DECEMBER 13, 2005

Turn of the Tide

BY ERIC ELLIS

Almost a year later, too little has changed along the tsunami-smashed Sri Lankan coast. Aid was sent but the will to recover seems to have been swept away

GALLE, SOUTH COAST, 115KM from Colombo: Galle’s Mr Cricket, Jayananda Warnaweera, struggles to hold back his emotions. A year ago, the former Sri Lankan Test off-spinner and his fellow administrators of the Galle International Stadium almost died as the tsunami broke in a massive waterspout over his beloved Test wicket. As many as 3000 people were killed around here and at
Galle’s bus station 100m away. The ground where Shane Warne snared his 500th wicket the previous March was an open-air morgue. Suddenly, sleepy Galle was the centre of the world’s attention for all the wrong reasons.

After the tsunami came the intoxicating rush of celebrity. Famous cricketers past and present from Melbourne to Marylebone pledged to rebuild the Galle ground. Millions were raised in special matches in Australia and India. Warne and Lankan rival Muttiah Muralitharan were visibly moved as they toured the devastation. “We are joining forces with the City of Melbourne to try to rebuild the children’s library and restore the Galle ground to its former glory. Any help will be appreciated greatly,” Warne pleaded in The Times of London.

Jayananda’s tears flow because, a year later, nothing has happened. The fine words of foreigners have so far come to nought. The ground – and much of the once-jaunty Galle – is essentially just another South Asian slum. Important people pledged Test cricket would be played on this iconic ground inside a year. But no one will be swinging a bat or ball here any time soon. The nets are gnarled, the stands tumbledown, the ground’s famous aviary a fetid sewer. Some 15cm of thick grass, a year’s growth, covers the outfield.

“A lot of money has been pledged,” laments Jayananda, “but we have yet to see one rupee of it.”

To be fair, there are other reasons. Many of Sri Lanka’s politicians have enjoyed a year-long boondoggle. New car sales have soared in a country burdened by one of Asia’s most corrupt and least able governments. Donors are reluctant to send money because they don’t know if it will get where it’s intended. And civil war between the Buddhist Sinhalese, who control the government, and
the mostly Hindu Tamil Tigers of the breakaway northeast seems set to again erupt after a tenuous three-year ceasefire.

Much of the devastated coast is in ruins and will likely stay that way for some time. All of which seems incidental to the expats who availed of cheap land and labour to build magnificent villas and a neo-colonial paradise for themselves. For them, the champagne flows and bacchanal rules, amid gossipy rumours that some foreign villa-owners rebuilt their gin palaces with tsunami aid. One of the first projects of an erstwhile charity of expat Britons in Galle was to rebuild the Unawatuna beach club where they bought their dope. This was called helping local business get back on its feet.

A year ago, there was lots of grand talk about Sri Lanka. The tsunami was an opportunity for peace and prosperity. The World Bank pledged to install a world-class infrastructure. Country representative Peter Harrold told me that if 60% of the damage was in the disputed Tamil areas, that’s where 60% of the foreign aid would go. Well, what a difference – or not – a year makes. Along large parts of its coast, Sri Lanka looks distinctly like it did on December 27. The ancient conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, which for a golden post-tsunami fortnight of co-peration looked like history, seems set to resume. Hardline Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was last month elected president on a ticket that denied Tamils their due aid, as allegations swirled around that he had misused up to $US1m ($1.33m) in foreign aid, employing it as election campaign funds. In Indonesia’s civil war-wracked Aceh, the tsunami brought peace; in Sri Lanka, the combatants again prepare for war. Sri Lanka may have many rivals as Asia's saddest country, but there seems little doubt it qualifies as the stupidest.

SINIGAMA, west coast, 90km south of Colombo: Three beaten-up red-rattler carriages have been pulled to the side of the Colombo-Galle line. They were once part of the Samudra Devi, the "Ocean Queen" express the tsunami swept off the track. About 1200 people perished in the world’s worst rail accident. About 800 were passengers, the other 400 local villagers who clambered aboard in their desperation to escape the 10m waters. Two carriages, swept out to the sea 100m away, were never found. The wreck is today a macabre tourist attraction. Dutch tourists snap away, as desperate Lankans paw at their clothes for money. Sinigama has also become an economic centre. There’s good guide money to be made explaining the horrors of what happened here last Boxing Day.

NILAVELI, east coast, 160km from Colombo: Les Barker is used to a few problems. Cooma-born Les and his wife, Sydney artist Mitty Lee Brown, have lived on an 8ha estate here, near Trincomalee, since the mid-’70s, where they stopped roaming the world and settled in paradise. Problem was the Tamils and Colombo started fighting soon after and their magnificent beachside property became the front-line of the nasty civil war, as shells roared overhead. “I went outside once and got me sarong blown off by a shell,” says eighty-something Les, his body today wracked by asbestosis. But the 20-year war was nothing compared with the tsunami. Mitty and Les almost drowned as it trashed their house and swept them, their staff and their many pets 300m back into the jungle. Fortunately, Lankan looters missed the best bits, priceless Australian art – Drysdales, Friends and Nolans – given to Mitty by her contemporaries. The thieves, more interested in food and TVs, didn’t realise the house was one of the world’s most extensive private collections of Australian art, much of it sadly destroyed. Builder Les fixed up the house and Mitty’s art is safely under lock and key, being restored far away. The Australian High Commission says it’s keeping an eye on the two but Mitty worries about Les. “The doctor said he wouldn’t see October but he’s soldiering on,” she says. Les lights up another fag and takes it all in good spirit. Something tells me he’ll see at least another October but a second tsunami might test him.

MAWELLA, south coast, 180km from Colombo: I stepped onto this beach last year to unimaginable scenes. Of the 100 villages and hamlets I’d seen along the 200km drive from Galle, Mawella was the most devastated, the death and destruction proportionally higher than elsewhere due its unique topography. Facing Sumatra 2000km away, the water had swept in from the south-east, hit the headland where my wife and I have a property, took out our beach shack below and furiously channelled down the gully along which the 500-strong hamlet lies. A quarter of the population was killed, the destruction near total. Arriving a few days later with supplies, we raised a fund to rebuild Mawella’s fishing fleet. By March the “Foreign Friends Fund” had delivered 60 new boats, and nets and gear for 90. A year later, Mawella still struggles. A few houses are being rebuilt but inertia and aid dependence has set in. Once a neat fishing town, it’s now another typical south Asian slum. It’s gratifying that locals are using the boats but puzzling how muddleheaded though well-meaning some donors were. After writing about the project in May in The Bulletin, I was contacted by a Rotary Club chapter in Melbourne which also wanted to donate boats. As their unpaid adviser, my first suggestion was to deliver boats to the Tamil areas as, by now, the whole world was donating boats through Colombo. The Rotarians, though kind of heart, blanched at sending donations to the Tamils. Weren’t they terrorists? No, I explained, a radical minority had employed terror tactics but most were apolitical, struggling fishermen. I can only imagine what conversations took place among those good Rotarians. I heard nothing more from them; my advice had been too politically inconvenient.

And here’s me stupidly thinking that aid was blind to religion, race and politics.