all their lives. Besides this fact, the Tsunami story has become a major subject of Sri Lankan history and is important to show to the upcoming generations.
• To try and collect international photo material and bring it back to Sri Lanka and the affected villages, like Telwatta and Parelyia.
• The Tsunami brought people from all over the world to Sri Lanka. Many villages had not met people from other cultures before. I hope the museum will be a place where cultures can come together in the future as well.

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Details of the Tsunami Photo Museum

Opening Hours:
The Museum is open every day from 9.00 AM untill 18.00 PM

The museum is free of charge because we want to give everybody the oppurtunity to see the exhibition but a donation, to maintain the museum, is most welcome.

Address:
Tsunami Photo Museum, Templeroad, Telwatta, Sri Lanka

Museum website:
http://tsunami-photo-museum-srilanka.blogspot.com/

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In Jacky’s own words:

At the 26 of December 2004 I was sitting in Holland behind the television watching the Tsunami videos and the aftermath. I had just got back from a trip to Thailand and I considered myself lucky being in Holland at that time, if I had made my trip 3 weeks later I could easily have been in the Tsunami myself.

I watched the news all the time and decided I wanted to help, not just donate money but go over there and help the people who had suffered so much. I wanted to help the people in whatever way I could. I tried to get in contact with NGO’s or people working on the site but this was very difficult. Nobody wanted to take the responsibility for helping volunteers. Finally after 3 weeks I got in contact with Jessica (also from Holland) who was helping the people in Sri Lanka.

On the 26th of January 2005 I was on the plane to Sri Lanka. I got some little donations from friends and I had asked some schools in my village to donate some presents for children there. I came to Hikkaduwa where Jessica was working together with more volunteers from all over the world. At that time most foreign people in this area where paid and unpaid aid workers.

We started with clearing rubble by hand in the village Wellawatta. After that I went to Hambantota for a week to do activities for children with another volunteer group. Between the rubble we would be colouring picture books, play cricket and other games at schools and in camps and made paper flowers and music in the childrensward of the hospital.

When I came back to Hikka Jessica and Co had already started to work in Telwatta. Making temporary wooden huts for about 15 families that were still living in the Temple at that time. Every day I passed Telwatta junction and this was still a big mess. People where living in tents between the rubble. Nothing had been cleared yet. After some time I decided to leave the other volunteers with the building of the huts and I started to see if I could help clean the rubble at the junction site. I tried to find volunteers to help and money to buy the needed cleaning tools, cause I didn’t have any budget myself. After one day of work with 8 people we where only able to clear one house foundation and I thought: “My god this is one hell of a job I started!!!!”

Any way although it seemed a long and heavy job to do we continued and after about 3-4 weeks we where able to clear the site from rubble. Main problem was to find the money to pay for the bulldozers and lorries that where needed to take away the rubble. Nobody had really a budget for this. I was very thankful that Jessica’s foundation wanted to donate the money for this and also to pay for the people who helped to clean. In the mean time I was able to get the Danish Peoples Aid to build shelters on the site and also I was able to get some funding for the clearing from them.

This was how it all started in Telwatta for me. After that I have been doing all sorts of projects in the area, but I kept coming back to Telwatta, because for some strange reason I felt at home there. And the people there have made me feel welcome and even when they didn’t have anything themselves they would give me a smile and a cup of tea. Also I admired their strong sense of community spirit and their strength to rebuild their lives after loosing nearly everything.

I have been up and down to Sri Lanka since the Tsunami for the last four years. All these times I had taken lots of photographs. I also found out how important photo’s are for the Sri Lankans themselves. Not only because they like them and put the photo frames on a central place in their house. Very much because, through the Tsunami, the people lost 98% of their photographs and didn’t have any camera’s. It where the aid workers, volunteers and journalists that had the camera’s. They visited the sites and took pictures, but most of these photos the village people didn’t see themselves.

From this background and my own background as a visual artist and an art teacher I decided to start the museum project. A project that is based with different aims:

- To visualize the stories of the local people who where affected by the Tsunami. A place where big and small stories can come together and can be shared. Not only the stories of the local people, but also about the people who came to help.

- To create a place where people can see and remember what has happened, because their experiences and the disaster that followed has had a big impact on the lives of so many people and will stay with them all their lives. Besides this fact, the Tsunami story has become a major subject of Sri Lankan history and is important to show to the upcoming generations.

