THE EGG MAN (NIWTON)

This week saw the start of our first two small businesses. It is great to be able to provide interest free loans to people that would not have access to funds to start a business. It is an unfortunate reality that many people in Sri Lanka do not have a disposable income. Instead, they live on a day to day basis. What profit they make is spent on the essentials of food and shelter.

We aim to give them a true income and teach them business practices to help them budget and prepare for the future. We are committed to seeing their business succeed so, although the loan is required to be repaid, repayments are based on their monthly income. This means that if they have a bad month they will not be in a situation where they have to repay more than they earn.

I met Niwton in the tsunami village where he and his wife live. Niwton was a carpenter until a fall from a roof left him injured. Upon recovery he found that he could not regain his job because of his age. So he and his wife started selling eggs door to door. Each week they buy nine hundred eggs and make AU one to two cents per egg profit. Although they are both in their late sixties they work every day, walking up to twenty kilometres to sell their nine hundred eggs for the week. His wife tells me that she does more than him beause she also sells soap and shampoo. He lightheartedly responds by mentioning that he always gives her the hilliest roads to sell on. They work hard but have not been able to earn enough to get out of the cycle of spending everything on surviving.

Through the generosity of those in Australia we have provided enough to buy three thousand eggs. This will help him step to the next level of income without having to sacrifice any more. We will provide them with basic training in business principles and our support will continue until the loan is repaid and they are secure in their business. The final step is to have successful operators become a mentor to other businesses, being able to offer first hand advise to new starters.

THINGS YOU DON'T EXPECT TO SEE

Living in a country that is not your native one is bound to throw up moments that are totally unexpected. For example, going to the beach with your children to be greeted by a contingent of airforce personnel, helicopters and high speed navy boats conducting maneuvres on the busy beach in Negombo.

Although they were probably carrying out important training exercises, at times it looked like a bit of fun. It seemed that the pilot was attempting to fly as fast and as low as possible along the water's edge where people were congregating to watch. Added to this was the fact the helicopter was nearly vertical, like you see in the movies.

Generally, you would think that picking coconuts would entail climbing the tree and removing the fruit by hand (or just waiting for it to fall down). In most cases this would be true. However, some trees are up to 15-20m and and even the locals don't attempt to climb these. So they use a long bamboo pole sometimes with a saw attached to knock/cut the coconuts out of their precarious position. This is no problem when the stick is vertical but the problem arises when they travel between plantations and have to transport this stick, which obviously has to be as tall as a coconut tree. Usually they are on foot but occasionally they get around on bikes and it is quite bizzare to see a skinny man on a bike carrying a huge stick.

Elephants in the back of trucks travelling through the countryside - enough said!

How about chipmunks in your house? Sitting in the office, I saw a little movement in the doorway only to look up and see a chipmunk having an explore. I looked to see if anyone else was around to witness this but by the time I had turned back he had disappeared. Hayley, having heard me calling, came in and, as I recounted the story, she suddenly pointed saying,"Yes, we now have a chipmunk in the laundry. No, now he's in the spare room." After some time and considerable excitement on the kids behalf we managed to catch him and release him back to a more appropriate place than our house.

ITS NOT ALL PLAY

I would like to highlight the good work that people are supporting here in Sri Lanka. Previously I mentioned a couple who have started their own little orphanage. These children have been abandoned or their parents have died. They were previously living with relatives who were just unable to support them. They have been taken in and given food, clothing and a loving mother and father.

This couple, their own son and his wife, the grandmother and the 12 orphans all live together. As the oldest of the orphans is now seventeen, space is becoming a real issue in the house. To give the children some more room they have been trying to build an additional building, with three new bedrooms and its own kitchen and bathroom. This has previously proven to be out of reach. Feeding and paying school fees does not leave a lot left over for extras.

Fortunately, as a result of the numerous trips made to Sri Lanka, people have seen the work that this family is doing and the neccessary funds have been provided to this family. This has meant that the building has gone from a shell to completion in a few short months. We would like to thank those involved and look forward to what else can be achieved.

WHEN OUR SHIP COMES IN

We are very excited now that we have our visas to stay in the country. All our belongings that we left behind in Australia to be shipped over have been waiting for this moment. We were led to believe that they would not be far behind us, but when we entered the country we found that there was a lot more that was involved that we were not informed of. So, until we had our visas our belongings had to sit in boxes on the docks back home.

"We will have it when the boat gets here" became the catchcry of our household. As a result of this, our boys were just as excited as we were to get visas. They have waited so patiently for their belongings. Truth be told, however, I have spent 6 months getting by with bare minimums only to discover that all the things that I thought would be essential do not seem so essential anymore. I think if I could go back and pack again, there would have been a lot more things in our garage sales.

However, there are still some things we will be very excited to see. So today, I thought I'd give you a glimpse at our priorities by letting you know the top 5 things each person in our house is waiting for.

