Day 1
We piled in the van knowing that we had a long journey ahead, all tired and ready for bed. But as soon as we hit the dusty dirt road, I remembered why I was here. What can only be described as feelings of happiness filed me. The time that we have spent here in the village of Werageila has been nothing but happy memories, even when dripping with sweat, working under the mid day sun, working alongside these incredible people keeps a continuous smile upon your face.
After high fives from all of our children friends and a lovely warm welcome from Deepika, I sat down and played a much missed game of snakes and ladders with my ‘nangi’s’ (little sisters) Sanduni and Sandeli. A gentleman arrives at the house and Deepika rushes to introduce us to her husband, Ruwan Dissanayaka. He works in Colombo prison, and comes home every few weeks to see his family. It was great to finally meet the man of this house. We were brought a cup of Deepika’s tea, and I watched everyones faces as they took their first sip and realised that there was more sugar in the cup than tea! I love it!
As we sit on the porch, playing games with the children, villagers stop by every so often to say hello and ask if I have any photos of them for them. Luckily, I was well prepared and had photos printed of each farmer and family we had met. I must be known as the ‘photo lady’. I see it as a small thank you to each of them for their welcoming of us and their time.
Back at the MEF, every Monday we have Sinhala lessons with Sriyani. Now Sinhala, with its extremely long words and 42 letters, is not the easiest language to learn, but I was very pleased to impress my mahout by saying ‘mama Habarana yanowa, mama sikurada enawa’ meaning ‘I am going to Habarana, I am coming back on Friday’. I thought I would try practising some of my new words and phrases on the children. All of the children here, although sometimes shy, speak very good English. After a few giggles at my probably funny attempts, Mihiri and Sunduni correct my pronunciation and become my Sinhala teachers here in Werageila. Then the two little rascals arrive.
Mahinda’s youngest ‘Juty’ meaning ‘small’ and his sidekick Sahan. As they climb all over Stu, destroying his laptop, they speak to us in Sinhala like they have no idea we don’t understand. As photos of elephants come on screen, we pick up some words that they are saying. ‘Aliya’ meaning elephants and I was surprised to hear ‘etah’ meaning ‘tusker’, which I have not yet heard said in the 4 months that I have been here. I only know the word from researching the Sri Lankan elephant.
One of the masoners, Premadasa, who had been helping with Sirisena’s well, recalled that Wayne was a practising magician and without a word of English demanded he put on a show. ‘Podi magic’ we all chant, ‘podi’ meaning small, as it was a previous volunteer, Jesper, that was given the name ‘magic boy’. Their faces were puzzled as Wayne, trick after trick, baffled them.
I sat down and tried to make notes for this blog and the girls asked what I am always writing. I explained that I am writing a diary of my time here and the work that we are doing, and I explained that they are all in it. I got out my laptop and showed them a previously completed blog and start to read it to them. Mihiri takes over and practises her English. They were all happy to see photos of themselves and I explained that these blogs are read by people in England and they were all very excited to hear this. As my screensaver of elephants starts, I decide to explain about the MEF, about the charity providing a home to many captive elephants. I wonder if they have ever seen people so close to elephants or if this is something completely new to them. Suddenly, the most beautiful music fills the house and all of the children run to see John, who like the pied piper lured them all in with his melody.
After a delicious meal of rice, dahl and fresh fish we sat down and discussed a filming plan. This week we aim to collect the final footage or our human-elephant conflict (HEC) film, a documentary introducing the HEC and what we are doing to help reduce it.
Day 2
In order to get as much footage as possible, to use in the human-elephant conflict film, we decided to retrace our steps with the camera crew, Chris and Stu, and visit all the things of interest that we had previously seen and explore a bit further looking for evidence of elephants. Setting off from the house, we started walking through the village heading out towards the farmland. The smell of onions filled the air, as almost every household had a porch full of onions. During the dry season here, many farmers make their income through growing onions, and now was harvest time. Having harvested them all from the fields, they had to prepare them for market. One of the most amazing things about the people of this village, is how everybody helps everybody. One day, a crowd of people will head out to help one family harvest their crops, then the next day, they will all head out to help another. The people of Sri Lanka are very kind hearted, but this good willed nature is unique to these small farming villages. Podi explains that even in Kegalle, where the MEF is based, if he needed help on his land, he would have to pay someone. The smiling faces of these kind, hardworking women, the colours of their floral sarongs, the smell of onions, set a beautiful scene.
They thanked us again, telling us that these were the onions that we had helped them plant at the start of the season. These farmers have to invest around 70,000R to grow onions, and at the end of the season, they sell them in Dambulla for around 40R (20p) per kilo. Millawana, a farmer here that we previously spoke to, told us that at the end of his onion harvest he hope to have made around 300,000R.
Saying goodbye to the onion ladies, we carried on down the road. On the side of the road, the bushes had been burnt away, probably to increase vigilance for safety, by making it easier to see a rogue elephant that has wandered to close to the village. In the ashes we saw an elephants footprint. This must have been recent, proba
bly made the night before, as the ashes would have been moved by wind etc. The height to an elephants shoulder is 2 times the circumference of the footprint. This was a big elephant. Seeing evidence of elephants in the centre of the village like this, amongst peoples homes, shops and the village school, is a reminder of how vital it is for us to help this community defend themselves and their land from elephants, and in turn help conserve the Sri Lankan elephant.
As we head out of the village and into the farmland, we meet Swijerathna, a local farmer here, tending to his onions. He tells us that a couple days before, on the 10th, 8 elephants had wandered onto his land. He shone his torch at them and they changed direction, so only crossed the edge of his land rather than walking right through the middle of his crops. He shows us the damage that they had caused.
