Sri Lanka is a very beautiful country. We discovered this as we whizzed past it in a hired minivan.
We arrived in Colombo from Vietnam, ready for our month of volunteering at Yogaswami Hindu Girls Home in Baticaloa, on the East coast of the country. We were met by Thivaa and his work collegue who had the van ready and waiting to drive us the 8 hours to our destination. Tired, hot and smelly we were chaufered from coconut stall to coconut stall, to various food outlets and cash points until we arrived at the home. And there we have stayed ever since.
We are the only white people ever to have visited Sri Lanka, or so it seems when we occasionally make a break for it to buy water from the local shop. People literally get out of their cars, off their tractors, tuk tuks or bicycles to stare at us. Mad people gravitate towards us and children either laugh hysterically or breakdown in tears at the mere sight of my face. The children at the home, after two weeks still haven't got bored of touching my hair and playing their favourite game, 'stop the blood flow from Roo and Emma's hands' (they like to see the pink colour drain away and then rush back- hours of fun!) They constantly touch our faces, stroke our arms and legs and examine our hands closely. More than once I have awoken to the sight of dozens of little faces watching me sleep. Emma, blessed with dark hair, brown eyes and stunted growth, blends in and lucky for her doesn't get treated so much like an alien invader.
A Sri Lankan custom seems to be to force food on visitors until they vomit. Luckily we both like rice and curry, as this is the staple diet of all Sri Lankans, 3 times a day, everyday, but sometimes they order in food from elsewhere. For breakfast we have experienced raw onion and whole green chillis with rice, what seems to be crumble topping-dry and uncooked, thick pancakes made without eggs, curried chick peas, sour rice pudding and a banana sandwich. Kamala, the 'cooking mother,' is a fifty odd year old lady with arms like a WWF wrestler and a penchant for having her photo taken! On average she cooks 12 kilos of rice and 4 different curries everyday on wood fires. She scrapes 6 coconuts, chops 50 chillies, 10 beet roots, 15 carrots and 20 onions, feeding 33 children, 4 staff, us and some waifs and strays who wander in.
Embarrassingly we are treated like royalty. No matter how much we protest, or how green we look from over eating, our pleas for less food fall on deaf ears. We have taken to hiding leftover food in the kitchen for the children, who have obviously been told not to take food off us. We're all too scared of Kavita, the warden, to do this in public. Everyone here is amazed that we know how sweep and chop vegetables, apparently white people have servants to do these things for them! The fact that we have eaten rice and curry before, let alone cooked it, was just too much for them to take. We still aren't allowed to wash our own plates, put up our own mosquito nets, clean the floor, carry our own chair or cook anything- including make a cup of tea.
The children here are all lovely. They work their little socks off (if they wore any) and get up at 4am to do prayers. They go to school at 7am, return at 2pm, have lunch then go to after school classes. They have 1 hour in the afternoon to play and then it's prayers, more study, dinner and revision. For us, this timetable is impossible and despite our best efforts we can't get up until at least 7am! That doesn't mean that we sleep however, as the lights are on, people are talking and the warden is shouting from 4am! There is no sense of personal space here, children wake each other up with a slap to the face. However, If one child is given four peanuts, she'll give three away. She will break her chocolate biscuit in half without being asked if there aren't enough to go around. What a difference to kids in England.
The children here age between 6 and 19 and live here because they either have no parents or their parents cannot afford to look after them. The stories of some of the children are appalling; fathers and brothers killed in war, mothers forced to go abroad to find work, some children have siblings with them in the home and some children have no one at all, except each other. Remarkably they are, for the most part, very happy, chatty, confident kids with a real keenness to learn. They are healthy, safe and in a place where they are encouraged to learn and achieve. They all want to come to live in England for a better life but are children in England with their play stations happier than these kids? Here, doing handstands against the wall, putting on a silly voice and making a farting noise has them rolling on the floor in fits of hysterics. A trip to the beach is so exciting, collecting shells can last for 3 hours and Chopping vegetables is done with enthusiasm.
Hello - just emma. There are more than one or two characters here that deserve a mention and we wish we could bore you more with tales of them all, but we can't let you go without mentioning Usher. She is the most intense 6 year old we have ever met. She looks about 4 and wears dresses at least three times her size. She is however hilarious and despite being the baby of the gang, she holds her own against them all. Her sole purpose in life is to get roo and I to count to 10 in Tamil. We exasperate her with our ineptitude and she pulls a face mixed with despair, constipation, constenation and disbelief which has to be seen to be believed. Then there is 17 year old Yali, who, at almost 5.3 towers over the rest of the children here. She is also the class clown and can always be relied upon for silly face or ridiculous noise at moments of stress (usually involving shouting wardens). She's also devoted to Roo and has spent too many hours laying at her feet in floods of tears at our imminent departure... in 3 weeks time. A lot of the girls look a bit like boys here, except for their dresses. One little 11 year old, Kamalese, is a whizz at sport and follows Roo around with a ball, in the hope of a quick game of footie, after Roo taught her how to kick properly. Individual attention from adults is understandably hard to come by in an orphanage of 33 girls and 3 adults, so we have spent our time trying to povide a little bit of 1:1 time where we can, but it all seems a bit meagre.
Anyway I'm sure we will go on more about this rather special place, but thats all for now!
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