4 on an elephant

Not much more to say:

Perahera Crazy

Wed 29th July

Incredible. Tonight we saw the Kandy “Esala Perahera“. Its billed as one of the greatest spectacles in Asia, and it lived up to it, even though we saw one of the earlier of the 10 nights, and the each night is meant to build in spectacle to a climax next week. Still, a parade of two hours of about 50 elephants and thousands of dancers and drummers all illuminated by fire was just fine for us!

To start with, there was an amazing buzz in the town. Although the parade did not start until about 8pm, local people crowded the streets from around 3pm, reserving their spaces.

Fortunately, we had our position sorted well in advance. Some tourists had to sit in their seats for hours before the parade, while the locals crowded below

But we were able to see the whole thing from the balcony of our hotel room. In the picture below, our room is in the centre - C and S are just peeping over the balcony.

The Kandy temple is lit up brightly for the event, and I sneaked up onto the hill behind some of the preparations and took this view of an elephant with the temple behind, waiting to take part in the Perahera.

Later, a platform would be fitted to him, and then lights and robes also attached.

The parade itself eventually started with a line of men extravagantly cracking whips so loudly they sounded like firecrackers, followed by a troup of fire dancers. See the fire dancers (and hear J’s excited voice in the background - he made it through an hour and half and loved it):

From then on the dancers and elephants just kept coming:

The point of the whole thing is to parade one of the Buddha’s teeth, which is kept in the Temple of Tooth in Kandy. In fact, only a replica dentine cannister is used, and there seemed to be 6 or 7 elephants carrying caskets which could have contained a tooth, or fake tooth. Here are some dancers and one of those elephants, which would give you more of a flavour of it all (excuse the sideways camerawork):

Lonely Hotel

Tues 28th July

I’m writing this back in the restaurant where we saw the elephants a few weeks ago. It is about 9pm and I am in the restaurant area in the open air. The moon, although less than half full, is bright in the sky free of light pollution. Below me I can hear the sound of the river where the elephants come to bathe twice a day, watched by a at least a hundred or so tourists each time.

When the elephants are not around the river is beautifully peaceful, except when as we saw this afternoon it used by local people to bathe and wash their clothes (they are clearly not too concerned by the recent mass elephant droppings or the fact that this is a wide river, clearly having passed through many other villages, if not chemical plants, on its way to this point).

Our room has two large double beds and is reached through many staircases passing through spacious areas of the hotel (attached to the restaurant) which have the potential to serve as conference and function space, as well as a couple of floors of rooms.

But it’s a bit weird. We are the only people here. The staff seem as surprised to actually have guests as we are to be alone here. They hover around offering help, but although they are well meaning, they have limited resources available. It took three men about 20 minutes to serve their only conscious guest a beer just now. Another young guy spent about half an hour trying to fix our satellite TV without success.

But its worth it for some peace after Colombo, and because I know in the morning J will see Jack the elephant (and his friends Jack & Jack etc) again, hopefully with the same wide eyed excitement as last time.

I’m not sure why such a great spot is so empty, but I think its mainly because the manager has not managed to get on the standard tourist itinerary sold by the agents here. Most people arrive in the morning and then push on to Kandy or elsewhere, following an demanding schedule under which they must see all the major sites in the country within 3 or 4 days. We’re lucky to be able to take a bit more time, as to be governed by the needs of small people means not just that you can only travel shor distances in one go, but also that you can stop and savour a bit more, even if there is noone else around to savour it with.

Our friends… ?

Interesting interview with a schoolgirl about her photos today. Turns out that outside school she has been on a nursing course, which she will finish before she finishes her O Levels at the end of this year. She said that she will then be qualified to work in a government hospital. This is the first child at the school I have met who has actually arranged a career for herself, impressive at 16. But this does not necessarily mean that she will leave the fishing village. She says that she loves it there and wants to stay.

Later we went down to the beach to see Roshan, the boy who J played with J during the beach cricket match last month, and his mother Roshini. I ran into Roshini in the street outside the school earlier, and promised we would come down.

Its great to be so familiar with a group in the village now. We chatted with Udaya and his wife and his mother, saw Kishmi, and saw Roshini hurriedly finish preparing food for her husband to take fishing overnight. The boats (including the Boat that Della funded) launched for the night in pretty precarious fashion.

NB - for more footage of the boats launching, plus other great vids, see the FODAD blog:
http://wwwfriendsofdellaanddon.blogspot.com/2009/07/time-to-reflect.html

Are these people our friends? On one level, it’s a straightforward yes. People like Roshini and Udaya’s wife exude warmth and have invited us into their houses and lives very willingly. Its easy to joke with Udaya, and he’s so keen to help.

