6th - 9th February 2007

Tuesday 6th February

Today was my last day teaching at both Siri Sumana and Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage. At the former I did a few “he is…/she is….”, “he has…/she has…” exercises. I’m still finding that 30 minutes with five different classes doesn’t work all that well. Even more so because at Siri Sumana I’m usually left alone with the class. This makes keeping order harder than at Ranapanediniya, where even if I’m alone, the open plan layout of the school means another teacher is within sight. It’s most unsettling for me when at Siri Sumana a child cries, and I can’t find out why.

At Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage I did the colour word search, The Rainbow Song and hopscotch. Discipline and lesson structure are both a problem here. Kids seem to come and go from the lesson at will, but there is always a core of pupils to work with. I feel these children have been rather unlucky with my time. For one reason or another there have been several occasions we’ve not been able to have a class here.

Wednesday 7th February

This morning was my last teaching before I leave. I was at Ranapanediniya School this morning and I personally donated a new medical kit to the school, and then set about the day’s teaching. I helped grades 7, 8 and 10 to write penfriend letters to Melbourn Primary School in Royston.

At 12:30 I was present for the inaugural meeting of the English Literary Association when committee members were elected and there were speeches by the English teacher, K. Premasiri, and by the principle , who’s name I’ve misplaced. After this there was a ceremony for me, in which all those children present (about 100) sang “You are my sunshine”. One student from grade 10 then made a really nice speech about me, before giving me a present they’d collected together for and bought. It’s a little statue of a fisherman. The assembly was finished off with the students all reciting a Buddhist chant.

This afternoon at Nirasha School I did a few exercises including Opposites and Name the Animal. I also taught them the rhyme about 10 naughty monkeys jumping on the bed before finishing off with the Engines Engines book, which I know they enjoy.

Thursday 8th February

Tonight I went round to Bindu’s where a small party was to be held for me. I bought a bottle of arrack for them all, and we played a bit of karam. I’ve got quite average at this over the past few weeks. We finished off the night with them all singing and percussing a few songs popular songs in Sinhala or Hindi.

I really like the way people shake hands here. It’s far softer than the statement of masculinity I’m used to in England. Here it’s sometimes more like holding of hands, thank shaking, such as with Sugat. Actually, men are more physical with each other here, and it’s nice. A hand on the shoulder, or a head massage, or even casually holding hands, is not uncommon.

Friday 9th February

I finished packing early this afternoon, so spent an extra ½ hour with the children at Nirasha School. I had some photos I’d brought from home of friends and family, so I taught the children sentences such as “This is Heather”….”She is 31 years old”….”This is Jack”…”He is 10 years old”….”Heather is Jack’s mother”.

I’ve been really pleased by the food here in Sri Lanka. I've written a much more detailed personal blog, including lots about the food. But I dind't feel it relevent to Help Lanka, so it's not on here. Email me if you want to know anything more...

albert

3rd - 5th February 2007

Saturday 3rd February

This morning I went to Morathuduwa Temple to meet Gothama, the monk as arranged last week. We sat outside, just near the white dagoba, and meditated on a mat for about ½ hour. We then had a chat about various things to do with Buddhism.

I went to Rathgama’s Saturday market after the temple to gather information for the This is Rathgama project. I took a few photos and made a recording of sounds of the market which I hope will find it’s way onto this website as an audio file. There are about 100 stalls selling fruit, vegetables, spices, fish, kitchenware, cloths, linen, household goods, toys and incense.

Sunday 4th February

Today is National Day, celebrating the anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948. Last night Nalinda said, “Tomorrow everybody hate (sic) you!” I know he meant it as a joke, but I’m not proud of my country’s colonial past, and I told him so. It was easy to explain actually due to his choice of t-shirt – red with a big union jack in the middle. I basically just said to him that I would never been seen wearing that t-shirt. I think he got my drift.

I snorkelled again today and I swam among loads of wonderful fish, including a school of barracuda and a fish about ½ metre long, predominantly electric blue, with a bright yellow patch on each side. But the most amazing thing was when I was swimming along looking at nothing in particular, only to find a huge turtle, the size of me, swimming underneath me!

This afternoon on TV there were a few films, some Indian, some Sinhalese, set in colonial times, with natives pitting their wits against the Brits. It’s good to see some Brit-bashing movies..!

Monday 5th February

Going to the beach to see the fishermen at 7am this morning I saw loads of kids walking to school. It was only now that I realised that school days here aren’t shorter than in England. They may finish at 1:30pm, but they’ve been at school since 7:30am!

After this morning’s teaching at Ranapanediniya School I went into Galle with Nalinda and Manju to get a few bits and bobs I wanted. There are some things I’m really finding a strain now I’ve been here nearly 4 weeks. One is people asking me for money after telling me something useful. For instance, today in Galle we went into the train station to find out times of trains to Colombo. I thought the smartly dressed man who explained the options to me was an employee of the station but no. He was a tour guide, and after our conversation he wanted some money. Now, I know that people here are generally worse off than I am, and so need the money more. But it’s not that that bugs me. It’s the deception of altruism that depresses me.

