Friend in Need

Friend in Need

Colombo Friends in Need Society. Founded in 1831, funded by donors and sponsors. Helps people who have lost limbs due to landmines, accidents, or illness.

https://charity.lk/item/colombo-friend-in-need-society

Our first day in Colombo, we walk, as always, and take a look around. Our goal is the National Museum; we want to learn about the history of Sri Lanka. At an intersection, we see an elephant and a person, drumming. Both made from screws, metal rods, threads, and various other tools. Art.

They remind us of COPE in Laos and Aki Rai in Cambodia, the services that take care of prosthetics for landmine and bomb victims, war casualties.

https://vakantio.de/worldwrite/aki-ras-cambodia-landmine-museum
https://vakantio.de/oneway2025/heros
https://vakantio.de/worldwrite/cope-and-nationalmuseum
https://vakantio.de/oneway2025/cope-cooperative-orthotic-and-prosthetic-enterprise-and-our-search-for-laotian-identity

We approach closer, curiously entering the premises. We are already welcomed and invited to enter. Guided through an office, we stand before the management's door; the friendly gentleman knocks, the door opens for us, a visitor leaves the management office, and we are invited in again. Friendly, polite, interested, warmly welcomed. We don’t want to disturb – and we aren’t. We start a conversation; manager Ranga Wickramasinghe explains to us what and who stands behind the association, the Society. We are politely asked about our time – we have it. Most naturally.

The state of Sri Lanka medically cares for every resident, free of charge. Everyone is treated, which is good. However, the consequences, the impairment that may remain as damage, is not part of the treatment. You live; everything else is your concern. Those who have money can afford a solution, in this case, a prosthesis. Those who do not lose their jobs, their income, and in the worst case, their family and home.

These people can turn to the Colombo Friends in Need Society. This society, founded in 1831 by XX, aims to enable people to continue living independently and with dignity; it continues treatment, manufactures prosthetics, trains with physiotherapists, and discharges each patient with the chance of an independent future. The costs are self-costs, non-profit costs. Patients can stay at a hostel located on the premises during their treatment, from measurement to fitting, from plaster casts to completed physiotherapy supervision. They have a bed and three meals a day. All free.

We share what motivated us to enter. That we have seen similar things in Cambodia and Laos – which surprises Mr. XX. Illnesses and accidents with mopeds, motorcycles, trains, or as pedestrians are the reasons here. We experience traffic as pedestrians – everyone looks out for themselves; if it gets too tight for the driver, he brushes against you. It’s that simple. That’s how it happened to Thomas. Complain? Useless, was the reaction of those standing around. This is new – until now, everyone looked out for each other.

We are allowed to look at every room, to greet the specialists, to follow the individual steps in the production of a prosthesis, and our respect grows. Non-profit, voluntary work, medical students who want to learn, self-injured people who contribute their skills. Women who cook the food, clerks who do the administration, caretakers who take care of the buildings. Everything is taken care of.

Towards the end, we sit there, telling how impressed we are, wanting to leave something behind, and handing over our last travel dollar. Already spinning in our heads about how we can promote this project, whom we know who could support it medically with tools, materials, know-how...? It occupies us.

Well, we are told to stay seated; there is someone we could meet. A family father and owner of a small shop lost a lower leg due to his diabetes. Today he receives his new prosthesis and can stand on both legs for the first time in a long time. Again, we are invited to be part of it – a moving moment. His son helps; I am moved to tears, and the patient is unsure how to react.

We feel that as we continue on, we have already experienced the greatest highlight in Colombo.