But this is of course a far from equal relationship. They need help and we have a lot of money (to them). Della has been generous over the years, helping to support many of the villagers. I am Della’s sister, and that is why we are here. Udaya is about to further consolidate his position as head of the village as a Friend of Della and Don funds new “pulling” nets for the whole village, that he will manage.

But however unequal, there is a real relationship here, and it is something that I value most from this trip. We have been putting faces and lives to the faceless sea of life in the third world, to people who suffered heavily in the tsunami and before, and who have to deal with all the problems of poverty the world over, but who are helping themselves and for whom we are contributing something that hopefully will make a real difference.

Finally, children of course create their own relationships free of all this baggage. J and Roshan seemed to have developed a rather odd one today, with Roshan repeatedly presenting his bottom to J for J to hit with a cricket bat. Won’t even start to try and analyse that one…

Random Festival

We took a taxi this morning through a mostly closed Colombo to a department store where they had what is probably one of the few soft play areas in Sri Lanka, in which we could leave Jacob to play while we bought a few bits and pieces for people at home.

On the way, one side street was packed with people celebrating a Hindu festival. We haven't seen many Hindu temples here, although there are a one or two which the Buddhists attend as well. There was even one just next to the venerated Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, which quite a few Buddhist pilgrims also seemed to pop into after seeing the tooth relic. Buddhists seem happy to access spirituality through other people's styles of worship also - something that sounds quite healthy for multicultuarism in a Buddhist country like this, at least in theory...

Anyway, it was the full experience, with face-pierced celebrants, and lines of men and women pulling extravagantly painted floats depicting a variety of gods. I'm not sure what this young lad thought of his role in the whole thing:

But we couldn't stay long enough to find out any more, as of course all of this was no competition as far as J was concerned compared with the prospect of a small windowless area in a shop covered with coloured plastic mats, a "ball pool" of small plastic balls, and a medium sized indoor coloured slide.

Nice dress

Went over to Udaya's for lunch today with the kids. As mentioned on previous posts, Udaya is the main local fisherman who has been helping Della with the project over the past couple of years.


Although he prefers to spend time by the beach, his real home is the block that 192 families that lived by the beach have now been rehoused in. These men are fishermen, but now live at least a 5 or 6 kilometres from their livelihood, further inland. Udaya's wife is deaf and dumb, but still managed to communicate with us and cooked great food. His only daughter Kishmi (aged 8), is v cute.


Anyway, as usual, S was the main attraction, being doted over all afternoon by Udaya's extended family. See her dressed below in Kishmi's 1st birthday dress, with Udaya's neice in the middle and Kishmi on the right:

Teletubbies Everywhere

Never one to shirk on spreading the good works of my employer, I stopped by the nursery we are helping here yesterday to distribute some books and also some BBC Worldwide kids magazines that had been donated by my colleagues.


Check out the unbridled joy on these childrens faces on their first introduction to educational magazines/ character merchandising based on four colourful characters that currently have no television platform in Sri Lanka, unless you have the satellite coverage from India that these kids definately can't afford.


Seriously, they really seemed to love them, and the stickers that came free with the magazines will go down well in any language.

Fame at last

Popped down to the test match on Thursday. Sri Lanka v Pakistan - 4th day. Not the most exciting afternoon of cricket and it was hardly full, but C appreciated the chilled atmosphere, J had some space to run around, and we sat in seats that only cost 80p.

More to the point, we were on TV! The camera lingered on the whole family (it was right in our faces) and apparently Sophie was a natural, acting just like she did not even know she was on television. Amazing for one so young. We learned all this from our friend Jonty watching the match in Northern India.

At stumps for the day we popped down to the Galle Face Hotel for a sandwich and a sundowner. The hotel seemed to have more of an atmosphere of the troubled country that this is. The view one way was of the sunset (and me and S),

and the other way was towards the swimming pool, with an unfinished building behind it, on top of which was a fairly prominent machine gun encampment. You can just about see it below:

My name is Wesli and I want to be an artist

I think that the most intesting project I have started since I have been here is to give some of the children cameras, ask them to take photos of thieir lives, and then talk about the photos to me.

It is a real way of getting an insight into the children's lives. Most strikingly, its very rare for a child to be living with both of his parents. Some have died, others work abroad. One girl's mother and father had worked in Dubai since she was six months old, and she only saw them once a year.

Then there is the standard question, "What do you want to to do when you leave school?" The most common answer amongst the boys is that they want to join the army. This is probably partly a route to a career for poor children the world over, but in Sri Lanka it is primarily the result of the fact that this has been a country at war for 30 years. The army, particularly in the last few years and the final months of the war, are promoted as heros to most people. Posters like this of smiling soldiers with machine guns are common all over the place, including in people's houses and taxis:

That is what made Wesli stand out. He is a softly spoken boy of 13 who lived with his mother and whose sister had been given to a hostel when she was very young as his mother could not afford to look after her. He saw her twice a year. He told me he wanted to be an artist. You could see from some of his photos that he had a real eye. Here he is with one of his paintings,, which he brought in to show me yesterday.

