International Peace Day, 21st September

I'm sure you'll agree this could be a typical airport arrivals lounge almost anywhere. Sri Lanka on the other hand has been fighting a civil war for decades, and this shows as soon as you step outside the terminal to the pick up point. Alert, and toughened soldiers with all manner of weapons stood guard.

Our driver took us into Colombo on the main highway, I think we were stopped at over a dozen checkpoints before finally reaching Colombo city center. The chaos on the streets was at once exciting, and scary, poverty is rife, and life is cheap in Sri Lanka. Road fatalities don't seem to get much attention unless the army is required.

At our hotel the staff stayed indoors, rarely venturing outside, after all, the multitude of checkpoints in the street outside aren't there for fun, and those soldiers have been known to get frightened then shoot first.

We were warned about walking around Colombo, don't take photos of the port or the President's palace. Avoid the checkpoints, and don't smile at the soldiers, look down and walk past. Keep our passports in a front pocket, don't give them to anyone, if asked, open it and let them look, but don't let them take it off us.

These were the warnings of regular folk who work in a hotel, the advice they gave was the result of having to rescue many a foreigner who strayed too close to the visible signs that Sri Lanka is indeed in a state of war.

I asked a few of the people in the hotel what it's like to live in these conditions. Some have travelled abroad, to Australia, the UK, India, and they know life in Sri Lanka is not normal. Some wouldn't speak, others would speak only out of sight of the main doors, others purposely avoided eye contact while the soldiers were looking our way.

The following day we were picked up by a driver who took us to Kandy, stopping along the way to see a tea plantation, an elephant sanctuary, and finally the most amazingly beautiful buddhist temple I've ever seen in the very heart of Kandy.

Our driver confided that life isn't easy, that he and everyone he knows wishes the government would just go back to the negotiating table instead of trying to win a war against it's own people. I had expected hatred and anger towards the Tamils, in fact never once did I sense any discrimination, our driver was adamant, Tamils are their neighbors, many people intermarry, there is no problem with the Tamils.

I asked why the country was at war then, his answer was quite telling, Sri Lanka is a poor country, and when so many have nothing, it's easy to think others get more.

Not being an expert on Sri Lankan history I can't say, but I can say the constant army presence, and that of the not-so-secret police is a constant reminder that Sri Lanka is not a country at peace with itself.

This is precisely what I think Benjamin Franklin may have been meaning to say, a bad peace is every bit is bad as a good war, people still have to live a precarious and oftentimes very dangerous life, and the quality of life for a nation's citizens is poor compared to total peace.

We loved Sri Lanka, I'd love to return, but I'm ashamed to say I'm afraid. The people have made the best of a bad situation, they try to laugh and joke, but this is quickly stifled when the ever present security forces look your way.

The day we left Sri Lanka is a day I'll never forget, our hotel wakeup call was earlier than we'd planned, to the news that the Tamil Tigers had used light aircraft to bomb the airport. We were lucky, we were still safely tucked up in beds while this happened, many of the people on our flight weren't, they had been in the departure terminal when the attack happened.

Our hotel concierge and driver conferred for a while, it wasn't considered safe to stay at the hotel given it's proximity to the Presidential Palace and the port, instead the advice given to us was to attempt our trip to the airport, or failing that, to the British High Commission where we could at the very least be assured of emergency flights if the situation deteriorated.

Thankfully for us the raid was over, and we only had to endure checkpoints and passport inspections, but even that was frightening enough. Our driver and his assistant endured worse, frisking whilst up against the side of the mini-van, at one even having to remove a shirt under the barrel of a gun.

I hope the people of Sri Lanka eventually get to know the peace that we take for granted, and when that day comes I'd love to return to see more of their spectacular country. Until then I'll just try to do my bit for world peace by supporting International Peace Day. May I encourage all my readers to sign their name below as a mark of solidarity with people living in warzones. If you've written your own peace day post, please, add your blog url so the rest of us can read it as well. Peace.