31st January - 2nd February 2007

Wednesday 31st January

This morning I was at Ranapanediniya School. It was the last day for 5 of their teachers. There is a policy in Sri Lanka that after 8 years at a school, a teacher is transferred. It’s an interesting idea I think. Some like it, some don’t.

I took 4 classes, accompanied by K. Premasiri. With grades 3 and 7 I did The Fruit Song. Only with the latter did I attempt to get them singing it as a round, and I recorded them on minidisc. With grade 9 we continued the telephone dialogue from their exercise book we started looking at last week. With grade 11 we looked at a couple of new words in 3 tenses: the infinitive, the past and the past participle.

This afternoon I was at Nirasha and using the atlas gave them a few exercises based around countries, such as “Sri Lanka is near India”, and “Sri Lanka is not near England”. They don’t know where many countries are on the map, so even the basic geography lesson is useful for them.

Thursday 1st February

Today, being a full moon, was Poya Day, a national Buddhist holiday. So I visited a school of a different kind this morning – that populated by fish. I took my snorkel, and it was wonderful to swim freely among hundreds of beautiful fish.

After my swim I sat watching the crowds enjoying their Poya Day on the beach, and noticed that those playing cricket, and swimming were predominantly male. I asked Nalinda and Manju, and they confirmed my suspicion that even on a special day like today, most girls will stay at home. That reminds me, very few, if any, women smoke in Sri Lanka, and most, if not all, men do.

This afternoon I watched a subtitled Indian film starring Anil Kapur on TV with Mrs. Mendis. She was amazed that I didn’t know who he was. At breakfast time, I had seen, apparently on every channel, Buddhist monks reciting tales of the Buddha’s life in Sinhala, and chanting in Pali.

This evening at sunset Nalinda, Manju and I went to a temple about 12km out of Rathgama so I could get a good grasp of what happens on a Poya Day. White clothing was popular among the devotees, but not exclusively so. People were wandering around making offerings, by lighting sandalwood incense sticks, and coconut oil candles. They would also water the roots of the bo tree. This tree, as is the norm, was on a raised bed. So watering it involved pouring water into a funnel at shoulder height. Before the evening mass started we all stood in a huge circle around the temple, and offerings were passed round everyone before being taken into the temple. These offerings were mostly lotus flowers, candles and incense sticks.

Alas I’ve had no joy with Sri Lankan radio stations. I’ve done my best to contact them and arrange a visit, but it’s not going to happen now. Pity, that could have been really interesting. Maybe next time…

Friday 2nd February

I was at Siri Sumana School this morning. I did an exercise about Poya Day: “Yesterday was Poya Day. What did you do yesterday?” Although all five grade 4 classes are of mixed abilities there is a stark difference in the abilities of some of them. The first group were a bit unruly, and as I’ve previously said, this can make things very challenging, particularly when the resident English teacher is not there to help keep order. Despite their behaviour they soon grasped what the day’s lesson was about. The 2nd class however, just could not get it. I had blank faces for 15 minutes, and I felt rather inept at not being able to come up with a way to help them understand.

This afternoon at Nirasha School I did a colour word search, followed by The Rainbow Song, hopscotch and the Engines Engines rhyme book.

I’m having my own pronunciation problems now. It’s taken me a while to get the difference between“…tha” and “…ta”. “Pahatha” means “at five”, as in the time I usually meet Indiga in the evening, while “pahata” means “down”.

25th - 30th January 2007

Thursday 25th January

At Ranapanediniya School, K. Premasiri was absent today, but I feel I made good progress with the classes I took. With year 6 I did my male/female friends exercise, and with both years 10 and 11 I did something slightly different. Using the school’s electric keyboard I taught them “You are my sunshine” and went on to give a couple of exercises based on the weather.

This afternoon I was at Baranasooriya Boys' Orphanage, where I covered quite a bit of ground. I used the big atlas I brought over, to do the “Where is …..?” / “…..is here.” Exercise. I taught them some common nouns using my flashcards and we played hopscotch to learn numbers.

Friday 26th January

At Siri Sumana School today I intended to use my “What’s the Time?” OHP sheets, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Firstly, I hadn’t realised a two socket adapter would be needed for the English power cable. Once we had power, I found the classrooms were too light, and there wasn’t a suitable blank wall space. I’ve told Nalinda and he’s going to speak to the principle about finding a suitable place for the projector. So, instead I did some Time exercises using the blackboard. But because I had to write it out for each of the five 30-minute classes, I had to make the exercises fairly brief.

In fact, I’ve found that because there are five grade 4 classes, and each only gets ½ hour, I’ve not made as much headway as I have at the smaller Ranapanediniya School, where lessons are 40-minutes long. Also I seemed to pitch my first few day’s exercises too high - many of the children don’t actually have the vocabulary to understand the topic, so I’ve had to adjust my lessons as I’ve gone along. It’s a shame there are so many classes, because given a whole morning with a single class, I’m sure I could make more progress. It would also give me chance to vary the exercises, and maybe throw a song into the mix as well. But in 30 minutes, there’s just not time.

