Dancing with rescued child soldiers
In 2004, Sri Lanka was at the beginning of the end of the long-running civil war between the government and the LTTE, known as the Tamil Tigers. The LTTE has the terrible distinction of creating suicide bombers, often using women as carriers, targeting political figures. Since busses were the primary transportation, they became frequent sites for their destruction, as well as the crowded bazaars. They once attempted to bomb the government complex, which was very close to my school, and the blast rattled the windows in the staff lounge.
But the one of the most brutal of their activities was the capture of children to serve as soldiers. No child was safe outside in the North and armed soldiers would even break into homes demanding one to conscript. No one argued with the brutality of the guns in their faces.
One day at school, word filtered down that the UN had captured dozens of child soldiers from the jungles in the north and that several dozen boys and girls had given sanctuary at Father Paul’s Jesuit College. Once a vibrant, thriving university; now it was shuttered and empty because of the war. Newspaper articles and other stories soon appeared about the devastating psychological condition of these children.
Katherine Spry was the drama teacher and we were known for our love of gin and tonic and uproarious laughter. One night talk turned to these children and she proposed that we go up and do some dance therapy with the girls. And we did...against the US Embassy edict about travel in the north and even our school. Father Paul gave his blessing and we were off to the dirty bazaar to buy yards of fabric and cut it into swaths for dancing. Katherine readied her boom box and in a blink of an eye, our backpacks were filled. Someone helped us find a driver who was willing to drive us the dangerous roads filled with remnants of war all around. At every checkpoint, the soldiers were incredulous when they saw us…two white women with a boom box, backpacks and smiles.
Drama teachers are incredibly resourceful and Katherine was no exception. We were there two days and at first, the girls, aged 15 to 22, were shy and reserved. We didn’t speak Tamil and they had little English, but Father Paul provided us with a young Tamil man, Jesu, to serve as our interpreter.
Music needs no language and we passed out the cheap swaths of fabric to the bewildered girls. Kathrine put a tape into the boom box and slowly, the music began. Confused looks soon turned into smiles as the girls followed Katherine and me around the room with the fabric floating behind us. The tempo increased and soon, laughter and movement filled the room. But in the corners were a few girls huddled, still so traumatized they could not move to join in the merriment.
Our two days were filled with trust and team-building activities and even teaching salsa to Ricky Martin. On the last day, the girls were overjoyed as they tried to teach us traditional Tamil dances.
With our translator, Jesu, we learned some of the horrific stories of these young girls. They watched as their parents were murdered by both Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE for perceived noncompliance with some vague request. Their homes destroyed, every small hope stolen from them.
As we were waiting for our driver the last day, some of the girls sat next to us, then more came, piling around trying to hold our hands, touch our clothing, begging us to stay. In this part of the world, all that a girl has of her own are small pieces of gold jewelry, often tiny earrings, and they tried to give these to us…the only thing they had left in their shattered lives.
Katherine and I cried all of the way back to Colombo and for weeks after. But we did more than brighten the girls’ lives for a few days. To protect Jesu, our interpreter, from the real dangers of a young man at that time, Katherine’s family paid to send him to university in India to study English education. My sisters paid his plane fare yearly to visit his mother and today he is teaching English in the north of Sri Lanka. He still messages us via Facebook.
Sadly, Katherine is no longer with us. In 2016 she went into an outpatient facility for a routine repair of a shoulder problem, where an anesthesia mix-up left her brain dead and she died. Katherine was in her mid-forties and still had so much to give this world.
I am sure that those girls still remember the brightness Katherine brought with her boom box and swaths of fabric.
A good short video on the LTTE and child soldiers
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