Stranded some 8,300 miles from his pregnant wife, unsure when he’d ever be able to return, Indrajit Gunasekara needed something to occupy his worried mind.
Changing the world would do.
Gunasekara, 38, and his wife, Naomi — sweethearts from their days at Brigham Young University-Hawaii — had been married only a few months when he received word that his mother was ill and that he needed to return home to Sri Lanka.
Gunasekara’s mother died a few weeks after he arrived. He stayed on for a couple of months to help take care of the family’s affairs — a little too long, as it turned out.
His visa expired.
With Gunasekara unable to return to Hawaii and unable to get a clear answer on how long a new visa would take to get approved, his wife flew to Washington state to be with her parents as her pregnancy progressed. The couple’s daughter, Grace Probodheni, was born four months later.
"I had time, and I was in a state of frustration so I wanted to do something," Gunasekara says. "I wanted something to wake me up in the morning."
One day, Gunasekara met a deaf man on the street who took him to meet his colleagues at the Southern Province Deaf Association, which provides training to people with hearing impairments.
Gunasekara’s late father was deaf, and Gunasekara had previously worked at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind. Eager to lend a hand, he approached officials from the American Embassy to propose a program that would bring together organizations for the deaf from both the Sinhalese south and the Tamil-controlled north.
It was an ambitious idea. The horrors of a 30-year civil war were still fresh in the collective memories of both peoples. To get his counterparts in the north to participate, Gunasekara and his fellow organizers had to convince them that unity between the countries’ deaf communities could be a steppingstone to better communication between north and south.
The result was a three-day event hosted by the association that focused on life-skills training for hundreds of Sinhalese and Tamil participants. As Gunasekara hoped, the event fostered mutual respect and friendship among the participants. Next month the two sides will renew acquaintances at a cricket match celebrating the Sri Lankan new year.
After 13 months in limbo, Gunasekara finally got his visa and returned to Hawaii three weeks ago. While occupied with finding work and establishing a home for his finally reunited family, he says he will continue to do what he can to keep the program in Sri Lanka moving forward.
"Meeting each other, human to human, and learning from each other allows us to come together with one understanding," Gunasekara says. "That is what we are trying to demonstrate."
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
