Happy Sri Lankan New Year!

Sri Lanka is a lucky country in that it celebrates New Year twice a year! Once on January the 1st and again at the Tamil and Sinhala New Year in April. This is a big celebration for people here, and is reminiscent of Christmas back home, with lots of visiting relatives, buying presents and for many people, sitting around watching TV.


Before we finished work for the holiday, all the staff gathered round to swap some presents and also to each give our thoughts on the year past. As I was about to get half way through my time here in Sri Lanka I felt it was a good opportunity to thank the staff for their hospitality towards me, and also encourage them to continue helping me with my project! It has now reached the stage where we have spent a considerable amount of effort looking at the organisation's different strengths and weaknesses, and also agreed some changes to their mision. Now we have to just get on and do all the improvement work people suggested!


To kick things off I have made a large colour map of the working area that we can print and stick on the wall. Hopefully this will allow the staff and visitors to get a better overview of where we are working. Sri Lanka's Hambantota District is very large and has many remote villages only reachable by dirt road. Many of the staff know the area very well but are not used to using maps for either work planning or for navigation.


I have been trying to keep my work here simple, which is essential in order to be properly translated and understood. It is also a good discipline to strip away some of the jargon and over-complication that people often use in the workplace back home. The downside is that it is hard to develop ideas creatively with others when you have to keep looking up words in the dictionary! However, when you do manage to get some ideas together it is really satisfying.

At new year the staff clubbed together to get the Director some new plates and cups.















Traditional new year presents include clothes and housewares such as cooking pots. Local potters were happy to supply these and filled the streets of Tangalla with their clay cooking pots.






































































The new year food is also special, and our family prepared an array of sweet cakes, biscuits, cookies and bananas.


























Fireworks are also traditional, and here Chandi is lighting some particularly spectacular "indoor" catherine wheels.