It's been about three weeks since I returned from Sri Lanka, where I volunteered with elephants as well as orphan girls for much of December. I had an amazing time, and I'm still having a hard time adjusting to being back home. Last month, I spent my mornings walking through the jungle and picking up branches to help Sitha make her bed. Now, I wake and make my own plush, cozy bed and rush out to approach my daily agenda. I used to make up dance routines for the orphans, now I spend my time teaching dance workout classes at the local gym. I'm half a world away from that lifestyle I enjoyed so much and back to making money, paying the bills and enjoying the excess of an American lifestyle.
I miss Sri Lanka. I miss my friends (elephants and people!), the simplicity, the nature and the challenge of travel and adventure...and yes, I miss the curry. When I put on my shiny dresses and leg warmers and get dressed up for a night out dancing with friends, I feel a contradiction and disconnect from the simple life I fit in so well with just last month.
It's not the same as being there, but I still aim to help out from here in the U.S. One way I'm doing that is by connecting students in Virginia Beach, Va., with the orphan girls in Kegalle, Sri Lanka. Before I headed to Sri Lanka, I had the students write letters, which I carried over in my back pack. When I delivered the letters to the girls, they were tremendously excited to read them and write their own letters back.
This week, I was able to deliver the orphans' letters in response back to students at Bettie F. Williams Elementary School, a title 1 school in Virginia Beach. I spent my time there talking about my experiences in Sri Lanka with Melissa Steadman Reynolds' two fourth grade classes. We started the presentation with a geography lesson and then I taught the students about Sri Lankan culture (the food, religions and languages). I shared my photos and spent time discussing the tsunami, elephant conservation and what life is like for the orphans in Sri Lanka. The kids had many questions, ranging from "Are elephants related to mammoths?" to "Did you wear heels in Sri Lanka?" I enjoyed teaching the kids and have a new-found appreciation for all of the technology that surrounded us in their classroom after seeing how different life is for the orphans. The students learned to appreciate what they have as well when I pointed out the 45 orphans shared only two bedrooms, one bathroom and did not have an XBox 360.
We finished up the lesson by making a video for the orphans, which my friends at Inspire Sri Lanka will share via a laptop the next time they visit the orphanage.
Volunteering can be as complicated and adventurous as traveling across the world, or it can be as easy as spending a couple of hours a week in your community. No matter where you are, the smiles, the connections and the memories you create have the same positive impact on others.
I spent my last week in Sri Lanka on the beach in Hikkaduwa.I've had an incredible year of traveling in 2011, and I couldn't have picked a better way to top it all off than spending my last week in Sri Lanka living it up in the lively surf town of Hikkaduwa. After a couple of filthy weeks volunteering at an elephant sanctuary and spending a few hours each day teaching orphans English, it was time for some surfing and partying!
Hikkaduwa was the perfect place to go because there are surf breaks for every level of surfer. Hikkaduwa offered an uncrowded gentle beach break that made surfing a breeze for me. I've never been lucky to surf simple waves like that at home in the Outer Banks! There also are three reef breaks, all within a stretch of about 2 miles of beach. Along the stretch of surf and sand are many guest houses and small restaurants, bars and nightclubs. This is a great town that is unspoiled by five-star resorts. My bare bones room at a guest house on the beach (I don't even think it had a name!) ran me $8.00 a nite and was next door to the best rotti shop on the beach.
There is fun to be had in Hikkaduwa, even if you don't surf. I spent my time walking the beach, dining with other travelers or taking tea with locals.
I watched a sea turtle lay eggs just feet away from where I was having a drink.My first night in Hikkaduwa, I was fortunate enough to spot several sea turtles swimming during sunset. Apparently, they swim up toward a particular spot on the beach looking for food. You can wade in the water up to your thighs and actually touch them, but watch out they bite! Later the same evening, I was enjoying a beer at a beachfront bar when a sea turtle came right up next to where we were sitting and started to lay eggs! I watched her nest for about 30 minutes, and then back she went into the ocean! I was so incredibly lucky to be just at the right place at the right time.
