Something Extra for Sri Lanka

My trip to Sri Lanka would not have been possible without the help of many colleagues, friends and relatives who sponsored me before I left the UK. You may remember to prove I was serious about the project I took a dip in the icy Forth Estuary near Edinburgh on New Year's Day.

The best thing about all the support people gave was that even after the expensive flights and injections, and various unexpected costs along the way, I had some sponsor money left to donate to one of our local charities.

While I have been busy working away with the rural women in Weeraketiya, Norny has been working equally hard in Tangalla. Her role is communications advisor and her local partner organization is a long-established charity working to improve the lives of disabled people. The organisation works across several Sri Lankan districts, and cares for 2,600 people with disabilities monthly.


They operate a holistic centre, providing people with physiotherapy, speech therapy, prosthetics and orthotics (false limbs and corrective devices) and many other services. As part of this work they have recently set up a training centre. This centre will allow them to look after the physical needs of their clients while providing them with life skills and livelihoods training. They will cover subjects like IT, handicrafts, English language and business and entrepreneurship.


The training centre is the first one in this whole region that offers accessible residential facilities, including a wheelchair ramp, an accessible toilet, and sleeping quarters for the students. This last part is essential in this area, as many of the clients will have to travel 40 or 50 km by public transport to get to their training, and could therefore struggle to attend a two-day course if they couldn't stay over. So once this facility is up and running, they will get some really great new educational opportunities.

Nearly Ready for the Clients




The charity’s staff have worked hard to complete the building and make it ready for the classes to start, but they have been struggling to find the funds to get the facility prepared with furniture and equipment.

That’s where my fundraising will come in. They have asked me to sponsor eight tables, twenty-six pillows, sixty pillow cases, a newspaper stand and (very important) mosquito nets to keep the bugs off at night. This furniture and equipment will bring them considerably closer to opening up the centre and starting residential courses there later this year.

In the meantime they have to make do with a much less accessible facility. I went there to chat to the teacher, and he introduced me to some of the students this equipment will help.

Suchendra and me in the current computer room.


Suchendra has been coming to the IT training since he finished school. He is in his early 20s but his education and independence has been hampered by his learning disability. His mother has given him so much support through his adolescence, but when his father died in the Tsunami it was a real toll on the family. By attending classes at the Navajeevana centre, he is doing something he really enjoys, and it also gives his mother a break from the full time job caring for him. Suchendra and the other students are really looking forward to using the new facility once it is up and running. So their thanks go out to all my supporters and sponsors around the world!

The outside of the new training centre, with some other UK volunteers digging the garden.

The accessibility ramp.

Inside the new centre.

The students enjoy their computer classes, and loads of other subjects.

Leaving the Island

Now we have arrived in India. It is a real thrill to visit a different country which also has a rich history and culture, intertwined with Sri Lanka's since ancient times. But SL was our home for six months, and we were really involved with the local community there.

I think we can continue to help them even though we've physically moved on, and what we learnt there will stay with us for a long time.

Through this blog I have shown some of the highlights, but there is so much more that I couldn't show. I'd better keep in practice with the camera for my return visit...

Ta-ta to our SL Family

Saying goodbye to our Sri Lankan family was really sad for us. They have looked after us brilliantly and helped us through the ups and downs of our time on the island.


Here is a group shot of them from earlier in the year:

Front row is me, Jayamali, Suresha and Ravindra (cousins) and Chandi.
Back row is Amma (Malani) and Thatha (Somasiri).


Here is everyone on our last evening (click to enlarge):


L-R: Athamma, Chamila, Somasiri, Chandi and Dimuthu, Jayamali, Norny, Olof, Amma and baby Usha, Ravindra.

And here are Ranil and Usha doing English practice...



So as we pulled off in a van from our jungle home on Thursday morning, I was sad but happy. Sad to say goodbye, but also glad to have spent six months with such good people.

