Where are all the tsunami funds?

By: Victor Karunairajan

Stories, fables and con-tickling tales
Emanating from my island home,
Are evenly spread on vice and sleaze
The deceptive charade still continues.

Thousands perished when the sea roared
With flowing waves that touched the skies
Many more thousands lost their all
And thousands turned utterly numb.

The world reacted in concern and kind
Opened the hearts and its chests of gold
Funds flooded in from faraway lands,
And from neighbouring nations too.

Cash and tents and packed food
Generators and kitchen utensils
Medical needs and emergency rations
And water counted in zillion flasks

Volunteer experts, doctors and nurses,
Engineers, technicians and planners
Determined to give their very best
To my affected Sri Lankan folks.

Once the waters had done their worst
And receded to distant horizons,
The wolves and hyenas saw their chance
For a dough quick on this Klondike trail.

The buck, however was not some notes
But Greenback wads and others of the kind
Say it Euro, Franc, Lira and Sterling
Even Asia’s Yen, the Japanese pride.

Though Indian Rupee was weak in might
But only in relation to the Western buck
Yet who cares, take whatever you can
Was how the plunderer pillaged.

Wolverine packs garbed in many hues
Politicians, priests and sham aid workers
Their scant morals and fictitious ethics
Cast to depths of vice and deception.

Mercilessly roaming far and wide,
The hyenas scavenged whatever they saw
Never spared even the barest of bones
Even baby food and hospital stores.

Ask the recipients of funds and aid
For an account of how they were used
Hardly any response will come
For how could they have recorded
The burst dam that sprayed so much
On to their laps in a flooded flash?

But follow the tsunami trail and flow
Over months since disaster struck
How this tragedy has impacted
On a few who were in frontline gear.

Search just not in Sri Lanka alone
But go to global cities far and wide
Houses, condos, and luxury spots,
Inshore, offshore and name others
Flying high in jets worldwide
Politicians, priests and sham aid workers
Seeking sanctuaries for their offsprings.

But this is only an iceberg tip
For Goddess Corruptia rules our shores
Tsunami was an added blight
For a nation perishing in ethnic feud.
Even there, the Klondike hunts
Are earned in shameful commissions
From arms sold by Merchants of Death

Sri Lanka, my dear, dear homeland
Has gone to hell and may never return
For those who rule this green, green land
Are corrupt politicians, fraudulent priests,
And sham-aid workers inland, overseas.

Photo By: Our Special Correspondent in Colombo Nuwan Jayatilleke from Batticaloa