As sea ails, it's sewing machines to the rescue

Women in a Sri Lankan village are given a leading role in an environmental project

A fact-finding journey across Sri Lanka these days might well be expected to take in the country's modernization and its port city construction, partly undertaken by Chinese engineers and workers.

However, the trip I made with other journalists in mid-March took us to very different kinds of places, and ones that were decidedly non-touristy, to see common village people whose lives are at the crossroads of history and modernity.