Give and take

Once the domain of the most intrepid cultural tourists, 'voluntourism' holidays now offer more travellers the chance to help their host countries during their stay. But how much can be achieved in just two weeks? Justine Reilly heads to Sri Lanka to find out.

"Gamini, do you mind if we pull up here so I can take a photo?"

Much as I hate to hold up a tour group for the sake of a photo opportunity, I've just seen the image that could sum up this journey to the south-west coast of Sri Lanka: a man and a boy sit on a grounded fishing boat, beneath the rangy palms, staring out to the ocean.

This is the ocean that has provided people here with livelihoods for generations through fishing and more recently, tourism. This is also the ocean that unleashed the fierce force of nature in the form of the December 2004 tsunami.

I'm on a two-week volunteering package holiday, created in reaction to the tsunami's effects. My group has been here almost a week and so far we've mainly been doing labouring work at two sites - an old men's home in Galle and a school for deaf and blind children in a smaller town. But today is time out from the volunteering.

Gamini our driver is giving us his "local knowledge" tour of the region, dodging, weaving and honking our minibus along the coast north of Galle through tuk-tuks, pedestrians, cyclists and at one stage a little inland, water buffalo.

We drive through towns like Hikkaduwa (aka Hippy-kaduwa) with its sleepy '70s surfer feel and hotels such as the Moon Beam and Copa Cabana. Gamini explains how this town fell from the peak of its touristic success after a cyclone destroyed the nearby coral reef in 1983.

More than 20 years on, the budget backpackers are making a return and the coral is regrowing slowly. He brings us to a town called Paraliya. This town is significant to our group for two reasons. Some of my fellow group members were on the first of these holidays to Sri Lanka in May 2005.

It was here that they helped a family complete the construction of their home, which we visited. And it was here that a horrific disaster occurred. This is where the coastal train, The Queen of the Sea, was travelling at the moment the tsunami struck. The first wave caused a signal failure; the second took the lives of around 1,500 passengers. Last May, my companions say, the derailed carriages were still there.

Now, the only sign of such destruction is a memorial by the shore, above the ground where almost 500 unidentified bodies are buried.

The tour group parks at this memorial. I run back down the road to ask the man on the boat if I can take his photo. He approves and we go through the usual exchange - names and where I'm from. He gives me his address so I can send him the photo and the transaction is complete. Until, that is, I ask if he is a fisherman. "No, a cook." And before I know it, this new acquaintance is inviting me to his cafe over the road from the shore.

"But I'm with a group," I say, "I have to get back."

"Bring them, too!" he enthuses as he serves me a delicious roti and pulls the cap off a chilled bottle of Coke.

"But I have no money on me."

"It's OK!" he says. "You eat."

So here I am, on holiday from a comfortable life in London, and here he is, a man who lives in a town that has seen far more than its fair share of misfortune. Yet it is he who is looking after me.

A different way to travel

Our tour leaders, Heather and Steve, were among those visiting with that first volunteering group last May. They tell me some members of that initial group had also experienced startling generosity at the time of the tsunami.

Their experiences had inspired them to return to Sri Lanka just months later, on a tour with Different Travel Company (DTC), then newly set up by a UK-based husband and wife team with a background in the travel industry.

The volunteering holiday I'm taking isn't one where people's skills are matched with projects, so a lot of the work involves labouring - and playing. From the outset, we're encouraged to treat this trip like a holiday and to not feel guilty if we want a day off while others are working. But all 10 of the visitors I'm with - ranging from twenty-something professionals to a retiree - are keen to get out to the projects.

These include the "Old Boys' Home", a shelter for men who once survived on alms.

Within the first week, the group has built two ramps and installed a water tank at the home. A young doctor in the group is asked to give the men check-ups and provide them with medical files, which she does. Another project is a school for deaf and blind children. Here, the group paints and repairs classrooms and a playground.

We're staying at the three-star Unawatuna Beach Resort, 10 minutes' drive south of Galle. Heather and Steve brief us over dinner at the resort on the first night, as they do each evening. Though you're encouraged to dine out or do whatever you else you wish, it seems that meeting the group for meals is important for staying up to date on the projects and working out who will be going where.

Demand for altruistic holidays

There was a time when a volunteering holiday was the domain of the most intrepid cultural tourists, from those who joined the Peace Corps to those who would seek out their own volunteer project in a remote corner of the world. But in the past decade, travel companies and charities have been catching on to the call for altruistic holiday experiences, facilitating such ventures to meet a growing and changing demand. "Voluntourism" is the new buzzword for it: they organise your transport, accommodation and, in some cases, the projects themselves.

However, what you put in - and get out - of your time there is still down to you. Among our less labour-intensive tasks are the visits to Gamini's home, where his daughter single-handedly runs after-school care. Visitors are encouraged to help out and pass on some English to the children who come from a displacement camp across the road, which sits alongside a mass of half-built houses.

The families at this camp are waiting for an Austrian charity that made the mistake of awarding a housing construction contract to someone who didn't see it through. The houses, numbering 158 according to Gamini, have not been built to spec, the walls wobble, and now they need to be dismantled and reconstructed. It's a story that illustrates the volatile nature of good intentions.

Many displaced people who have been relocated inland are unable to return to the coast where they lived before. The Sri Lankan government's Task Force to Rebuild the Nation (TAFREN) created 100-200 metre-wide buffer zones along the coast last year. It has been decided that buildings here with more than 40% damage cannot be rebuilt. So if a home was destroyed on this land, the occupant cannot return to rebuild.

A report published by Tourism Concern last year discussed the way the government was using post-tsunami reconstruction as an opportunity to redevelop the tourism industry while forgetting about everyday people's needs. The report suggests that that tourism development is being allowed in buffer zones, without community consultation.

'Don't expect to save the world'

This is among the challenges facing any new travel company that sets out to be ethical. And there are greater challenges for a volunteer travel company.

More than any other, it has to become enmeshed in its cultural surroundings and to understand what the needs of the community are.

In the initial night's briefing, we are advised: "Don't expect to save the world". And it seems that you'd need to go for longer than two weeks if you wanted to become involved in a larger-scale or longer-term project, or to really get to understand the local people and their situation.

But everyone on this trip is happy to make a difference if only a small one and by visiting at all, DTC reminds us that we are supporting the local economy. In addition, two of my travelling companions decide to buy gifts for people they meet. One local woman is trying to set up a cookery school and only has old pots without handles, so Susie, an Australian in the tour group, goes out to buy a shining new set of pots. Another visitor, Lorna from Ireland, buys musical instruments for the displacement school. "For the price of a night out we gave them something very valuable," she says.

In return, the humbling experiences you encounter make an inescapable difference to you. One of these occurs on my final night, during a conversation with the resort's resident dancer, Ranga. He lives in the staff quarters and sends wages back to his family who live a few hours' drive away.

On this evening, following his Michael Jackson/ hip-hop dance routine, he explains to me how the tsunami washed away the tools of his trade. He'd accumulated CDs, costumes, eight pairs of shoes, he tells me; now the only shoes he owns are those on his feet.

"But slowly, I build up," he says to me as he flicks through his mostly empty CD folder.

And his attitude to what happened in the past is even further removed from any semblance of self-pity: "Nature gives and nature takes away.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," he tells me. "I'm alive."

(Courtesy: Guardian Unlimited.)