Sri Lanka's school desks remain empty

They are making their way back to school this week. From around Matara, the pupils of Sujatha Vidiyala school trickled into the classrooms. But lessons had changed forever.

In one room, where an English lesson should have been read to 40 people, there were just nine. No one knows how many are missing and how many just didn't have the appetite to come back.

One who did respond to television and radio announcements urging them to go back was 17-year-old Samitha Ruwanthia. She carried a photograph of her best friend Purmina Hansani. Purmina will not be coming back to school.

The sombre atmosphere collapsed into a tearful one as the class of girls remembered Purmina.

"She was a very kind-hearted person, always helping other people," said Samitha, wiping away the tears. "She loved school and was a wonderful dancer. She was so beautiful."

Just two schools in the southern Matara area of Sri Lanka opened this week. The other 10 are still being used as refugee centres. But across the country teachers took registers. No one was in the mood for lessons.

At Sujatha Vidiyala there were 250 pupils. As school principal Chandra Pinidiya called out the register fewer than 70 answered "here". Teachers suspect more than 40 may be dead.

And those who have survived do so with painful scars.

Desha Kalnpahana said she was eager to start learning again. Yet Desha begins the new year in a new home with a new family. For the December 26 tsunami washed away her father, mother and grandparents.

Along with a brother and sister, Desha survives, and has moved in with her aunt. She returned to school in an ill-fitting blouse. Few pupils had their uniforms on - clothes were borrowed or salvaged from wrecked houses.

"I am not afraid, I just want to study, be with my friends and get on with my life," Desha declared.

The girls sat on wooden desks, hugged each other from time to time, cried intermittently. They know the new term will be like no other.

"There can be no teaching right now," said Samitha. "We are still in shock. It feels horrible to be here and we were afraid to come, but I think it is the right thing to do. We didn't want to see empty seats that were filled by our friends - they can't be filled."

It is not just pupils who will not return. School principal Pinidiya said at least one teacher was dead.

"The place feels different than it did before," said Pinidiya, looking around the stark walls of her school. "I have been talking to all the children and hearing their stories and I think it is best that they come back. We must try to get some normality back."

For the girls of class 3C, that is going to be a difficult task. "The school's totally changed," said Sankhitha Gunaratne, 17.

"We now realise there are so many things we wailed about before that seem irrelevant now.

"One thing that has come out of this is that people are helping each other, people are getting closer. But we have paid a high price for this.

"Now we have to get on with our lives. Friends who have come together, like us here in this class, must stick together."

As the teacher explained to the girls of the English class that they could go home in the afternoon, they said they were afraid of further waves and a storm said to be brewing off this southern coast of the island. These are a people still living on frayed nerves, frightened about what is to come.

But Pinidiya was preparing to go back on local radio again last night to try to get more of her children back.

"The schools can lead the way in lifting this country. It is very difficult, but we can help the ones who have lost loved ones and homes. By coming back, we can all move forward."

- INDEPENDENT