Food Shopping in Tangalla

Here are some photos of Tangalla pola - market place - and nearby shops. It gives an idea of some typical sights around Tangalla, and the kind of people that inhabit a southern Sri Lankan town.

Tangalla Market

Fruit and veg stalls, including pineapple, papaya, coconuts, avacados, potatoes, beans, carrots, gourds and chillies. Our part of Sri Lanka is very fertile, so getting good quality fruit is no problem.


























































Some examples of preserved fish, including maldivan dried fish and dried prawns. Most of these have a very strong taste and a very strong smell.























Pulses like chick peas and lentils are important ingredients in Sri Lanka - lots of people have lentil dal for breakfast.























Tobacco and betel leaves that the country people like to chew with betel nuts. It gives them a mild high and a distinctive red mouth.























Around Tangalla Town

This old fellow is looking after a delivery of bananas and other fruits.

















Fresh, or not so fresh, fish for sale by the bus stand. The newspaper is a vain attempt to keep the flies off.























This is a typical shop in the town, selling sachets of shampoo and soap, and brightly coloured boxes of cakes.


















This repair shop in the Muslim area of Tangalla does a bit of everything!

A turtle’s life in a day...

With a huge effort the turtle drags herself up the beach. Her flippers are designed for swift movement under water, so shifting her huge body weight 20 metres up the sand is not easy. Any distraction – a barking dog, and obstructing branch – and she will give up and return to the sea. In the moonlight on Rekawa beach near Tangalla, the green turtle is completing a lifelong mission to lay her eggs. Norny and I and some of the other CWW volunteers were lucky enough to witness it.















Once the female turtle is at the top of the beach, she completes the laborious process of digging an egg pit, lay around 100 eggs, and covering them with sand. Our guide tells us that while she lays we can get close as she will be in a kind of trance. Not surprising given the number of eggs she has to lay in just 30 minutes. We get close enough to touch her shell and even feel the eggs, while by torchlight the staff measure her shell and look for distinctive markings.

































The Rekawa Turtle Conservation Project uses local staff and volunteers to close off a stretch of beach, and guard the laying turtles and their eggs from wild predators and humans alike. While turtle eggs don’t often arrive on the breakfast table back in the UK, in Sri Lanka eating them used to be quite common – particularly as many of the turtle species were much more abundant in the recent past. Although it is now illegal, human consumption of these eggs may be a reason why all five of the species of turtle that occur in the waters around Sri Lanka are endangered.
















After burying her precious offspring in the sand, our green turtle turns back down to the sea, the whole process taking more than two hours. Turtles will travel many thousands of miles to complete this laying process, and they usually return to the beach where they themselves hatched, but once she returns to the water her parental duty is over. That is why the eggs need guarding, like at Rekawa, or alternatively protected hatching and some hand rearing.



At Koggala Turtle Hatchery we saw the alternative model of care for the offspring. Here they pay locals to collect the eggs, and bury them in an enclosed sand pit. After approximately 65 days, incubated only by the warmth of the sun, the eggs hatch out and the keepers transfer the baby turtles to a tank for a few days, to build up some strength. This also gave Norny and I a great opportunity to take a look at the baby turtles and also some older ones that they have at the project for educational purposes.


























Norny held a three day old green turtle.


















This loggerhead was around four years old.





















We also had the chance while we were there to release some into the sea. Setting the ten olive ridleys on the beach we couldn’t help wondering how many would survive the short journey into the open ocean, dodging hungry tuna fish and wriggling through fishing nets. Would any of “our” turtles live long enough to reach full size and to struggle up the beach to lay their eggs? At least with these two conservation projects they stand a slightly better chance.

Education, Education, Education

Something that has struck many visitors to Sri Lanka is the importance the people here place on education. For a developing or middle income country, it has a very high literacy rate and the vast majority of children finish school. Academic and vocational education is seen as the quickest route to success in Sri Lankan society.

It is quite striking that the pupils are always immaculately presented in their white uniforms, no matter how rural their home or route to school is.

































Also, the infrastructure is very simple, and classrooms can be outdated with a lack of suitable equipment.


Good teachers can make up for the poor environment and this sari-clad Miss recently won a prize from our organisation for her dedication in teaching technical education in a rural town. My NGO also provides accredited vocational training to young people in the Weeraketiya area, so they can find jobs in TV and Radio repair, or go on to further study. Because of high levels of youth unemployment in our area, the pupils are also in competition with each other for training places and jobs.



















If you have the money here you can supplement your schooling with night classes and tuition. There is fierce competition between private teachers who can make a good living providing cramming sessions to huge groups of students.

In order to attract the business the teachers put up garish posters all around the town. It might look like an advert for a club night or rock concert, but in fact this poster is advertising Mr Wijaya and Mr Janaka's Pure and Applied Maths Class!
















So, Sri Lanka's social and educational programmes have given a whole generation opportunities in eduction. Whether they are able to use these will depend on how the country develops and grows over the next few years.