ABDF

You read a lot about the exploitation of children all ‘round the world, and it can be really depressing. Exploitation takes place in many different forms, some of it more devastating than others, but all of it is, in a word, evil. Sri Lanka is no better or worse than other places, and it has its share of child exploitation. During the war, certain armed groups used kids as soldiers, an experience that I imagine can only permanently disfigure a child’s mind. This is a particularly violent and also obvious form of child exploitation which is thankfully fading out as the war has come to an end and many militia groups are disarming.

Of the three kitchens at the orphanges this one is the nicest

There is an especially pernicious form of child exploitation here that is quite common. It’s especially bad because: this exploitation takes place in the name of helping and protecting kids, those in charge gain prestige in the local community for the civic efforts, and it has suckered millions of dollars, euros, and rupees into the system from well-meaning folks who only wish to help the helpless.

I am talking, of course, about the hundreds and hundreds of orphanages scattered around Sri Lanka, especially on the East Coast.

First of all, let me say that there are some – a few – orphanages that are properly run, do their upmost for the children, and are managed by folks with a pure heart and no desire for personal gain. Unfortunately, these are the minority of orphanages. Of the dozen, 15, or so local orphanages of which I’m aware, I can only safely say three of them are legit.

Orphanages are completely unregulated, to my knowledge, and are more often than not set up as money making ventures by, and this is the sad part, local clergy and politicians. Minimal care is given to the kids, yet cash is constantly being sought from abroad, as pictures of smiling sad-eyed kids really tug at Western heartstrings. More often than not, funds from abroad, in particular funds that are not being directly overseen by the donor, often end up making the management a lot of money.

It’s the perfect scam; most foreigners, if they visit at all, see the orphanage for an hour. Thereafter they depend on the management to ensure that their donations are being properly used. I know people who have supported orphanages for five or six years, based solely on pictures emailed to them by the managers of these places. And since donors frequently don’t know each other it’s real easy to get multiple donations for the same thing, complete it, send out the pictures, and pocket the rest. It is so very easy, and so very tempting.

Let me give you an example. After the tsunami, I and a small group of volunteers visited a nearby orphanage for girls. Let’s call the place “Sweet Girls’ Home.” Run by a Protestant minister, the place was tiny, bare, and lacking in even the basics. The pastors’ house was a shack, and he and his family were living in poverty. We were all impressed; obviously the minister was using all of his meager resources on the orphanage.

Fast-forward to 2008. I am in Batti, and Errol, my Canadian friend arrives. As I mentioned in my last letter, he has a particular interest in orphanages. As part of this, we re-visit “Sweet Girl’s Home,” as neither of us had seen the place since tsunami times, although Errol had been in contact with the pastor, and sent him funds annually. There had been a lot of improvements; a second story was being added, the old decrepit kitchen replaced by something reasonable, etc. So far so good. Then the pastor’s son drove up during out meeting on a brand new, very expensive motorcycle. His job? He had no job. Hmmm. We notice the large well under construction. “Wait a minute,” said Errol “I thought I paid for that well to be completed two years ago.” The pastor had no reply and changed the subject. (That evening I emailed Katie, another Batti veteran. Her response: “No, I paid for that well to be finished!”)

Then Errol, through a couple of friends, started talking to the pastor’s neighbors. The pastor now owned a string of shops along the main north/south road. He also owned several houses, and rented them (this was confirmed by one of the renters). All of this – and a lot more we discovered – since the tsunami and all the foreigners that discovered his orphanage.

It turns out that “Sweet Girls’ Home” was very sweet indeed; for the pastor and his family. The girls, well, they did have a roof over their head, food to eat, and clean clothes. But somehow that didn’t matter when we heard about all the refrigerators. Apparently, the pastor would request fridges, and when one was bought, he’d turn around and sell it, asking another donor for another fridge. Katie, who was one of the people who paid for the never-finished well to be finished, had also bought them such a refrigerator, and I found out it was sold two weeks after she left Sri Lanka.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens here all the time. It’s a HUGE industry.

The problem, of course, is that ultimately the kids suffer. If you stop supporting these places, who will? So the support continues, often with gritted teeth. The villains who run these places know they have us over an emotional barrel, and they pull no punches. This is why I say the orphanage system here is a form of child exploitation, again excepting those few that are honest.

OK, so why am I going on and on about this? In my last letter I talked about Errol’s return to Batti, now slated for the end of August, and his desire to build one or more kitchens in Kokkadacholai, where there are two girl’s orphanages and one for boys. These are desperately poor homes in a desperately poor area. But the manager/supervisor, whatever he is, it turns out, is extremely corrupt. On top of that his brother is a semi-higher-up in a local militia currently allied with the government. The manager has bilked a huge amount of money out of well-meaning and too-trusting foreigners.

