Sri Lanka 1/3

Since March 31st, I have been in Sri Lanka, more precisely just outside of Tangalle. It's not that exact, but it doesn't really matter. So here I am now for exactly 2 months, 'working' a bit in a children's home. Together with other interns, 3 dogs, and a cat, I live on a property where everyone stays in a beautiful, large bungalow just 2 minutes' walk from the children's home and 5 minutes from the beach.

There are always 2 shifts to be covered. The morning shift from 9-12 o'clock, where you mainly help in the kitchen with cutting and cleaning because the children are usually at school. And the afternoon shift from 2.30-5.30 pm, where you then spend time with the kids. These are the official hours... let's just say, we hardly ever need the full 3 hours. And especially in the afternoon, the kids usually have to take a shower by half past four. Oh yeah, we also have a tea time in between... as you can see, I'm very busy :) Not to forget the 2 days off per week that we are each entitled to... Dad, don't give me that 'lazy life' talk!

There is a big cupboard with a lot of different materials, such as games, arts and crafts, mandalas, pens, etc. So we can actually organize our time relatively freely. I've been talking about 'we' the whole time, and 'we' are Miriam and David from Austria, Julia and Kathi from Freiburg, and me.

And the three dogs Sia, Lanka, and Enja, and the cat 'Cat' (my absolute substitute for Socke!). The first 3 days, there was a couple from Switzerland, and for 2 weeks there was Mona, a high school graduate from Germany. So my hope of speaking more English has also vanished, because even in the children's home, they speak very bad, broken English because the adults and the children are not very good at English. But well, I have accepted that now :)

Once a week, we have to delouse the girls, and it's anything but fun! They have so many lice and especially nits that it would only be effective if we shaved off all their hair. It's really disgusting...

When we're not delousing, learning English is very high on the list. At first, we often tried to make progress with English worksheets, that's how our predecessors did it. But with 6-7 children of different ages, worksheets don't get us very far, and besides, none of us are teachers. Quite quickly, we realized that we need a different strategy to bring the language closer to them. Actually, it took 3 weeks until I found fun and some meaning in what we do. We don't have any more English worksheets for now, and we have put mandala drawing on the back burner for now because we don't need to sit next to them for that. They can entertain themselves very well. I have already tested and loved my favorite theater warm-up game 'Hey Con Cara'. It works with any group :)

As mentioned before, everyone is entitled to 2 days off per week, and we use them, sometimes all together, and we have already done 2 bigger trips. The first one went to the rainforest, where we got a guided tour.

Compared to the rainforests in Borneo, this one was really cool! We saw a lot of animals. From spiders, a tarantula, poisonous snakes, to monkeys and all kinds of geckos.

And our guide also knew many German words. Then sentences like 'This is cotton' or 'Can you hear the woodpecker?' would always come up. The tour led to a beautiful waterfall (see picture above with the other interns), and all the way along, we were accompanied by a pregnant dog. As it turned out, many groups of stray dogs followed, hoping to get something to eat in the end.

Very sad... yes, Sri Lanka has a lot of stray dogs. Speaking of stray dogs...! A few days ago (the days after Easter - for orientation), Julia and Kathi discovered a lot of puppies. 2 female dogs gave birth at the same spot, and one dog took all the puppies from the other. We visit the little rascals almost daily.

It really melts your heart.

The second trip went to Udawalawe National Park. We did a safari there and saw many elephants.

There were also a lot of buffalos, even crocodiles, colorful birds, monitor lizards, peacocks, etc.

Asian elephants are significantly smaller than African elephants.

Unfortunately, there were too many jeeps, mainly because most of them only had 1 or 2 people in them. Totally silly! Sometimes it looked like this:

Fortunately, it always got lost again.

If you're lucky and it's the season, you can watch turtles on our beach in the evening as they come out of the sea to lay their eggs. And actually, one evening, I saw one with Miriam and David!

It was such a unique moment and very exciting! She slowly pulled herself out of the sea and struggled up the wide beach. She dug many holes, and when we thought it was time, she unfortunately stopped. Once turtles get scared (for example by light, dogs, or other animals, people getting too close, etc.), they stop and go back into the sea. Unless they have started laying eggs, then they go through with it. This turtle was really huge!

For 2-3 days, I went to Hikkaduwa, a smaller coastal town that is located a bit further north. It wasn't anything special because it was quite crowded due to the holidays around New Year. And otherwise, in my opinion, it didn't have much to offer. However, I visited a small turtle rescue station and a small tsunami museum. I met Sarah from Germany at my accommodation, who is also a volunteer in a kindergarten there. I also visited her and helped her paint a bit because it was the holidays, and she took it upon herself to make the rooms a bit more welcoming.

Then I want to briefly tell you about Easter Sunday, about the bombings. How it was here and how it has been since then. First of all, I am quite far away from the places where the explosions occurred, and we are even more secluded from the nearest town Tangalle. So we were never in danger at any time. Unaware, I spent my morning, had breakfast in peace, and read a bit. I have to say that we have very bad reception in our bungalows, so you can't really do much with it, especially not read any news. Around noon, I looked at my phone and read a message from my friend Leslie asking if everything was okay. In capital letters. Still unaware, I wanted to reply with something funny, but at that moment, a friend called me. He said he was so relieved to hear my voice, and I half jokingly replied that I was also very happy to listen to his voice, until he told me what had happened in Sri Lanka a few hours ago. I hadn't expected anything, and even less something like that, and the shock hit me hard. Even though many bad things have happened before, this time it hit me pretty hard. But it also felt so close. The atmosphere was very gloomy all day long, and even more so in the children's home. News was playing all the time, and the house mother Wasanthi told us disturbing things about the hatred between the Muslims towards the Buddhists and Christians in the country. At some point in the afternoon, all social media were blocked by the government, and we were therefore temporarily unreachable. However, this lasted not only 24 hours, but was blocked until April 30th. After 3 days, we found out that you can reactivate social media with an app. But it was strange not being reachable for a few days and not being able to let others know that everything is okay. There was also an evening curfew for a while, and since many visitors left early, there is an almost too quiet atmosphere. Meanwhile, in my opinion, the situation has calmed down, and everything is pretty much back to normal.

I mentioned before that we are very close to the beach, and we go there almost every day. However, you can't swim in the sea here because the current is too strong and the waves are too big. A few days ago, the rainy season also made its presence felt, and since then, the sea has become even more powerful! Sometimes the waves are 2-3 meters high. But we were also told that in May, when the rainy season really starts, the waves will become even more intense. I'm curious...

That was my first month here in Sri Lanka, and therefore, half of my internship is already over. Time is flying unbelievably fast! I apologize for this lengthy post and the many photos, but a lot happens here 😉

See you in a month, then comes part 2 🙂