Hambantota
"It was... the eastern part of the district that won my heart and which I still see when I hear the word Hambantota: the sea perpetually thundering on the long shore, the empty lagoons, behind the lagoons the stretch of jungle, and behind the jungle far away in the north of the purple line of the mountains." - Leonard Woolf, Growing: An Autobiography of the Years 1904-1911 (1961)
In recent years the dusty provincial capital of Hambantota has become far better known for the devastation it suffered in the 2004 tsunami than for the merits of the town itself It doesn't have the attractions of a Dutch fort, glamorous shopping and boutique hotels - as do other towns along the south-west coast -but it is a one-of-a-kind tranquil town characterized by its dry landscape Malay population, colonial architecture, and great expanses of salt. .
SEA, SALT, SERENITY
Hambantota is a much-changed place since the tsunami. Now, to the eastern part of town empty spaces and random buildings dot the dry flat expanse that bridges the gap between the mangrove-
fringed ocean and the Karagan lewaya - a beautiful expanse of lagoon populated by migrant birds and flamingos. It was once a busy residential area; now the people who used to live here have been relocated further inland.
 |
| Source: http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081130/FunDay/fundaytimes_2.html |
The sloping western part of town is still a busy and colorful place where you often see goats sunning themselves in doorways and market stalls selling fish and vegetables. An old clock tower stands in the center of –the town. In addition to its chimes the Muslim call to prayer can be heard at regular times, throughout the day. The bay is full of colorful catamarans – representing the livelihood of the majority of Hambantota’s inhabitants- and no wonder since it's a rich fishing ground-for prawns lobster and crabs.
To the east of Hambantota in the foreground of silent windmills, are large swathes of flat land used for salt-production. Salt has been produced in Hambantota for centuries. Making it is a fairly-straightforward process if conditions 'are right - low rainfall, strong sunlight, flat grounds and clay-soil. During the Colonial era, the Dutch quickly realized the value of Hbmbantota's salters as a bargaining tool against the Kandyan' kingdom, which acquired its vital supplies, of salt from there. Today, with companies employing a, large proportion-of the local population - both men and women - the industry is vital for this dry region and provides 70% of the country's salt requirements.
THE MALAYS
Despite the origins of the town's name, today's Malay inhabitants are descendants of settlers - members of the former Malay Regiment - dating back to the advent of Dutch colonial rule in Ceylon in 164Q. At that time Indonesia was also under Dutch rule and the regional headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was situated In Batavia (Jakarta). So it was that hundreds of exiles were brought to Ceylon from Java, while later, when the British took control of Ceylon in 1815 further Malay soldiers we're brought in by the British. Since wives and children of the Malay settlers also eventually 'came to Ceylon, much of the Malay lineage and language has been preserved throughout Sri Lanka - especially in Hambantota and, Kirinda, further down the coast. Listen out for the landues as you travel around the town.
COLONIAL INFLUENCES
The wild stretch of beach forming the .bay of Hambantota is overlooked by a headland that preserves a slice of Hambantota's. colonial, history. Standing squat atop it is a circular structure- not unlike a fort'- and next to it, a black-and-white lighthouse whose light, it is said can be seen from the southern hill country. The circular building is a British Martello tower, built, according to R H Brohier in Seeing Ceylon, by a Captain Coper in the early 19th century. Its, purpose was to help troops guard against Kandyan infiltration- into the Hambantota area.
Martello towers - inspired by the Genovesa defense system at Martella Point in Corsica - are small forts built in several countries of the British Empire from the 19th century. They typically stand up to 17m high (Hambahtota's measures 10ml have two floors and usually a garrison of an office land 25 men Their round, sturdy structure made them resistant to cannon fire, while their flat roofs allowed for the positioning of a single artillery piece! that could rotate 360 degrees. They were able to] house the garrison's ammunition and provisions and also had a well or cistern for fresh water.
Today, Hambantota's Martello tower is a National Fisheries Museum. Opened in 1999, it has a gallery of fishing models, mural paintings, antiques, and exhibits in glass cases such as the darawa lampuwal - a lantern that fishermen traditionally used to taka out to sea at night to put in the water and attract tuna to their nets. Upstairs - where you can peel out of square holes as British sentries would grave] done - are exhibits of sea fauna and bottles oi preserved local fish! It is worth a look as it forms part of an enjoyable walk from town.
LITERARY HERO
Close to the Martello tower are other buildings including a government rest-house - a reasonably place to stay - a crumbling old British cemetery and some other ex-residential buildings. It was- one of these that the author, publisher and political worker Leonard Woolf - husband of better-known author Virgjnia,Woolf - lived for three years| as Assistant Government' Agent for the Hambantota District. Arriving in Ceylon in 1904, Woolf was first based in Jaffna, then Kandy before settling in Hambantota. He managed to double salt production and worked closely With rural villagers.
Returning to England in 1911 Woolf married Virginia and though intending to return to-Ceylon after a year finally quit the Ceylon Civil Service in [early 1912. In his own words, he was "sick of being an imperialist". His acclaimed Hovel, The Village in the Jungle (1913), - about a reluctant but complicit imperial agent sympathetic to the plight of village people - was based on his experiences in Ceylon His official diaries as administrator of Hambantota were published in Diaries of Ceylon 1908-11 (1962). (See Island Travel, p 26)
LASTING MEMORIES
Woolfs sister, the writer Bella Sidney Woolf, came to Ceylon to visit her brother and fell in love with the island together with two of its colonial servants (the first died). In How to See Ceylon (1914), she declares that Hambantota is best seen at sunset when, "the sun makes pools of gold on the waters of the bay... and the maize-coloured moon rises slowly, majestically, till she hangs like a wonderful Japanese lantern in the blue sky, above the bluer sea, Where the masts of the dhoneys (small sail boats), sway fitfully against the horizon".