Outside Jeya's beauty parlour, staff and customers craned their necks for a better view. As the dust cleared they watched with bemusement as a motorcade of 30 vehicles, including three buses, two VIP limousines and a seemingly endless stream of Land Rovers, army Jeeps, motorbikes and police cars passed by.
Along the potholed main street, old men and mothers with babies in their arms did the same.
They might not have known exactly who the visitor was, but the villagers were delighted that anyone at all had bothered to come.
The Tamil-dominated district of Batticaloa, which along with neighbouring Ampara was home to some 15,000 of Sri Lanka's 31,000 tsunami dead, is one of the poorest in the country. Recovery has taken place at a slow pace, away from the eyes of any visiting dignitaries.
So when the villagers of Navalady and Maddikkali heard yesterday morning that a prince was on his way, they hardly dared believe it.
"They told us someone big was coming," said Neethan Nadaradah, 19. "They said Prince Charles would be here. I've never heard about him; I'd only heard of Diana. But it's good that he is coming."
At Navalady village, which lost 1,300 of its citizens in the disaster, a Hindu temple lies fractured in half on the palm-fringed beach.
Uprooted from the sand and in desperate need of repair, it was dressed up yesterday to welcome the Prince of Wales, who had flown in by military helicopter to visit tsunami victims on his way to a 12-day tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
As news spread that at last a high-powered figure was visiting, villagers arrived on the beach in shy, giggling huddles, and scores of soldiers, bristling with guns and importance, ordered them behind an old hospital bed screen to be frisked for security.
Suddenly, out of the dust on the roadside, three very English men in official-looking dark suits walked briskly forward, waving panama hats to clear the crowd. In their midst the Prince of Wales, grey linen suit crumpled from his flight, stepped towards the temple entrance, where priests, children and village leaders swamped him. Reaching her hand forward, a young girl placed a Tamil marking on his forehead.
Soundararajan Kanapathipillai, 70, the village elder, embodied the optimism and resilience of those gathered around him. "30% of our village has come back now," he told the prince.
"They have been given tents to live in. They are still frightened but they want to come back and rebuild their homes."
As quickly as he had arrived, however, the prince was gone, swept off in the chaotic, dust-spewing motorcade to the neighbouring village of Maddikkali, where a group of fishermen and their children - one bearing a garland for him - stood to attention outside the UNHCR tents that are now their homes.
On the beach the source of their income, their fish- ing boats, still lay broken and useless, two months on from the disaster.
"Are you able to buy new boats?" asked the visiting prince. "We can't think about buying new ones: we have no money," was the reply.
"We are hoping for help from the government to build new ones," said Ramachandran Prabakaran, a young fisherman. "But the government has not come. You are the first person to have come to see us."
"I wish I could do more," the prince replied.
Japan earthquake: Eyewitness accounts capture Japan's tsunami ...
Japan earthquake: A tsunami hit northeast Japan on Friday, reaching as much as three miles inland. Hundreds are believed to be dead, ...
Along the potholed main street, old men and mothers with babies in their arms did the same.
They might not have known exactly who the visitor was, but the villagers were delighted that anyone at all had bothered to come.
The Tamil-dominated district of Batticaloa, which along with neighbouring Ampara was home to some 15,000 of Sri Lanka's 31,000 tsunami dead, is one of the poorest in the country. Recovery has taken place at a slow pace, away from the eyes of any visiting dignitaries.
So when the villagers of Navalady and Maddikkali heard yesterday morning that a prince was on his way, they hardly dared believe it.
"They told us someone big was coming," said Neethan Nadaradah, 19. "They said Prince Charles would be here. I've never heard about him; I'd only heard of Diana. But it's good that he is coming."
At Navalady village, which lost 1,300 of its citizens in the disaster, a Hindu temple lies fractured in half on the palm-fringed beach.
Uprooted from the sand and in desperate need of repair, it was dressed up yesterday to welcome the Prince of Wales, who had flown in by military helicopter to visit tsunami victims on his way to a 12-day tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
As news spread that at last a high-powered figure was visiting, villagers arrived on the beach in shy, giggling huddles, and scores of soldiers, bristling with guns and importance, ordered them behind an old hospital bed screen to be frisked for security.
Suddenly, out of the dust on the roadside, three very English men in official-looking dark suits walked briskly forward, waving panama hats to clear the crowd. In their midst the Prince of Wales, grey linen suit crumpled from his flight, stepped towards the temple entrance, where priests, children and village leaders swamped him. Reaching her hand forward, a young girl placed a Tamil marking on his forehead.
Soundararajan Kanapathipillai, 70, the village elder, embodied the optimism and resilience of those gathered around him. "30% of our village has come back now," he told the prince.
"They have been given tents to live in. They are still frightened but they want to come back and rebuild their homes."
As quickly as he had arrived, however, the prince was gone, swept off in the chaotic, dust-spewing motorcade to the neighbouring village of Maddikkali, where a group of fishermen and their children - one bearing a garland for him - stood to attention outside the UNHCR tents that are now their homes.
On the beach the source of their income, their fish- ing boats, still lay broken and useless, two months on from the disaster.
"Are you able to buy new boats?" asked the visiting prince. "We can't think about buying new ones: we have no money," was the reply.
"We are hoping for help from the government to build new ones," said Ramachandran Prabakaran, a young fisherman. "But the government has not come. You are the first person to have come to see us."
"I wish I could do more," the prince replied.
Japan earthquake: Eyewitness accounts capture Japan's tsunami ...
Japan earthquake: A tsunami hit northeast Japan on Friday, reaching as much as three miles inland. Hundreds are believed to be dead, ...
