Stories and Projects: Sri Lanka Post Tsunami

Prior to December 2004 Sri Lankins were enjoying a brush with prosperity, Life was beginning to move toward a state of normalcy, at least one which the civil war of the past two decades was fast becoming a bad memory, replaced by the hope of more jobs and the hint of a tourist boom along the undeveloped beaches of the tropical island nation.

In one day the Asian Tsunami took the lives of more than 24,000 Sri Lankins and most of the economic progress made since the tenuous truce between the majority Buddhist Singhalese and Hindu Tamil.

Aid organizations fight bureaucracies on both Tamil and Singhalese governments trying to bring aid to the victims.

These Photographs were taken in the ten months after the December 26th 2004 Tsunami on a reporting trip that circled more than 3/4 of the island visiting nearly all the areas hit by the Tsunami, from Point Pedro in the Northern Tamil provinces down the east coast through the Muslim and Christian areas then across to the Southern Buddhist regions near Gall. The tsunami took the lives of nearly a quarter million people in 11 countries.