Elephants down eat these onions, but through crossing his land, had trampled his onions just 10 days before he was due to harvest them. The onions that had been trampled are unsalvageable and he will be unable to sell them.
From this conflict, he lost 2500R worth of onions, for which he will get no compensation. Our volunteers will be staying with these farmers in their treehouses at night, to monitor the elephants and get an overview of the situation here. But, the key to any successful conservation project, is working with the community and getting their involvement. We bought some small diaries to give out to farmers for them to record elephant data for us. We asked him, if elephants came to his land, if he could write down in this diary the date and number of elephants. This way, we can start to collect data from the farmers and get to see how often, how many elephants are in what area. He was very happy for our interest and offer of long term help. We then took a GPS reading of his treehouse and the border of his land, which we intend to do with each farmer, enabling us to map out each farmers land, so when we get data from these farmers, we can map where the elephants frequently visit.
We carried on down the dusty road further out onto the farm land, nearing the jungle border. On route, Podi points out more elephant evidence, alongside the balls of dung and footprints, which are often seen here.
He points out some trees that had been pulled down by elephants so that they can reach the leaves. He then shows us a small patch of dried mud on a tree, from where an elephant would have rubbed up against. He is well trained to spotting these subtle signs of these giant creatures. 
We were heading out towards the elephant bones, that we were taken to see by Sandith on our first field trip to this area. Seeing the elephants bones scattered in the shade of the tree, brought back the scary realisation of the scale of the problem we are facing here. This is the remains of an elephant that had been killed. Years ago, someone had decided to take matters into their own hands, and defend themselves and/or their land from a rogue wild elephant, even though it is illegal to kill an elephant here in Sri Lanka.Human-elephant conflicts in Sri Lanka kill 200 elephants and 48 people in 2011 (Sri Lanka Department of Forest Conservation). This is exactly what we are here to prevent.
We then headed back to Deepika’s for lunch, and a much needed cold drink, after our morning out exploring. After food, and a small break whilst the camera crew logged their footage, we headed back out to the fields for some more filming.
We wanted to get some shots of treehouses, so we ventured to Siripala’s treehouse, overlooking the lake, very stunning location. Chris and Stu clambered up the ladder to the top to get some shoots of the view from within.
One of the shots that we wanted for the film, was a farmer walking away at the end of his day, and climbing up into his treehouse for the night. Podi tracked us down a farmer, who was happy to be in our documentary, and we filmed him entering his tree house. We then needed a timelapse of the treehouse as the evening sky turned to dusk and then dark. This did mean that we had to sit in a field for a couple hours, but in a setting as incredible as this, with good company, it was very enjoyable.
As we discussed some of the wildlife we had seen on route, such as a red headed lizard, a tortoise, a peacock and a snake, one of the farmers pointed out the birds that we flying above us. The farmers say that when swallows fly low, rain is on the way. This is what they have all been waiting for. It has not rained here in Werageila for around 6 months, and life has been very difficult for this community. Now is the hardest time for them, as many of the lakes here have dried up. For us, coming up every few weeks, it is easy to see the water levels dropping. The rains are due in October, and it couldn’t come soon enough. They tell us how beautiful this land is during the rainy season. I am very happy that I will be here to see it, as to me, it is beautiful enough already.
Day 3
On our last day here, we decided to go and help the people of the village with their onion harvest, so again, back out to the fields we headed. We found a group of women, and joined them in sitting amongst the onions. It was certainly much easier harvesting the onions than planting them! Pulling them up, many at a time, soon enough we were surrounded by piles of freshly harvested onions. The women were very thankful and again, told us that we had helped plant them, and now harvest them, they blessed us. It doesn’t even feel like long ago that we were here planting the tiny onion shoots, and now, at the end of the season, they are full grown, and very tasty!
We saw Mahinda working on his land nearby, so we popped over and asked if he had time to take a break and talk to us. He was more than happy, and invited us into his hut. He tells us about his life as a farmer, his daily work, his family and his troubles from elephants. He again, reiterates how difficult it is to be a farmer here during the dry season. He is looking forward to the rains of October.
Back at the house, we spot Piyadasa, another farmer who lives across the road from our host family. We pop over to see if he has the time to talk to us. He is currently growing onions, but also works as a mechanic for bicycles. He also recently lost about 30-40 kilos of onions due to elephant damage.
We gave him a data diary and asked for his help in monitoring these elephants. The talk was cut short by the little rascals, Sahan and Sunil, running over and climbing all over us!
Back at the house, we decided it was time to interview Podi. He has been absolutely brilliant here, and he has so much knowledge of the area as has been working for the MEF for around 30 years. We asked him to tell us everything he knows about the human-elephant conflict and what our goals are here in Werageila. The answers couldn’t have been more perfect.
He explained how he first came to Weragiela with Sandith’s father, Sam Samarasinghe, in 1979. They started talking with farmers and decided to try and help them defend their land from elephants by giving them bells. Since then, Sam passed away, and the charity MEF was founded. Now, with the help of AWF, the MEF are able to further this work by having a permanent research base there and can put in place long term sustainable strategies to reduce conflicts. Podi’s talk was truly inspirational.
The next few weeks, we will be focusing on strategies we wish to help put in place here, in particular, certain crops that we can plant in buffer zones around the farmers crop land, that are unpalatable to elephants, so act as an elephant deterrent.
Goodbyes, are as hard as ever. But now being able to say ‘passe hamuwemu’, meaning ‘see you later’ definitely made things easier.
Love, Life & Elephant Tales 