This week I visited Sabaragamuwa University. Despite the long journey and the current national strikes of academic staff at universities, I was looking forward to this week on several accounts. Firstly it gave me the opportunity to work with Gareth and Bhargavi, neither of whom I had worked with since arriving in Sri Lanka. Secondly I was able to visit the three Hill Country villages adopted by Project Sri Lanka – Ihalagalagama, Puwakgahawela and Pambihinna – for the first time. They are all located in the most stunning locations; nestled amidst the moody mountains and tea plantations around the base of the World’s End escarpment.
I particularly enjoyed working in Puwakgahawela as they have a huge area of land for the children to play on and thus we played lots of sports games with a focus on developing English. A massive parachute was rolled out to help the children learn English animal names with the ‘lions’, ‘fish’, ‘cats’, ‘dogs’, ‘ants’ and ‘bats’ all enjoying their turn at hiding under the parachute. It was also great for teaching actions words such as running, walking, hopping and dancing around in a circle with the parachute. To calm the children down we ended the game with everyone sleeping on top of the parachute which dissolved the children into fits of giggles. I’m not sure how much sleeping got done!
A touching moment occurred at break time when one of the children eagerly took my hand to lead me into the playground. I flinched due to the open blister on my thumb which was squeezed too hard. The little girl opened my hand and tenderly examined the wound before carefully taking my other fingers and pulling me over to her friends to show them my injury. A group of six girls each took turns in checking it out; all the while chattering away to me in Sinhala before they proudly turned out their own ‘war wounds’ scars and scabby knees for me to inspect. It’s funny how children can turn even the tiniest of things into common ground and a shared understanding!
Our afternoons at Sabaragamuwa provided us with the opportunity to broaden the range of age groups we worked with by teaching spoken English to non-academic staff at the University. Gareth taught a poem by Charlotte Bronte, Speaker of the North, which the staff said they found particularly enjoyable, probably due to the passion with which he delivered the lesson with. We also held English classes for under-privileged grade 4 children in the area. They are a super bunch of children. Whilst a little shy in formal lessons, they became very animated when we played hangman on the board. To ensure there was a learning outcome to the game, we encouraged the children to put the word from the game into a full sentence and they were much more relaxed about speaking English in this context. However, I think what they enjoyed the most was taking us to the playground after lessons to have a throw around with a tennis ball and to chase bubbles with Bhargavi. They never tired of these games and only when the light faded to much to see did we say our weary goodbyes and head back to our guest house for a nap.