Sri Lanka Day 5

Day 5 and a change of scene. We were all up a little earlier for and 8:00am pick up to make our way out of Colombo on the Kandy Road. After leaving the suburbs we started to gradually climb. The vegetation started to change too more fruit trees and paddy fields, bamboo and eventually rubber trees. First we went to Mulberriwattha to visit Pastor Samta (?sp) and his small church and pre-school. He offers free schooling to eight villages in a government approved facility. He then took us up to Rosythe, the village where Fenwick Parish church have provided five toilets over the years. We really were out in the sticks as the roads got narrower and steeper. We were also faced with rural poverty first hand, there is little work here, the men get some labouring work in the paddy fields a or on the paddy fields but the pay is a mere handful of rupees. The local church is looking at the possibility of providing a small workshop with training so that the folk could make their own gods for sale. We handed over money to provide for a tenth toilet in the village before gathering all the kids to give them an orange each and a sweetie as well as a jumpy boiler and a bag of rice for the village. The children were really grateful for the little that we gave them. Until recently there had been a teacher visiting the village two days a week to provide basic education to the children but the funding for this has dried up. £35 per month would restore that vital educational lifeline which may be a hand out of poverty for some of the kids and their families. There is no doubting the enthusiasm of Samta and Danesh and the ideas they have for practical action and the preaching of the gospel. Just last week they baptised 8 people from the village in the name of Jesus.

After Rosythe we became tourists for the afternoon and visited the elephant orphanage at Pinawella. We ate lunch on a balcony overlooking the river while the elephants bathed below us. After that a little shopping was the order of the day before the long journey home and supper out at “Parkside Mews”. Another excellent meals courtesy of our hosts we really have eaten well this week.

Tomorrow is church at 9.30, a couple of free hours then off down the road to Hikkaduwa to begin our second week.