- To try and collect international photo material and bring it back to Sri Lanka and the affected villages, like Telwatta and Parelyia.

- The Tsunami brought people from all over the world to Sri Lanka. Many villages had not met people from other cultures before. I hope the museum will be a place where cultures can come together in the future as well.

It is impossible to tell the whole Tsunami story, as there are too many. But by telling some of them I think a lot of people will get a general idea what has happened. The museum is not only about the Tsunami but also about the first years after, as so much changed every day during this chaotic period. I have chosen for a museum with a personal touch instead of a museum that shows all the facts. For me the personal stories are more important than the facts. Only the necessary facts to tell the story will be presented in the museum.

I had not been in Sri Lanka before the Tsunami. When I came here I saw the mess of a culture that has been whirled up side down. I had no idea how it had been before and what was normal and not. I learned about Sri Lanka life and culture the other way round. I learned about every day Sri Lankan life from rubble. Now slowly I get to see and understand what it had been like before the Tsunami. I hope I will be able to do more projects in Sri Lanka in the future. For now I would like to invite you to explore the museum and read the Tsunami photo stories.

© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Stilt Fishermen, Weligama, SRI LANKA

Weligama (lit. “sandy village”), situated 144km from Colombo, is famed for images of stilt fisherman (fishermen sitting atop their poles, which are fixed to the ocean floor for hours) and an offshore islet known as Taprobane, where the dream house of the French Count de Mauny was built. Comprising of around 175,000 inhabitants, poverty in Weligama is highly noticeable with  80% of it’ss residents unemployed. Main income sources are agriculture (coconuts), fishing and tourism.

Weligama made its way into the international press in December 2004 when the Tsunami swept this poverty stricken coastal town in the South of Sri Lanka destroying roughly 15% of the area.

Jaya was hardly 7 years old when the Tsunami hit his beach side home where he had been playing on the sandy beaches while his father had been out at sea. When the waves receded, Jaya recounts “hearing” his father’s command to run for the nearest and highest coconut tree, frantically climbing up the trunk and holding on tight while crying out for his mother and siblings. His father was swept by the giant wave into the bowels of the sea only to be thrown back inland where miraculously he grabbed on to a coconut tree some 100 metres away from Jaya.

Today, they have rebuilt their home in a track of land fenced by a perimeter fence containing a modest coconut plantation; land that they had inherited from all their extended family members that had perished. Jaya abandoned his hopes for a government job a few years back due to economic constraints and continues the family tradition of fishermen while his father mans the coconut plantation. He however, does stilt fishing on the side, having abandoned this traditional form of fishing for the more lucrative modern fishing technologies and motor boats.

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Although Dambulla is thought to have been inhabited from as early as the 7th to 3rd Century BC, with Ibbankatuwa prehistoric burial site situated 3 kilometers from the cave temples, Dambulla is most famously known for providing refuge to King Valagamba (also known as Vattagamini Abhaya) for 14 years during his exile from the Anuradapura kingdom. Buddhist monks meditating in the caves of Dambulla at that time provided protection to the king from his enemies. As a results, when King Valagamba returned to the throne at Anuradapura kingdom in the 1st Century BC, he built the magnificent rock temple at Dambulla as a gratitude to the monks in Dambulla.

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The Dambulla Cave Temple is the largest and best preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka where major attractions today spreads over five caves containing 153 Buddha statues, 3 statues of Sri Lankan kings and 4 statues of god and goddess (including two statues of the Hindu gods, Vishnu and Ganesh. In addition to statues, the Dambulla Cave Temple has murals covering an area of  2,100 m² depicting Lord Buddha and his life, which includes Buddha’s temptation by the demon Mara and Buddha’s first sermon. The statues and paintings in the Dambulla caves dates back to the 1st Century BC, but have been repaired and repainted in the 11th, 12th and 18th Century AD.

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Time line of the Caves

7th to 3rd century BC – early inhabitants

1st century BC – Painting and statues

5th century AD – the stupa was built

12th century AD – addition of the statues of Hindu gods

20th century AD – UNESCO restoration and lighting

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© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Djamaa el Fna, Marrakesh, MOROCCO

The Haouz Plain that surrounds Marrakech provides the city with a rich variety of fruits and vegetables. Being a major orange producing region where naval oranges and clementines accounts for more than eight percent of the fruit grown in Morocco, it is no wonder that fruits that are less than perfect for the big European export markets ends up at the Djamaa el Fna, filling carts to the rim with its delightfully sweet and refreshening juice being freshly squeezed on demand.

