Going South

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Well it's coming to the end of my time here in Sri Lanka so I thought I would head South and see what the Sri Lankan coast has to offer.

Actually it was really wierd, I don't mean to depress you all but the coastline is still in disaray from the Tsunami. I found the drive quite sad, at times it was like driving through a war zone. The remains of houses with only a couple of walls standing or foundations where houses once stood. It made me wonder whether the owners survived, were these houses that had noone to return to them to pick up the pieces?

Back in the UK I don't think we realised just how badly Sri Lanka was affected, 12,000 Sri Lankan children died when the wave hit, in Galle 8,000 people died. There's a memorial on the side of the road in memory of a train that was hit by the wave, over 1,200 people killed in an instant not to mention the 250+ people that died in the village near the train crash. In Unawatuna where I am staying, when the tide receded, just before the wave, the fishermen thought it was a strange low tide so they waded out to fish, by the time they saw the wave it was too late, they didn't stand a chance.

Sri Lanka is only a small country, about the size of the UK, imagine the loss and devastation if it had been us and not them.

The relief work that has been going on is amazing and you can see new houses going up and the Sri Lankan people are fighters and in the last 2 years they have gradually picked up the pieces of their lives and mourned their losses.

It's amazing what we can control in the world, but we will never be able to control nature no matter how hard we try it will always have the upper hand.

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