Goodbyes and Lampries

Thursday morning we had to say goodbye to our Sri Lankan family. Although we were a bit daunted by the prospect of being in a busy local household when we arrived, we have thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Wickramasinghe family have been kind to us and put up with our strange foreign ways the whole time. We were very sad to leave them behind!

One of our last meals with them our host ma and pa made lampries, a Sri Lankan / Dutch invention. It is meat curry wrapped in a banana leaf packet and baked.

Here Amma and Thatha demonstrate the wrapping method:

Clean banana leaves from the garden,


.... heat them over the wood stove to soften,


.... cut to size,


... and put in the curry to wrap up.

Thanks to them we have been well fed and healthy throughout our time in SL.

And the lampries were delicious!

Last Day in the Sri Lankan Office

Last Wednesday was my last day at work here in Sri Lanka. My project was finished and it was my chance to say goodbye to the rural women and men who have worked with me this last six months.


I was really pleased to be able to hand over to them a new plan for the organisation, developed in close collaboration with the staff and director. It is not a big change in direction for them, but it clarifies and updates a lot of their work, and gives them a blueprint to build on their strengths in the future. The best aspect of the plan is that they were the creative force behind it, with me channelling their thoughts into a coherent whole. The whole thing is also available in English and Sinhala. This was no mean feat given the other pressures on Ranil, the only truly bilingual staff member.


Here I am, handing over the printed plan to Daya, the director.



They surprised me here in that although they worked over a large area, they did not have a good map of the surrounding roads, towns and villages. I made one myself and got it printed by a local sign maker, and they are going to hang it on the wall and mark their projects on it to show visitors.


A practical present for them:





I also worked with them to improve their other skills, including English language, IT and organisational development. I really think that I have struck the balance right between accepting their (very different) culture and also challenging them to use better ways of working from elsewhere.



Here is the group photo of us all outside the office. Front row, left to right: Fernando, Siri, Daya, Shriyalatha, Anusha, Gnana, back row: Pubudu, Ranil, Mr Dadallage, Ruwan, Ranjith, Ajith, another Ruwan, and me... (click to enlarge image).




My now-former colleagues were really kind to me on my last day, and said very generous things. Apart from the work, they also thanked me for taking part in their traditional ceremonies and also regularly sitting down to lunch with them and sharing my precious rice packet...


I was sad to say goodbye to some good friends, but I feel that my work has been accomplished and I really feel the organisation is in a stronger position than before I arrived.


Mission accomplished!

Parades and Axe-Weilding Toddlers

The most famous Perahera festival in Sri Lanka is the Kandy Esala in August which features a cast of hundreds, and attracts thousands of spectators. We won't be able to go to that one as we are leaving the island this month.

But don't feel too sorry for us, as it is perahera season, meaning everywhere you go you seem to see some kind of procession heading towards or away from a temple.

Weirdly, no-one ever seems to know these things are happening until they stumble across them. Presumably the participants know in advance though as they have to put on their crazy costumes.

Here are some photos from the rather cute Witharendeniya Perahera last month. This small town is half way between Tangalla and Weeraketiya and can't quite muster an elephant. But they did have some pint-sized drummers and a cave man. Raar!






The chief monk led the procession through the main street towards the temple, accompanied by what may be the chief parasol bearer.



Not quite the hot ticket of the season, more of a luke-warm one, it still attracted a few hand tractor trailers and three wheelers of eager spectators from the local villages.



This boy seemed to have attached an entire rose garden to his bicycle before joining the parade.




So, we won't be at the Kandy perahera, but who needs it when you can get so much entertainment from the back-country version?

Folk History at Koggala

Norny and I visited the Martin Wickramasinghe folk museum near Koggala recently. There is a really great collection of traditional crafts and Sri Lankan everyday items there, so definitely well worth a visit.

Here are a few examples:


This 50cm tall puppet, made for travelling shows, represents a king from the Kandyan era. The pale skin of hill country people is admired by other Sri Lankans, as are their hats.




