9th July 2013

1. Trip to Pottuvil with Thasleem to check on school supplies. Arpico had some reasonable stuff. Lots of cheap stuff but some duplo type blocks and some wooden shapes and a few balls. Paper, pens, crayons etc. The basics. But enough to get started. Sharon says the only good alternative is Colombo. She has volunteered her van to pick up any order we might make when her van is up doing the shopping. Saved a trip to Acrupattu to find these things. 2. T. told me that the contract for the school was agreed and that he was waiting for a signature. We get two years and they will look for some tiles and get the water hooked back up – but we will pay for repairs to roof, windows and get tree cut down. These are small things. Before the contract is signed it has to be approved by a local authority meeting though – this is tomorrow apparently. 3. T. loved Shining Stars preschool as a name and it is now on the contract awaiting signature! 4. Tea with Tiffany at her home. She lives down behind the Buddhist shrine at end of AB. Pretty basic! A house with a couple of bedrooms and little sitting room and small kitchen. Nice porch and lovely big sandy space for a yard which they use to play games with her boys age 4 and 6. She home schools and she seems to do a great job. A couple of the local girls were there just hanging out – they do after school tutoring like everyone else here. Tiffany had a little girl with her too – daughter of an English mum and sri Lankan dad, who kind of scrap a living selling board shorts and jewelry in a shop nearby. I bought some jewelry for Saumia there. I broached the subject gently of helping us. She will discuss with her husband. I would see her paying Thasleem each month and T. going to her to get money for supplies etc. She is part of a Christian/missionary group called ‘surfers international’ or something. I think she could be trusted. Sharon agrees. 5. I went to visit Saumia. I gave her the jewelry from us all and a notebook with London tube map all over the front of it. She is sitting for three A levels – Geography, Agriculture and Tamil. She will go to University. The whole community are so proud of her. T. says she will bring a bright future to her family. What a responsibility! She lives in a very very basic house – held together by a lick and a promise – ‘not yet finished’ to use T’s words!! There are 4 girls – she is the eldest. The father is now working in Kuwait as he was a baker and could not make ends meet and so is over there as a driver. He is earning LKR30,000 according to T. It appears to be okay to ask these things as he did!! I took some photos. 6. Next Rafeek - a mission to mend bridges. I did as we agreed, said we wanted to open preschool and kids would get good education and then come to him very smart in 1st grade. He laughed. I explained that we would charge for education so not in direct competition. I said we still wanted to support him and asked what could we do. Clearly he had been thinking since we last met. He says he plans to move kids around and build one new ‘temporary’ classroom over the break and put the little children in the big classroom that was built for the rice distribution. That is a good space and lots of light. I said that if he did that we would supply the room for him. Hope that was okay. It won’t cost too much. He was very happy and I think relations are restored. I told him that we wanted to have pictures and that we would not supply until the children were in the classroom. Thasleem will monitor. I teased him that he needed to learn how to email and use the Internet. I asked him about the laptops (I knew but T said I must ask him and he must tell me himself that they were stolen). He did tell me and was obviously very sorry and sad at the loss. They had money in the office that night too which was also taken. T. thinks things are okay with Rafeek now too. 7. Back to Hideaway and met with Mr Croos – introduced by Sharon. He is paid by an NGO to teach English and computer after school to kids from a Sinhala school just here in AB. They did not have an English teacher at the time so the NGO set this up. He was a very nice (Christian) man. Very distinguished looking and intelligent with much integrity and we had a really good talk about education is sri lanka. He says a big problem in the after school classes he runs is that the children are badly behaved and just don’t turn up. He puts this down to the fact that they don’t pay. Interesting and makes me think we may be on the right track in charging some money for Shining Stars.