As the mini-bus drew up outside Hiththatiya school at nine o’clock it slowly dawned on me what lay ahead, a whole day of teaching children who didn’t speak a word of English. As we moved inside, however, it was clear to see we were not the only ones feeling the strain as two children immediately burst into tears and a third shouted, ‘Suda Yaka!’ (white devil) at me and hid behind the teacher. They soon quieted down and we each took a seat at the table to help out with the morning’s activities. The first step was to glue down an aubergine which had been cut out. Then we added the top and labelled the drawing. This took far longer than we anticipated and by the time we had finished it was lunch time for the children (ten o’clock). We enjoyed a cup of massively sweetened tea and bananas whilst the students ate and we took them outside for some games and exercise. Eleven thirty came all too quickly and the children soon had to leave, waving to us ‘and bowing to our feet with whispered Buddha ‘sarahnai’ (a blessing of ‘the Lord Buddha be upon you’) and they were off. We spent the next hour having an intense Sinhalese lesson with Sam path Spun Kumara, our guardian and translator. Sam path is the20 year old Nephew of one of the pre-school teachers and spends every school day volunteering to help us attempt to cross the epic language barrier, with varying levels of success.

Lunch followed at 12.30, this time in the Manager of Sarvodaya’s house. Lunch was a beautiful meal of rice, curry, pineapple, bananas, noodles and Kiri Pany (Curds and Kithul treacle ‘honey’) for afters.

In the afternoon session we split into two groups, six members inside working on art and craft activities, and six outside doing sports activities. Inside the children drew the outline of their hands and then decorated them, they followed this by writing simple statements in English such as ‘My name is….’ and ‘I am … years old’. Outside we concentrated on spoken English, mainly counting scores and discussing the games. We played cricket, rugby and volleyball.

Whilst playing cricket the ball was temporarily lost in the long grass which surrounds the school playground and, when we went to look for it Sampath suddenly froze. We froze with him and, looking over his shoulder saw a snake not two feet from where he stood. We gingerly retraced our steps and returned to the game with a new ball. Later on in the day I asked Sampath what the snake was called, he said he was unaware of an English name but the snake was definitely venomous.

The day ended at four and we all piled into the mini bus, back to our accommodation. A very tiring but rewarding day.