Rebuilding Brings New Joy

Valsa Sukumaran still glances about the empty rooms of her new home as if she cannot quit believe it's real. With concrete walls and electric lighting, it is a dream beyond measure — a dream that just months ago she never could have imagined as the tsunami that struck Asia devastated her former home in Kerela, India.

"I was in the house when the tsunami hit," Sukumaran remembered. "I heard a sound and wanted to see what was happening. Then the water really came."

Valsa Sukumaran poses in the living room of her newly constructed home, built by CRS and Caritas through local partners. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

Sukumaran's house was just 80 yards from the sea, and though she and her two teen-aged children managed to escape the onrushing water, their home was destroyed. Living in a camp for displaced people before returning to the site of their former home to live in a makeshift shelter of plastic tarp and scrap wood, Sukumaran and her family have been struggling since the tsunami destroyed their lives.

But today, Sukumaran, her husband and her two children are rebuilding their lives. As beneficiaries of CRS and Caritas, working through local partners in India, Sukumaran and her family have had a permanent home rebuilt on the site of their old home. The new home, comprised of two bedrooms, a living area, electricity, and indoor cooking facilities took two days to build, and was financed entirely by CRS and Caritas.

A domestic worker earning only about $14 a month, Sukumaran and husband, a laborer who earns only about $70 a month, never thought they could afford to build a permanent home, having lost everything in the tsunami. Today, her house is among the first three finished in this area, part of a CRS/Caritas effort to build 46 such homes in the village of Chapakadapuram, where Sukumaran lives.

Situated on a run-off area just in from the beach, Sukumaran said she had many problems trying to keep her old house, made of woven palm fronds, dry. With a concrete foundation and concrete walls, those problems are gone.

"I had a lot of problems with my old house," Sukumaran said. "I could never dream of a house such as this."

David Snyder has traveled to more than 30 countries with CRS, working in such crisis zones as Pakistan, Sudan, Angola, the West Bank and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most recently, David visited those devastated by the Kashmir Earthquake.