These are ancient Sinhala texts written on ola leaves. Before paper was available in Sri Lanka, this was the only way for the people to record religious or historical documents. The leaf would be written on with a knife-like stylus, and the indentations filled with ink. Many examples have survived for hundreds of years.





A crab trap woven from reeds. Many traditional techniques are still in use in Sri Lankan fisheries, though plastics and fibreglass have made many traditional materials redundant.






These hand carved masks show what people thought of the British policemen who patrolled Sri Lanka during the colonial era. Clearly they couldn't take the sun...




And this is a devil mask, crowned with cobras. In some parts of Sri Lanka the masked "devil dance" is still performed to ward off evil spirits and treat people with mental health problems.

Things I didn't know about the Sri Lanka Tsunami

Those of you who have been paying close attention to my blog may have noticed that I haven't written that much about the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Though the programme that brought me here is for Tsunami-related projects, I felt that there was so much that had already been said about the events of Boxing Day 2004, and it was probably best not to dwell on disaster.

However, some things I have heard since I've been here have really surprised me, and challenged what I thought I knew about that day, so in this post I recount some of the things I have learnt:


1. The damage depended a lot on local geography. Even within Tangalla, there was a huge variation in the destruction depending on the local landscape. The beach nearest us (ten minutes walk) was completely inundated, damaging hotels, guest houses and residences. However, because of a steep bank, the water did not hit houses just 20m from the beach. On the other side of Tangalla, the flat landscape meant the water travelled a long distance inland, damaging houses and farmland 100 metres from the beach.

2. While we were watching events unfold on television from thousands of miles away in the UK, people here had no idea what was happening. The phones and electricity went down when the wave hit so people could not watch the news or contact loved ones. The coastal roads were damaged or blocked so it was very difficult to travel to help friends or family. Very few people actually saw the Tsunami waves, and survived to recount what they saw. Most only saw the destruction some time afterwards. A local friend commented that their first visual impression was the unexplained black mud all over the beachside area.

3. I now know some of the noble things people did in the immediate aftermath. Our host family took in friends and family and supplied neighbours with food and clean water. One family member travelled in to Galle to help his fiancee, who was still stuck on the roof of her college when he waded through the water to get her. Ex-pat residents and foreign donors did an enormous amount to help the local community, including building and equipping an excellent new hospital in Tangalla, constructing a special school near Dickwella, and supplying the fishing community with new boats and equipment.

Fishing boats in Hambantota harbour on Sri Lanka's south coast. The fishing industry has largely recovered, partly as a result of assistance from foreign donors.














4. In the years since 2004, a mind-boggling amount of foreign money has flowed into the affected area. This caused a major shock to the local economy in Tangalla, some positive, some negative. As happens in any such situation, certain people were better at securing help than others who perhaps had greater needs. People talk about the "golden wave" that came after the Tsunami, which some people took advantage of to enrich themselves at the expense of more needy people.

5. Much more deadly things have happened in Sri Lanka without foreigners really hearing about it. The civil war in the North and uprisings in the South of Sri Lanka have led to the deaths or displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the last 25 years.

6. The 2004 tsunami was a very rare event. It sounds obvious, but before I came I was a little afraid that great waves were a regular occurrence in Sri Lanka and there might be another one while we were here. However, the earthquake that caused the 2004 tsunami was one of the largest since records began. Sri Lanka is not in an earthquake zone and coastal communities worldwide are also vulnerable to such a disaster.


So, these are just some of the things that I have learnt and that have surprised me about the Tsunami of 2004 - perhaps they will be surprising to people back home too.

A broken fishing boat still stands on the Palikuduwa beach near our house in Tangalla as a reminder of the Tsunami. In the main, the restaurants have now been rebuilt and the greenery has grown back, but the stories remain a powerful part of the local culture.