We’ve been tracking the progress of the cargo we sent to Sri Lanka as part of the local tsunami appeal. Eight containers left here on January 11^th, the shipping donated. The trip took longer than anybody expected because (understandably) any time spent in ports-of-call was kept short, or given “low priority status” to keep costs down. The ship eventually arrived into Sri Lankan waters last week, but was again left to wait offshore because of its low priority status. It was given a time to dock on Thursday of last week, but because it was a public holiday there wasn’t anybody to unload. It finally docked late on Friday and the port authorities went onboard. Unbelievably, (or am I being naïve?) they found a stash of weapons. Somebody, somewhere, presumably in one of the ports-of-call, had added a consignment of arms for the Tamil Tigers. Obviously nothing is going to be unloaded now until every container has been searched by hand.

I don’t think for one minute that this is a unique case. I wonder just how much the ensuing chaos of the tsunami has been taken advantage of.