Sri Lanka Day 2

Supper last night was with Paddy & Peter. Paddy is Sri Lankan and Peter is from Yorkshire. Great hosts, fantastic food and then it was team briefing to prepare us for today at Mulleriyawa (sp?) Mental Hospital. It is State run but resources are few, St Andrew’s Kirk sponsor Ward 19 hence our job to repaint the exterior. Our pick up times had been pushed back an hour at the request of our hosts, so 9.00am seemed very civilised then it was out through the city traffic to the outskirts and along some narrow country roads to get to the hospital. Much of Colombo and district could be transported to Africa and not be out of place. The vegetation, road side shops and more must be similar to those all around the tropics.


The team brief did little to prepare some of the team to met by a large group of women smiling, waving and in some cases eager to touch and kiss our white skin. All at Mulleriyawa suffer from some form of psychotic illness. Here it is controlled by drugs and the safety of the institution much as it would have been in the UK 40-50 years ago.


But so to work! A tour around the exterior gave us the jist of what had to be done – some patching to the rendering, some scraping away of loose paint, a brush down, and a few weeds to be pulled out. It soon became a little larger. Had I been too eager knocking away the loose render then we may have had to rebuild the corner of the shower block! We made do with scraping away some of the jointing cement and re-pointing as best we could before re-rendering. The morning soon passed with a compulsory “water” break half way through the period. Lunch was a “lunch packet” – Curried chicken or fish, rice, daal and veg wrapped in newspaper – very good though a little spicy for some.


Then back to work and it was on with painting, another water break and the job is half done – should get it finished tomorrow.


Supper tonight in under the coconut palms in Gloria & Rasheed’s garden – hospitality has been wonderful plates overflowing with rice, chicken, daal, white potato curry (one for the list to make at home) and salad. Little bit of a breeze tonight so feels a little bit cooler out and about. The whole team are on good form and you can still knock Shona over with a feather!