Morgalogue

We had to get going. We had a 5 hour drive East to get to Amapara and the military imposed curfew began in 6. We’d spend the night there and make the trip to Kalmounai in the morning. Unlike the LTTE border I’d visited in the North, this one was pretty live. Very shortly it looks like Sri Lanka will admit to the international community what everyone here has known for months – civil war is back on. The Tigers have declared and end to negotiation, termed the ceasefire agreement ‘defunct’ and tried to blow up the Defence Secretary (the President’s brother). It seems like a fairly clear message to me.

In terms of landscape I liked what I saw of the East the best. For the first time there was a feeling of the place being under populated and remote, maybe that’s just the Scot in me. There are more plains and lakes between more ancient and majestic looking lumps of rock. A wilder country. Little signals of war began to creep in as dusk arrived. Abandoned houses, blackened patches of grass on the side of the road where vehicles had perhaps burned out. The checkpoints became a lot more serious too … no smiling soldiers hunched on their guns here. Searches, anxious looks and lots of barbed wire. After passing the main checkpoint into Amapra region things became eerily quiet. We were following what might have been a road through a national park with trees and bushes on either side and no-one for a record 2 miles. This was exactly the sort of place I’d imagined us being mistakenly ambushed. When we rounded a corner and saw a group of soldiers on foot, guns trained on something in the trees, we all must have briefly thought the same thing – “shit, who’s side are they on ?” Ours, thankfully.

Ampara acts as base camp for the UN and just about every big NGO working in tsunami or war-related relief work as it’s just inside the frontier of the government controlled area. To the North and East lie LTTE controlled Batticoloa and Trincomalee, aside from Jaffna the most infamous of all the conflict afflicted towns. To the South and East is an area controlled by a small splinter group called the Karuna Faction who are at war with everyone. Not a great tactical move but they seem to have survived  thus far. We were to travel East along a narrow corridor still controlled by the Sri Lankan army to Kalmounai on the coast, a town with big Muslim population who, on top of all the other layers of misery, people still find time to repress.

We arrive late and check into ‘The Monty’ a place on the edge of town that I’m sure appears on no map but the aid agencies clearly know about. The car park is lined with expensive 4WD’s with mounted radio masts and ‘no-smoking’ style stickers that depict an assault rifle instead of a cigarette. ‘No-shooting’. Oxfam, Red Cross, Tearfund, UN, Worldvision, Unicef … at one point there were apparently as many as 70 International aid agencies here. We scoff and plank the mini-van proudly displaying nothing. In the restaurant most people are Sri Lankan but there are 5 or so white faces among them. There’s a real air of war-correspondent cool about them. I don’t know how someone drinks a coffee with an “if you’d seen the things I’ve seen” look but somehow they do. It looks painfully cliquey … like movie people.

Next day we left early to drive along the ‘military corridor’ to Kalmounai. The country flattens out towards the coast and a straight road traverses alternating patches of forest and rice paddy as we drive into the glare of the morning sun. Lines of soldiers in full combat gear patrol the ditches on either side, searching for mines and radio detonated ‘claymores’ as a we pass in a convoy of cars, bikes, trucks and busses going about their normal business. I’m now acclimatised to what once might have been a shocking sight. The old adage is true … what else are people supposed to do ? Life goes on.

Kalmounai is a very poor place. A 30ft wave wiped the coastal strip off the map but the grey, dirty town centre further inland is full of things that just fell over on their own and a few that maybe blew up. By far the poorest and dirtiest area is the Muslim quarter where we visit our first hospital. It’s a real shocker. Abandoned in the centre, is a half-finished, mosque-like, concrete shell. Rutted, dirt roads crowded with waiting women in chadors lead you between prefab units and low-rise buildings that form the wards. I feel like I’m in the Middle East.

The reason for the crowds we find out later, is a suspected outbreak of Chikkungunya that has left hundreds with mystery fevers and delirium. When I first hear the doctor say it I am convinced this is Tamil for bird-flu and am obviously feeling like the luckiest man in the world. But it turns out to be a mosquito-borne virus that has just swept through India. A week later it is confirmed in the media that Kalmounai is infected. A few days later 3 people in my house catch it as it spreads to Colombo. No-one has died, I think maybe only the elderly do, though high fever and arthritic joint pain sounds rather unpleasant.

