“Don’t Call Me by My Name . . .” by Nuzhat Shahzadi

“It’s Charlie, Charlie 67. Do you read me? Over. . . ” I spoke on my VHF handset as the headcount roll-call began. The connectivity was poor––I called in from the UNICEF land cruiser. Our meeting had extended beyond the expected duration. I got delayed.

It was a close-knit meeting attended by a handful of NGOs––the lead was Save the Children, UK. I was the only UN staff among the attendees. NGOs weren’t as strict as the UN regarding “cut-off curfew” as we used to call it, meaning return to the base-camp before dusk.

Trincomalee in 2006 was a dreaded place. The roller-coaster-conflict was dehumanizing––unbearable, hurting. I was supporting our Trincomalee field office. My duty station was Colombo. We were assisting thousands of IDPs who were sheltered in camps.

I could hear the multi-barrel guns roaring in the background as we sped on the narrow, bumpy road. The Sinhalese army was shelling the Tamil Tigers’ hideouts. One round of shelling continued almost up to 45 minutes, without any break. The cost of ammunition for each round was about USD 10,000, I learned. We termed such shelling as “outbound.” By “in-bound” we meant firing at the government forces by the LTTE. The firing began early that day.

“We will make it to the hotel soon. Don’t worry Nuzhat,” our Tamil driver assured me.

“Don’t kill us. Take your time,” I joked as I glanced at the speed meter.

The staff of all the humanitarian aid agencies involved in the Trincomalee operation were housed in one hotel––about 30 of us. Most of us from the UN rotated every 4-5 weeks. NGOs’ operated differently, for sure.

Save the Children was intending to do a “quick and dirty” qualitative assessment about the displaced children’s psychosocial wellbeing in the camps. The selected participants were mostly between the ages of 6-11, some were unaccompanied minors. When the offensive began in Mutur, people fled from their homes. They hid in the ditches, among bushes, behind houses to duck the bullets, and the army and the LTTE. They just kept running and running . . . till they reached the Trincomalee town. Children got separated from their families . . .

Every day new batches of IDPs flooded the town.

My name was suggested by partners to guide the qualitative assessment process. I developed a child-friendly focus group discussion (FGD) guideline and provided guidance to the facilitators on its implementation. It was a combination of discussions and gathering “expressions of feelings” through drawings. Most of the facilitators had solid experiences of working with children.

By that time, the “Meena” comic books in Tamil language were already distributed in the child friendly corners (CFC) we (UNICEF) had set up in the camps. It was a temporary solution––children had a place to learn and play, and to cope with the trauma of the war. The government threatened to send the IDPs back any time though the war was raging in Mutur. It was a desperate time.

The most popular Meena stories were on water and sanitation, and going to school. The comic book on conflict was still being translated in Tamil (I think). The NGOs promised to screen the videos (available on CDs) by hooking up projectors on laptops. An easy process.

The guidelines were translated in Tamil and FGDs were conducted by the local NGO staff. I attended one of the discussions. There were 4-5 adolescent girls in the group. They were unaccompanied minors––they had no information about their families. Once upon a time––just some weeks ago they had homes, they had people who loved them, moms, dads, siblings . . . the known faces were all lost. I could see their anguish, their struggles–––isolation.

The results of the FGDs were shared in our small group. Among many things one factor stood out. The children overwhelmingly mentioned how they loved to stomp and dance in the water that we provided in water tanker trucks in the shelters. Children usually sneaked out at night in groups and played with the tap water from the tanker. They got caught––we placed sentries to protect water wastage by children. Days and nights were oppressively hot and humid in Trincomalee.

I felt guilty––we had robbed them of the thing they loved most . . .

. . . Whenever I think of my days in Trincomalee, I think of the children in the camps, the girls who sat in our discussions to offer their grief. I can’t brush them away from my mind. Their pain still haunts me . . .

I don’t know their names. I didn’t ask.

Note:
Below are links to the Meena video and comic book on conflict that I directed and authored. (I may have shared them before).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-15bqPK8o
https://www.meenacartoon.com/2020/05/16/strangers-in-the-village/

Read more articles by Nuzhat