WOW! What a whirlwind. On Friday I thought I was hosting a small graduation ceremony for the Shilpa girls who had taken the career development classes I had been teaching for months. Not quite. Instead the entire home was there: all the girls, the trustees and some parents. Three different groups of girls performed dances, the entire group sang a song about ‘you are an angel’ (of course I cried), the girls I taught made speeches in ENGLISH! I was presented with a book of photos of each girl and a letter from each one. I was given a beautiful tablecloth made in SL. And it ended with food they had prepared. I was truly overwhelmed by their efforts and felt honored.

Then Ron joined me and we took off for Mohan’s, an Asia Foundation driver, who had invited us to his home. Unfortunately, Mohan had to work that night and couldn’t join us. He is the executive director’s driver and the director had decided to go out to eat that night. His daughter Priya who also works at TAF was there and her mother had prepared a lovely meal for us. Sri Lankans prepared a minimum of five dishes so there was more food than we could ever eat. Priya gave each of us a gift.

On Saturday we got up early and had Ruwan drive us to Jayatissa’s for lunch. He lives about 2.5 hours northeast of Colombo. Jayatissa is one of Ron’s program officers. He lives with six women aged 12-85: his wife, three daughters, his wife’s aunt, and his mother. They had prepared 15 dishes. In the SL culture it is common for the guests (if Western particularly) to dine while the hosts watch you eat, making sure your plate is never without food on it. So Ron and I ate, Jayatissa sat at the table some of the time while mother and daughters glided around the room taking care of our every need. Before lunch we walked down to the river and skipped rocks. We got to see a ferryman who ferried villagers back and forth across the river. You only pay when you go back to the far side of the river. It cost five rupees each way. The ferry was a boat carved from a log with an outrigger for balance. Women would remove their shoes and pull up their saris and wade into the river to board the ferry. There are many things in SL that are done the way they were done 100 years ago. I think I have mentioned that they still use bullock carts here for transport.

That night we dined with Peter and Veasna. In our conversation with them, we learned that we might have worms from eating lettuce here. We decided to de-worm when we get home since we will be eating raw veggies between now and then. We are sort of eating our way out of SL and gaining weight in the process!

On Sunday we met up with Ahmad who is here from Vancouver WA working on a project for Ron. We asked him to join us and we went to two art shows and an exhibition of hand loomed creations. In addition there was a sale near the hotel of the most beautiful embroidery I have ever seen. Ahmad managed to complete his Christmas shopping with the embroidery sale and the handloom sale. I now need to mail a box home because we keep seeing beautiful things to buy as gifts or for us. We ate lunch at an Indian vegetarian restaurant and came back to the hotel.

bThen at 6:30 Mr. Kularathna’s son picked us up and took us to the Kularatna’s home for dinner. What a great evening! Mr. K and his son live next door to each other. His son is married to Aspara and they have a four-month-old daughter. Aspara’s brother and his family (three kids and his wife) were visiting for the weekend; Aspara’s mother lives there also. In addition to Mr. K, and his wife, their youngest daughter lives with them. So it was a party! We started with sweetened limejuice and conversation at the son’s house. Then we moved to Mr. K’s for shish kabobs and alcohol drinks (beer and wine) then back to the son’s house for dinner. Again, Ron and I ate while many hands waited on us and attended to our every need. It turns out Mr. K did much of the cooking and what a feast it was. We had seer fish prepared two ways: SL and western. There were shrimp, hoppers, string hoppers, sambol, seeni sambol, jak fruit, cucumber and tomato salad and I can’t remember what else. Mr. K is a very shy and humble man but Aspara kept the conversation flowing. We had a GREAT time and were honored to have been invited. Although it was dark out, I could tell there were perhaps 100’s of orchids in Mr. K’s yard. He is very creative. In his kitchen he had created a wall that looked like a typical SL mud hut with a thatched roof. He also showed us his ‘ships in a bottle’ collection. I think I mentioned he has given us one for our anniversary. I found out that his son had asked for one and still is waiting for one!

Ron and I decided to give Mr.K some artwork as our gift since he had taken us to numerous art shows in our time here and he often would join us once he had parked his vehicle. We bought a photograph taken by Dominic Sansoni of Mirissa at sunset. It is a beautiful seascape on the south coast of SL. I wrote on the back that I had spent more time with him (Mr. K) than anyone in SL except Ron. So we had lots of laughs about not having jealous spouses.

There was some good news in the paper about SL for a change. A firm that makes paper and paper products from elephant dung and recycled paper won the World Challenge Award. The name of the firm is Maximus, which is the species name for the SL elephant. This is a firm that employs 35 people and now pays villagers to collect wild elephant dung. I’ve seen photo frames, notepaper holders and similar products made by Maximus. Google them to learn more about their process. It is fascinating.

When Pat McDonnell and Tanya Grey were here last week, I took them to Barefoot to buy gifts. Tanya wanted some tea to take home for friends. She had picked up a box of loose tea that is called ‘fannings”. It is the dust of processed tea. Tea is sold as whole leaf, broken leaf and fannings. I had remembered this from our tea tour so I told her I didn’t think that fannings was a very good grade of tea. I asked a clerk who said ‘no, fannings is the best!’ Upon further conversation I discovered that he meant to Sri Lankans fannings was the best because they like a really dark, strong tea with lots of milk and sugar. He told me the French liked the whole leaf the best. The light went on for me at that point.
It is Monday and we leave Thursday early. I will do a farewell to SL blog on Wednesday. Until then, that’s it from paradise five degrees above the equator.