ABDF

Abi, genius First Grader

It has been a month since my last letter to, for which I must apologize. But really, it wasn’t (entirely) my fault; for two of those weeks I had little internet time, and for the other two, well, it’s been real busy.

I first spent two weeks out of Batticaloa; a week and a half in Colombo, and four days in the Hill Country. The last week or so I’ve been in Batti, dealing with work issues. As most of you are probably more interested in our work, rather than my tales of travel, I’ll start with that first, although it’s in backwards chronological order.

Upon my return to Batticaloa (see below) I first had to spend a day cleaning and washing, but the next day was spent running around in town, mostly catching up on project payments that were due while I was gone. So, for example, I had to pay the tuition for Abi, the tsunami-affected First Grader we support. Fortunately the folks at her school know me well, so the late payment was not a problem. The devil in the details, or so it is said, and it’s these little but important things that get backed-up so easily.

Almost immediately after, I got slammed with a head cold.

Getting sick is never a joy, but in the tropics a cold is especially uncomfortable. For example, all colds are accompanied by a fever, although usually the other symptoms are harsher and thus keep our attention. Not so here. The heat and humidity really makes you feel even the slightest of fevers, and thus the sweats and chills are exacerbated. And sleep at night is particularly difficult. Thank goodness I had brought my day-time and night-time cold medicines. While they don’t make you feel 100%, they really help. Most folks here rely on traditional Tamil remedies, which don’t seem overly effective.

I seem to catch cold once a year here, and so I suppose it was my time.

However, after a couple of days I was feeling well enough to go out and about again. Which was good, as there is a lot going on work-wise, and it needed my attention.

I spent one afternoon with Prabha, our local partner for our various projects in Mamunai West Division (our water tanks and some school projects) to inspect our tanks and see how they’ve been holding up. We also went to drop in on our tutoring project in Navakadu.

I really like hopping on the motorcycle and getting out of the densely populated coastal strip, crossing the big lagoon, and heading into the remote, rural areas on the inland side. True, it’s hot, dusty, and there’s little shade, but driving amongst the rice paddies through tiny hamlets under enormous blue skies gives you a sense of what the “true,” pre-modern Sri Lanka must have been like. It’s in these areas that you find ancient cultural practices still alive (see below).

Anyway, the water tanks. We visited all four and while they are all still intact and functional, there were some problems. The biggest was a design flaw in our construction; the pipes and spigots. In order to keep costs down, we had built the tanks using plastic piping and taps. Not such a good idea; about a quarter of the outlets were either snapped off at the pipe, or the spigots themselves were broken. The reasons why taps were missing/broken, and pipes snapped include:

In Shalampailkerny, one of the spigots had been snapped off by a cow, of all things. A villager told us that she saw the cow happily scratching itself against the tap, but didn’t realize until later it had broken off.

OK.

Our water tank in 2009, before Bessie came along

While I am happy that the cow found such bliss, it wasn’t something that I had anticipated as a problem. I’m a city boy, and the thought never had occurred to me, any more than, say, elephant damage would be a problem at our project site in Irunuroovil. I mean, where I come from, cows are something that live Out Over There Somewhere, and elephants are in zoos. Prabha, who was born and raised in Mamunai West has cow experience (as it were), but apparently his years of service as a teacher had softened him up; he hadn’t thought of this potential problem either.

Woulda loved to have gotten a snapshot of that cow scratching, though.

Does this make our water tanks multi-purpose?

The tank in Mangikkadu had a different story. Last year a road crew was backing up a trailer full of earth and hit one of the taps at an angle. Snap! I had heard about this at the time and tried to make the RDS (Road Development Service) pay for the repair. All for naught. So rather than be right, I’ve decided we need to just go ahead and fix the thing.

The Mangikadu tank also needs a good coat of paint. We had Parliamentary elections last month, and some wise-guy candidate thought our tank, which is along the roadside, would be a perfect place for him to glue up some posters. Rival candidates immediately followed suit. Villagers complained and the original candidate tried to tear off the posters, but was unable to. So he had black paint swathed across the whole thing, in an attempt to “scribble out” everything. It looks just terrible. Now, I’m usually of the opinion that looking nice has little to do with utility, and we need to watch our funds. But this is just plain bad, and I do want to disassociate our work with politics. A good paint-over shouldn’t be very expensive.

Ultimately Prabha and I decided that the best thing to do about all this is to repaint the one tank and replace all the piping and taps with ones made of metal. Metal is obviously far more durable than plastic and while it might not survive intact getting hit with a trailer (a rare event), it would certainly stand up to any rapturous scratchings Bessie might care to dish out.

After viewing the water tanks, Prabha and I rode over to the school at Navatkadu to check up on how our testing project is coming along. Since I know you read the project description, I‘ll only briefly summarize it by saying that we hope to increase the test scores of 5th graders in a national exam. Until now the last Navatkadu student to pass the test was some 15 years ago. The principal and one of the teachers came up with a proposal to help solve this, and we’ve agreed to fund it. If there is significant improvement in test scores, we’ll continue the program, and perhaps expand it.

Our 5th Graders busy studying

The school itself is a fairly large complex of buildings, as it serves all grade levels for the entire western part of Mamunai West Division. There are 49 5th Graders this year, so you can extrapolate that across each grade. Most of the buildings are fairly new, having been built since the LTTE was pushed out the area in 2007. Glancing into the classrooms on my way to see the 5th Graders, I couldn’t help but notice how the teachers have tried to make do with very few resources; I saw hand-made educational materials and tools, improvise chalkboards, school furniture repaired with twine and glue, and so forth. We had dropped by after school hours, so only the 5th Grade was still there, but I was still impressed by the effort I saw by the teachers in general.