Nonetheless, the mounds of oranges only makes its appearances at certain times of the year, depending on season.

Spring-apricots, cherries, kiwis, peaches, and strawberries

Summer- watermelon, wild artichokes, tomatoes

Winter-oranges, mandarins, carrots

Seasonal-almonds, walnuts, pumpkin, bananas, lemons

Being a predominantly Muslim nation where  cocktails or other intoxicating beverages are prohibited due to religious reasons, the Moroccans have as a result created a variety of some of the freshest natural fruit juices (sharbat) and shakes in addition to the famed mint tea and Arabic coffee. With oranges in abundance, a glass of freshly squeeze orange is about the only thing in Djamaa el Fnaa with fixed pricing and the best value for money available, even during Ramadhan where the vendors have no qualms exercising extreme price discrimination and other dishonest trade practices on tourists and travelers.

© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Processing argan oil in Little Atlas Region, MOROCCO

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Argan oil, valued for its nutritive, cosmetic and numerous medicinal properties is an oil produced from the kernels of the argan tree, endemic to Morocco. Famed for having wild goats climbing all over them, the argan trees were first reported by the explorer Leo Africanus in 1510. The Berbers or Amazighs (indigenous people of Morocco) have been processing the argan pits collected from the waste of the goats that climbs the trees to eat the argan fruits for nutty cooking oil and cosmetics long before the Phoenicians arrived.

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Whilst the process has not changed and remains largely manual, today, the oil used in cosmetic and culinary products available for sale are more likely to ave been harvested directly from the tree than by sifting through the waste of the goats. All argan oil sold today is produced by a women’s cooperative that shares profits among the local women of the Berber tribe. Not only does the cooperative employs widows or in more recent years divorcees and unmarried single mothers, the cooperative has established an ecosystem reforestation project to ensure continuous supply of argan oil and hence, a sustainable income for the women. Excess money attained has been used to provide for health care and education of the local women, as well as supporting the entire community.

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According to the Department of Water and Forests, argan oil provides income for 3 million people in the southern part of the kingdom and provides a total of 20 million workdays per year.  The argan oil women cooperatives in Morocco work within a biosphere protected by UNESCO which ensures its protection and reforestation.

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Source: Wikipedia and Argan Oil Society

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I’ve met this man twice now. Always at the same spot, opposite the snake charmer. Separate trades; a flute seller and a snake charmer and yet when you hear them blow their lungs out in an indescript melody on two different (but similar) musical instruments, you’d think they were competitors competing for both the throng of tourists’ attention and that of the snake.

The fact is snake charming is a practice of pretending to hypnotise a snake by playing an instrument, typically one made from a gourd known as a been or pungi. Regardless of instrument used or the quality of the melody produced, the snake does not react to the tune and is unable to hear! What appears to be a response to the musician’s tune with the snake emerging from its container and extending its hood for cobra is a normal defensive reaction of the snake startled by the change of its darkened environment to one that is bright with the removal of the container’s lid. It’s swaying movements which appears as if it were hypnotised is a reaction towards the vibration it feels from the deliberate swaying movement of the snake charmer’s instrument and tapping of his feet.

Taking advantage of the snake’s timid nature, snake charmers sit just out of the snake’s striking range of about a third of the cobra’s body length and amazes onlookers by kissing its head as cobras are incapable of attacking things above them. Understanding this creatures habits and keeping them groggy and lethagic in dark, cool containers, snake charmers are also trained in handling methods and arm themselves with rudimentary knowledge of treating snakebites.

Though this holds true, in some extreme cases of precautions, snake charmers are known to removing the creature’s fangs or venom glands, or even sewing the snake’s mouth shut. This amongst other treatment to the creature have raised the brows of Animal Rights Protection groups.

Having originated from Ancient Egypt with the practice extending throughout Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa, snake charming is today in danger of dying out due to a variety of factors including pressures by Animal Rights Protection groups to governmental law enforcement such as the 1972 law in India that bans the ownership of snakes; though enforcement remains questionable.

