Their urgent needs
Blessings, Dharmalatha, showers on all those generous donors who bring not only alms in the form of food to the Sarana Home but also soap, toothpaste, towels, bedsheets, pillow cases and much more.
In 1991, it was the recipient of only 12 danes (alms-givings) per year but now all 365 days of the year are booked and people are begging of those who are listed to hand over their days to them.
Every single item brought by the donors is used for the elderly, says Dharmalatha.
However, the home is in need of mattresses for the beds and tiny cupboards (3½’X2’) to store the stuff of each person and this is the plea which goes out from Dharmalatha.
The Sarana Home may be contacted on Phone: 047-2223625. Its postal address is: Godawaya, Dehigahalanda, Ambalantota. their marriage, leaving her devastated.
“I was 32 years,” she says, recalling how her life was marred by this personal tragedy. While she was still weeping and moping that she came to the Sarana Home “jeevithe epa wela aapu gamanak” (a journey she came on after being dejected with life).
Introduced to the Sri Lanka Federation of the Visually Handicapped by her sister who had taught at the Ratmalana School for the Blind, Dharmalatha came into an unfamiliar but welcoming world. The blind elderly, she found, were very caring and concerned.
It was a time when the Sarana Home set up on land donated by the government was just a shadow of what it is now. There was neither water nor electricity and there had been only one large vishrama shalawak for the blind people who had been brought from far-off areas such as Bibile, Mahiyanganaya, Ampara, Kandy and Katunayake.
Dharmalatha went around with the begging bowl collecting pin-wee (donations of paddy) and built a wall around the property, as otherwise the Sarana Home was vulnerable to theft and nocturnal visitors. Seeing her untiring efforts and dedication in looking after the blind elderly, the donors rallied round, with immense sup- port being extended from the team at the Department of Social Services of the Southern Provincial Council.
Dharmalatha has not looked back, waking up at the crack of dawn to ensure that the place is spick and span and everything runs like clockwork 24/7. “The blind elderly are disciplined and through practice very adept at handling most of the work,” she says.
Life has not been without its dangers for them though. Dharmalatha recalls how one morning as usual the men went down to the Walawe to wash their clothes and bathe. She suddenly noticed water from the Walawe flowing up to the Budu Medura. The first wave came at around 9.20, then the sea literally ‘withdrew’ about 60’ about 15 minutes later, before unleashing its fury a little later. It was December 26, 2004, the day the tsunami struck.
All this while, the unseeing men were in the waters of the Walawe attending to their ablutions. “Diye indalath beruna,” says Dharmalatha thankfully, explaining that though they were in the water, they escaped injury or death. For, the tsunami wave went up the river, not coming their way to harm them. The geophysical consequences, however, are there for all to see –a moya kata (estuary) has developed where there was only a mound of sand before.
As life goes on at the Sarana Home, with tearful goodbyes when one amongst them departs this world, there are many challenges they are forced to grapple with these days. “Sevaka prashnaya or finding employees to manage it,” is most acute, with a plea going out for a few women to work in the kitchen as well as a driver for the vehicle, to step in during an emergency such as an illness in the night.
While the blind elders murmur that “our Latha is a Bodhisatva who tends to each and everyone with commitment”, one talks of the battle she waged to save a fully burnt blind victim brought here, cleaning the burns every day and another refers to how a “sister” of theirs who had got septicaemia after a tiny “seerimak” which was not noticeable died in hospital, it was Latha who went all alone to claim her body for the funeral.