I also didn't have trouble filling my days in Hikkaduwa because I slept through about half of them! The night life doesn't end until the sun comes up, so if you like to party and go dancing, Hikkaduwa can be a fun. Unfortunately, I found many of local guys to be extremely aggressive. The more you travel, the more you learn how to handle these types of situations and stay safe. I was forceful in saying no when I needed to be, I never walked alone at night and I spent my nights out at the bars with other travelers and not alone. I had a particularly aggressive encounter with the surfer boys at Mambo's Place (A-frame Surf Shop). But I didn't let these guys ruin my week or make any problems for me. Fortunately, I was able to avoid the "beach boys" and hang out with fun, kind travelers from all over the world instead. I now have new friends from England, Italy, Germany and Australia!
After having tea with the locals, I helped them decorate a Christmas tree. Sri Lanka is not a Christian country, but they decorate for the tourists.And while I had more than my share of experiences with offensive, aggressive locals, and I am not impressed at all by the overall attitude toward and treatment of women in Hikkaduwa (local women or tourists), I did in fact meet a few local men who were the exception and seemed kind given their cultural disposition. The rotti shop restaurant owner and his friends would sit and enjoy arrack and beer with us hotel guests in the evenings. One of the guys entertained us with some crazy life stories and he made all of us travellers bracelets out of coconut as a gift. He even brought me fruits and herbs from his garden.
There also was a local shop owner who made it his personal mission to help me and another solo traveler have a great time. He was always buying us drinks, he gave me all kinds of free items from his tailor shop (including a beautiful handmade quilt!) and he even cooked us an amazing rice and curry meal at his house! I really enjoyed spending time with his wife and two little girls. My last day there, he wanted to help me arrange transportation to the airport. I was perfectly fine going solo, but he and one of my new travel friends rode the 1.5 hours to Colombo with me, just to see me off. It's amazing when you travel solo, yet you never really end up alone.
I left Sri Lanka on December 24, just 2 days before the anniversary of the tsunami that killed over 228,000 people in South Asia and wiped out the south and east coasts of Sri Lanka, including the town of Hikkaduwa. As you walk along the beach in Hikkaduwa, you see many dilapidated guest houses that are evidence of the destruction. I visited the tsunami museum in Hikkaduwa, which was basically a shack with hundreds of laminated photos and handwritten signs in broken English posted.
The little-known tsunami museum in Hikkaduwa is more like a shack with laminated, faded photos to remember the victims.
This museum was a highlight of my visit to Hikkaduwa and sadly it's very unknown because it's too recent to be mentioned in the tour books. The woman who runs the museum lost her house to the tsunami, only the concrete slab remained. She went back to the spot where her house used to be and put up a few rickety walls and made it a museum and a place of remembrance. Entry to the museum is free and she simply accepts donations. She was kind enough to share with me her stories as I walked through and saw photo after photo of death and destruction.
I'm standing in front of a Buddhist memorial that was erected at the site of a train accident where 1,500 people lost their lives during the 2004 tsunami. When the first wave hit, thousands fled the beach and ran to the nearby train tracks and climbed the train for higher ground and safety. They didn't know a second wave would come soon after and take their lives.
Remembering the tsunami and honoring the victims brought my time in Sri Lanka full circle. Here I was about to head back to the United States and be due to arrive home on Christmas day -- accounting for the time zones, the very day when this horrific tsunami took place in 2004. Those images I saw and the sadness in the woman's eyes as she told me her stories will stay with me forever. And as I spent so much time working with wonderful orphan girls my earlier weeks in Sri Lanka, I was reminded that the tsunami left behind thousands of orphans. I always like to travel during December to avoid getting wrapped up in the holiday season and to stay grounded in the spirit of love and giving. This year, my trip to Sri Lanka did that for me and opened my mind and heart to so much more. I'm so grateful to be taking all I have learned from this travel experience with me into the New Year.
More photos from my experience in Sri Lanka are on Facebook.
One of the volunteers, Owen, and I teach numbers to the younger girls by playing a game they love called Flying Hats.
I came to Kegalle to volunteer with elephants, but Inspire Sri Lanka also supports a girls orphanage that’s just down the road from their elephant park. A few times each week, after a morning of dirty work with the elephants, I gather with the other volunteers to create our lesson plan for teaching. We come up with activities to do with the girls at the orphanage, who range from 7 to 15 years old. We teach the younger girls basic math and English vocabulary, while the older girls learn geography, reading and writing.
