May 23rd was our last day at the site. While Keith remained home sick, victim of poisoned pineapple that affected only him, the rest of kept working and realized how close we were becoming with the fellow workers.
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I wasn’t able to update yesterday because I was unfortunate enough to get a nasty case of food poisoning and stayed in bed and slept all day. I’m blaming Ish, a member of our group who is from Sri Lanka on my illness. While in Colombo yesterday, he had me try a piece of pineapple from a food vendor, which I am pretty sure got me sick. Fortunately for me I had Jason take care of me and was able to feel good enough to get out of bed at night. I had to skip work at the site, but was able to go to Mevan’s house for his birthday celebration. I really wish that I wasn’t passed out for most of the dinner party because this was our first chance to meet Mevan’s parents, the founders of AFLAC International. Elmo, Mevan’s father, is a pilot for Singapore Airlines and decided to [help] start AFLAC to try to help his country. He has worked with his wife, Di, ever since on the project. The really cool part about the organization is that they don’t use donations to cover administrative costs, such as copies and officework. In big charity groups these costs sometimes cover 40% of donations, which makes a donation that much more ineffective. Also, they can track exactly where every dollar of a donation is spent.
After the party, we went back to the hotel and slept. Today was our last day at the Wadduwa housing site and there wasn’t much left for us to do. The group finished digging the holes yesterday while I was sick and all we had to do was pick up garbage around the site. It started to rain after a while and we went into a house for cover. A bunch of the local kids came there and we gave them candy and played with them for a little bit. After, we went back to the hotel early and recovered from the last 5 days of work (and in my case to get my appetite and strength back). We’re going to sleep early because tomorrow we have a 6 am wakeup call to travel.-Keith
We started the day at 8am or so. After breakfast we headed to the site for our last day of construction work. Mr. Jayewardene and Mevan as well as Mr. Patrick were at the site, ready to greet us before we got there. I thought it was really nice of them to make it out there. And they all greeted me by name which really touched me, considering I had met some of them only the night before. I started painting, but it soon began raining. The boys had stated shoveling the rubble from the site with their spades and wheelbarrows. But the ground got really wet and mucky so everyone huddled up in our house with a bunch of children from the site. I kept working since I was under shade of the roof of the house, simultaneously chatting with the children who came out when they saw me. In a little while we decided to head back to the hotel since to rest since the morning was rained out. I went to say bye to my friends in the camp. I communicated to them that I will not be coming back tomorrow, and felt like I needed to completely absorb all their faces since it’s highly likely that I will never see them again. One woman was visibly upset. She and her daughter started rubbing their eyes to gesture their sadness, pretending to cry. It was just SO difficult to turn around and walk away.
I then ran and said goodbye to Mansoor. He had tears in is eyes. He is the one who had told us his entire family’s story the first day that we met him. I was reminded of it since he had said that his family was his boys, his co-workers because his wife had left with his children and gone to Saudi Arabia. He talked about his loneliness, and it just kept resonating in my head with every heartbeat.
I was the last one in the van. As we drove away, I felt heavy.
We stopped at an internet café on the way back to connect with the rest of the world for a cheap Rs. 60 an hour. We all then went swimming for the last time at the Villa Ocean View Hotel. We all get along well. Tomorrow we head off to the fisheries in Tangalle at 5am – must sleep now.
-Zohra