Bad Education

Some thoughts based on the school that we have been working with.

The poorest always lose out. Just like anywhere, if you are working with children from families with the sort of problems that serious poverty brings, there are real challenges. Also, the poorest rarely have access to the resources that the rich can access. Three examples from this week so far:

1. On Monday I went into the school to find that not only had they been burgled last week (no insurance), but that they had no water supply as their water tank was leaking and they had no money to fix it, and apparently the government would be unlikely to cough up for months, if at all.

We could fund fixing this for what turned out to be less than a tenner, and it was done on Tuesday afternoon.

2. Then yesterday I dropped in at the school to see a separate lesson in the afternoon taking place in a separate building just opposite the school (school finishes at 1pm here). These were free English lessons given by local church members, to local children. They seemed really well organised and the children were really engaged.

But there was only one child from the school there, all the others were from other schools. in our small fishing village (just a few yards from the school), it is likely many of the children or childrens parents are not so interested. But could it be that the children are not made to feel welcome? Surely not the latter, as the school principal's elderly mother was one of the teachers at this class, but...

3. Next to the room with the lessons is a well organised library. This was funded by the Friends of Della and Don for the school children, and is staffed by a volunteer librarian, also from the church. But the library is only open outside of school hours, apparently because when children from the school were lent books, some did not bring them back. So a resource intended for the whole school was effectively closed to the school because of a few bad apples.

The principal and I persuaded the librarian this morning to give the school another chance, and open the library during school hours once a week for the children that the books were intended to help.

We're doing some real good here, but every day I learn a little more about the background and motivations of the people involved.

Beach Life

A few things to do on the beach in Colombo, all of which I saw today.

In the morning, there is some kids boxing practice. As you can see, its tough stuff, no head guards for the kids, and they were really going for it:

Or you could get married on the beach in front of the Mount Lavinia Hotel. If you do you will probably need an elephant to arrive on. Here is one strolling down the beach into position for a wedding this afternoon:

And of course there is cricket. Yet another picture of J playing. Here's Papa bowling to J in his latest innings:

Finally, C and I sneaked out while her parents babysat for a candlelit dinner on the beach, just 10 mins from our apartment. The table was perched way out onto the sand. I picked out a pretty good fish for grilling, although I've no idea what it was called.

Cool Colombo?

Thurs July 16th

Hardly anyone at the school this morning as they all got back around midnight from the trip yesterday. C and I went in and spent about an hour with the few kids that were there playing word games.

So we spent the day in Colombo with Steve and Val checking out the small block that houses the few attractive places to hang out in what generally a mess of a city.


Here are Sophie and I asking directions just off the main “Galle Road”




And Sophie hanging out in the soft toy section of “Barefoot”, a rather nice shop and café.

We then cruised over to the Gallery Cafe, housed in the architect Geoffrey Bawa’s former offices. Probably the coolest building I’ve seen in the city.

And finally, the Cricket Club Café, where I caught some of the test match at Lords, while confirming just how far we are away from home.

Sleeping through dinner

Wednesday 15th July


No school today, they are on a trip to some historical sites in the north. But we learned that the school suffered a break-in overnight and lost their (non-functioning) computer, a DVD player, the mike and amp used in the sports day, and some money collected from the kids for the trip. The money was in particular drawer - the robbery was clearly an inside job and all the sadder for it.


It was also Della, Don, Steve and Gav’s last day here. J spent about 5 hours in the pool at the hotel in honour of this fact, then collapsed during an early dinner at the hotel with everyone. But the restaurant staff were not phased, the simply made a bed out of two large chairs for J - v comfy:

Help to Grow

14 July

Before the sports day I went with D&D on an interesting trip to meet some children that the charity sponsors this morning. It is managed through an existing church organization which is very well organized, and appears to assess the claims of needy children and their families carefully before giving them support to help with their education, and in some cases, their health.

A great example is Merrenage Fernando, a boy who could not afford the drugs to help wih his growth hormone deficiency, but which was funded through the Friends of Della and Don along with a contribution to his education. Check out these photos of how he was a few years ago, and then the photo of him today. He no longer needs the drugs and has just got 7 As and a B in his O Levels.

Lime and Spoon Race anyone?

Today we were at the school for a “sports day” that Steve and Gavin had very ably organized.
The hot, rainy muggy conditions proved challenging for visitors, but the school children, divided into teams of mixed ages, just could not stop running. Here's Don with his team:

There were some tried and tested European style games, which of course we participated in, such as the sack race,

And the 3 legged race. Here's Della in action:

We quickly discovered that the cliché that the difference in height affects performance in this race held true in our case:

More unusual games (apparently more common locally) included, the “Lime and Spoon Race”:

And of course the “dancing with a balloon between you” game. As you can briefly see below, Della and Don particularly excelled at this one, despite blatantly breaking the rules by touching the balloon.