I’ve still got problems with naughty children. More so at Siri Sumana School than the other schools. I’ve found that a fairly good way to deal with them is to make them stand up and read out, or sing, whatever we’re working on alone. One thing that does work well, with good kids and bad alike is giving them exercise to write in their books that I can then mark. The prospect of a red tick, and a comment seems to really get them writing!

This afternoon at Nirasha we did some Friends exercises, and before a torrential downpour played hopscotch outside.

Saturday 27th – Tuesday 30th January

During these four days I went on a trip around some of Sri Lanka’s historic sites in the Cultural Triangle, which embraces Kandy, Dambulla, Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. I hired Lahiru as my driver. I can highly recommend you make a similar journey if you are reading this as a prospective volunteer in Sri Lanka and you have enough time. I’ve written a far more lengthly summary of the trip, which I can email to you if you wish.

22nd - 24th January 2007

Monday 22nd January

This morning I was at Suri Sumana School, and I did an exercise based on the past tense, in which I asked the pupils what they did at the weekend. It was the induction day for the new first years today, and the principle invited me into the main hall for a while to take a few pictures of the proceedings.

In the middle of the day, Nalinda and I visited Devapathiraja College, and Rathgama Library, delivering some books donated from the UK.

This afternoon I gave the students at Nirasha an exercise based on the Galle trip on Saturday. I had prepared worksheets for them to fill in the gaps.

Tuesday 23rd January

I was at Ranapanediniya School this morning. I assisted the English teacher, K. Premasiri, with a telephone dialogue exercise with grade 7, and I finished the lesson with a Word Chain, asking each student in turn to come up with the next word (last letter – first letter, that sort of thing).

With grade 6 I sang a song I’ve written to be sung in a round, like Frere Jacque. It’s about fruit, and I’ve cunningly called it The Fruit Song.

With Grade 11 we did a past, present and future exercise. K. Premasiri actually has a more in depth knowledge of English grammar than I do. I know, and can explain to the children, how and when to use different verb forms. But he knows all the group names, like the infinitive, and present perfect better than I do. He told me it’s 3 years since any pupil passed their English O-level. That’s really sad. A few of the children in each class seem to be really enthusiastic to learn from me, so hopefully this run will come to an end this December.

I had a chat with the principle at Ranapanediniya School, to find out what they were planning to do with Help Lanka’s £100 donation. Apparently they’re on the lookout for a TV to use with their video, and they want an internet connection.

This afternoon was my first proper teaching visit to Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage. With a couple of exeptions, the level of English among the boys is lower than elsewhere. So I spent quite a while on learning just the English numbers with a few boys. I also did a few basic, “My name is…”, and “My favourite…is…” etc.. I spend quite a bit of time on the phonetics of English words and I had an interesting pronunciation challenge with one boy when working on the numbers. He couldn’t say “six” (“sig”), but could say “sixteen”. And he couldn’t say “fifteen”. I spent a long time with him on this. First I got him to break down the word to “f-i-f-teen”, but when putting it all together it would come out as “sibteen” or even, “sixteen”. After much patient encouragement, he almost got it right, so I don’t think he’ll be scarred for life by the experience.

Tonight I went to a baby’s first birthday party with Indiga. I took a teddy and some soap for the birthday girl, who today would get her first taste of rice. It was also a first for me – this party was the first time I’d seen men and women at the same social gathering, but after a while I was whisked off into the men’s room (one of the children’s bedrooms, it seems) where we had nibbles, and drank arrack (think coconut whisky).

The lack of English speakers at the party didn’t bother me, but what did make me feel uncomfortable was the men, as they started to get drunk talking at me, apparently forgetting I couldn’t understand. I didn’t feel intimidated, but it did become a bit of a strain, maintaining a false smile.

I felt more comfortable after a while when I left the room and went and watched television with the women and kids. The men had curry and rice at about 10 pm. It was one of the best dhals I’ve had.

I read in an English language newspaper today that certain types of polythene bag have been made illegal. This is quite encouraging, to see environmentally conscious policies being implemented here in Sri Lanka. Despite this law, it’s a shame so many eateries serve food on a plate covered with cling-film to save on the washing up. It’s also a pity people don’t have more of a sense of what to do with litter. A lot is just dropped, wherever and whenever. I’ve been really saddened to find that the rubbish I have collected is just on the patch of land at the back of Mrs. Mendis’s garden.

Wednesday 24th January

The English teacher at Siri Sumana School had asked me to bring along some exercises about friends today so I duly did. I prepared an exercise describing both male and female friends, what they like and where they live etc.

This afternoon’s class at Nirasha was a washout because there were so many absentees. Instead I used my time to prepare some OHP sheets for Time exercises with Siri Sumana School on Friday.

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.