A tumultuous departure from Sri Lanka

As our time in Sri Lanka drew to a close, we were busily working to complete all the tasks we had begun, which included:

• planting out the remaining plants that we included in our homegarden designs (785 total documented plants, plus hundreds more seeds sown)
• labeling each plant with a metal tag number for inventory and identification purposes
• drawing maps of the locations of all plantings with corresponding label numbers
• completing a digital inventory of all plants with heights, numbers, scientific/English/Sinhala names, and notes
• documenting the plantings with digital before and after photos/video in each zone
• infrastructure improvements in zone 1, including a chili pepper bed and manioc mounds
• mulching, composting, and weeding the plantings
• passing on the garden care to Tillekaratne, who will be taking over the maintenance until new fellows arrive
• saying farewell to our neighbors and friends who welcomed us into these villages as family

We were squeezing this all into our last few weeks in addition to a final trip to the ancient cities (a blog on that is forthcoming) when without warning (but with anticipation), the southwest monsoon arrived. We were pleased to see the daily rains that would ensure our homegarden's successful growth and were not surprised to experience a couple of evenings of heavy downpours in a row, as the SW monsoon season generally begins each year in May.

The anxious talk around town began, however, when one day it rained all day long with several heavy downpours. Our caretaker told us that our little bridge might be overtaken by the river and that the radio forecaster had predicted the rains to continue. With the previous rains, the ground was already fairly saturated, and with water pouring out of the mountains in Sinharaja, the river had begun to rise. By midday, on May 25, it was clear that not only was our bridge going to be topped (stranding us at the field station), but the rain was going to continue and cause flooding. It looked like we weren't going to make it out to dinner at a friend's house, like we had planned...

We went down to our nursery and witnessed the moment that the river had gained about 10 vertical feet to breach the bank and begin flooding our nursery. As we stood watching the water rise (about a foot every couple of minutes), we quickly acknowledged the need to move plants to higher ground. As we began doing this, the water rose so quickly that many of our supplies started floating in the flood water. At this point, we were still thinking the flooding was unlikely to get much higher, but we picked up our speed. During the 20 minutes that the flood water took to completely submerge our nursery, we recovered perhaps 100 plants and about half of the lumber that we had used to construct the nursery beds, while equal amounts became lost in the deep and rushing water.

The river's first breach into our nursery! The river is normally behind the pictured trees and about 9 feet lower.

Less than 10 minutes later, our lower nursery fence was half submerged, along with the small banana plants

The downpour continued and the upper nursery fence also started to be overtaken by water

As the rains increased, the flooding spread across our lower landscape and large logs started floating by!

Towards the end of the heavy rains, you can see only the partially submerged shade cloth on top of the upper nursery fence

Raging torrents poured down from our hillsides where previously no visible water had been flowing

Neighboring tea fields that spread across the lowlands were entirely submerged, surrounded by half immersed coconuts

 

Once our nursery was submerged and we had toured the surrounding area above flood line, there was nothing left for us to do but watch the rains come down. We weren't surprised when our cell phone service stopped working around 6 pm, but were a little surprised that the power stayed on until about 10 pm that night.

When we were able to check on the nursery after the flood water receded (late morning on May 26), we were surprised to find that although the green fence had been knocked down, the fencing material was still intact and the banana plants had survived without noticeable permanent damage. Our higher fence was fine and some of the boards had even stayed in place. Instead of repairing the lower fence and putting more energy into a nursery in this vulnerable location, we recommended that the fences be rebuilt further up the hill to avoid any future flooding.

Our nursery as the flood water receded. We were pleased to find that the bananas had survived, although entirely submerged

Our nursery after the flood water receded. The area, including our pond was buried in sand, but it was mostly recoverable.

Tying a rope across the river to serve as a temporary handrail once our bridge stopped floating

It wasn't until the next day when the flood water receded that we found out that along with the power outage, our village had experienced a major landslide, overtaking a house and killing 3 people inside it.

The Pitakele landslide poured down a large mountainside, overtaking a home

The Pitakele landslide photographed from the destroyed homesite

The woman whose house had been destroyed was considered the local Ayurvedic medicine woman. Once when Logan had stomach issues, he was escorted to her home, where she prepared him a spicy concoction full of pulverized herbs. Her remedy cured him! He also recalls fond memories of her describing her garden plants with care and enthusiasm when we interviewed her and collected plants from her garden. The evening of the landslide, a pregnant friend of hers had been visiting with her 3-year old daughter from a nearby village and were also tragically killed in the landslide.

