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HERE IS NO WATER,” Udayanthi says. “My
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but he cannot cultivate anymore.” Udayanthi is from
Bakmeegama, a small village in northeastern Sri Lanka’s
Trincomalee district where small brick homes nestle into
surrounding vegetation. “Without paddy, there is no
money. That is why he had to go to [Sri Lanka’s capital
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Her husband sends money from Colombo, but it is barely
enough for her to run the household and buy food.
A wooden fence separates Udayanthi’s home from the
village road, and clothes are strung up to dry on wires
that run alongside it. Her only son, about three years
old, clutches a tiny cricket bat and a ball, pounds the bat
on the road, and laughs with excitement. Palm trees line
the horizon and provide shelter from the harsh sun that
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women and children go about barefoot, and a few men in
sarongs tend to the crops.
Yes, some of the plants look discolored. White layers
of sodium cover the soil, and water levels in village tanks
seem low. But if you are not from here, you might not be
able to tell that this region is in a drought.
The drought is real, however, and it persists. Like
many other villages in Sri Lanka’s dry zone — which
covers more than 75 percent of this pear-shaped tropical
island nation’s land area — Bakmeegama was still
recovering from a severe drought that hit the region in
2016 and 2017 when it was subjected to another season of
below-average rains in 2019. In August, major reservoirs
in the country were at 19 percent capacity, compared
by Dennis Mombauer
Hollowed
Lands
In Sri Lanka’s rural
hinterlands, the
slow-onset impacts
of our warming
world are forcing
families apart.