This is my bedroom
We drove through to Columbo and out the other sde,( many wild dogs but what I didn;t expect were wild cows! actually roaming around scavagung for food,they terll me beef is very cheap now I know why!) to the 6 district which is where both Amal and Anne live. I have a couple of photos of this place , it is quite small and has a colonial feel to it. No air con, a ceiling fan in the lounge, which is where I am now. I wish you could be here and hear the sounds outside, all the windows are as open as possible and all doors including the front door, it is a maisonette, the landlady lives on the groundfloor, you can hear birds singing,they have parrots flying around as well, there are chipmonks and pomcats all chatting away!.
This is the lounge I am on the settee nowtyping this
A quick change, and off to see the orphanage. The children go to lessons from seven in the morning until 12 midday. They all wear their uniform, for the little ones it is a white dress for the girls and blue shorts with a white shirt for the boys.When they are 12 the boys go into long white trousers.After lessons they change into play clothes and have free time. I saw their dorms where they sleep. The girls dorm is very tidy and they have a single bed each. The younger boys have to share a bed, they lay two boys side by side in each single bed. They have no toys as such a lot of the children will be carryibng a prizzed pocession in their hand, one girl carries a fold up type book a boy today was holding a plaster of paris buddha which was painted fairly crudely and had recently lost its head. The one thing that struck me immediately was their smiles they have the most contagious smile that seems to stretch from ear to ear! Their eyes are beautiful and huge and generally they have very long eye lashes. The children mostly have been here since very young. Often the parents are alcoholics or so very poor they cannot feed or care for them. There are three children two girl twins and their brother all here cos the father is drunk and beats the mother so she has gone to work abroad and the childen have all been left here. There are a few who were with wealthy families but the parents died in the tsunami, those children are aware of technology like i pods, but they have no concept of prices. Both yesterday and today as soon as they see you they want me to take their photo, immediately I have taken it they want to see themselves in the photo, they also ask us to buy things for them, a few of them want padlocks cos they have lockers and they want to stop the others having assess, several have asked for socks, they all put their feet straight into the shoe I have not seen any wearing socks and some willask for an i pod!
They eat very poorly, sometimes Leo pays for a meal but they have learnt if they give the orphanage the cash it is not all spent correctly so they now buy the food.. Hopefully you can see in the photos the boys playing in what they call the well, it appears to be the foundations of a building with varying depths of water in it. This is where they clean themselves. They can often be seen during the afternoon standing at the well covered in lather and yet others will appear with their swimming trunks and towel saying they are going swimming, they then walk round to the same well.
Today we arrived at 12 having slept until 11.15! and set up the room with resus Annie, lesson was due to begin at 12.00 with a break for lunch allowing four hours in total. In Sri Lanka they have little sense of urgency eventually we began around 13.15 we had lunch at 14.30 and finished around 16.00. I had been so nervous but it went very well. I had my very own translater everyone enjoyed the lessons and hopefully they will remember and use some of it.
Afterwards I was dropped off back here while both Anne and Amal went to a funeral. A child of 13 who had died, she had not been at the orphanage but had complained of a headache for sometime, followed by a stroke and then a cardiac arrest, she had been on a ventilator for a few weeks before they turned off the machine, the parents are seperated so Dad was not there and Mother was in a bad state as you would expect.
I had a shower and we went to look at their equivalent of John Lewis, owned by a business woman who apparently cheats on everyone, her picture is on the walls inside the shop and she has her own range of jewellery. The prices were cheaper than home but not much you would want to buy. We went to pick up a take away and a couple of beers which we are now enjoying.
Tomorrow we are leaving at 8 to drive via the elephant orphanage to Kurrenegala where I will present another first aid lesson to the staff there on Saturday.
I am loving it!
XX The other photos won't load at the mo so you may have to wait for those ! Love you
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