ABDF

I don’t have much project news to report to you, but it looks like we MIGHT have the secured the funding for our well project, and our O-Level tutoring program. So please, those of you who made commitments, please send your money in! And thank you!

Well, Greaseman disappeared as quickly as he appeared, at least in my area. After nearly a week the vigilantes decided to stay home and the nightly outcries ceased. The last I heard was that vigilante action “only” resulted in a half dozen deaths, one of whom was a policeman. I say “only” because with all that was going on I’m surprised that there weren’t more deaths and injuries. So while the violence was shameful, it could have been way, way worse.

Despite the dozens of stories I’ve heard, I only know of one from an actual witness, and even with that there was no literal sighting: a friend told me how the previous night someone came pounding on their door at 12:30 at night – an unusual time for unannounced visitors, to be sure – but they didn’t dare open it. The next morning there were boot-like treadmarks in the sand in their front yard. None of the neighbors had anything to report.

OK yeah. It’s been a really long time since I have updated. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I haven’t had internet for a month or more. The other is that while our projects proceed apace, there has been little change in them, nor have we had new ones starting. However a lot has been going on and so perhaps the main reason has been a big dose of laziness on my part. Perhaps.

Now after waiting daily for more than three weeks for Sri Lanka Telnet to come install my internet connection, the installation guy promises he will be here at 4:30 this afternoon (Friday the 19th) to hook me up. Of course he’s been telling me this every day for the past three weeks but this time I have him by the ba – I mean ears. Yesterday I went to a puberty party (more on that later) during office hours and he was there, food plate in one hand, beer in the other, not at “work,” which I don’t think his boss was aware of. So yesterday at the party I told him – I didn’t ask, I informed – that he WILL install my internet today at 4:30. We’ll see if the implied threat works; nothing else has. Is he waiting for a bribe? I wonder. Perhaps I should call his boss and ask.

But the biggest motivation for my taking up finger to keyboard once again has been the civil unrest in the District over the past week, but especially last night, which I kinda/sorta got caught up in and, for a short time, it got a little scary.

But I know that YOUR reason for reading this is to get news about our work here, as well as news on what I’ve been up to. So I’ll talk about that first and you’ll have to wait till the end to read about burning tires and young men roaming the streets with machetes.

Well finally! The last couple of weeks haven’t been the most productive, which has been frustrating. Most of our current projects are educationally oriented, and the past two weeks have been the end of the school term, which means that our partners, who are mostly teachers, have been giving and grading exams. So while I’ve tried to use the time productively, there has been no movement on new projects. Until today. I just returned from spending the whole day with Prabha, our main project partner for Mamunai West.

Meeting Mr. Paskaran (center) and the Assistant Director.

Mamunai West Division, I’ll remind you, is the area opposite the lagoon from Batticaloa which until 2007 was under LTTE control. All of our water tanks and several of our education projects are located there. I was concerned about our projects, particularly the water tanks, because during the floods in January and February the Division was completely submerged. So that was one goal for the day.

The other was for me to meet the Zonal Director for Education for the Division, Mr. Paskaran. The Division Zonal Office acts in a similar way as our local school districts do in the US, and Mr. Paskaran is in charge of overseeing the schools throughout Mamunai West. Given ABDFs increasing involvement in Mamunai’s schools it’s important that I establish a good relationship with him and his staff. They can be a tremendous resource in the future. They had already heard about our tutoring projects in Navatkadu, and wanted to meet me, as they had several other ideas that they hoped to fund.

So today was a good day; I was able to accomplish all these goals.