18th - 20th January 2007

Thursday 18th January

This morning I was back at Siri Sumana School. I had the same 5 grade 4 classes as previously, and I was teaching pronunciation, focusing on “f” and “s”. With the “f”, it is distinguishing it from a “p” that is the challenge, and I found it helpful to draw a face in profile on the blackboard clearly showing that the top teeth are on the bottom lip, and the lips never touch. I also walked round the classroom helping any children who found this particularly difficult. I introduced a few words such as “friend”,” football”l, “Friday”,” favourite”, “Food City”, and “knife” and these helped a great deal. One or two did find this extremely difficult, really not managing to get far beyond “booboll” for “football”. Although I’m not comfortably with this failure, in context, 2 out of about 150 isn’t too bad, so I had about a 95% success rate.

With the “s”, it is particularly words starting with a “s” sound followed by a consonant that are big problems. I introduced a few words such as “sport”,” spoon”, and “snake”. The natural pronunciation for a Sinhala speaker would be “isport”, “isnake” and “ispoon”. They have no difficulty whatsoever in pronouncing words like “Sam” and “Saturday” but even after 20 minutes on the “s” sound, there were still a few children in each class who really could not say “Ssssssssam…sssssssport”. It would still come out as “Ssssssssam…ssssss-isport" I wrote some sentences on the board to put these words into context, and the majority of each class managed them ok:

“My favourite sport is football.”
“Sam eats his food with a spoon.”
“On Friday I saw two snakes.”

I think by the 3rd or 4th class today I had developed a pattern of teaching to make it relatively easy for them. The first two classes I took were quite rowdy, and rather disobedient. I’m sure this is because I was alone with them, and the usual teacher was not there. I did my best to be cross with them, but there was still an unruly element. During the interval I addressed this with the principle, and from then on the school’s English teacher accompanied me. This helped to keep the order and greatly aided the learning process.

This afternoon I was at Nirasha School, and I got the world atlas to teach a bit of fundamental geography prior to reading the children an Indian counting rhyme called Engines, Engines. This is one of the books I salvaged from Bradford Library. The brief geography lesson took longer than I’d hoped, but it was a success. It was harder than I’d anticipated to teach the children the question / answer couplet:

Mr. Albert: “Where is xxxxx?”
Pupil: “xxxxx is here.”

Friday 19th January

Back at Ranapanediniya School this morning I just took 2 classes, one either side of the mid-morning interval. In the first I did as I had done at Siri Sumana School yesterday, teaching the “f” and “s” sounds. Copying is a problem in all the classes I take. When marking work I often see the same errors crop up in several children’s books.

I ended the lesson with some dictation, which was actually the request of one of the pupils. I told them a few things about myself, and asked them to write down what I’d said. This was useful for them, and for me to where judge listening and comprehension skills.

After the interval I took grade 11, and using coloured chalk taught them The Rainbow Song. They learnt it well, so I recorded it onto Minidisc. I then gave them an About Me exercise in anticipation of next week’s lessons when I hope to help them write letters to their pen-friends at Melbourn Primary School in Royston, Hertfordshire.

I’m going to have to be careful what I say in Sinhala. Nalinda and his friends, and some of the school children have all picked up on my interest in learning some Sinhala phrases, and I get the impression that some of the words they want me to say may not be of wholesome content. Today’s grade 11 class got me to say something that I instantly regretted. I think it meant “black elephant” and was an insult directed towards a boy whose skin was darker and more abundant than that of the majority. I feel terrible about that, but I had no idea I was being coaxed into such a cruel remark. He may not have heard of course, but I think he might have done.

The afternoon session at Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage was a washout. I got there to find they had changed their minds about when they wanted me to teach, so I’ll have to come back on Tuesday.

Saturday 20th January

Today I took the children from Nirasha School on a day trip to Galle. I hired Lahiru and his van to take the 12 kids, 5 parents and Mrs. Mendis round a few sites Nalinda had suggested. We visited the Rumassala Reserve first. Here there’s a beautiful Japanese Dagoba at the top of a hill with a stunning view across Galle, and at the bottom, a nice little beach. The area is known to be a rich source of medicinal herbs. This is purportedly because a giant mythical monkey dropped part of a mountain here when flying over from India.

