Only in the morning would we discover who our neighbours were.”Now, Nadeeka says, they can live without fear and, for the first time, plan their future. With her family, she was forced to leave home each evening and hide in a secret underground bunker in the jungle, to avoid abduction or slaughter.”We would prepare food before 6pm and go to the jungle at nightfall,” she says “We had to keep very quiet. Nadeeka, in an immaculate pleated skirt and her hair in black ribbons, has the body of a child but sounds older than her 18 years. For much of her life as a Sinhalese in this threatened village, obtaining food and rest has been a struggle. There are six students in each team and they declaim and gesticulate with passion as they try to sway the audience of 50 parents and children.

On a Sunday morning at Sampathnuwara secondary school in Weili Oya, three under-employed military officers are judging a debate on the abuse of children as servants.Nadeeka Kumudne has cycled 10 miles to attend the event, organised by Kids in Touch, a British Council-sponsored programme, which aims to forge links between children isolated by war. Tourism is up 25 per cent and, until a state of emergency was briefly imposed then lifted this month, the Colombo stock market had hit a record high.After two decades of civil war and 60,000 dead, the population in the blighted north and east is rediscovering ordinary life. Thanks to the fragile peace that has held for 21 months, this tropical island of serene, rustic beauty is experiencing a boom. Will the ceasefire hold? “Yes”, Major Gunasomahe says diplomatically, but adds: “The problem is the greediness of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).”The only battles now being fought in Weili Oya in the north are between the bees over the pollen of the heavily scented frangipani flowers.

There have been no “incidents” for the past 18 months, he says. Before the ceasefire in February 2002, in one of Asia’s longest and bloodiest wars, at least once a week Tamil Tigers launched raids on government forces. The mature shrubs inside the fenced compound make it seem more holiday camp than military base. Only the ululating call of a small green barbet (Megalaima viridis) breaks the hot, humid silence.
Under the fan on the terrace, Major Keerthi Gunasoma, commander of 223 Brigade, sips tea and wipes his luxuriant moustache. The bougainvillea bushes grow over the roof of the officers’ mess at Weili Oya, on the front line of Sri Lanka’s civil war. The problem is that today, neither us nor they see any better future.”. Almost everything that we do to them and that they do to us, were we able to put it into a context of time and to say this is a stage on the way to something better, would be tolerable.