Life picks up in Trinco

By Tharuka Dissanaike

Tall palmyrah swayed in the evening breeze. A lone fisherman was netting in ankle-deep water in a roadside lagoon. Turbaned old men cycled on endless stretch of badly maintained road weaving through a herd of tall, bony cattle who had wandered from their grazing.

Another checkpoint in a seemingly endless, inevitable row of points where vehicles coming into and going from Tricomalee are checked with minute care. Before us, a loaded van-turned-into a bus was stopped. Soon a heated argument began. In the scramble to get out of the vehicle, a woman had overturned a can of kerosene. "It was my week's supply of kerosene," wailed the owner of the can while a young woman soldier tried to placate her.

The women, their gaudy sarees flapping in the breeze, went behind a makeshift screen to be body-checked while the men were frisked in the open. Finally the van, tilted under its weight of grain, flour, rice and oil took off to its destination in Kuchchaveli. For many of its passengers, this was a monthly marketing/ trading tour to Trincomalee town.

The beach was deserted. Even though the wind had picked up and was turning rough with the approaching monsoon, the sea was calmer than most beaches on the western coast. Another unusual experience was the abundance of marine life so close to the beach. We shared the water with schools of flying fish and colourful jellyfish.

Fareed approached us with a bag full of sea shells. With the acquired suspicion of beach boys, we waved him away. But then we saw the shells. Gorgeous and big, creamy white with a touch of pink, white with orange underside and even a conch shell. "My brother dives in Kuchchaveli," Fareed told us in faltering but legible English, after we had generously contributed to his daily income.

Few lands were cultivated. Many had gone to waste, like the empty shells of houses that remained all along the roadside. Land, earlier rich with farming had turned to jungle. Only signboards remained of the many guest houses and small hotels that did good business when tourists flocked to the perfect beaches of Trincomalee.

"I hope people come back," Pushpa, 40 said. "Before the troubles, this was like a town," she gestured to the overgrown bare land around her tiny thosai kade on the Trincomalee- Anuradhapura Road. Not a single other dwelling was in sight.

The income from the shop- Rs. 300 a day, goes to feed seven children aged between 14 and seven and a crippled husband wasting in hospital.

I ask her if she is Tamil. She responds saying she 'is Christian'. How right, in a town that had traditionally never known ethnicity to be a problem. Tricomalee had equal percentages of all three communities before the war forced upon them an unknown aparthied. Now the government has asked the people who own land in the district to return to their properties and re-register with the Government Agent.

For those who never left Trincomalee this is welcome news. In the abandoned town of Uppuveli, two lonely soldiers kept an eye on the famous hot wells. "Weekends are good. A lot of people, even from Colombo, come here," one soldier said .

Despite small sporadic attacks, aimed at politicians or the military the town bustles. New buildings were coming up in the market square. Across the bay, a large ship bringing wheat to the Prima Factory is guided by a tug into the harbour. Trinco is proud of its foreign investment- Prima, Tokyo Cement and Deutsche Wella, the German transmission station, 15 kilometres from Nilaveli. In the historic temple of Sri Koneshwar on Swami Rock, a group of Sinhalese devotees from Matale, were offering a pooja to God Shiva. They were guests at the Air Force camp in Trincomalee.

The ancient kovil was constructing a new bell tower. Signs of progression. But at Swami Rock, where the rock parts dramatically to reveal a sheer drop to the blue, blue sea, polythene bags and bottles told their own story. On the road to Nilaveli, was a huge municipal garbage dump. Is this the kind of progression Trinco needs, as the once-idyllic town staggers back to normalcy?

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