When we arrived, the kids were busy taking a practice math test. Not wanting to interrupt, I took only a few quick snapshots and left them to their tests. The teacher heading the project, Mr. Paththinathan (pat-in-AT-an) has been putting in a lot of effort to make this work, and spending a lot of time above his normal school duties, and all as a volunteer. I really hope this plan works, as it’s the project which has captured my enthusiasm the most this year. IF we can get these kids to score better on the test in August, it will encourage them further in the academic career, and inspire next year’s batch of 5th Graders to also excel.

I stumbled across this Kuttu rehearsal in 2009

While in Navatkadu I received an invitation that I’m going to accept. In the past I‘ve written a lot about the kovil festivals (kovil = Hindu temple) that are annual events here, the biggest being the festival at Mamangam kovil in Batti. Last year about this time I wrote about how, while stranded in the nearby hamlet of Vavunateevu, waiting for my flat tire to be repaired, I chanced upon the rehearsal of the Kuttu Dance. This is an all-night dance done in kovils on the inland side of the lagoon, which is a retelling of the ancient Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. This particular dance has a form unique to the area and almost died out, what with 30 years of civil war and displacement. It has only been revived in the last couple years. Taught by old men mainly from memory to young guys in their teens and twenties, there is a whole generation missing the cultural experience of this dance. So it seems to me that peace only came in the nick of time. I had wanted to go last year, but circumstances prevented it. This year I’m going. I’m pretty excited about it, although it starts at sundown and ends at sunrise and I’m not sure if I will stay for the whole thing. Still, it will be a rare experience; few Westerners have seen it.

I know this is getting a bit long, so I want to turn to by business in Colombo. I was there for a week or so, and then took a trip up to Hatton, in the tea region. I had a list of things to do in Colombo and, happily, I was able to get them done. This included getting my visa extended, a nerve-racking process which I’ve described before.

But the really interesting part was my trip upcountry to Hatton. I went with Shanthakumar, a close friend from Hatton who works in Colombo. I had been to Hatton before, but only in transit, as it lies on the road between Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. This time I was able to stay for a bit, and get to know the place. I loved it.

Note the waterfalls erupting from the cliffs

First, let me tell you that Hatton is one of the highest towns in Sri Lanka, at more than 3,000 feet. As a result it is very cool, especially at night. While my Sri Lankan friends were shivering, I was in heaven; evening temperatures were in the upper 60s or lower 70s; perfect by Western reckoning. I slept REAL good at night. Right now it’s monsoon season in that part of the country, so we had rain. Lots of it. In fact in one 24 hour period we recorded 88 cm, which is almost 3 feet. So yeah, it was a little wet. But all the rain made the area exceptionally beautiful; seasonal waterfalls literally bursting from cliff faces and cascading hundreds of feet, and the intense deep green of the tea plantations.

During our stay, Shanthakumar took me high and deep into the tea estates, remote areas that few Westerns see. The scenery was stunning. Everywhere you looked was a breathtaking view. Truly this is the most beautiful part of Sri Lanka.

Of course it masks deep poverty. The Estate Tamils, as I’ve written before, were imported by the British to work the tea estates 200+ years ago and have been left there, largely isolated, in what at best could be called benign neglect. No, let’s call it what it really is; they are treated little better than economic slaves and are deeply discriminated against by all sections of Sri Lankan society, including their cousins, shamefully, the Sri Lankan Tamils of the north and east coasts.

Hatton area: everywhere you look there is a spectacular view

Hatton is around 95% Estate Tamil, as is the District around it, the only Estate Tamil majority polity in Sri Lanka. It also has the highest levels of infant mortality, lowest levels of education achievement, and all the other indicators of a neglected minority. Shanthakumar, and his friends I met in Hatton, are members of the tiny minority of Estate Tamils who escaped this cycle and have tried to improve their community. They are actively trying to convince ABDF to start work among the tea estates. I have to say it’s very tempting. The condition of the people there, especially in the estates themselves, is heart-rending. And Hatton would be a great place to live. But right now it’s just not practical, we don’t have the budget, and I would waste a lot of time traveling between Hatton and Batti. In the future as we grow, I would love to work there.

Of course, if we found someone with development experience and access to funds, we could always set them up in Hatton. Hmmm. Any takers?

For me the highlight of the trip was the tour of a tea factory. Being a foodie, and always curious about how things are done, I was delighted to accept an invitation from a friend of Shanthakumar to tour the tea processing center at Strathspey Estate.

Tea is rolled between these two gyrating plates

The idea behind the process is very simple, even if some of the machinery is not; tea is dried, rolled, chopped several times, de-stemmed, fermented, baked, sorted by grade, quality tested, and packaged. That’s it. I was able to follow this whole process; from when the tea is brought in from the fields through to when it ends up in 150 kilo bags to be sent to the auction houses in Colombo. It was hot, noisy, and tea-dusty, but the aroma that pervaded the factory was intoxicating. If you ever come here or to some other tea producing country, you must tour one of the factories.

Well, this has been a long letter, and so I think I’d better close; almost time to go to the gym anyway. Yep, I’m still going. And so I’d better go now, before I find an excuse not to!