ABDF

We’ve had a great last couple of weeks here at ABDF. We have progress to report on three fronts, all of which bode well for the future.

First, I’d like to announce that ADF has its first volunteer teacher! As you know, the Ministry of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development requested our assistance in bringing native English speaking teachers into Estate Tamil schools in the Hatton area. You can read about the project here.

Will these be Anna's students next year>

We are thrilled that Anna Britton has decided to teach at the school in Kotagala. Anna has years of experience as a social welfare worker in the UK, working primarily with children, and recently taught English in a school deep in rural Nepal. Anna is currently in Sri Lanka traveling and has already been to Kotagala to talk with administrators, teachers, and the principal, as well as with our partners at the Ministry. She is very excited about her assignment, and will return to London next week to begin getting her UK life in order, financially as well as logistically. She will return to Sri Lanka in time to start off the new school year in January and will stay for a minimum two terms (about 6 months) and, if she can manage it financially, for the full school year.

Obviously, it’s a huge commitment for someone to take six months or more off from work, and pay their own way. It speaks volumes about Anna’s love of Sri Lanka and how much she enjoys teaching kids, not to mention her commitment to improving the lives of the Estate Tamil community, that she is eager to do this work. ABDF applauds Anna, wishes her the best while in the UK, and looks forward to her return at the end of the year. Thank you, Anna! Yer a gawdess!

Anna with two fans

Last week ABDF received a welcome visitor here in Batticaloa. Angela, who has visited Sri Lanka before and knows Batti well, has been a major source of support for ABDF, having funded projects at St. Cecilia’s Girl’s School, including the purchase of multimedia equipment, musical instruments, a computer for the English Library, as well as supporting our classroom furniture project in Vatharumoolai, the Education Incentive Association, and the Fifth Grade Testing Project in Navatkadu. We were able to spend much of the day touring the sites, and discussing further plans with the participants as well as local education officials.

Perhaps the best thing to arise from the tour was that Angela got an in-depth look at the projects, and met the folks who are impacted by them. This connecting face-to-face, person-to-person, is always a powerful experience for all parties, making the needs and the projects/solutions very real and tangible. Just having real faces to put with the names accomplishes this, but we were fortunate enough to have very direct and probing conversations with those involved.

Visiting our Testing Project in Navatkadu

It also allowed Angela to experience a part of Batti District that she had not visited before; the vastly impoverished, deeply underdeveloped inland side of the lagoon. I think that for her it was something of an eye-opener. Its one thing to read about conditions in the interior, but quite another to see it for yourself. ABDF is slowly starting to realign its resources to help the people there, and after visiting I believe that Angela too is interested in further projects in the area.

A teacher friend of both Angela and mine came along for the tour. She teaches in a school on the coastal strip of the District, and like Angela she had never been into the interior, primary because until recently the security situation made it unsafe for her to do so. She was perhaps even more shocked when we visited the school in Navatkadu, the site of our Fifth Grade Testing Project, than was Angela. She and Angela were both astonished to see that there aren’t enough classrooms, and so the O-Level and A-Level classes (the equivalent of 11th and 12th grades) sat under trees, each with a chalkboard leaned up against a chair, rather than in proper classrooms with roofs. Obviously, in a tropical climate such as here in Sri Lanka, where it’s either broiling/steamy, or raining cats and dogs, such an arrangement creates more than a few problems. This is just an example of the problems facing students and teachers in the area, and this school is perhaps one of the best, infrastructure-wise.

This is the A-Level (12th Grade) class. They have no classroom.

The comment was that while the schools on the coastal strip have a lot of problems, administrators, teachers and students there have no idea how bad it COULD be. This got me thinking. My teacher friend is quite correct; many teachers and school administrators complain about the resources for their schools, but most are quite complacent when it comes to doing anything about it. I wonder if working in a less fortunate environment, for example at Navatkadu, even if for a short time, might shake some of these teachers and administrators out of their languor, and give them a kick in the butt to work to improve their own schools? Certainly my friend won’t take her own school for granted any more. I wonder if we could create some sort of exchange program among teachers, say for a week? Hmmm…

We’ve begun the process of creating a sister ABDF based here in Sri Lanka: ABDF-Lanka. There are numerous reasons why this is a practical idea. Perhaps first and foremost is that it will be a Sri Lankan organization, registered as such with the Sri Lankan government. Currently there are many complaints with the way INGOs do business (so to speak) in Sri Lanka, and some view foreign groups with suspicion, believing that many are merely a form of neo-colonialism. Some of the criticisms, I might add, are quite legitimate, although I think the neo-colonialism argument is mere political grandstanding. Having ABDF-Lanka as our sister organization undertaking projects, with ABDF in the US providing funding and administrative support, will allow us to continue with our work without the broadly-painted brush of suspicion that includes all foreign INGOS working here affecting us. The all-volunteer Board of Directors includes folks from the three major ethnic groups (Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala) as well as myself, acting as Project Director, in the same way I do for ABDF in the US. Thus in reality, nothing will change in the way we do our work or allocate our funds, or, more importantly, in our philosophy of supporting Sri Lankans doing Sri Lankan development work.

The process of registering is rather different from that in the US. Thus our name has already been provisionally approved, and now we’re at the stage where we have newspaper ads declaring our name, so that if anyone has a problem with the name can speak up. After this there is another round of paperwork, and more waiting for final approval. The hope is that everything will be finished up before I return to the US in November. Hey, it might just happen.

