Tsunami-hit Sri Lankans thank the gods for cinnamon

By Simon Gardner

HIKKADUWA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Dancing to traditional drums behind an elephant draped in purple, Sri Lankan cinnamon growers are offering part of their crop to pagan gods in thanks at a steady recovery from the 2004 tsunami.

When the giant tsunami waves battered the island's coastline, razing beachside homes and businesses and killing thousands, the water pushed as much as three km (two miles) inland in some areas. The sea salt killed vegetation and ravaged the local cinnamon industry.

"The tsunami took everything away. My wife, my daughter ... goats, cows and my cinnamon," said wizened Anthony Silva, carrying two large bundles of finely rolled cinnamon bark as he made his way with hundreds of fellow growers and their relatives to a temple to make an offering to local Sinhalese god Devol.

"Things are better now, but I still think about the tsunami," he said, raising a forearm to show a coarse tattoo of his wife and daughter's names. He has not shaved since the tsunami swept them away and now wears a long white beard.

Saturday's ceremony in the beach resort of Hikkaduwa marks another milestone in this community's recovery from a disaster which battered two-thirds of the island's shoreline, killing some 35,000 people in Sri Lanka and a total 230,000 around the rim of the Indian Ocean.

In the southern district of Galle, hundreds of acres planted with cinnamon trees were badly damaged. Most of the plants were killed.

ROAD TO RECOVERY

"Due to the tsunami, about 75 percent of the cinnamon growers' land was damaged," said Saman Ranasinghe, chairman of the Galle District Cinnamon Growers' Association. "We had to put new soil and start growing from the very beginning."