Pre-Tsunami (Dec 20 - Dec 26)

So here are a few of the pics I've long since promised. Over the past few weeks I've taken very few photos. There several reasons for that. One is that I was being judicious (stingy?) with my memory cards. Turns out I had plenty of space left over, space that I should have at least filled with video clips. Another reason is there were times when I didn't feel like taking photos (as outlined in my last post). And finally there were a few times when I wasn't allowed to take photos for one reason or another. Generally the people with the guns, from either side, were very camera shy.

As it turned out though, many many people took photos, so while I may have missed a number of shots, it's likely I'll eventually get a hold of 'em. I'm guessing that'll be when I get back to Canada, but still, I'm making a note of it now.

So what'd I get up to? Traveling around the North-East I got a chance to see a slightly more rural side of life. 20 years of conflict will do that. At the same time I was able to access my email sporadically, though I could probably count the number of public internet terminals in the region on my hands.

This is the cemetery I had also mentioned in that earlier post. I read the link that Mr. Blarneystone provided in his comment; this was location of my first moral dilemma I had encountered while picture taking. I opted at the time not to take any photos of the mother crying. I shot this instead, at the same time, a few graves away.



Christmas day, which unsurprisingly felt like any other day, a group of us visited an orphanage for boys. It was amazing just hanging out and talking (well, I was listening a lot) to the kids. They've been through a lot; war, losing their parents, their siblings, their homes. But they are really bright eyed & bushy tailed for lack of better cliche, and all are very familiar with digital cameras.



The best Christmas Jam I've ever been to. There was one kid who was a crazy good dancer. It was like a mix between ghana, reggae & hiphop. He looked like he was 8, though all of them look younger than they are. This would be the perfect segue into a video, but the one major failure of using my digital camera as a camcorder is that low-light video is not possible.



This is from Boxing day morning. A reminder of the war...this was taken while about 10-15 km away, the North-Eastern shoreline was being hammered by the tsunami. I didn't find out what was happening until later in the afternoon, though I saw and heard numerous ambulances going past. There was some discussion going on throughout the day, but I didn't know what "wave" was in Tamil.

Sri Lanka