We then went to Dharmapala Park where the children enjoyed the playground and had lunch. Nalinda’s original idea was that I could buy them all pizza for lunch but I wasn’t happy about that, so they all had a packed lunch with them. It wasn’t simply the cost of the food that put made me reticent. Relatively speaking, the cost of pizza for 12 kids here isn’t much, and I had happily paid the fan hire charge, and later the museum entrance fee. The thing is, I felt uncomfortable with the thought of being the affluent Westerner, encouraging these impressionable youngsters to poo-poo their local, traditional, wholesome foods in favour of our foods. I haven’t put that very well, but there is a genuine point in there somewhere. I did buy them ice-creams after lunch. Yes ok, that’s hardly encouraging a local, healthy diet, but I didn’t want to seem like an old bore, and it was a Sri Lankan brand so at least I wasn’t supporting N****é!

In the afternoon we went to the Galle National Museum. This contains Portuguese, Dutch and Buddhist artefacts, and Mrs. Mendis explained them to the children in Sinhala. The final stop was at Galle Fort, which was built by the Portuguese in, I think, the early 17th century.

I’m not doing too badly with the local lingo. As well as figuring out for myself how to ask Mrs. Mendis about her fingers which I trapped in the van door (“aththa kohamada”) tonight I managed to go into Food City and successfully ask for 4 bottles of water!

“Mata wattura boathal haturak denna.”

16th - 17th January 2007

Tuesday 16th January

At Siri Sumana School today I used the flash cards again and compared a few words, like bat and bag, hat and cap, fork and four. This I did as 30 minute lessons with 5 different classes of grade 4 students (9 years old). So, over 2 ½ hours I taught about 150 children.

One nugget of advice about blackboards, if you’re reading this with a view to coming here yourself. Although they can be a little dirty, you will probably find the bit only you can reach (i.e. the top) to be almost as clean as new. But you ought to remember to clean the blackboard when you’ve finished, because you will be the only person in the school who can..!

In the afternoon at Nirasha I found things a little tough again. I was only working with 5 children, but they were at different levels of ability and it the work I had in mind would not have been suitable for them all. Some of them lost concentration, and seemed to be keen to play around with teaching me Sinhala words. I turned this to my advantage though, by getting them to tell me about their families in Sinhala, and then English.

After school Indiga, a friend of Nalinda’s invited me up to his house, which was really nice of him. It’s about a 15 minute walk up through jungle paths. All three generations of the family were really welcoming. I started singing “Head, shoulders etc” with the kids to break this ice. This ended with raucous enthusiasm from the adults though, as I became the student of their language. And how’s this for an orchard in the back yard: coconut, mango, pineapple, passion fruit, papaya, jakfruit and bananas..!

Wednesday 17th January

I was at Ranapanediniya School this morning. I took four 40 minute classes from grade 6 (11 years) to grade 11 (15 years). With the younger kids I used the flash cards, and gave them spelling tests on 10 of them. I did past and future tense exercises with the middle groups, again using the flash cards, and with these two sentences:

“Yesterday I went shopping and I bought a…”
“Tomorrow I will go shopping and I will buy a…”

With the oldest children I got them saying and writing things like what their favourite colour or sport is.

This afternoon I paid my first visit to Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage near Hikaduwa. We delivered the VCR and videos Help Lanka has donated, and arranged when I would be back there to teach.

Last night, on the way to play Karam (a popular board game, somewhere between billiards and drafts) we stopped off at a grave that was being dug. The work was being done by the light of a lamp hanging from a banana plant. Today we were passing through Rathgama as the funeral procession was making its way to the site. Walking at the front was a small band of musicians – drummers, and a local instrument a bit like an oboe. I’d very much have liked to have captured this music on minidisc, but I only have 2 hands and one brain, and all these were busy with my camera.

Following the musicians were close family, and then the coffin upon four shoulders. Another group of men were responsible for laying cloth in front of the procession. They had two or three pieces, each about 3 metres long, and they would quickly nip one bit from under the feet of the parade once the coffin had passed over it, to lay the same piece just ahead of the musicians again. A sort of manual caterpillar track, if you like. The dominant colour at a funeral here is white. White ticker tape hangs across the street all the way from the funeral house to the grave, for several days before the burial. A lot of the clothing worn by mourners is also white, embellished here and there with bright colours.