Pitakele's much missed medicine woman died in the 2017 landslide

As time progressed, we discovered the widespread scope of this disaster. Across the country, 224 individuals were killed in the landslides and flooding that swept the country, with 78 missing, and another 72 injured, affecting almost 700,000 people in 15 districts. Over 13,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. The district that we lived in, Rathnapura, was the most affected, where over 20,000 people experienced flash floods. We were told that rainfall was reported to have been as much as 24" in 24 hours!  While disasters like this are not frequent in Sri Lanka, they do occur. The last major flood in our area happened in 2003 and the flooding was higher than this year, but at that time there were no landslides, so the impacts were less significant.

In the days that followed the disaster, we found that locally all roads to our village were blocked with landslides. This was particularly unfortunate for us because the morning after the storm, Professor Mark Ashton from Yale University had arrived in Sri Lanka to survey our project firsthand. Although his driver tried several routes, they were unable to arrive and the roads were not reopened until after he was scheduled to depart the country.

The road into Kuduwa was ripped apart by a torrent of water rushing down the hillside

By foot, we visited Kuduwa, the village 45 minutes down the hill and found that the entire town had been flooded, destroying the contents of about 10 shops and even collapsing one into the river.

Kuduwa's shops were ravaged by the flood, destroying their contents and collapsing one store (right) into the river.

As if all this weren't enough, after just two days of light to medium rainfall, Cyclone Mora was forecast to hit Sri Lanka on May 28. We left the field station to stay closer to town the night before, but were relieved to find that the storm had veered east and missed the island, likely saving its people from even more landslides and fatalities.

Just 10 days prior to this disaster, another major incident had rattled life in the village. An elephant was roaming the area! When this elephant arrived, people chased it away from their houses and homegardens with loud noises, such as banging pots together and the panicked elephant became more and more destructive as it ran from home to home. Eventually, the forest department arrived in a vehicle in Kuduwa and threw firecrackers to chase the elephant back into the forest, but the elephant retaliated by destroying the vehicle with several hard blows of its trunk. This is as much of the story as we could piece together, so we assume the elephant then returned to the forest. Unfortunately, just two days later, another elephant (or perhaps the same one) arrived in another nearby village and killed two people. This was both scary and shocking for us, as we didn't really perceive elephants to be very dangerous.  Of course, we knew they are extremely strong and could do serious damage, but we didn't think they often did. We understand now that some of this aggression is a result of being frightened, but young male elephants are sometimes aggressive unprovoked as well. The Sinharaja Forest reportedly only supports 3 elephants on an intermittent basis, so these encounters were particularly alarming. While we were happy to have not personally encountered the elephant in our village, we did see it's footprints the following day. After this, we made sure to be inside at dark as a precaution to potential roaming elephants!

The front page of an area newspaper reported on the elephant and the forest dept vehicle

Although these incidents were frightening, I also want to point out that we felt safe where we were at the field station during these incidents. During the rest of our time in Sri Lanka, we felt very safe. There was virtually no crime and people were overall very honest and helpful.  

During these times, we witnessed the nearby villages come together to assist and support each other in many ways. Following the landslide, the primary task of many men in the village was to recover the bodies from the landslide and repair the bridge that led to that site, so proper funerals could be held. We attended the funeral to offer our condolences and were struck by the care of the community in helping the loved ones that were suffering for many days before and after. During this time, power and water were cut off for most people in the village, so those that had generators or mini-hydro power charged cell phones and those without water easily found neighbors willing to supply it. We were fortunate to have water stored in a tank that we used sparingly for drinking and cooking until our water lines were repaired. Of course, there was plentiful rainwater to collect for bathing!

Logan and I had our flights to the U.S. on June 3, requiring us to be in Colombo by at least the 2nd.  With so much water saturating the ground and the continued chance of rain at anytime, we were anxious to make our way to Colombo a little earlier. So, the day after the roads were repaired, we made our way up there on May 31.  After carrying our heavy bags across the now only partially repaired log bridge that separated the field station from the main road, we arrived at the little "tuk tuk" (three wheeled motorized tricycle) that would carry us and our bags down the hill. There, we were surprised to see a whole crowd of villagers gathered.  We assumed they were all waiting for the tea truck to arrive, but once that came, we realized that sweetly, they had all gathered there to see us off! We took photos with them and promised to return as we said our goodbyes and realized that while our experience of living and working in this small village had certainly made a big impact on our lives, we had also touched the hearts of many people in this community. Although our language abilities were limited and our interactions with many of the villagers were minimal, we had been accepted as part of this community with open arms, teary eyes, and many hopes of return.