ABDF

Loading the Kokadacholai ferry.

Saying no isn’t easy, especially here. Sri Lankan culture, with its emphasis on the group over the individual, decrees that to give a direct “no” might hurt or offend the person. Thus the answer is ALWAYS yes, or at best the ambivalent head-wobble, even when the real answer is no. This includes business or work situations. The result of a “no” yes is that things are avoided or put off until both parties either forget the situation, the situation solves itself (somehow), or the requester gets a clue and asks someone else. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve expected someone to follow-up on a “yes,” only to realize, some days or weeks later, that they meant “no.” Those of you who have worked in South Asia and other places will know exactly what I mean. I can just see you, nodding your heads knowingly and either chuckling or groaning.

We in the West have no problem telling someone no in a business situation, and we don’t take it personally when someone says it to us. Frankly, I wish folks here would be a little less concerned for my feelings and give me an honest answer. But they never will, so I figure I’m the one who has to adjust. I, however, as a foreigner, get a lot more cultural leeway, and thus have no problem telling people “no,” although I do it as diplomatically and gently as possible. Most of our local partners are now used to my foreign bluntness of speech and are equally so with me.

After consulting ABDF folks back home, I decided that we couldn’t help the kovil (Hindu temple) in Kaluthavelai with its soup kitchen (see my last dispatch). While in theory we support feeding the poor, the fact that this happens only four times a year during local Hindu festivals is what ultimately decided us against the project. First of all, we have to remain religiously neutral and so we don’t fund projects that are specifically religious in nature. And even if we did, this project would have opened a whole can of worms. Pretty much all the kovils here are poor, and all have problems. Word would have quickly spread that we had helped this kovil and then I’d have been absolutely besieged by representatives from all the other kovils, asking for assistance. So this one went into the reject file.

I did give the go-ahead for two new projects, the expansion at Puhalidam and a bit of financial backing for the Education Incentive Association. I won’t repeat the descriptions here, as you can follow the links to see for yourself, but I will go a bit into why we decided to fund these projects.

Since I was introduced to them last year, I have been impressed with the work done at Puhalidam. As I described in our first project with them, the Puhalidam Transportation Project, the mentally and physically handicapped are the most ignored segment of Sri Lankan society. In a place with few resources for “healthy” folks, there is simply nothing left over for those less fortunate. True, you do find a few schools for the disabled, but my experience is that program quality is very low and administrators see the schools more as a way to make a buck than anything else. The exceptions are exceedingly rare, and Puhalidam is one of them. Thus when I see a little gem like this, I think we ought to support it. The expansion of the school will allow for ten or so more students and provide space for a small kitchen. Additionally the school worked hard and has already found most of the funding it needs, and has asked us merely to supplement the remaining amount. So to me this seemed a really easy “yes” to say.

The Education Incentive Association project is a little more nebulous, a little more intangible. The group is trying, against heavy odds, to increase the number of Batti students who enter university in either engineering or medicine. So unlike Puhalidam, the results are long-term and difficult to measure. Despite this, I believe that without EIA working over the last 15 years there probably would have been fewer students entering than there have been. Additionally, the group is well-known, and in the past has received support from some of our local partners, who all agree that it’s a worthwhile goal. But what ultimately brought on a “yes” is the fact that everything is provided to the students for free. Tutoring for the A-level exams, which determine university admission, is a huge business here, and there are a lot of people making a lot of money out of it. These guys do it for free, and are all volunteers. Ultimately, the more educated the people here are, the more the community as a whole benefits. So we’ve decided to lend them a helping hand.

Anyway, I just wanted to demonstrate some of the thinking that goes behind the decisions.

One aspect of our mission here is to act as a conduit for other foreigners to do their own projects here. I just started working on a perfect example of this, and I feel it’s worth bringing up; perhaps one of YOU will be inspired to come and do some work!

Errol is a Canadian of Sri Lankan origin, and I first met him back during tsunami times. Since then he has returned once, back in 2008, and he plans to return again this year. Errol has a particular interest in orphanages, and is known in several here as “Uncle Errol.” His personal motto is “every kid deserves a toy” and he’s known for showing up with a van stuffed full of them. You can see why the kids love him so much.

Of course Errol does a lot more than just hand out toys; he’s funded all manner of orphanage-based projects, many designed to help them become financially self-sufficient.

This year Errol wants to build two kitchens, one a girl’s home, and the other at a boys’ home, both located in the inland village of Kokkadacholai. A shockingly impoverished village, Kokkadacholai was under LTTE control for years, and was also the scene of a particularly spectacular (in the negative sense) massacre in the early 1980’s, when most of the village was rounded up and slaughtered. The decimation was so brutal and complete that it has since passed into local lore and is probably the single most remembered incident throughout the District. It’s still talked about today.

My job in all this is to get the plans in place. So last Saturday I rounded up Prabha and Balan and went to Kokadacholai to see the two homes. (Prabha and Balan are our main contacts for work we do in the interior; they are a delight to work with and have no problem with “no.”) None of us had been to either orphanage, and so we wanted to find them, make ourselves known, and then plan for our construction contractor to go out and draw up plans and estimates.

The hot, dusty road to Kokadacholai.

The ride to Kokkadacholai is (in)famous among those who have worked here. While not very far as the crow flies, the drive there is very, well, interesting. You head south along the main road (the one undergoing all the construction I mentioned in my last dispatch) and about 10 km south of Batti you take a right into the interior. The road immediately reverts to the semi-dirt/gravel condition of pre-peace days, and after a few kilometers you come to the ferry that crosses the lagoon that divides the coastal strip from the interior. This lagoon, back in the day, was the line of control between government and LTTE-held territories.

The Kokkadacholai Ferry.

If you’ve ever watched National Geographic on TV, you’ll recall there’s always a shot of an overcrowded floating platform crossing a river. Picture this, and you’ve got an adequate idea of the Kokkadacholai ferry. Maybe 15 feet wide by 25 long, there is only a railing between you and water below. Everyone, pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, trishaws, trucks, are packed aboard, and I mean p-a-c-k-e-d, and two outboard motors slowly glide the ferry across the lagoon, which at this point is only a football field wide. It’s a free-for-all getting on, and equally chaotic getting off, with folks trying to get aboard before everyone else has disembarked. The whole thing seems dangerously overloaded, but I haven’t yet heard of any sinking. I tell you, it’s an experience not to be missed.

Once you’ve survived the ferry, it’s just a couple more bumpy kilometers to Kokkadacholai. Distance-wise, it’s probably around 15 miles, but it takes over an hour.

So assuming all goes well, when Errol gets here he’s not only going to make the trip back and forth each day, but he’ll be doing it with truckloads of concrete, iron rebar, bricks, pipes, etc. I may just tag along for a day or two; it should be a sight to see.