Finally, Della continued with her regal duties (this time adorned in a tiara given by Steve), by handing out prizes to the winning team and clothes to all the children which had been donated to the charity by well wishers in the UK and US.

Monday 14th July

Back at the school today. We taught a couple of lessons to groups of 15-17 and 12-13 year olds.

J loved every second, participating in the songs and games that we set up. Perhaps he is missing the structure of an institution, and he also gets a chance to show off his knowledge. His English is better than most of the school children's, which is great for his confidence.

Here he is with the younger class and their teacher for the morning:

J was also very excited to see C's parents, who arrived today in Mount Lavinia and will be staying for another week, after a whistlestop tour of some of the rest of the country.

Milking The Crowd

Couldn’t resist another post from the elephant orphanage. This is a baby elephant, just after having been fed with a bottle, milking the attention of the assembled tourists.

There are plenty more photos of the trip which did not make it onto the blog at http://www.flickr.com/photos/saulvenit/

Saul meets bloodsuckers - 12th July

Up in the hills for a couple of days - and we can breathe! The humidity in Colombo is really oppressive, and we spend quite a lot of time hiding in air conditioning or by the pool.


Up here, its more like an English summer's day, quite warm but you can actually sit outside for more than 10 mintures without feeling uncomfortable. And the swimming pool was not so warm as to feel like a bath, so I had a real swim for once.


We're at the Hunas Falls hotel, right next to a waterfall, with a dramatic view for miles across the hills. J had a couple of good draughts sessions on the balcony - and later we cllimbed the large hill to the right in this picture.

J was an intrepid climber...

...but complained a couple of times about black worms trying to creep into his shoes. Turns out he was right to be concerned. When I got back I realised that the black worms that J had shaken off were leeches, and I had one attached to each of my legs. They washed off with a bit of soap and water, and the holes bled for a while, but the strangest thing to me as a leech novice was that at no point did the wounds hurt at all. Maybe being bled by leeches was not that bad after all.

S was also pretty intrepid - see her as a small dot on my back having hiked up to one of the waterfalls.

Who needs computers?

Loved Kandy. They have a temple dedicated to the Buddha's tooth and hundreds of fruit bats hanging on the trees just outside our hotel (J v excited about the latter and a bit non-plussed by the former).

And we'll be back in a couple of weeks for the biggest festival in Sri Lanka.

Maybe I should think of moving here. They certainly have a distinctly more traditional aspect to legal practice. Quite fancy this office opposite the temple which houses several "attorneys at law":

I had a peek through the door and its there was just a pile of dusty files and an old fashioned typewriter. Forget those e-mails...

Boy meets elephant - 9 July

J made friends with an elephant or two today.

In fact there were a hundred or so around at the “elephant orphanage“ , all of which he decided to name “Jack”.

Three Jacks came to say hello in particular, and J fed them giant “olives” that were growing around the café in which we were sitting.

All a little nerve wracking - those trunks are strong, and we moved away when a mother an her one month old baby came closer.

A cliché I know, but it can so much more fun looking at world through the eyes of a 4 year old. Even a fairly tacky tourist “cultural dance” in Kandy where we sat amongst white faces than we have seen since we got here, is imbued with a new sense of wonder when the dancers with masks are like real monsters to J, or you have never seen the fire walkers before.

Then to our distinctly “old school” hotel, complete with wood paneled billiards room. And we had to teach J how to use a 1970s phone.

Monkeying around in class

We went down to the school today to teach our first proper English lesson.



But before we could get started the so-called English teacher dashed off on his moped for a couple of minutes and arrived back with a monkey, which he tied up in the main school room for no apparent reason. I explained to J not to expect monkeys to turn up in his break times when he starts school...

Meanwhile, the headteacher, who was just a couple of yards away talking to Della, didn't bat an eyelid.

Eventually we got started in an area outside, and it was great fun. Interesting to see that the older kids vocabulary was pretty good, but when they attempted a sentence of any sort really struggled. Here are a couple of the students who seemed the brightest when we were playing word games, having a go at role playing a shop situation with Caroline:

We also gave 5 kids cheap cameras with instructions to take photographs of things that are important to them. They are to return them on Monday after which I plan to pass them on to another 5 students. After developing the pictures I will talk through the images with the kids, hopefully learning more about their lives, which we can share with a school in the UK which supports them. But first I will have to see whether I'll get all five cameras back...

We're off to Kandy and the hills in the morning for a long weekend - not sure how much internet access I'll have up there but will post if I get a chance.