Thus I am headed back to Colombo for about a week. I need to meet with our lawyer about the registration, as well as see Anna off at the airport. I also have two birthdays to attend, so the timing is great. I’ll take the day train Friday, and return the following Thursday.

The nature of our work here is that the first few months are quite busy, what with a series of new projects being initiated. Then it slows down for a month or two. Then in the last months of my stay it suddenly gets very busy again. I suspect that, in part, it’s due to our partners. When I first arrive, there are all sorts of ideas, and once they are vetted, the good ideas are carried out. Then in the middle I suspect folks think “Ah, well, Ben’s here for several more months, and so there’s lots of time.” Then suddenly my departure approaches and everyone thinks “Oh-oh! I’d better tell him about those projects I’ve been thinking about before he leaves.” And they come and I get swamped again. This happen every year, and it will happen this year as well. We’re currently in the slow period.

Which is just as well, as it’s allowed me to spend time with both Angela and Anna. Anna was here for a week, and she and I went all over, looking at projects and discussing future ones. Its part of why she got so enthusiastic about joining the ABDF family, I think. It also allowed me the time to be sick for a week. Yeah, I ate something and got some sort of stomach bacteria. Stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever; the works. I suspect it was the Chicken Briyani I had for lunch in town one day. Thank goodness for antibiotics! Still, this it’s only the second time in five years this has happened to me, which is pretty good considering where I am.

Having followed the health care reform debate from afar, I have to put in my own two cents. Sri Lanka has socialized medicine, where all the basic health care stuff is paid for by the government. Highly specialized or major procedures are charged, albeit at a reduced rate. There is also a parallel system of private clinics and hospitals, which is where I go when I need medical attention. You pay for it, but even so the prices are ridiculously cheap. I went to the clinic to get my antibiotics, and I saw the doctor within 15 minutes (I got there when it opened), and after a pleasant chat with the doctor, he prescribed a week-long course of two antibiotics. The entire visit – consultation AND (European) name-brand prescriptions – cost me a whopping 250 rupees. That’s about $2.10. Even if you’re insured, in the US you’d co-pay for everything, and if you aren’t…! A consultation with the doctor could be, what $80, $100? And brand-name drugs for a week could cost a bundle more. For this reason, as well as for convenience, I now have a dentist, GP, and optometrist in Colombo, all of them private, all highly competent, and all of them costing a fraction of what it would cost me in the US. I would never say the system here works perfectly, and there are still huge problems; this is a poor country after all, but if they can do as well as they are with such limited resources, think of what we could do in the US!

OK, off the soapbox now.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: I’ve got bats. Yes, going batty in Batti. Over the past week or two I’ve been visited by two small brown bats, which has never happened before. They swoop into my veranda, circle the ceiling light, and fly back out, only to re-swoop a few seconds later. Obviously, they’re going after the insects that swarm the light. Since my desk is back a bit, sort of in a corner, they never come near me. Frankly, I don’t mind at all; they are eating bugs after all, and we have far too many of ‘em here, to my reckoning. I notice they only come on certain nights, when the insect density is low, so I guess my veranda is their back-up if their normal feeding area is devoid of food. Anna and I named the first bat Henry. The second bat, which didn’t show until after Anna left, I decided to call Marsha. Little tiny brown bats. They’re kinda cute.

Ah yes: Dog. I was asked about Dog recently, by a long-time reader. He’s still here. Dog, you may recall, was adopted into the household, against the wishes of the family, by two foreigners in January of last year. Dog quickly became human-dependent, especially on the two foreigners, who left Sri Lanka after a month. There were a couple attempts on the part of the family to kick him out, but like the cat in the old summer camp song, he kept coming back. Finally, through sheer doggedness (pun intended) on Dog’s part, the family’s antipathy was worn down and now he’s accepted. In fact, Amma, the family matriarch, sometimes talks to him when she thinks no one’s around. Dog and I continue to have a civil relationship; he wags his tail when I come to the house, but otherwise he leaves me alone. He doesn’t try to come upstairs to sleep or beg food anymore, and I always say something kind to him. That’s how we both seem to like it.

This year there’s a new addition to the animal family. Cat. Cat is this gorgeous tiny little splotchy, multicolored female that showed up just before I arrived in March. Her eyes are light green and incredible, and she is as aloof as can be. Being semi-feral, she doesn’t allow physical contact, although she’s completely unafraid of us humans, and in fact is quite an effective beggar, especially when it comes to Appa, the family patriarch. He can’t seem to resist sharing his fish curry with her. She’s also a skilled huntress, as witnessed by the population plunge of the beautiful little coral-colored geckos that used to climb my walls and ceiling, eating insects. They’ve been positively decimated, and probably why there are more insects around to attract Henry and Marsha.

One last thing before I close. This can be filed under Very Random Things. At the local market I can now buy – get this – Hunt’s BBQ sauce. Yep, both Regular and Honey Mustard. Hunt’s BBQ Sauce, straight outta Omaha Nebraska. How did this happen? How did it get distributed all the way to Batticaloa Sri Lanka? Is there even a consumer market for it? At almost 500 rupees for 21 ounces (about $4.50) it ain’t cheap, but… BBQ sauce! Whodathunkit?