Landmines, Amputees & the JJCDR

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Sri Lanka is home to 160,000 amputees. In the north, where civil war raged for almost 30 years, 75% of amputees are victims of landmines or are war wounded. Landmines have indiscriminately torn the limbs off of soldiers and children alike. Although the government is now trying to clear the landmines, it is a slow and tedious process. An estimated 90% of the amputees in this region lack proper prosthetic limbs. Deprived of their mobility, many are unable to work or provide for themselves and their families and are forced to beg in the streets, and children are unable to go to school.

This walk I'm doing is in aid of the Jaffna Jaipur Centre for Disability Rehabilitation, who provide high quality, lightweight and low-cost prostheses and orthotic devices to physically disabled people living in the Jaffna Peninsula (northern Sri Lanka) as well as physiotherapy and follow-up rehabilitation. The JJCDR also provides mobility devices, micro-credit loans to get adults back to work and student educational grants to differently-abled children. Its mission is to reach out to people with limb-loss and physical disabilities to empower them through a total rehabilitation program to restore not only their mobility, but also their dignity.

The cost of a below-knee prosthesis is only $180.  A wheelchair, $106. A monthly education grant to a disabled child is $3.80. It just takes a ridiculously small amount of money a lot to transform a life from one of dependence and poverty to that of independence and economic productivity. So I'm asking everyone... click on that DONATE link and help me raise funds for 100 prostheses.

Only a Month Left to Go

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Just over a month to go before I start this trek across Sri Lanka, and still sooooo much planning left to do. For six months, I've been pouring over maps and topographicals, scouring the internet for information on the tiniest villages, calculating distances and elevations, and exhausting every contact in my arsenal to slowly piece together an off-the-beaten-path route that is actually doable.

To get my body ready for this little endeavor, I get up at 4:30 in the morning, 4 days a week, to walk the 25km needed to toughen my feet and strengthen my legs and back. I aim for the tiniest footpaths and back roads I can find, heading away from the coastal village I live in, deep into the back countryside, where it's all rice fields and tea, coconut and rubber plantations, and slow meandering rivers. Blisters and plantar fasciitis have been my only -- but constant -- companions. And yet, despite the obvious pain, and ridiculous start time (I am NOT a morning person), and exhaustion, I am inspired and exhilarated with each new route I discover.

It's amazing how much there is to see when you get off the main roads, get off the tarred roads, and walk into this stunning countryside. The green is shocking, lush, and omnipresent. Walking is slow enough, and silent enough, to sneak up on the wildlife. Every morning I'll spot mongoose, langur monkeys, peacocks, water monitors, blue kingfishers and green parrots, macaques and lizards, flying foxes and snakes, frogs, buffalo... Stay on the main roads and buses and trucks will belch soot into your face, and scabby-looking concrete block buildings and litter mar the view. Turn down the path that looks like it's definitely not the obvious route, and wow...

Where, How and Why?

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Where?
From the southern-most tip of Sri Lanka, Dondra Lighthouse, north through rice fields, mountains and tea plantations, onward north through forests and ruins, north past stupas and temples, past war-torn, shelled-out buildings and the remnants of tanks, north and further north until my feet can take me north no more, until I touch the waters off Point Pedro, the last piece of Sri Lanka extending into the sea. That's as much of a road-map as I have right now.

How?
The goal is to walk all of it, self-supported, with the certainty that the Universe abhors a vacuum and that all my apprehensions will dissolve on the road, on step at a time.

Why?
After 30 years of civil war and the laying of innumerable landmines, Sri Lanka is home to more than 160,000 amputees, many of whom, mostly in the North, too poor and too isolated, still await prosthetic limbs. Disabled and neglected, their prospects are bleak. My hope is to raise funds for those in need of prosthetic limbs and mobility devices, walking to enable others to walk themselves.