Rebuilding Asia's 'Emerald Isle'

BBC Newsline presenter Mark Carruthers details how the £1.5m raised by the Dean of Belfast, Houston McKelvey, for the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami has been helping the devastated island of Sri Lanka.

It is a long way from the Emerald Isle in the Atlantic Ocean to the Emerald Isle in the Indian Ocean.

Dean McKelvey (right) raised £1.5m in Black Santa appeal

Ireland to Sri Lanka - two breathtakingly beautiful islands with very different histories.

Twelve hours on a plane from home, a sleepless overnight in an airport hotel and we are roaring our way north-eastwards in a 1957 de Havilland seaplane.

The lush countryside beneath us belies the tragedy that will greet us in the northern coastal area around the town of Trincomalee.

Battered by 20 years of conflict between government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers, this region was already deprived long before the tsunami came.

This town is to be our base for the next four days.

We are advised not to leave our hotel after dark. We are warned that a local man who worked as a driver for several relief agencies in the area has been kidnapped.

The next morning, we wake to the news that a senior government administrator in the province has been shot dead for allegedly failing to distribute tsunami aid fairly. Tamil separatists are being blamed.

Aid workers refer to the shelters as microwaves because people feel as if they are frying inside them in the midday heat

We are told it is too dangerous for us to visit one of the projects in our planned itinerary. We will not now see the orphanage where children whose parents perished last December are being cared for.

Thankfully our hosts are quick to reschedule our arrangements and the next morning we find ourselves travelling along moth-eaten roads at first light on our way to the coastal village of Gopalapurum.

About 80 villagers died here when the 20ft high wave crashed in from the shore through the coconut groves.

Selvan Chellyah lost his home and most of his possessions, but his wife and four children survived.

He shows the Dean around his plot of land. His fences are down and the cows are eating the bark off his precious coconut trees. His well is corrupted with salt water and it may take years for it to recover.

Christian Aid's local partner in the region has provided Selvan with a temporary shelter.

Mark Carruthers (right) travelled with the Dean to Sri Lanka

It is a 200 sq ft corrugated iron hut on a concrete base. Aid workers refer to the shelters as microwaves because people feel as if they are frying inside them in the midday heat.

Selvan knows he is luckier than many people in his village, but still he cannot be optimistic about his future.

He has no idea when he will have a permanent home to live in again and he does not know when, if ever, he will get his job back at the nearby tourist hotel.

He thanks us for coming to see him and wanders off to play with his four-year-old son in the shade.

'Small boat and engine'

The next day, we are in the nearby village of Sally. Fifteen people died here on Boxing Day - 10 women and five children.

The village depends on fishing and dozens of local men lost their boats in the tsunami.

Inbathas Thuraichamy is one of them. He had saved for years to buy his own small boat and engine.

Six months after he first put to sea in his own vessel, the tsunami snapped it in two like a child's toy.

He is managing to eke out a living now on another man's boat, but he has three children, a wife and a sick mother-in-law to support.

Inbathas hopes to benefit from a rolling loan scheme which is being introduced by Christian Aid's partner in the village, but borrowing £1,000 to start again is a daunting prospect in a place where lunch in an upmarket tourist hotel costs no more than £2.

The Dean is visibly moved by his experiences - we all are. Generous people at home entrusted him with a small fortune to help those whose lives were blighted by the forces of Mother Nature.

He is pleased to see that real progress is being made, but he is chastened by the scale of the need.

Through no fault of their own, the people of Sri Lanka have been dealt a much poorer hand than the one held by the inhabitants of that other Emerald Isle.

People in Ireland should be grateful they do not share with Sri Lanka its other moniker - Teardrop of India.

Mark Carruthers' reports from Sri Lanka will be shown on BBC Newsline on Wednesday and Thursday this week.