Day 1
We arrived in Habarana monday afternoon, and headed out to the small village of Werageila, where we are working. We were warmly welcomed by Deepika, the lady who is hosting us. She and her children, Sandu, Sanduni and Sandeli were very happy to see us again. As she welcomed us in with a cup of tea, Podi explained that the whole village was happy that we were back. It really drummed in how much good we can do here and much difference we can make to the lives of these incredible people. During our last stay here, we photographed this family, and it was an incredible feeling to see how happy Deepika was to be given a large printed copy of her family portrait.
We spent the evening catching up with everybody and enjoyed many games of snap with the children.
Alongside helping out on the farmland and teaching the local children English, our goal this week was to talk to farmers and find out more about their livelihoods. I did not realise how interesting this was to turn out to be.
Day 2
Up early, we walked down to the MEF house to see the progress of the building work being done. A couple of local villagers had been helping build an extension onto the office, which was almost completed. We helped them bring water up from the well to make the cement and helped carry the bricks nearer to where they were working.
We then decided to walk to the local temple high up on the hill. This place is stunning, overlooking the village one side and jungle the other. A small group of locals offered us some delicious sweet treats. Not a word was exchanged, but the mutual understanding and appreciation of the beauty surrounding us was enough.
After lunch, the children started streaming into the garden. My favourite part of the week. They were all so happy to see us again and curious about the new volunteers with us. We started with a recap of everything we had previous taught them, and we was so surprised to find that most of it was all remembered. They were very fast learners. They even then requested some of the educational games and songs that we had previously taught them. So one again we had a sing 
song of head, shoulders, knees and toes, lead by the children. We then all sat in a circle and played a memory game suggested by Grant, one of our volunteers, known to us as ‘I went on holiday and in my suitcase I packed’. Going around the circle we all had to say a word starting with, first, the letter ‘a’, and then the next child had to repeat this word and add something beginning with ‘b’. By the end of the game, which the children were brilliant at, we were all struggling to remember and repeat ‘apple, banana, car, dog, elephant, frog, giraffe, house, icecream, jeep, kite, lion, mouse, nose, orange, pig, queen, rabbit, snake, teacher, umbrella, van, white, xray, yellow, zebra’!
We had been invited to attend a special ceremony in the village that evening. A women had passed away 3 months ago, and that night a monk was to visit the house and prey for the family. The whole village comes to pay their respects and we were honoured to be a part of this unique cultural experience. We were welcomed into a local’s home to watch the drummers prepare themselves. This role of traditional drumming is passed down through generations.
Once the monk starting his chanting, I didn’t think I had ever heard anything so beautiful. 2 hours, and 6 numb bums later, we were all lost in a trance like state, and I couldn’t believe that his voice was still as perfect as when he first started. Unbelievable.
Sitting in this house crowed full of local people, it was so nice to recognise so many faces, many of whom were farmers that we had helped on their land and children we had taught English.
Day 3
Today we went to help Mahinda on his farmland. The week before we had helped him and his family replant onions. He has to water his fields of onions every 4 days. Luckily for Mahinda, he has a well and an engine to pump up the water through a giant hose. Using this, the water fills up the trenches around each onion bed. Once a month, he needs to weed these beds, and this is what we had come to help him do. Between the rows of sprouting onions were the spreading leaves of grasses. We worked with Mahinda all morning searching through the onions and pulling up the roots of these intruders. He then invited us all to his farmland hut in the middle of his fields, where his wife had made us all a very sweet cup of tea over an open fire.
Walking back from the fields, Mahinda pointed out the homes of the farmers that were in the group photograph that we took last week and had printed many copies to give to each of them. It was lovely to be thanked and to have such a small gesture so highly appreciated.
After lunch, Podi took us to see an elephant corridor. Heading into this village, just off the main road, was another elephant crossing point. It was here that one local farmer, Nimal, was attacked by a rogue elephant 8 years ago.
We heard news that Sirisena, the farmer who we had helped with his chilli harvest during our last visit, had come off of his bike and injured his leg. Podi told us that he was sad to be unable to come and visit us at the house we were staying at, so we decided to go and pay him a visit. He was very grateful to see us. He explained that he had fallen off his bike after dropping his children to school. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad, and he sad he would be able to walk again soon. Sirisena is a local farmer here in Werageila. This time of year he grows chilli in his garden, and come September, when the rains come, he works out in the paddy fields growing rice. He explained that he served 22 years in the Sri Lankan army and is lucky now to receive a pension, which along with his income from farming, gives him a very comfortable living. He has recently had a well constructed on his land behind his house. Which will make his life a lot easier.
At the ceremony the evening before, we had met A.P. Simon, a retired mahout from Kegalle. Being based in Kegalle and working amongst many mahouts, we were all very interested to learn more about A.P. Simon, so he had invited us to his house this evening. He explained that he had been a mahout for 25 years, and had moved from Kegalle to Habarana in 1965 when his elephant was moved to work in logging, transporting timber from the jungle. Logging is a very hard life for an elephant and mahout. Nowadays, this work has been replaced by machinery, so it is a less common job. We asked if this was why he retired as a mahout and became a farmer, but he was happy to say that he retired as a mahout when he got married. Life as a mahout is not an easy life, as we see everyday with the mahouts at the MEF. There is never a day off and work with your elephant lasts all day. When we asked about whether he gets wild elephants on his farm land, he was proud to tell us that he can use his mahout commands and the elephants leave. Whether this is true or whether they leave due to the shouting, it is his belief in this that is important.
