Varod...oasis in the desert

My father colleague works in the Varod centre, an orphanage for disable, mutilated and physically war affected people. He invited us over there to see how this centre works and to establish a cooperation between our NGO and the centre. Before visiting the centre, I expected the worst. The orphanage in Mutur is a very sad place, so I assumed that the Vavuniya centre, gathering people with different kind of disabilities, was more upsetting.

However once there I had a pleasant surprise! The centre is very well organized. It is divided in the physically disable part, mentally disable boys area and female disable side.

Also the staff quarters are little cute houses and compared to the centre in Mutur it looked like a guest house.
 The centre is directed by Catholic priests but staff is mixed as the people that are taken care.
The kids are looked after by strong and lovely staff.
They have different kind of activities such as music, dancing, sports, theatre and also gardening.
What I expected to find was a sad environment but kids are happy considered the troubles they have been through. The diaspora provides the main funds and the money are well managed by the Director of the centre. The stories of these people are heartbreaking: mentally disable women raped during the war and now with kids fruit of violences, mentally disturbed kids left alone in the refugees camps or mutilated people. However, now they have the chance to live a new, better life and a lot and huge improvements have been done especially thanks to the hard work of the staff.

Boys disable area

Female area 

Female area

Minori, my colleague

Mutilated area 

Minori and a nun, part of  the staff

Physically disable area and staff quarters.

Staff Quarter...yeah food wrapped in newspaper

Conflict Resolution Training

My volunteering job also included seminars on conflicts resolution.  I prepared the seminars  using basic conflicts resolution theories and exercises in order to make the audience actively participating to the seminar

We expected between 20 and 40 people but 69 people showed up! My NGO wanted to address the seminar to pre-school teachers, I didn't agree much, cause a better audience would have been school teachers  but the Secretary of the Community Centre, was abroad and he came back few days before the workshops so we did not have enough time to rearrange it.

In any case, the teachers were very receptive and  they made a lot of interesting questions and comments.

One of the activities was the conflict tree, I asked my translator to divide them in groups and make them examining the Sri Lanka conflict diving it among root causes, core problem (the trunk) and effects of the conflict( breaches and leaves). At the end of the activity I asked to get the papers to have them translated after.

Once I got the translation I discovered that the topic was  on a general ethnicity conflict, different from what I asked.

Living in a war affected area, and also traveling around the country I discovered that the conflict is a very delicate topic, people are scared to share their thoughts and feelings. Only once, when I was in Arugam Bay, I had a open conversation with a Tamil guy, but he was drunk and ended the talk whispering, fearful that someone could overhear us!

What I can say is that after 4 years of supposed "peace" the situation is on a stake, their life fload normally, but this is the picture the government and also Sinhala population want to give...If you are a tourist, and you dont ask too many question everything looks normal, but if you are inside you can see how under the quite surface there are still the old unresolved problems, with human rights violations and discriminating issues.

This upcoming weekend I will be in Vavuniya, visiting a special kids school, but also I will have the opportunity to make some research around, then I will end up in Jaffna. There, I am going to meet some Europeans working in NGO, I am happy about this, so I can get a clear and unbiased picture. What it is frustrating is that after four years of apparent calm nothing really changed...

  I dont know if this pressure cooker will explode again one day!

Life in Mutur...

Students from grade 8

Grade 6

Mutur Beach..me, a Hindu friend and a Muslim family

Afternoon classes

My youngster students

The old guardian...deaf and half blind, he slept outside, even though he is nice person he was pretty useless :)

At the end of the world

I work Monday, Tuesday and Friday in a Sinhales school in Mutur and Wednesday- Thursday in a pre school in Kinnya. Last Friday was Teacher day so I achieved to skip the boring function and get the Friday off!  So I joined Fabien, a French couchsurfer in his " alt ernative" trip to Horton Plains.

View from the bus

Horton Plains is a National park in the central highlands of the country with amazing clouds forests and spectacular mountains! Our trip started in Trinco at 2 p.m. then we changed 6 busses to arrive at 2.30 am to the final destination, Belihuloya , a town in the middle of nowhere but with an alternative path heading to the national park.

It is an alternative because you can skip the 40 dollars entrance plus transportation expenses. I knew when I read his profile it was going to be fun!
The first night in Belihuloya, the driver highly suggested a very expensive guest house, but obviously we found  a cheaper place, free camping ...once awake we discovered we camped in a school yard!

The climb was on at 7 am. The path was very tough, 30 km uphill and it took 10 hours to arrive on the top of the mountain through a tea plantation.Even though it was hard, the landscape was astonishing, with several waterfalls where we stop for bathing and refreshing.

On the top of the mountain we had to cross 3 km of very dense and tangled jungle with precipices in some spots...

 I got worried on the very last part, it was getting dark and after running inside it for one hour the jungle looked neverending!,

 Eventually we found the exit to the World End...an amazing sky plenty of stars welcomed our accomplishment but 11 hours of hiking and a sleepless night made us sleeping like babies!
The sunrise was spectacular,, I would suggest to everyone heading to Horton Plains to spend the night over camping because it was simply breathtaking!

Then we took the normal tourist path, only 8 km to go back...the national park is nice, but if I had to choose I would do it again, two completely different landscapes and some doses of adrenaline ;-)

Once out of the park, luckily we found a lift that avoided us 11km and eventual problems when approaching the entrance gate,cause we entered in to the park through a forbidden entrance skipping the 40$ plus risking to get lost into the jungle....Our saviours were 2 Libaneses tourists(brother and sister) heading to Nuwara Eliya,, double luck cause we were also going that direction.
Nuwara Elyia is a beautiful British style city, very rich compared to Mutur.

 Also the food is fresher and cheaper because is plenty of fertile lands...If you ever come to Sri Lanka, this area is a MUST! I really liked the atmosphere thanks also to my buddy traveler :-)