Opening up shop

22 February 2006

The first one happened three years ago, when he was still a fisherman. On a day like any other, he drank his morning tea and headed towards the sea to his boat and nets.

He thought it was going to be a good day: “The water was calm. I used to get very good catches when the sea was like that.” Anthony noticed a tin of sardines on the sand. The waves must have washed it ashore.

He bent down to pick it up, and that’s when the explosion happened. In a terrible state of shock, he made his way back to the village. The next time he awoke, he was in the hospital and discovered that he had lost his right arm below the elbow.

“I still don’t know what was in that can, why it exploded, or who put it there. It was just bad luck, maybe,” he said.

The second tragedy was last year’s tsunami. The water rose and engulfed Anthony’s entire village. His family survived, but some friends died.

The home where his one-year-old daughter Sugi was born and the little shop that became the family’s source of income after Anthony became disabled were completely demolished.

“After the tsunami, we felt lost. Many people died and everything we had was gone. But we were lucky that we survived, and can now rebuild,” he said.

Today, the villagers of Verugal Mugathuvaram have been resettled in a transitional camp and there are signs of reconstruction all around them. They live in temporary homes built by the Danish and Norwegian Refugee Councils and use water and toilets supplied by Oxfam and the Red Cross. The government and aid agencies are planning permanent houses for them.

And Anthony and a few others are getting help from CARE’s livelihoods assistance program, and have started to earn money.

During the first few weeks after the tsunami, cash-for-work programmes provided a safety net. People earned some cash by clearing the coastal area, rebuilding roads and taking on other tasks.

But CARE’s field staff, working with a local NGO, realised that income from cash for work wouldn’t be enough, and the program itself wouldn’t last very long.

Kanagasooriyam Uthayakumar, a CARE project officer, said: “Even as we started cash for work, we spoke to the community and identified people who wanted help to set up their own businesses. Anthony was one of these, and we did our best to help him.”

CARE provided grants worth the equivalent of 85 pounds each to a number of beneficiaries in Verugal Mugathuvaram. Anthony, the fisherman-turned-shopkeeper, used the seed money to reopen a 'boutique', the local term for a shop that sells groceries, sodas and other everyday needs.

That shop now clears SLR 1,000 (£5.60) in profits each day, and Anthony has started a savings account into which he deposits at least SLR 1,000 each week. He credits its location – by a new road that is now being built to provide access into and out of the camp – for his shop’s success: “A shop would do better by the road, and I specifically asked for my house to be here.”

But Anthony adds that another reason his business became successful was the fact that CARE tailored its assistance to what he needed. “My disability means I can’t work in the field, or fish at sea. It was good that CARE listened to what I needed, and supported me. I make more money now as a shopkeeper than I did as a fisherman, and that’s good,” he said.

For the future, Anthony wants to save up enough money to expand his boutique. He wants to carry new products, as well as a bigger variety of the usual staple items. He said a better road to the markets in Kantale, the nearest big town to his village, would lower his costs and allow him to get better profits.

And finally, Anthony wants to be able to save up enough money to buy land, so that his wife could start a garden and grow vegetables for them to sell in the shop.

“We have been through a lot this past year, but I think things are getting better,” he said.