Back at our host house, Nimal was waiting for us. He took us over to his home next door and his lovely wife Mala made us all a cup of tea whilst he started to tell us about his elephant encounter. Nimal works in the post office, about 22 kilometers from his house. One evening after work, walking back from the bus stop, he came across a rogue elephant. He explained that the elephant followed him and then chased and attacked him. He said he was very lucky to fall over a bank and into bush, so he was hidden from the elephant and so managed to escape with his life. This elephant had previously killed 3 people around this area. He told us that this elephant was angry and came to the village to attack people, as someone, somewhere had previously shot at him or angered him. The government captured this dangerous rogue elephant and translocated him to a national park. Nimal spent one and a half months in hospital and suffered from 5 broken ribs and an injured leg. But still, although weary of elephants, he loves and respects them.
Day 4
After a scrumptious Sri Lankan breakfast, we walked over to the MEF house to see how the extension was coming along and ask if we could lend a hand. The four walls were up. Next, the roof will need replacing. We got talking to to the 3 local men, Weerasekara, Ajith and Karunatilaka, who were working on the house for us. Karunatilaka is a mason, Ajith is his assistant, and Weerasekara is a farmer lending a helping hand. Getting into conversation with these thre
e local men about their livelihoods and families, we found out that all three of these men had wives that worked overseas. They had gone to work in Kuwait as housemaids, as their simply wasn’t the jobs or money here in this village. They leave for 2 years at atime. Ajith’s wife was due back in 2 months, so he was very excited to see her soon. When she returns she will stay for good. Weerasekara and his wife have been saving up to build a well, so they will be able to earn an income from farming when she returns. Theytold us that they speak on the phone every day, but it is so sad that these women are forced to leave their husbands and children to work overseas.
Weerasekara, also earns an extra income from collecting and selling honey from the jungle. He wanted to show us how they get the honey out of the bee hive, so lead us to his friends garden nearby where up in the tree was a football sized hive covered in bees. Pulling down on the branches to bring the hive within reach, he used leaves to carefully brush off all of the bees. After a good few minutes most of the bees decided to abandon ship and Weerasekara cut the hive out of the tree. Once in his hands, the honey started oozing out. He squeezed some into each of our palms to taste. I don’t know whether it was knowing that we had just seen him get this honey fresh out of the bee hive and that we were stood with a group of friendly local Sri Lankans under a shaded tree on a beautiful day, that made the honey taste so good, but it was unbelievably delicious. Weerasekara ripped apart the honeycomb and dished out a portion each. Eating this fresh honey whilst bees were still buzzing around us will be an experience not to forget.
That afternoon, some of the volunteers wanted to visit Minneriya National Park. As a thank you to Deepika for caring for us this week, we asked if her children Sandu, Sanduni and Sandeli would like to come with us to see wild elephants. Most of the people in this village have never been to a national park, and she was over the moon to tell her children that we would take them. Mahinda, our translator, said that his eldest Nuan, would love to join, so we pilled into the safari jeep, kids on laps. When the first group of elephants came into view, the look on their faces is something we will always treasure. “Aliya, aliya, aliya” they said to each other excitedly. In this poor village, elephants destroy crops and damage houses, so are feared and rightfully so. So for these children to safely observe these graceful giants at peace, must have been a whole new experience for them. We plan to take a couple of the local children with us each trip that volunteers make to the reserve. One could argue that giving them all the opportunity to experience these creatures here, will restore their pride in these native animals, however, even though elephants are considered pests and feared here in rural Sri Lanka, everybody that we have spoke to, still views the elephant as respected national treasure. They all love elephants, just not on their land.
Day 5
Weerasekara, the honey gatherer, had offered to take us out into the jungle to show us how they find the wild bee hives. The bee man, as we like to refer to him, led us out of his house and into the jungle behind. He had been watching the bee’s all year to see which trees they were colonizing, so that when august arrives he knows exactly where to find the honey
. First job was to make a hole in the tree, using an axe, large enough for the other man, with long thin arms, to reach in to collect the honey combs. After about half an hour of hacking away at the tree, the man reached up into the trunk and without being stung, harvested a bucket full of the freshest honey combs. Bee man took the honey combs and squeezed the golden honey into a bottle and the job was done, tree to tasty, in just 10 Sri Lankan minutes!
On our last day here, we wanted an afternoon teaching all the children again, as it is their wide eyed smiles that make our week. We had some big posters that had been found during a tidy up back at the MEF, with pictures of many different types of fruit and animals. We taught them some new words, and learn some new exotic fruits ourselves, then we explained which of these fruits and animals we find in England, then asked them to tell us what you can find here in Sri Lanka. After another recap lesson and another memory game, we taught them a new game, where they had to creep up on one person and freeze every time they turned around. They loved it and played it for a good hour.
After our English lessons they have so much energy and love a good hour of games, we sometimes find it hard to keep up! A Previous volunteer had donated a box of toothbrushes which we were told we could bring for the children up here, so after they had told us the English word for toothbrush and told us in English which colour they wanted, they all left happily, new toothbrush in hand.
Pilling into the van, and waving out of the window was even more difficult this time. We are so happy to know that we will be returning soon.
Love, Life & Elephant Tales 