ABDF

Friday, July 31, 2009

Greetings from Galle, Sri Lanka’s beautiful city at the island’s southernmost tip. I haven’t written in a bit, in part because for the last week I’ve been on the road. This has been a very productive trip, project-wise.

Last weekend I met the Minister of Education for Central Province, the area to which we will send English teachers next year. I was fortunate; he was in Kandy for the weekend, and I had some friends I wanted to visit anyway and thus had a place to stay. So although the Minister is a busy man, we were able to meet for 15 minutes on Sunday afternoon. Although we hadn’t met previously, he knew all about me and the project, and so we were able to attend to business efficiently. It’s always good to meet folks face-to-face so they know you and you them. It humanizes the whole situation, to have a face with the name. The Minster is an Estate Tamil, the target population for our project, and the Estate Tamil political and economic elite is very, very small. Thus it was no surprise to find out he knows about me and the work we do.

On Monday I took the train down from Kandy to Colombo. Colombo was the real purpose for this trip; meeting the Minister in Kandy was a stroke of very good luck. My purpose in Colombo was dual; to receive through Customs the ESL workbooks for the Kattankudy Tutoring Project (Thank you Sandra – you’re the best for taking care of it!) and to sign some paperwork between us and the Ministry of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development, our partner in the Teacher project. Those two things accomplished, I decided to come down to Unawatuna for two nights of R&R. Today is Friday; I return to Colombo tomorrow, and then on Tuesday I go back to Batticaloa.

I try, whenever possible, to get everything useful possible out of a given situation. Thus even my little vacation down south has the potential to be helpful to us. Lots of expats (as well as tourists) come here, and you never know who you’re going to meet. Last night I met an American named John Lee; he runs an investment firm in New York, but half-time lives in Sri Lanka, representing a US group that works in orphanages in the south. He confided in me that internationally, it’s hip to help orphanages in this area and as a result they are “spoiled,” as he put it. He was very interested to hear about some of the orphanages I know of in Batti District, some of which have difficulty just feeding the kids. I think I’ve convinced him to come out to Batti to see some of these orphanages, as well as a couple of our ABDF projects. I’m defiantly going to follow up on this with him. So we’ll see. Like I said, you never know where things might lead.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Well, I’m back in Batticaloa. I had wanted to write more and post earlier, but after leaving Unawatuna for Colombo I’ve had no time to sit for a spell until now.

The rest of my trip was fairly uneventful. Two days in Colombo running errands (for example, stocking up on couscous which you now can’t get in Batti) then the train back home yesterday. I got in around 6:30 in the evening. It was a long day. Fortunately, Easwaran had bought a small bottle of toddy, the delicious palm wine. Bless him.

Today Easwaran is having a crisis. On his way to a friends’ house this morning he lost his wallet. OK, so for us loosing our wallets is a pain in the ass, but hardly the end of the world. Here it can be, quite literally. You see, he carries his National ID card in it. The checkpoints are numerous, and you have to produce your ID at each and every one of them. If you don’t have ID, the security forces assume you are LTTE and take you into the station, unless you happen to know the cop or can talk your way out of it. In the very recent past, some people taken in were tortured, and occasionally were never seen again. So you can see why loosing your ID is a serious problem. Fortunately, Easwaran thought ahead and had made photocopies of his ID and other paperwork. So he was already able to go to the District Secretary’s office, show them the copy, and get an affidavit that he is waiting for a replacement.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that on the ID card there is an entry for Ethnicity? Creepy.

He also lost his money, 2,000 rupees, or about $18, which is all the money he has. I gave him 1,000 to cover the next few days.

But perhaps worst of all, in his wallet was his card for taking the A-Level exams. The exam is next Tuesday. Sri Lanka follows the British style of education, and the nearest equivalent we have to the A-Level would be the SAT exam. In Sri Lanka, you must pass that highly competitive exam in order to have any educational opportunities above high school. If he doesn’t take the exam, Easwaran’s academic life is over and, despite being brilliant in Chemistry and studying for the test for 3 years, he’ll be condemned to a life as a small shop keeper or farmer. That’s how important this exam is.

Fortunately he knows me, and I know someone attached to the District Ministry of Education. So I made the call, and my friend has the authority to allow Easwaran to sit for the exam without his exam card. I believe that it’ll be alright. How nice it is to be able to save someone’s future with just a phone call! If only everything here were that easy…

I spent all this morning doing laundry. Around 11 I started hearing wailing from the house behind mine. There were cries of “Amma! (Mother!),” so I assume that the matriarch of the household has died. (By the way, I don’t know the people behind my house, other than that one of the sons likes to play Bollywood music early in the mornings on weekends – REAL loud.) Just an hour ago, the whole place erupted in shrieks and moans and crying; I assume they brought the body home. I peered off my rear balcony, and although I can’t see much of the house due to the trees, I did glimpse a lot of people moving about. But the cries; they quite made my hair stand on end. Shrieking, absolute shrieking.

This morning I made an Executive Decision regarding a project request. I’ve mentioned our projects with the St. Vincent de Paul folks. This Saturday they are having a day of fun and games for children living in an area refugee camps. Vive, my friend and SVP partner, stopped by and asked if I could spare 5,000 rupees, as they had a shortfall in their entertainment budget for the kids. Now normally ABDF doesn’t spend money on stuff like entertainment as one could reasonably argue that the developmental benefits for the community are if-y in such situations. However, given that we’ve worked four great projects with SVP with no problems whatsoever, and also the small amount involved ($45), it would have been shameful to not contribute. So Saturday I’m going up to Zahira IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp and will enjoy an afternoon of sports, games, and other diversions. Should be fun.

Other than, let’s see… Oh yes; the two roofing projects in Valachchenai were completed while I was away. I won’t be able to see them this weekend, but will do so the following. And if I understood Prabha’s text message properly (often a challenge) then our water tank in Palakkadu is nearing completion as well. No pun intended.

I have to tell you that I take no small satisfaction with the way we do our projects here. Normally when someone visits a project site, the locals are made promises and more often than not only see action six months, a year, two years, after the fact, if at all. I’m tickled that Prabha and I went out to Palakkadu at the end of June and here it is the beginning of August, and the tank is almost finished. I think it goes a lot towards disproving the stereotype locals have that Westerners are all talk and little action. And it works both ways; I’m able to show my supporters back home that we are able to take action quickly and actually help.

Well, the wailing back behind seems to have died down to a low murmuring sob. My veranda, on which I sit while I type this, faces the opposite direction, over the lagoon, so I can’t really hear what’s going on at the rear. And someone across the lagoon has an amazing speaker system and is playing Bollywood music really loud. So while I’m not sure everyone in the neighborhood wants to share in the music, I much prefer it over the sounds of mourning.

And with that, I close.

Update a few minutes after posting: I found out that the person who died is my friend Goabi's best friend (and cousin) Pratheepan. A young guy in his 20s. That explains the depth of the mourning. So sorry, Goabi!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Letter from Batticaloa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.