Journey to our little village...

The next day, after spending the night at pastor’s guesthouse, we leave in our little tuk-tuk for our little village in the middle of nowhere. We cross the lagoons outside Batticaloa, past the guard posts and into this land where it seems that no-one wants to go apart from the army, aid workers and those who have always been there and always will be. The road is only for the most daring of tuk-tuk drivers and it seems that the only other vehicles that venture this way are 4x4s, tractors and lorries. A journey in a normal car along this road would be a LONG one and the driver would have to be very determined or a little crazy. The road is red dirt, loose sand and concrete in patches – extremely pot-holed and worn away at the edges.

The land around us is dry scrubland. Scorched, overgrown paddy fields wait for the next rain to fall. No workers, no egrets. The rain falls for 3 months of the year and then it’s up to the breadwinner of the family to leave for Colombo or find odd jobs here and there. The climate has changed even since Batticoloa. Not far west from here people are still tending their paddy fields. A shack serves as a house and a shop at the side of the road, scattered within miles of each other, and every now and then we pass a hamlet-sized village or army barracks. At one point we reach a bridge with a flow of muddy water passing beneath it and realise that there has been some rain here. After the bridge the same landscape is revived in a lush green and there are people working in the paddy fields again.

When we arrive at our village it is the greenest Miriam has seen it. We drive up the road – passing 2 or 3 houses on either side and reach the centre of the village – the village shop. Over the hill, past the shop, the road disappears into the green distance. The first house we come to after the shop is our house, where our kind hostess and her two daughters will put us up whenever we visit. This lady and her house were chosen at the beginning because it is one of the two houses in the village with a toilet (you average hole in the floor toilet of course!). The house and the loo were built for her by Christian Aid, so while she is lucky enough to have been chosen by them, she is also lucky enough to have been chosen to house us, the foreign visitors, a task she seems glad to have received!

This house is made of red brick with red roof tiles and a sloping corrugated tin extension that she has added on herself. Other houses are made from cob, palm branches or cement while some are built in the same style as hers. Each house stands in its own clearing which seperates it from the scrubland outside – paradise for cobras and pythons. The gate comprises of three sticks across a gap in the fence to keep the cows out. The front garden is full of recently planted manioc. At the back a pathway leads through the scrub to the village well where people shower and fetch water over-looking the rice paddies and looking out to the hazy hills beyond. Also looking out at this view are the bright blue kingfishers that we’ve seen along the way and eagles that soar out from the trees next to us. The setting seems so idyllic in the greenness after the rain, at dusk, away from the heat of the day, but the reminder of the war that has been is never far away as the soldiers across the road keep a watchful eye on everything that is going on in the village and everything that drives by. They keep watch from a derelict building just diagonally opposite from us.

It seems that we are a source of entertainment for the soldiers, the passers-by and the villagers. A Sri-Lankan girl in a shalva, a western-looking Sri-Lankan girl in jeans and t-shirt and me, the whitest person around. As people stare we smile back; glad to be a novelty and to provide some kind of distraction in this village which is not used to visits from the outside world.



And so begins our routine of visiting and teaching. The morning we teach at the nursery where we try to get them to say ‘elephant’ instead if ‘elepant’ and ‘fish’ instead of ‘piss’. As teacher Miriam holds up the flash cards the ladies gather outside with their faces pressed up against the grid to watch the class proceed.

We eat most of our meals at the house where we stay but the whole village shares the cooking, turning up with parcels of curry and rice just before meal time. Everyone wants to help look after us whether they have the means to or not. Most people have little but the little they do have, they share. Most of the families are headed by women, with their husbands lost to the war or snake bite or gone away to find work.

After lunch and the obligatory after-lunch nap, we go to school to do after-school club – an hour of English teaching and then an hour of play. The first day we go expecting to find the usual 30 children that Miriam and her friend teach. As we walk through the school yard hands wave and voices call out and when we arrive there are at least double that amount of children – about 70 children between the ages of 3 and 19 – greeting us with ‘Good Afternoon teacher’. They all enthusiastically sing and do the actions to ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and everyone tries their best to complete the writing exercise with the books and pencils that teacher Miriam brought from Colombo. The classroom is noisy but everyone is eager and happy to be learning and even happier when we announce playtime. We go out for a relay race and then a game of rounders. The older boys gather in the road outside the fence to watch and the next day there are even more children – about 85 – and all the mothers come to watch as well, happy that we are there for their children. The school is stamped with Unicef and Oxfam labels and there are signs that the UN has also been here, so it is clear that the village has had some input but since the war it is also evident that most, if not all, of these agencies have now left the area.

After our teaching, playing, visiting and talking (using very few Tamil words and mostly smiling while our friend does the speaking!) for the week, I go back home blessed by these people and their hospitality and looking forward to the next one (which begins tomorrow). Despite the bad reports from Colombo, the food didn’t seem that much hotter than what we’d already eaten and because of the rain the weather was not quite as overwhelming as expected (outside temperatures of 35 degrees plus seem manageable with the genius invention of the umbrella and the cover of the school roof). We make the overnight journey back to Colombo (which takes 12 hours this time), happy at the prospect of spending the weekend with light and electricity, in front of a fan, with running water and a bed instead of a quilt on the floor, but realising that living without these commodities is not that big a deal if you don’t have great expectations of comfort. Having said that, we will each be taking a sheet sleeping bag next time in an attempt to provide some kind of protection from the spiders, crickets and Mr.Rat who we share the floor with! Wildlife outside and in the loo = fine. Wildlife inside = something we are going to have to get used to!!