JAYMON'S TOP 5
1) My Buzz Lightyear Blanket
2) My red torch that looks like a bird
3) My remote control car
4) My scale electrics racing cars
5) Woody

BRENTON'S TOP 5
1) My remote control car
2) My toy dog
3) Uno
4) My scale electrics racing cars
5) Buzz Lightyear and Zurg

DARREN'S TOP 5
1) My tools
2) Television
3) Books
4) The kid's toys (so they can get out of my hair!)
5) Settlers (All the groupies will understand)

HAYLEY'S TOP 5
1) My cook books (so that dinner can have more variety than the same seven meals each week)
2) My kitchen stuff (for the same reason as above and so I can cook biscuits for the people in my neighbourhood)
3) Tweezers (enough said!)
4) My boxing bag
5) My art stuff

Come on boat, full speed ahead!

GETTING STARTED

Six months in and we can actually start getting our hands dirty. Looking back, we have achieved quite a bit but one of the things that has been on our list for the entire time has been our visas. With that behind us it really feels like all systems go and we can start being truly constructive and seeing results. Having our visas delayed had its benefits; we have made good relationships and we are prepared to get stuck into things when the country was as sure as we were about us staying.

I was quite surprised how much the lack of physical confirmation had been weighing me down and consuming my thoughts and activities. It was difficult to keep preparing for something that may not actually happen and learning the language was hard enough without feeling like it was pointless. Then we had parents coming out in August and we often joked about the irony that we might be back in Australia when they were here. It was such a relief to have that passport stamped or, as was mistranslated to me, chopped. Can you imagine being told that my passport would need to be chopped? I almost swallowed my tongue!

It feels like we are just starting, with the added benefit that we are adjusted to the country and know our way around. We are excited that we can now start showing, as well as telling, people here what we are doing. One part of this has been stuck on the docks in Australia. Before leaving we received items that we were going to start utilising here but had to wait until we had visas. So we can now receive all these items and get the resource library up and running (see "Weekend at Colombo" for more details). Plus, our personal belongings will arrive. Hayley has been cooking everything in one pot and frying pan for our entire time here. We were constantly commenting, "It's OK, our stuff will be here soon". So, all in all, I'm excited about the future.

LEARNING TO WRITE

Part of our language learning experience has been learning the Sinhala script. At first it was pretty daunting to think about learning a new language with a different script and we thought we would just learn the spoken language. However, we found some books that also taught us how to read and write and we discovered it wasn't as difficult as we had feared it might be. In fact, it helps us to be able to learn the correct pronunciations of words.

What's more, we have since learnt how to teach our computer to write in Sinhala also. So today I thought I might introduce you to a few of the Sinhala letters to you and explain how I helped myself to learn them.

This ර makes an 'r' sound. It reminds me of a baby with a curl of hair on top of it's head, so I call it "Ah, baby". (Get it, r baby!)

This ට makes a 't' sound so I call it swirling your tea.

This ත makes a 'th' sound; not a hard 'th' like that, but a soft 'th' like thing. It reminds me of a prince with a big feather thingy in his turban, so I call it the fine prince's thingy.

This ඩ makes a 'd' sound and reminds me of a dragon, so it's simply the dragon.

This ඉ makes an 'i' sound, like icecream. I call this one cyclops because it's only got one eye (i) in the middle of his face.

This ප makes a 'p' sound so I call it the puppy. This one ඡ says 'j' so I call it the jumpy puppy because it's got that crazy ear.

This ල makes an 'l' sound and I call it the lollipop because it looks like one of those swirly lollipops.

This ග is wavy gravy because it looks like a wave and makes a 'g' sound, like in gravy. This ශ is the shurfing shcorpion because it makes a 'sh' sound, looks like a wave, but has a scorpion's tail.

The last letter I will show you today is ඊ which makes an 'ee' sound. Because it looks like it has 2 eyes that have jumped right off the face, I call it 'EE! You scared my eyes off of me!'.

Well, that's enough of a language lesson for today and probably also enough insight into the strange workings of my mind. It might seem a little weird but it's working!

HAPPY SNAPS

A post for the family to enjoy. Happy birthday, Nanny!




Jaymon and the foster puppies, Puppy and Cookie (otherwise known as Georgie and Jinnie)
















The boys explore the paddy fields. They thought this was heaps of fun.
























"Helga's Folly" is a hotel in Kandy. It is a truly amazing place to look around; an adventure for your eyes. Each room is unique, with it's own colours and look.













There are monkeys galore outside of "Helga's Folly". It is a veritable monkey kingdom. These little fellows were quite curious to find out what we might be up to.
















We didn't have time to go elephant riding whilst in Kandy, so the boys had to settle for the next best thing.


















Playing with the kids at Kurunegala.

The gang (well, for the morning, anyway)!



























Ah, you can't go past the old bunny ears and silly faces for the camera. A classic shot.

TALKING THE TALK 2

Following the responses to my last post, I have decided to mention a couple more strange expressions we have heard since coming to Sri Lanka. The first is the liberal use of the term 'famous'. Anyone who is well-known for any reason will be called famous. She is famous because she called the police when a neighbour's house was robbed. He is famous in this area for his carpentry. This man is famous for selling eggs where he lives. Darren is determined that he will one day be famous too.

The other unusual twist of the English language comes with the use of the word paining. Where we might say something hurts (for example, my back hurts), Sri Lankans tend to say it is paining (my back is paining). A dear friend of ours caused us great merriment when he told us, "My leg meat is paining". Translation? "The muscles in my leg are sore"!