From north with love...Stories from the other end.

Immense pain throbbed my chest while I watched the movie" Ira handa yata" Under the sun and moon, (some time back in 2010 ). This movie reflected the 30 years of war that ruined the lives of all citizens of this country, while the rest of the world went higher up in the scale with their developments and higher living conditions. The movie touched my heart as I too was a victim if this war since I was born and until I finished my medical degree. The theme it carried not only bears a clear history of the war but also the humanity and its relativity towards the nation. The terrible time period during the war had been reflected in a mind blowing pattern. It bears a lot of courage and kindness to look at one another with love and compassion even when one has lost almost everything he or she owned. "Its so good that it all ended doctor" every single person I meet told me that their lives are so much better, the children are safe and their homes are recovered now since the war ended. 

One year ago only the sounds of guns, bombs and air crafts filled the northern air of  this country. Everything ended for good in 2009 May, having all the civilians saved (from terrorists who used them as a human shield) they are gaining their are gaining the lives back even though most of it had been destroyed by the brutal war.
 The tears of the living dead, the cries of the innocent, had been reflected sharply throughout the film as I witnessed most of it myself during the time I served in an immediate post war area as a doctor.

Every day I come across hundreds of people who come to us with all their illnesses. Billions of fears, tears and pains seem to flock beneath their smiles... even though they greet us with a smile , suppressing all their hardships. Most people I meet, seem to have a slight fading tiredness in their faces. Later I understood that we can’t expect cheerful grins from them as they have lost their happiness on the road to salvation.

Ramya was about 26 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  we started her on Soluble insulin as her blood sugar levels were rising up on each visit for blood sugar series. As her condition was managed with the Insulin I was explaining her on how to self inject it and the care, she interrupted me "doctor I don't have a refrigerator”

This is a common question we always come across as most of the villages’ don’t even have electricity. "Ok then use the neighbor’s refrigerator” I told her. Her answer to this was "no electricity” ah just as i expected. There were 4 other kids and she was pregnant with he 5th, she had most of the factors that indicated a high risk pregnancy. and still unable to use medications at home due to lack of electricity. the rural hospital seem to be far away from her home that keeping her here was also a challenge as she had 3 months more to go. Asking them to come to a closer residential area is out of the list. They bearly have homes and survives on "Kuli weda " manual labor work which pays about 200 to 300 rs a day. Its not enough at all for a family of 6. Every day we come across these kind of problems and we seem to be the pain hearers and bearers for them but all what we can do is merely help them with unrealistic solutions such as inform about them to the welfare society of the hospital or a helpful NGO. War had hit them really hard. All most all we examined seemed to bear a scar or a wound from the past.  A shell, A bullet or a bomb blast written on every scar. 

On their long run for survival many lost their homes and were taken as a human shield by the terrorists till the final battle from town to town so almost all of them with chronic diseases had lost their clinic books or diagnosed cards from past along with their homes, valuables and family members.

Whenever we ask them what happened and why couldn’t they keep them protected, a river of tears fall out with the war wounded history. Lives of the people have torn, twisted, blasted sometimes but regained as I write this note now, that’s the change we see at present in this end of the country

Life has never been easy for anyone but being a doctor just doubles your stress levels and adds a zero to your social life. During med student days I never realized  that one day I’d be wondering why I chose medicine as a career. I was fascinated by the heaps of stories I heard and the kind, caring doctors I knew . I thought I would definitely help as many people as I can.

Regressions…. well, yes but only during final exams and the internship period due to the heaps of stress and work load.  I was posted to the “other end” of the country for my post intern appointment which is the first proper appointment we get as a doctor in sri lanka (well, you are a doctor during internship but its more like a training period where one learns to be a proper doctor)

I didn't get a good response from everyone who heard that I got posted here, to the far north of the country. But I was really happy that I got my dream post, just like I’ve applied. 

How I began writing …..

It all started while I was working in a government general hospital at the other end of the country , when my seniors and consultants got to know that I do a little bit of blogging and asked me to start writing about the challenging  work load we , doctors live through.  One of our consultant’s even picked interesting cases while doing the ward rounds and told me that I should go ahead with writing down these true  life stories of the people who have survived after a very difficult and devastated era back then, when the terrorist activities peaked in this area and of course to write about us, the doctors dealing with all the hardships in hospitals with less facilities. 
Ethical background to it was discussed with our consultants and seemed to be of no harm if the true names, places and any connections to true incidents were not written. 

First I started writing in sinhala because of my good friends who already had Sinhala blogs. Their writing skills and blogs inspired me to create a sinhala story blog “anith kona” which depicts the day to day life of me and the strangers I run into everyday. “ Anithkona “translates as “the other end”. More than 50 stories were in sinhala so far. 
Wonderful people from all around the world has been reading , commenting and sharing my articles , nearly for 3 years.Some even visited anithkona area and also remembered to help the needy and poor over here.
 Im not a good writer, because most of my higher education was spent reading medicine. I started writing these stories in Sinhala as it’s the language of my heart. Most of my non sinhalese friends wanted me to translate this web page in to english so that the non-sinhala reading community could read this.Finally I gave some time and thought to it.

Me, a sinhalese , working as a doctor in a tamil speaking community was a challenge, as we were not taught tamil as a language at school. 

We knew only wanga ponga - come , go. and counted upto 3 .

Now I can speak and understand tamil language, thanks to my patients and the staff who taught us tamil whilst daily work and thus made it so easy to work here and also to fit into the local community.

Here are the stories from the other end , work, stress and life from the other end of the country as I worked as a junior doctor at the start of my medical career.Please bear any mishaps of grammatical errors as I'm not good in comprehension.

Related links in sinhala : 

ඉර හඳ යටදී ආදරේ විඳින්න...