This group of aged but well-maintained bungalows on a prime site in central Colombo used to be called with old-fashioned bluntness the

This group of aged but well-maintained bungalows on a prime site in central Colombo used to be called, with old-fashioned bluntness, the Hostel for Cripples. Amputees having peg legs fitted in the public hospital could rest in the dormitories here before and after their fittings. The hostel was run by the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society (Fins), a charity established in 1831.
But then, in 1985, the Sri Lankan civil war, simmering for years, erupted in a series of appalling massacres, and battles between Tamil insurgents and the Sri Lankan armed forces across much of the northern and eastern parts of the island, claimed by the Tamil Tigers as their “homeland”. Suddenly, the Hostel for Cripples found itself flooded by amputees from the war zone – victims of bombs and mines, whose needs far outstripped what the state could provide.With remarkable enterprise and dispatch, the old hostel turned itself into a full-service limb replacement centre for those in need, whether war victims or not. Since 1985 it has provided men, women and children with about 10,000 artificial limbs.

More than one-third of these clients lost limbs to “civil commotion” – land mines hidden in paddy fields and the like. Sri Lanka’s mayhem continues, and so does the flood of war-wounded. In 1999, the centre dealt with 385 civil commotion cases, and another 101 “gangrenous wounds” cases that were also often the result of war.In 1998, Bob Parsons, the Englishman behind Hope for Children, the charity that The Independent has chosen as the recipient of this year’s Christmas appeal, visited the Colombo centre and learnt that Fins was struggling to find funds for limbs for poorer children Such limbs are a daunting expense. A plastic leg produced here, with what is called a Jaipur foot, costs about 5,000 rupees (£70), two months’ earnings for a poor man; an imported artificial arm costs twice that.And the limb needs to be replaced about once a year until the child stops growing.

Addthe costs of the parents taking time off work and travelling to and from Colombo, and for many poor families it is too much to pay.Arriving at the Fins centre, one is braced for a disturbing experience. Then the first person one sets eyes on is Neranjala, aged nine, a pretty girl with one leg, sitting on a bench waiting for her new replacement to be fitted.If you lose a leg as an adult it must take years to adjust to the fact. But children are fabulously adaptable and Neranjala seems not in the least bothered – far less so than visitors such as us It happened five years ago, she explains, when she was four. She was out in the chilli fields in her parents’ smallholding in North Central Province. They were all in a hut at the side of the field, and she was fast asleep. There was talk locally of a wild elephant on the rampage: her parents were guarding their fields. Her father had his rifle at the ready to frighten away the animal, but suddenly the elephant was upon them, smashing the hut and flattening her leg.She has made the long journey to Colombo by bus with her mother.