However, these places do need kitchens; currently cooking is done in unventilated tin shacks on the dirt. So the question then arises; how do you help the kids without giving the manager an opportunity to enrich himself? This is the big challenge I’ve been facing lately. First, you never, never hand money over to these people. The work will never been done, and there will be some excuse why the money was insufficient. Second, you use your own contractors and labor, particularly if they are from another part of the District, as is mine. This prevents the contractor from jacking up the prices so he can pay a kickback to the manager, or buying too much, say, concrete and keeping the excess. Third, concentrate on big infrastructure items. These kitchens, they are going to be large concrete buildings. Concrete buildings don’t walk away.

Errol hopes to provide these lovely ladies with a proper kitchen

Errol is also planning on equipping the kitchens, and that’s where the real danger is. Gas cylinders, cooking ranges, pots and pans, all these can easily grow legs and walk off.

I’m trying to develop a multi-pronged strategy to deal with this. The trick is to do it in a non-confrontational, non-accusatory way, as this manager has a reputation for his temper and his proclivity to threaten people who anger him with his political and militia connections. I’ve decided that with metal equipment, the big pots, the gas cookers, and so forth, to solder “Property of XXX Home” in a prominent place. The same can be burned into wood furniture and utensils. (Stickers won’t work – they can be scrubbed off.) That way if they are spotted outside the homes, people will know. I’ve also decided to create a list of all equipment, down to the last spoon, and have the list witnessed by the local authorities, and to mandate periodic inspection and inventory of everything, to “ensure everything is in working order.” I think at the dedication ceremony, to which the village will turn out, it would be smart to have the list of equipment read aloud. I believe that this should be enough to ward away any temptation to commandeer what belongs to the orphanage.

Isn’t it ridiculous to have to go through all this, just to help some kids? But that’s the nature of the orphanage industry, and a large reason why ABDF steers clear of it. Errol is a friend, and his heart and intentions are pure. This is why I am helping him.

On to happier things.

I want you all to know that I have found Paradise, and it’s only three hours south of me.

One of the beach huts at the Beach Hut

Last week I went with some friends to Arugam Bay. A tiny village in the far south-east of the island, Arugam Bay is located right on the beach, and is world famous among the surfing set for its perfect waves. A mix of Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim, the place escaped the worst aspects of the war. I had heard about this near-mythical tropical paradise, but had never been. It exceeded every expectation I had.

Arugam Bay is not a tourist place. There aren’t any tourist-level facilities available, and anyway the place is so remote that few tourists would want to take the very long journey from Colombo. It’s the kind of place that hippy surfers love; shacks on the beach, fresh fish on the grill over an open fire, ice cold beer, local recreational herb, lovely ladies, and a population that is as relaxed and kick-back as they are.

We stayed at a place called Beach Hut, run by an extraordinary man named Range (RAN-geh). A man of middle age and middle height and stature, Range has a scraggly beard and long hair, which he keeps in a topknot. He only ever seems to wear a sarong and that’s it. He looks like he could be some wandering Hindu holy man. Tamils tend to be very loud and expressive in their conversation, but Range is surprisingly soft-spoken. But most amazing are his eyes. I got the distinct impression that, the first time he looked at me, he saw into me and instantly knew everything there is to know. It would have been really unnerving except that you also somehow know that he does it with a complete lack of judgment, that your personality, your secrets, whatever, to him are mere facts and don’t inform his opinion of you. I’ve met very few people like this before, and I find them not only intriguing, but very wise, in an earthy, organic, non-intellectual way. He’s really a most impressive man.

It turns out that he and I have four unrelated groups of friends in common. In fact, one of my friends had mentioned “my American friend Bennett who you should meet” to him last year. It also turns out that, like me, he loves to cook. So we quickly became friends.

My friends at play in the water. I stayed in the shade.

Beach Hut is literally a small set of wooden shacks directly on the beach. Some of them are up on stilts, with hammocks slung below. All of them are located in a grove of pine-like trees, giving the whole setup a lovely cool green feel. I’m not a beach person; having grown up in Southern California, I know beaches, and am actually a bit paranoid about skin cancer. So I spent my afternoons in the hammock, listening to the surf, sipping lassie (a type of sweet milkshake made from water buffalo yogurt), slipping in and out of sleep, and letting my mind wander. In other words, complete relaxation. In the evening, when the sun was less intense, we’d all take straw mats out onto the beach, and hang out until dinner was ready. The entire day we heard nothing other than the birds and the waves. No phones, no motorcycles, no radio, none of that.

OK, so the place is like the Land of the Lotus Eaters in Homer’s “Odyssey” I can easily see myself going there and never being able to leave. As it was, just a couple of days and I had to positively tear myself away and return to Batti. It was like emerging from one of those deep sleeps where you feel like you’re swimming to the surface of a deep lake. Wow.

Laurie Anderson, the avant-garde performance artist has a line “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now… only much, much better.” After last week, I’d have to disagree with her. Paradise is Arugam Bay.