All of the girls at the orphanage are bright and well mannered. They rush up to us volunteers when we arrive each visit, and although they know little English, they reach far into their vocabulary to find ways to communicate. They ask me if I have a sister or brother. When I tell them I have a brother, they ask his name. I tell them “Michael,” and it fascinates them that my brother has the same first name as Michael Jackson. I learned very quickly that their connection with the United States is Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber.
As one of the older girls grabs a marker and starts coloring my finger nails, they tell me, “you are very beautiful.” I tell them they are beautiful too. Then we just spend time smiling at each other, smiles being a universal language.
I ask for a tour of the orphanage and they proudly show me around. The 45 girls share two large bedrooms (one for the big girls and one for the little girls), a large classroom, a kitchen (no appliances, just cabinets and a fire place), a two-stall bathroom with squatting toilets (Inspire Sri Lanka aims to install western toilets when they have the money), a large playground and a vegetable garden. Their orphanage is fortunately very adequate, and they have supplies and toys and clean conditions. But, I can quickly identify the kids each time I visit by their clothing because they wear the same clothes almost everyday. Thankfully, Inspire Sri Lanka recently provided them with a washing machine. Can you imagine that up until then, all 45 girls hand washed their clothing!
One of two rooms at the orphanage.
The orphanage is government sponsored, though they run on donations. The girls come from broken homes. One of the oldest girls tells me “My mother no, my father no. My mother die, my father die.”
The orphanage brings the girls a good life and education. But the girls receive very little individual attention. This is why their contact with the volunteers is so special. Ordinarily, their life is one big assembly line. Each girl follows the same schedule, eats the same food, follows the same rules and has the same haircut. There is no one-on-one attention for these children and no individuality.
When volunteers visit, we have the opportunity to change this for a few hours of their day. We come up with creative ways to have fun and interact. The girls brought up Michael Jackson so much, we decided to perform a dance routine to “Thriller” for them. We also play schoolyard games like “Stuck in the Mud.”
The girls heard I like dancing and eagerly asked me to show them dance moves. So all of the volunteers agreed it would be fun to do some American dancing: the Electric Slide, the Cupid Shuffle and the Tootsie Roll! The British volunteers here had never heard of these dances, so it turns out I got to educate everyone on this unique aspect of American culture. We volunteers have just as much fun as the kids!
Inspire Sri Lanka’s volunteer coordinator Aravinda Rathnayake said, “It’s like [the orphans] live in a cage, they have no experience with the outside world.” Unfortunately, the girls have no Internet access, so there is not much to help them prepare for lives when they move on from the orphanage. Inspire Sri Lanka is a new organization and they're looking for volunteer ideas and feedback. One of my suggestions is that the girls must learn how to use computers and start exploring the Internet. So we set a goal to have one computer in place for the girls to start using, and we'll have them keep in touch with volunteers via email. This will enable the girls to practice English while learning basic computer skills. From there, hopefully, they can start using the Internet to enhance their education.
In the meantime, we've started a good old-fashioned pen pal program between the orphans and students from my cousin’s fourth grade class in Virginia Beach, Va. I carried letters that the American kids wrote with me when I flew over and handed them out during our second day of volunteering. In the letters, the American kids talked about weather and hobbies and asked the girls questions about their lives in Sri Lanka. The girls were so eager to write back, they couldn’t wait for us to hand them paper and pencils!
Spending time with the girls has left a lasting impression on me, one that will not let me forget them when I am home. I will have to come up with practical ways to help them in some small way from afar. And hopefully, this post will encourage more volunteers to join Inspire Sri Lanka to support the orphanage.
Volunteering with elephants at Inspire Sri Lanka. Meet one of the girls, this is Manika.
Ayubowan (hello!) from Kegalle, Sri Lanka! For two weeks, I am volunteering with Inspire Sri Lanka, a charity project that is home to an elephant sanctuary and supports a local girls orphanage, among other projects. There are many elephant sanctuaries in this part of Sri Lanka, but I was fortunate enough to find Inspire Sri Lanka, which is a much smaller project that allows for an intensive, hands-on learning experience while supporting conservation and local community service. There's a lot going on here, so expect some more posts and videos when I get home about the elephants and the rest of my trip.
I traveled to Sri Lanka alone, but have been fortunate to meet up with three other volunteers from England, and we’re all learning and exploring together. Each of us has been working with a specific elephant each day and building a relationship with her. Sitha is a 60-year-old elephant showing her age a bit with a few cuts and sores that are tended to, and Manika is younger, about 40, and adorably cute and hairy!