We see overcrowded wards, more waste-burning oil drums and a scavenging cow with a surgical glove in its mouth ripping open bin bags containing all sorts of atrocities. The infection control nurse is at his wits end but the hospital is too inundated and under resourced to begin to act. He shows us some tattered scraps of A4 in his office presenting the findings of a one month targeted surveillance on a ward – 1 in 10 patients left the hospital with newly acquired infections. He insists we stay for a grimy cup of tea … even The Doc grimaced as he forced down a worried gulp. 

Over the next few days we see the non-Muslim hospital and it’s a world apart. Clean and under-utilised. On the first day we arrive just as the army dramatically besieges the hospital. It’s a real Hollywood scene … the building is completely surrounded as if they are expecting some kind of attack. Inside a full search is underway. As we shuffle meekly past the reception I draw a glance from the Tommy Lee Jones commanding officer as he strides through the centre of the room, deploying troops along corridors and stairwells. He’s clearly thinking something but keeps it behind his expressionless military face. We wait outside the clinical directors’ office and hypothesise about what is going on. To the bored-looking office staff, this is clearly routine but the tense body language of the soldiers outside bothers me. Either they are looking for wounded Tigers or they are on the retreat with wounded of their own. I greatly prefer the first option but either way, something is happening close by.

I cannot resist and attempt to take a photo of the action outside from a secluded second floor window. I accidentally leave the flash on, not only taking a shit picture but no doubt making myself look as suspicious as Lee Harvey Oswald hanging out the Book Depository window. I scarper like a school boy and manage to avoid being shot.

Eventually the body language changes. The unit is put ‘at ease’ and then moves out. They were looking for Tiger wounded we are told. We do our thing and hit the road. It’s been a long day.

The sun had set and we were rushing back along the straight road to meet the curfew. I’m sat in the back looking out across the fields into the inky black forest. About a mile and a half off the road the sky suddenly flashes orange. I assume it’s lightning until it happens again, twice. “Eh … something just exploded up ahead” I say. No-one else saw it. Chinthaka gives me a patronising grin and I’m convinced I won’t get the chance to prove him wrong when we all see 4 more flashes from exactly the same place. We go quiet … “It’s lightening” reasons Dr Hemanth. I don’t want to over-react and I’m not exactly sure what the protocol for taking your foreign specialist (him, not me) into a war zone is. It’s definitely not lightening. We are about a mile West of Ampara and it seems to be about a mile and a half north of Ampara. Still we are surrounded by all the trappings of normality, among a procession of civilian cars, yet I can’t stop myself running through escape plans and good places to hide in case of a street battle. I’m clearly not the only one as even Susantha, an ex-soldier, doesn’t say a word till we reach Ampara, where he confirms that it was indeed a battle. In the papers when we get back we read about the breakaway wounded Tigers and a series of Tiger offensives involving rocket and mortar fire.

To his credit, Dr Hemanth is the most mature of the lot of us, and shrugs it off without much procrastination. Talk of war seems to bring out the wee boy in everyone. The papers are full of it and in my office there’s a poorly suppressed playground kudos to be had by visiting these places. And I can’t help trying to make the most of a good story here too. Neither can John Simpson, Robert Fisk or Anita Pratap (cheers Sarah) … so why not, it’s my blog. But I don’t for a minute claim to know a thing about war. Some of the stuff I’ve read about this country is absolutely horrific. It’s just as hard for me to believe it’s actually going on even after being so close, geographically, to it.

It’s such an odd country. Outwardly I see a tropical island paradise populated with very calm, sober, gentle people with little imagination for anything but curry, though I can forgive them for that. Yet on the TV, in books, in photographs, in my inbox every day is death, mutilation and destruction. What I find weirder is that there’s no sinister, media-enhanced culture of paranoia that the person sitting next to you could be an extremist who actually hates you so much he’s going to explode himself. Even though that actually happens here. The contrast is so stark and matter of fact – the beauty, the gentle, pragmatic culture and the brutal, daily violence - that the only comparison I can make is with nature itself. The gazelle with all its vital, ballet dancer grace is ripped open and devoured live by the playful, hungry young lions, on a lovely summers day, by a pretty stream, under a tree. Fact.

So, comments please. I put my naive observations on-line to be savaged. I sense Sarah will give me a talking to.