Profiles in Dignity

Meet: Poonaiya Muthulingam
Date of Birth: October 14, 1929
Place of Birth: Batticaloa, Sri Lanka
Joined Mercy Home: 2005
Hobbies: Working in the garden, helping those unable to move around freely 

Mr. Kitnan was unable to continue working as a farmer, due to heart disease and asthma, when he joined the Mercy Home family. No longer married, he and his children left Batticaloa after the 2006 combat actions in Muthur, south of the bay from Trincomalee.

“Because of the bombing, my family was displaced and I went to a refugee camp in Batticaloa,” he said. “Then I came to Trincomalee, but I was very sick and went to the hospital.”

Returning to the war-torn area was impossible; neither fishing nor farming were an option any longer. His family was scattered, and he had few options before being referred by doctors to Mercy Home.

It’s a “nice life,” he called it, a place where he can work in a garden and, “Be productive. It is a place filled with peace and joy.”

War, health and family problems, poverty and other issues, he said, have affected all the elders at Grace Care Center.

“If not for a place like Mercy Home,” he said, “our life today would have been a question mark.”