Today Mylar lives in the United States as a registered optometrist with her life on a set track to start her family with her husband in San Francisco. Although this seems like a fairytale ending, the beginning of this lifelong story was not nearly as neat. Mylar grew up in Sri Lanka. Most people are uninformed about the conflict in Sri Lanka, and today is the day when you find out what happened for 25 years in the small island nation right under India.
Sri Lanka is an island roughly the size of Pennsylvania and has around 22 million people who live there. The origin of the Sri Lanka Civil War began as tensions between ethnic groups which dates to when Sri Lanka was under British rule. In summary, the Tamils which is the rebel group fought to overtake the Sinhalese government in 1983. The Tamils support grew to the point where there was a full civil war. Tactics of the Tamils included the abduction of children was used to create child soldiers. During the 25-year war, an estimated 80,000-100,000 people died there during the conflict. With this now known, Mylar was a child in a disputed land of Sri Lanka. She was eight years old when the conflict reached her area and her story of what she had to endure created a lifelong impact on my life.
Our family would open our house up to these optometry students to help them save money for rent in the area. Upon move-in, my twin sister and I would nearly question these students to death and try to learn everything we could about them. When Mylar came, we did the same thing, however, when she told us she was from Sri Lanka we were instantly intrigued. Mylar started her story off that she had grown up in a fishing village right along the coast and how turquoise the waters were around her. She talked about how she had a normal family with a few siblings, and everything seemed so vanilla. Well, that was until I asked her why she moved to Canada at a young age, I mean what could have possibly happened in such an island paradise. This is when she softened her tone of voice and told me that there was an ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka and that the conflict is what caused her to become a refugee, seeking residence in Canada. At that moment, my eyes lit up and so did my sisters. We both had no clue that she was a refugee. She told the story of her childhood while trying to hold back the tears, but they just kept on coming. Mylar mentioned that during this period her home was burned two times and she was always in constant threat of the bombings that were happening around her. She described that her family had a bunker in the sand, which was made from an overturned rowing boat. One of her family members would risk their life to cover the boat with sand while everyone else hid inside. At this point in the story we were all in tears. She had mentioned that there was a close call when a soldier used the butt of his gun to tap the surface of the sand to make sure that there were no secret bunkers, fortunately, he did not find theirs. In another instance, she recalled that she heard soldiers talking right outside the makeshift bunker.
Her story ended there. The story the separation from her family was too painful to recall. She moved into our home one second and the next was in tears about how she had to leave her home. Mylar was instrumental in my life to help me understand how even if someone has made accomplishments, like becoming an optometrist, her path there was unique.
Throughout my life, I have had the ability to talk with people from all over the world and I hope to share some of the stories of these amazing people. If you are interested in contacting any of them, just email me (nrw5191@psu.edu) and I will be more then glad to reach out to them.
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