Silawathi Una Paniyage worries about providing for her two children while her husband seeks emergency treatment for kidney disease.
Part 2 in a Series
Fading Culture: Sri Lanka’s Indigenous People Adapt to a Modern World
DAMBANA, SRI LANKA – Gunapala Uruwarige, 45, has swollen legs and a pale face. Semiconscious, he screams in pain as he lies on the deck of a small lorry hired to take him to the hospital 10 kilometers (six miles) away.
Gunapala Uruwarige, a farmer, is a Vedda, one of Sri Lanka’s indigenous peoples. He lives in Dambana, a village in the landlocked Uva province in southeastern Sri Lanka.
When Gunapala Uruwarige first became ill, the Vedda people treated him with indigenous medicine and performed traditional rituals, as they believed a curse had caused his illness, says Silawathi Una Paniyage, his wife. But when he did not recover, they took him to a doctor in town, who diagnosed him with chronic kidney failure.
Now, his condition has worsened, and his family has decided to admit him to the hospital.
Vanniyaletto Uruwarige, 65, the Vedda chief, says these types of diseases are developing in his community for the first time because regulations on hunting and farming have forced them to change their diets.
Veddas can no longer hunt or grow crops in the national parks created by the Sri Lankan government, forcing them to change their diets. Consuming nonorganic produce and foods with preservatives has led to a rise in diseases previously foreign to the Vedda community, the chief says. Although the government has returned some food-gathering privileges to the Veddas in one national park, they say it is not enough to restore their diet and health.
Noncommunicable diseases are increasing in Sri Lanka because of a rapid transition in lifestyle, including the increased consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, according to the National Non Communicable Disease Risk Factor Survey conducted in 2008 by the Ministry of Health.
Noncommunicable diseases account for 85 percent of cases of ill health, disability and early death in Sri Lanka, according to a 2011 World Bank report.
During the past 60 years, the government has created national parks, sanctuaries and reservoirs in the forested areas where Veddas traditionally lived and gathered food, Vanniyaletto Uruwarige says. Today, it is illegal for Veddas to hunt or grow crops in these protected areas.
Veddas’ diets are changing because hunting is illegal in national parks, says Heenbanda Bandiyalage, 75, an elderly Vedda in Dambana.
“Early Veddas, being hunters, had a meat-rich diet,” he says. “They killed rabbit, turtle, venison, tortoise, wild boar, monitor lizard and even common monkey for meat. But, as there is no forest to hunt, most of us have become vegetarians.”
Cultivation is also illegal in national parks.
“Now, we don’t even have land to grow vegetables,” Bandiyalage says. “We have to buy them from outside.”
The majority of Veddas now depend on food sold in small boutiques run by Vedda families, Vanniyaletto Uruwarige says. Whereas Veddas used to farm organically, boutique owners must buy nonorganic produce from farmers who use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
“We mainly depended on agriculture and didn’t use chemical fertilizer and pesticides in farming,” Vanniyaletto Uruwarige says. “We engaged in traditional organic farming.”
Veddas’ inability to hunt and farm has also pushed community members, especially young Veddas, to eat nontraditional foods at restaurants, he says.
Kumarasiri Hewamudiyanselage, a 29-year-old Sri Lankan man married to a Vedda woman, runs a small restaurant in Dambana that serves Chinese and Mongolian dishes.
“I work hard to give quality food for my customers who are from the Vedda community and also to the visitors in Dambana,” he says. “Veddas like to eat Chinese and Mongolian food. There is a good demand.”
Hewamudiyanselage says elderly Vedda people still dislike nontraditional dishes, and young Veddas are his regular customers.
Vanniyaletto Uruwarige links the community’s change in diet to a rise in unprecedented diseases. When Veddas hunted and cultivated their own natural food, they did not develop illnesses as they do now, he says.
“Those days, our people didn’t have such complicated illnesses,” he says.
Vanniyaletto Uruwarige attributes these illnesses to the community’s consumption of nonorganic produce treated with pesticides and other chemicals and nontraditional foods containing preservatives at restaurants.
“These foods have preservatives, which make our people ill,” he says.
Vanniyaletto Uruwarige, who grows his own medicinal herbs, says that the Veddas are unprepared for these new diseases.
“We have never heard of kidney disease among our people,” he says. “With our people changing their traditional lifestyles, they suffer from some of the illnesses, like kidney disease, high blood pressure, stress, cholesterol and diabetes, which are common among city dwellers.”
Vanniyaletto Uruwarige signed a memorandum of agreement in 2011 with the Department of Wildlife Conservation. Under this agreement, Veddas with proper identification can fish and gather honey in nearby Maduru Oya National Park, says Hitiralalage Dayavan Ratnayake, the department’s director general. But hunting and harvesting crops in national parks are still illegal.
Fishing and gathering honey return some traditional food options to the Veddas, but Vanniyaletto Uruwarige says it is not enough to restore their diets and to avoid disease. Because most Veddas are poor, they have no choice but to eat nonorganic produce and nontraditional restaurant food.
“I have no control over banning these food items,” he says. “Otherwise, they will die in hunger, as they don’t have any other means of finding food.”
Interviews were translated from Sinhala and Vedda.
Although local custom in the Vedda community is to list last names first and first names second, Global Press Institute follows The Associated Press Stylebook on this matter.
