Late last year I traveled south a couple times to Tangalle and Hikkaduwa, seaside towns known for the fish and surfing. It’s still strange to see the wreckage of the tsunami 2 years afterwards. Although many houses, hotels, businesses have been rebuilt, and most people have recovered from the onslaught of the ‘benevolence’ of NGOs, people enter into a new phase of recovery, from the decline in the tourist industry due to heightened conflict. Around the New Year a bus bomb exploded on the main road, a few km outside Hikkaduwa, killing about 15 people. Tourism has dropped significantly and the rupee has devalued, putting pressure on everyone. This is the same pressure that people in the East and North have felt, probably for the last 23 years; only it is even more unbearable to think that very little has been done to reconstruct the communities hit by the tsunami, due to the constant gunfire and slaughter.
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