ABDF

Shanthi, cricket fanatic.

Meet Shanthi.

This lovely lady is Shanthi. Shanthi is currently in the 7th grade at a local school in her home village of Kaluthavalai. She has three older sisters and one younger brother. He father harvests bettle leaf while her mother takes care of the house, family, and sells excess eggs from their chicken coop. She lives in a three room concrete house. Her family can’t afford electricity, so after dark she studies by a kerosene lamp.

She complains that she wants to play cricket (an unusual thing in Sri Lanka) but the neighborhood boys won’t let her.

Being almost a kilometer inland, the tsunami only flooded her house by a few inches, but she lost several friends who lived closer to the beach, whom she still misses. The tsunami brought a few Western aid workers into the area; the first foreigners she had ever seen in person. ABDF.org's Program Director is the only foreigner she’s seen since.

She attends class at EDS five days a week, and has been for about a year. It is her only opportunity to learn English. She’s still learning the basics, but was quite eager to try what she knew on the visiting ABDF.org Program Director. She says that one day she will go to Eastern University and become a teacher. We at ABDF.org wish her all the luck in the world.

And we wish the boys would let her play cricket.