Everyday we meet at 7:30am and walk to the jungle meet the elephants and their mahouts (handlers) at the elephant beds. Each day when I approach Sitha, she extends her truck to smell me. She recognizes me and I greet her, always still with a little trepidation and respect that she could squash or charge me at any moment if she wanted to! I tell her to lift her foot (yes, I now speak elephant language), and then unhook her chain that keeps her at her bed overnight.
Working alongside the world’s largest land mammal can be quite intimidating. These are captive elephants, but we have to accept that they are still wild animals. We are under supervision of their mahouts, each elephant’s handler who works exclusively with them. The mahouts we work with are very good to the elephants and you can see they form a special bond with them. It reminds me of the bond I have with my dogs --their leader, their caretaker, their parent.
We tell Sitha, "Ho," (stay) as we start cleaning up all of the branches from her bed and leftovers from the leaves she’s eaten -- and of course, there’s lots of elephant dung to clean. We can pile up all of Sitha’s branches, and when we tell her, she’ll lift them up with her trunk and place them in the compost heap, essentially making her own bed very quickly. This makes our job easy. We joke that Manika is lazy, because she makes the volunteers and mahout do all of her clearing.
After the beds are clean, we take Sitha and Manika on a short walk to the elephant park and down to the river, where they get a bath. We do this using the elephant language commands we have learned, telling them to move forward, backward, toward us, away from us and so on. For fun, we often get to ride the elephant! The girls will lift up their front legs, allowing us to use their leg like a huge ladder and climb on! It’s an experience that is out of this world, riding an elephant that you care for each day through the jungle.
Leaving the jungle, we walk the elephant down a road with traffic -- imagine sharing the road with an elephant during your morning commute, that’s how they do it in Kegalle! The neighbors along the road we walk love the elephants and are lined up ready for us to walk by. They treat the elephants with fruit each morning as we pass. The elephants are quite used to this and know to stop at their houses along our walk.
When we get to the river, we tell them to lay down in the water, “Hida!” and we splash water on them and scrub them using coconut husks. It’s a bit like a loofah spa treatment for them and like playing hopscotch for me because I’m on the lookout for snakes swimming by while I’m scrubbing her! Owen, my volunteer counterpart, gets a kick out of this.
One of the other volunteers, Owen, and I give Sitha a bath each morning, scrubbing her with coconut husks.
After their bath, we lead them to their daytime spots and then clear their area, which is filled with branches and leaves from the day before and you guessed it, more elephant dung. The rest of our morning, we spend time learning about the elephants (their anatomy, health and conservation efforts) and practicing commands and mahout skills. We feed them treats (they love bananas and all parts of the banana tree), ride them and splash around more in the water with them.
It’s not all fun and games though, we are here to help and make a difference. We do a lot of labor, like building a stone wall for the elephant park. It’s a dirty job volunteering, but the elephants are captivating and majestic creatures and getting to be close to them in a natural environment makes it all worth it.
It’s a shame these elephants were ever captured from the wild, but at least now they have a good place to spend their remaining days. Sitha has a slight limp in her walk due to an injury she sustained when she was captured. Another elephant here, Tangama, makes it clear to us that she likes to be left alone. We all stay clear of her because she’s usually in an unpredictable mood. Tangama, Sitha and Manika have a good life now and dedicated mahouts looking after them. Fortunately, it’s now illegal to capture elephants in Sri Lanka, so they should be the last generation of captive elephants here (I wish the same was true for other countries).
It’s sad that in another 200 years, Asian elephants may no longer be roaming the jungles. In another post, I’ll explain more about the treatment of these animals, the importance of conservation and how they need our help. For now, I’m enjoying every minute of my time with these fascinating and beautiful elephants.
A note about the chains: A few of my friends who saw my photos on Facebook asked about the chains that are sometimes on the elephants. The elephants are chained by a foot when unattended (mainly at night so they don’t stray). It’s not right for an elephant to be chained, but these are captive elephants, they can't go back into the wild and they are forced to find a place in our "civilized" world. They still have a very natural habitat at the elephant orphange. While you may at times see the chains around their necks in the photos, this is the chain that was around their foot that is just placed out of the way on their neck. They are not confined or chained by their necks.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 10:20PM 
