Gaya Fernando PhD
Independent Academic Lecturer and Trainer
PhD Social Anthropology (University of Edinburgh)
LLM EU & Int. Comparative Law (VUB, Brussels)
Member, Oral History Society, UK
Oral History
Experiential reality shared by those who lived through events that changed communities forever.
"Why is it that this memory is so poignant, so charged with meaning and emotion? One of the things that make oral history different is that while more conventional history is primarily interested in what happened—why was the massacre carried out, in what way, whose responsibility is it, what was its place in the overall military scenario of the war and of the Resistance—oral history also asks another question: what does it mean?" (Portelli, 2009, p.22)
The oral history encounter!
20 years ago, in a shaky ceasefire, I travelled from Brussels to conduct my first oral history interview in Kandy. My daughter was eight months old. A mother, whose son was MIA, spoke of the time when she went up North with other mothers, and met the LTTE at Madhu, the portuguese catholic historic sanctuary, a sort of no-fire zone. "'Why did you come? they asked. 'We came to see your claws and teeth'...I said."
A koha bird was calling late in June as I listened.
'Like the peace, it is late...' she said.
