Life goes on, at turtle speed

2005-01-10 10:54

Bentota, Sri Lanka - At a hatchery for endangered turtles nearly destroyed by the tsunami two weeks ago, 22 baby turtles have been born.

At the Sun and Moon Hotel, Wajira and Lakmal just got married.

And at the Prince of Wales College, students are getting ready for a cricket tournament.

Along Sri Lanka's devastated coast, signs of normalcy are emerging amid the ruins.

This island nation has suffered the second-highest death toll after Indonesia - nearly 31 000 lives lost out of a country of 19 million. One-third of the nation's coast is wrecked, and thousands of fishing boats have been tossed inland or washed out to sea.

But Sri Lanka has already closed almost half of its 800 refugee camps because people wanted to return to their damaged homes.

Among the traffic of relief trucks, medical teams and cranes clearing fishing boats, dozens of men on bicycle carts negotiate for space. They are lottery vendors.

And this week, schools are reopening after the New Year holidays, although many children will not be returning to their familiar classrooms.

About 8 000 children will start lessons in makeshift school rooms - some in tents pitched near their destroyed schools, some in buildings that did not fall and some using emergency "school-in-a-box" kits provided by UNICEF, consisting of exercise books, pencils, chalk, teaching aids and some puzzles.

In the town of Bentota, Sudath Jayakumara of the Sea Turtles Project, one of one dozen or so hatcheries trying to protect endangered species, said the tsunami washed away 20 000 turtle eggs, 20 adult turtles and 5 000 babies.

Five of the world's seven sea turtles - green turtles, leatherbacks, hawksbills, loggerheads and olive ridleys - nest on the shores of southwestern Sri Lanka.

But a day after the tsunami, Jayakumara found a thousand eggs under a patch of sand. Of those, 22 have hatched into baby turtles.

He also found two of the 20 adult turtles in a nearby canal, and they are doing fine.

"See, we can resume," Jayakumara said.

In nearby Aluthgama, Wajira and her groom, Lakmal, were married in the elaborate finery of Buddhist ceremony.

"This date was fixed sometime back and we decided not to postpone it." said Sujeewa Nishantha, a relative of the bride, as Sri Lankan traditional dancers performed.

"We feel that time has come to forge ahead and leave the bad dreams behind," said Nishantha.

Further down the coastline, 18-year-old Anhiva Meegoda was preparing for a cricket tournament.

"This cricket match was fixed for last Sunday, but we could not hold it because of tsunami," said Meegoda, who opens the batting on Tuesday.

"If cricket is resuming then it means our lives are also resuming," said Chrishan Fernando, a graduate of the school.

Even fisherman Benedict Dias has managed to get a crane and lift his boat that was tossed on the road.

"I am trying to get it repaired as soon as I can, and go back to the sea," he said.

- AP