14th - 15th January 2007

Sunday 14th January

This afternoon I sat and spoke to Mrs. Mendis for a while. We don’t share many common words, but we got by. I showed her, on the atlas I brought from Bradford Library (thanks, Chris!), where myself and various members of my immediate family live. Mrs. Mendis taught me a few Sinhala phrases I asked her about. Everyone seems really touched by my desire to learn a bit of basic Sinhala.

Monday 15th January

Today was a public holiday due to the Tamil Hindu festival of Thaipongal. There aren’t many Tamils in Rathgama, but it’s a national holiday. So, with no schooling commitments, Nalinda and I decided to spend the morning on our “This is Rathgama” mapping project. This is intended to aid future volunteers here. With Manju as our tuk-tuk driver and companion we covered most of the ground between Rathgama and Hikaduwa. Nalinda sketched a map, and I took photos. Places we covered included the hospital, police station, railway stations, markets, temples, and recreation areas.

The gender roles are different here from what I’m used to in England. For instance, last night at the beach, there were 7 of us, all men, and there was no question of a woman being with us as well. From what I gather, men and women just don’t mix socially, before or after marriage (I mean to include teenagers within those collective nouns as well, by the way). Men will often go out with their friends, while women stay at home with their family. I’m not entirely sure what happens when a couple fall in love. I think they have clandestine meetings in the street at the start, and then meet at the family house of the woman once they feel confident about declaring their love for one another. I may have got some of my facts wrong, but I think most of the above is accurate.

12th - 13th January 2007

Friday 12th January

I thought I’d struggle to do anything productive after all the traveling yesterday, but I’ve already been teaching at two schools. This morning at Ranapanediniya School I took a class of 14 children which quietly doubled before I finished a couple of hours later. I did an “I went shopping and I bought…” exercise using some flash cards I made in Bradford (thanks for the idea Heather!). I then extended this notion into the future tense, so it became “tomorrow, I will go shopping and I will buy…”

The age of that first class was, I think between about 8 and 12 and I seemed to have picked an exercise just right for their level of English. I have to admit that this afternoon I didn’t find things as easy going. I had 4 younger children, at Nirasha School. I really found it difficult to make myself understood when trying to help them with an exercise in a book they had been working on. This may partly be due to them being a little distracted by the use of a cane at the other side of the room. This was taking place behind my back, but from what I could gather, there was an upset child, that was deemed in need of some disciplining. I didn’t turn round, but tried to keep the attention of the kids I was working with. I eventually won my four over by changing tack for a sing-song of “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” This they clearly enjoyed, so I think this might be the way forward next time I have this class.

Saturday 13th January

I went to Galle today with Nalinda and Manju. I bought a big Sri Lankan drum a few odds and ends I’ll need for teaching, such as blank paper. I decided against getting a guitar. For the teaching of nursery rhymes it is not necessary. And Nalinda thinks it will not get used in the schools after I have left.

I have been feeling a bit daunted today by all that I have to do, but Sam has reassured me that I’m not expected to work every hour under the sun, and my “This is Rathgama” project can be continued by the next volunteer if I don’t finish it.

11th January

I was picked up at the airport by Nalinda (Help Lanka’s Galle co-ordinator) and his friend Lahiru. As we reached the final stages of our 5-hour drive to Rathgama and entered areas that had been hit by the tsunami, I felt quite peculiar. No, not peculiar. I can’t quite find the word. But you know how when you read something in the news it always seems somehow other-worldly, no matter how of-this-world it is? Well, I suddenly felt I was in a world that had, just over 2 years ago, been invaded by the ocean which now laps at the shore again as though it has nothing to be sorry for at all. I was interested by Lahiru’s memories of discovering his dead relatives, but could tell he was still affected by the experience so didn’t push him on the subject. We stopped just outside Hikaduwa at a tsunami memorial built by the Japanese. It is huge, white, calming Buddha facing the coast. Thinking about it now, its poise, with a hand of compassion facing West, could be seen as more than a memorial to those who suffered or died. It may also be intended as a spiritual gesture, warding off any more incursions.

I’m living with Nalinda, Help Lanka’s Galle co-ordinator, and his mother, Mrs. Mendis, who is the teacher at Nirasha School . Mrs. Mendis speaks little English. This is not a problem, as Nalinda can translate.