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© Penelope Gan – All Rights Reserved – Reflections of Taj Mahal on Yamuna River, Agra, INDIA

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The Yamuna (Hindi/Sanskrit: यमुना, Urdu:جمنا sometimes called Jamuna (Hindi: जमुना) or Jumna) is the largest tributary river of the Ganges (Ganga) in northern India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height 6,387 metres it travels a total length of 1,376 kilometers (855 mi) and has a drainage system of 366,223 km²; forming 40.2% of the entire Ganges Basin. With a distinguishable “clear blue” water as compared to silt-ridden yellow of the Ganges, the Yamuna crosses several states - Uttarakhand, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh - passing by Himachal Pradesh and later Delhi with nearly 57 million people dependent on the Yamuna waters; 96% contributing towards irrigation and accounts for 70% of Delhi’s water supply.

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Despite it’s “clear blue” coloration, the Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, especially around New Delhi, which dumps about 58% of its waste into the river. This is attributed to the high density population growth and rapid industrialization which contributes towards the three main sources of pollution in the river:

1. households and municipal disposal sites,
2. soil erosion resulting from deforestation occurring to make way for agriculture along with resulting chemical wash-off from fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and
3. run-off from commercial activity and industrial sites.

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With an annual flow of about 10,000 cubic billion metres (cbm) and usage of 4,400 cbm the importance of the Yamuna river cannot be disregarded. Coupled by it being highly venerated in Hinduism and worshipped as goddess Yamuna, numerous attempts have been made to clean it. Nonetheless the efforts by the government of India that has spent nearly $500 million on clean up efforts and over Rs 1,700 crore to control pollution under the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) and Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) seems futile where it continues to be polluted with garbage and where most sewage treatment facilities are underfunded or malfunctioning, resulting in the pollutants being continuously channeled into the river.

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The situation is exacerbated over the fact that the water in the Yamuna river remains stagnant for almost 9 months whilst the Lok Sabha continues with talks on plans on how to resuscitate the Yamuna.

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The ‘Gathering’ is a stunning natural phenomenon of wild Sri Lankan elephants assembling in large numbers every year; a behavior found in very few places around the world. Occurring every year, usually between July to October, the Gathering takes place on the receding shores of the Minneriya Tank in the north central province of Sri Lanka. A huge, ancient man made reservoir covering 8,900 hectares, the Minneriya Tank was constructed by King Mahasen in 3rd Century AD to provide continuous water supplies even during the drought when the dry season grips Sri Lanka. It is here that hundreds of elephants will take refuge when waterholes elsewhere evaporates into cakes of cracked and parched mud. It is believed that elephants from the Wasgomuwa Park and from as far off as Kantale makes this annual visit to feed  its need of about 100 litters of water per day per adult elephant.

Unlike its African counterpart the Asian elephants  in Sri Lanka is not blessed with nature’s ‘air conditioner’ in the form of large ears. As such, the herds of elephants in Sri Lanka will take cover in the scrub jungle, away from the heat during the day, only to emerge in the evenings. Typically the ‘Gathering’ starts with one matriarch making its way to the open plains, followed by her family group who upon reaching the receding water of the tank, slowly disperse around and starts grazing on the lush grass shoots growing on the damp earth. This is followed by more matriarchs leading their herds out, coalescing into larger herds. Soon the vast plains of the Minneriya National Park is dotted with dark shadows of elephants of all sizes eating, playing, jostling, drinking and bathing.

Gaining popularity, the ‘Gathering’ over the years have become a tourist attraction, attracting thousands of visitors a year. It is common to see 25-40 jeeps entering the park each evening, many of which without a ranger or tracker due to shortage of staff and Minneriya Park’s administration inability to manage the influx of visitors. Consequently, with the insistent prompting and demands of foreign visitors, unlicensed jeeps are often found driving over the grass lands to get a better and closer views of the elephants; disrupting the elephants feeding and movements, in addition to damaging the rich grasslands and endangering the other inhabitants.

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Being a hardy beast of burden who moves at a relatively fast pace of 8-9 mph (13-14.5 km/h) for hours at a time across arid landscapes void of food and water, the one hump camel – dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) – has been used by Persian conquerors to nomadic pastroralists of the deserts for transportation, milk, dung, hair, hide, meat and even blood!

