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The Director's Sri Lanka Journal
Read the March 2005 mini-tour Diary!







Arabella's Diary

Monday 14 March 2005

My last full day in Sri Lanka! We have a good meeting with MC of the Hikkaduwa Area Relief Fund, who is feeling better today. We show her how to use the badge machine and how to make the beanbags, and also hand over all the facepaints. When Geoffrey Dobbs has finished with the parachute, she will collect it, and make sure that this is also used regularly. She sends us off with Chaminda to see the wonderful house that Neil is hopig to buy, about 5 miles away in an inland village, to be the "Creation Centre". It is a truly beautiful plantation-style house, ornately carved. Lots of rooms that will make very good workshop spaces, and a wonderful two-storey high hall with minstrels gallery around - an excellent space for performance, and there are lots of other possible perfomance spaces in the grounds outside, which are filled with very old, huge, magnificent trees. It would make a wonderful arts centre, and I do hope he can manage to buy it. The equivalent of £56,000 (but would cost over £2M in England I reckon - with an elegant small pool or spa, it would make the best boutique hotel in the world!)

In the afternoon we visit a camp in Seenigama (where the land is very low-lying and some of the very worst damage occurred. There are about 150 blue tents in a field the other side of the road from the sea. We thought the ground looked a bit muddy and were surprised as there hasn't been a lot of rain recently (though there will be soon, with the monsoons coming!) We went to tne camp and were very surprised to see no children around at all, despite it being after 2.00 p.m. and school-closing time. Some adults came up and explained that the day before a 2 foot deep wave had invaded the camp. Everything is wet and horrible, and it scared them badly, so they have sent most of the children inland. We press on to another camp by a temple, but there is some Buddhist dance going on, so we don't interrupt the children. We have a quick look around the temple, which is really beautiful - as we climb some steps and look to our right, we are suddenly amazed to see a play parachute (complete with hand grips, etc. for shaking games) suspended in the air to provide shade. I go and have a close look - it is definitely a play parachute! We try to explain its real purpose, but without complete success. Must remember to get MC to go there with a translator and try to get it used for its primary purpose. I think it must have just arrived as part of an aid package, with no instructions, and they just leapt on it for shade cover. (It would be really nice to design a structure with bendy poles, so that the parachute could be used for shade and games easily - will get one of my more practical friends to have a think about this. I must let Geoffrey Hobbs (who is investigating whether his tailoresses can make us 50 play parachutes by the autumn) know about this, and say that we really must create a pamphlet that explains in English and Singhalese how to use a play parachute, as I would hate to see them all just being used for shade!

Then we go to Kushil's base where a group called Fun for Life are doing a parade and perfomance with children they have been working with over several weeks. The Clown leads the parade from Kushil's to the temple, wearing his motley garb, and then does a show for the kids before the second half of the parade turns up. We return to Sun Beach to do our final packing, and then Ranil picks us up and he drives us, Mohan and Cynthia (an incredibly energetic and very nice American television producer) back to Colombo. We stop briefly at Bentota (where I stayed for a month 15 years ago) to see if I can recognise anything. It is dark so we can't tell how much damage was done there by the Tsunami, but it doesn't look too bad - I can't recognise anything - I think the small hotel we stayed in must have been bought up and incorporated into a big hotel.

We go to Mohan's flat for the night, and are joined by Ranil and Rajnul for a bit - a chance to thank them for all their help and say goodbye.