I spent last week in Sri Lanka with an organisation called Adoptsrilanka at the invitation of the organisation's founder, Geoffrey Dobbs, businessman, philanthropist and host extraordinaire. Along the Sri Lankan coast in and around Galle , Dobbs owns top of the market tourism outlets and some of the world's most exclusive boutique hotels. Somewhat resignedly, post tsunami, this quite remarkable Sri Lankan, and former Australian, British and Hong Kong resident now sees himself as a full-time aid worker, a life-change casualty of the December tidal waves.

I was invited to Sri Lanka to prepare action profiles of schools affected by the tsunami. Geoffrey's plan was to have these profiles `promoted' to potential twinning schools in Australia , Great Britain and the United States . Adopt a School is the catchy title of the project and the idea is already proving popular with school leaders in the west, and a successful Adoptsrilanka partner to Work for Widows, Adopt a Home, and Fish and Ships.

Driven by Geoffrey's high energy, financial support, and business and political contacts in Sri Lanka , Adoptsrilanka is quietly going about its business of helping to rebuild Sri Lankan lives along the south west coastal stretch between Colombo and the southern town of Tangalle .

As far as seismic waves go, this Indian Ocean tsunami was no cataclysmic one-off. Consider the explosion of Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia in 1883, whose resulting thirty metre wave killed an under reported thirty six thousand people; whose five cubic miles of spewed out rock and ash covered an area of three hundred thousand square miles and caused brilliantly coloured sunsets worldwide for years. In Sri Lanka itself there are stories passed from generation to generation of great waves of the past that unfolded and enveloped large tracts of the Sri Lankan coastline. Grandchildren have been told to stop what they're doing and run inland if the great Weligama Bay ever again emptied of water.

As we all know, too few children listen attentively to the wise advice of their elders. Some forty thousand lives were lost along the Sri Lankan coast. Half of these were children. The fishermen will tell you that the disaster was greater because it was a full moon and the fishing boats were on shore rather than out at sea. The school principals I spoke to report with some measure of relief, that the tsunami impact would have been more tragic had it not hit land when schools were empty because of the school holidays. And I believe them.

I visited fifteen schools and orphanages during a five day period. Some of these schools once occupied prime oceanfront locations, the coastal road linking Colombo and Galle on one side, the beautiful sandy beaches on the other. Sons and daughters of fishermen, of resort workers, of craftsmen are the students of these schools. Children of coastal squatters, of owners of three and four room concrete block and tile homes. Many of these children are now dead. Most of their homes have been swept away. Family members have been killed, employment destroyed. Some of these schools have been used to house refugees and aid workers. Some schools have been flattened and are now operating in tents supplied by international aid organisations. Others will never permanently reopen on their current site, required by government to relocate to allocated land at least one hundred metres inland from the coastal zone.

There are schools without desks and chairs, walls and roofing. There is concern that the May monsoon rains might come early this year. The invading salt water destroyed the grass, and like the much publicized Galle cricket ground, school playgrounds are brown and barren. In corners, amongst the broken bricks and fractured timber beams are torn clothes, pieces of children's toys and once useable teaching aids. The principals talk about rebuilding children's lives and doing their best with what they've got. In some schools all classes are held outdoors or in tents. UNICEF 'school in a box' kits have been well used.

In a Matara government secondary school of twenty eight hundred boys there are no toilets and no drainage. A wall at the back of the school is set aside for toilet purposes. The women teachers make use of a local teacher's home. The principal is urgently seeking water filters to reduce the further likelihood of illness and diarrhea. In a Catholic Girls' Convent school also at Matara, the principal began the year with five days of emotional counseling for the students and teachers. Her boarding house of seventy girls is full of girls taken in with special needs, girls traumatized, their nights dominated by lack of sleep and nightmares. There is no government financial assistance for the schools. Much is left to the initiative and generosity of the principal and staff. Assistance for children traumatised by the effects of the tsunami is unusual. Most schools simply don't have the resources for what those of us in western schools would see as an essential response to disaster.

The most overwhelming impression that we came away with from these visits is the powerful force of the human spirit. With very little, teachers are teaching and children are learning. There is a disability unit in a school in southern Sri Lanka where sixty intellectually disabled children are taught in one class by a teacher and two parent volunteers. The average student/teacher ratio along this area of coastal Sri Lanka is forty five, in a classroom about half the size of an average Australian primary school classroom. The limit is fifty children. At the time of my visit to one large National Girls' School of twenty nine hundred students, the police were in attendance turning away parents trying to get their children into classes, their own schools having been destroyed by the tsunami. There is remarkable perseverance, determination and courage amongst the teachers.

There is reason for great optimism in what I have seen. The Sri Lankan people are at work rebuilding, helping one another, doing their best. There is evidence everywhere of improving spirits and improving conditions. There is effective leadership from those who are privileged and from international aid bodies. There certainly are the doubters and the sceptics. But they're wherever we see the good and they only serve to distract us from everything that is positive.  I hope those of us with the opportunity to contribute can take away something of this powerful force to improve our own lives.

(Dr) WILLIAM T. McKEITH

PRINCIPAL

PRESBYTERIAN LADIES' COLLEGE, SYDNEY

Boundary Street, Croydon. NSW 2132

Phone; +94 (0) 2 9704 5666