With its myriad of usage and versatility, dromedaries are believed to have been domesticated in the coastal settlements along the southern Arabian peninsula somewhere between 4000 BC to as recent as 1400 BC. Around 2000 BC, the dromedary was introduced to Egypt and North Africa.

Today, dromedaries are used to ferry tourists on treks across desserts in popular tourist destinations such as Egypt, Morocco and India despite being reputed for their ill-tempered, obstinate temperament – one that involves spitting, kicking and dismounting its rider by stamping its feet and running erratically.

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{photo manipulated for grunge effect}

At a rate where more than 90 percent of the world’s rhinoceros have decimated over the past 40 years due to illegal rhino horn trade, in no time, these wonderful beast would be no more than a distant memory viewed only on aged photographs.

Reports by the IUCN/TRAFFIC claims that the illegal trade in rhino horn had become progressively worse since 2006 both in Africa and South Asian region of Nepal and India. The major trade route for the latter’s infamous Great One Horned Rhinoceros is from Assam to Kathmandu in Nepal, via Siliguri, and then on to Tibet before it makes it to the major Chinese market that has a long standing history of crediting the rhino horn with the potency to cure a wide array of maladies* ranging from headaches, fever to even exorcism!

But does rhino horn really have any useful medicinal properties?

Various tests carried out by researches including those at Hoffmann-LaRoche in 1983, the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1990 and more recently the Zoological Society of London in 2008 revealed that the rhino horn, like fingernails, is made of agglutinated hair and has no analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmolytic nor diuretic properties, and no bactericidal effect could be found against suppuration and intestinal bacteria. In short, none of the studies were able to support the wild claims of the rhino horn’s curative power.

Conservationist have long taken efforts to arrest the problem by adopting a two-pronged approach via (1) awareness and education and (2) by undermining the activities of poaches with guarded reserve parks.

In some areas, such as the Kaziranga National Park, drastic measures have been taken whereby park rangers are known to be light on the triggers of their riffles adopting the ‘self defense’ approach with poaches. Whilst the risks faced by poaches have increased over the decades, the rise in wealth and hence purchasing power in China and Southeast Asia continues to prove itself to be far stronger an allure to deter the illegal rhino horn trade.

Despite the many efforts undertaken, many other factors are stacked against the rhinos and conservationist efforts continues to be plague by many shortcomings. For example, the Pobitoro National Park which stands at 38.8 square kilometres for instance is clearly too small and inadequate as a rhino reserve and some have argued that it is possibly counter productive in its aim. Being a cattle reserve prior to being declared as a forest reserve in 1971 – thanks to some rhinos who had strayed out of Lawkhowa and Orang Wildlife sanctuaries and took resident – Pobitoro is surrounded by approximately 20 villages with around 2,500-3,000 cattle grazing on the grounds daily and the illegal collection of thatch grasses, firewood and fishing, thereby depleting the natural food source for rhinos. Coupled by the fact that it is inundated by high-flood during the monsoon season, the swamp areas and ‘beels’ in Pobitora are not only gradually becoming shallow due to silt deposits, but the lack of highlands platforms forces the rhinos to congregate in limited areas, making poaching easier.

With all these stacked up against the rhinos despite concerted efforts by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) and the World wide Fund (WWF) to conserve this species in India and Nepal, one can’t help but wonder if the Great Indian One Horned Rhinoceros would be a fable for the future generations.

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* According to Bernard Read’s 1931 translation of Li Shih-chen’s 1597 materia medica Pen Ts’ ao Kang Mu, rhino horn was prescribed for nearly everything:

“To cure devil possession and keep away all evil spirits and miasmas. For gelsemium poisoning. To remove hallucinations and bewitching nightmares. Continuous administration lightens the body and makes one very robust. For typhoid, headache and feverish colds. For carbuncles and boils full of pus. For intermittent fevers with delirium. To expel fear and anxiety, to calm the liver and clear the vision. It is a sedative to the viscera, a tonic, anti-pyretic. It dissolves phlegm. It is an antidote to the evil miasma of hill streams. For infantile convulsions and dysentery. Ashed and taken with water to treat violent vomiting, food poisoning, and over dosage of poisonous drugs. For arthritis, melancholia, loss of the voice.”

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