Saturday I went to Navatkudah, the site of one of our water tank projects, to attend the one year anniversary of the death of Prabha’s father. Prabha is our project partner in that part of the District, having helped us with a half-dozen or so tanks and other pieces of infrastructure. My long-term readers will recall my description of the Hindu funeral rites from this time last year; the eight days of sitting in mourning, the one-month feast, etc.

The first year anniversary ceremony officially ends the mourning period for a loved one. Not necessarily religious pre se, it’s more of a memorial. Prabha’s family is from Navatkudah, and so in his father’s memory Parbha built a cement bus stand (there was no shade at the bus stop previously) and created an education fund for local children.

I like crossing the big lagoon and riding into the interior. The land-side of the lagoon is very different from the populated coastal strip, as I have described before. The whole area is very underdeveloped, in part why we do so many projects there. As the crow flies Navatkudah is only 13 or 14 kilometers (about 10 miles) but the road is more sand and gravel than tamarack, and is quite treacherous, and the going slow. It takes about half an hour or 45 minutes. The village itself is a typical hamlet of the area; a stand of trees along the road, giving shade to the houses in an otherwise sun baked plain.

The ceremony took place under an improvised awning. It was unbelievably hot as there were no fans and the air dead still. We sat in plastic chairs in rows and listened to all the speeches.

Prabha’s father was a very well known man, being a nationally recognized poet and a leader in education. So naturally the local politicos came, and I’ve learned the hard way that when there’s a politician or any other man of supposed importance around, they give speeches. It’s like a compulsion; they can’t seem to help themselves. And the speeches tend to be long and drawn out, even if the audience is restive and not listening. This time was no exception.

Two of the four speakers were mercifully short in their speeches. Under 15 minutes; the soul of brevity here. But two of them! Oh jeez, they went on and on. And so we’re sitting there, in the stifling heat, hungry and thirsty, and these two guys each kept droning on and on and on. Half an hour or so. It was pure torture.

Twenty minutes into the second speech, my mind began to wander into strange territory. Perhaps it was the heat. I began to fantasize: maybe I ought to suddenly stand up, scream, and then collapse onto the ground; surely that would put and end to the speeches! I went into a reverie about just how it would work: should I say something like “O! The talking! The talking!” or just let out a Nightmare on Elm Street type of shriek? When I fall to the ground, should I writhe about, or just lay still? All very important details requiring thought and planning.

Just as I was about to take the idea seriously, the man said “Nandre, vanakum (thank you, goodbye),” signaling the end of his ramble. So I didn’t do it. I’m not sure who was luckier, him or me.

After a delicious vegetarian lunch, I managed to hang in there another hour, chatting with folks, before I couldn’t take the heat any more and made my departure.

So for Prabha it was the closing of a year, a year in which he mourned the passing of his father. But it was also the end of a year for all of us.

April 14th is the New Year in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese and Tamils, Buddhists and Hindus respectively, celebrate their new year at this time. In fact, much of the world traditionally celebrates the New Year sometime around the Spring Equinox. Even our own cultural ancestors, the Greeks and Romans, had theirs at the end of March.

In Sri Lanka everything closes down and the people celebrate. Both Buddhists and Hindus go to temple early and perform puja. I’m not sure about the Sinhalese (who are Buddhists) but among (Hindu) Tamils when everyone returns home, the matriarch of the family blesses each in turn. You stand by the family well, and amma places a betel leaf, a symbol of luck and fortune, atop each foot and on top of your head. She then pours a little of a fragrant herbal water mixture over you, which had been prepared by temple priests the previous day. Then while murmuring blessings, she pours a small pot of water over you three times. The entire process takes just a minute or so; and once you are ritually cleaned and renewed, you take a bath and change into brand new clothing. It’s a simple, sweet ceremony, and I participate every year.

Once the family is changed, everyone heads out to visit friends and relations. At each house, you sit and have light conversation. The host traditionally offers you sweets and tea. This can go on all day.

In years past I’ve hopped on my motorcycle and visited friends and some of our project beneficiaries. This year I decided not to. Last year I must have visited 15 households, and by the end of the day, between the sweets and strong, sugary tea (you are obligated to eat and drink) my stomach was in revolt and I couldn’t stop shaking. For me the problem is that everyone invites me, as it is an honor to have a foreigner visit, and really, you can’t say no. Also, everyone knows everyone else; this is actually a small place and the grapevine rivals anything the CIA or FBI can come up with. So if I had accepted some invitations but not others, I could hurt some feelings. The only way to be really fair, and to preserve my stomach, was to decline all invitations and instead play host. So that’s what I did; I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I figured would bring novelty to the affair, cut them into four, and served them with tea or fruit juice. And you know, it worked! I had several visitors, all who enjoyed the sandwiches, I saved my stomach from the annual trauma, and I avoided hurting peoples’ feelings, all within a perfectly acceptable way. It was really pleasant. Slowly, slowly, I’m figuring these things out.

So to all of you reading this; I wish you all a happy, prosperous, terrific New Year!