� Went to tsunami camps to give out nutritional packets for undernourished children (up to 5 years old) and recorded their weights. As mentioned before, we had to cut off the corners of the packets to prevent them being resold. Chaotic with lots of children who had head lice, scabies etc. Camps are desperate, filthy places.
� Arranged for one of the volunteers with food poisoning to go to the hospital.
� Had lunch with 6 Jesuit priests who had come to help at Shanti. Answered searching questions about life!
� Deborah gave presentation to 50 people (Sri Lankan project coordinators, English & Italian volunteers and the priests) on a scheme of work she has written about teaching/learning English by the phonics method. As an icebreaker, she taught everyone to count from 1 to 5 in Japanese!
� Went to magistrates� court to support our Sri Lankan project coordinator who had been attacked a few months ago. What a hot, people-crushing, bureaucratic, completely incomprehensible yet absorbing experience. The case was deferred due to non receipt of a medical report!
� Visited a children's orphanage with lots of differently abled children. Helped to feed some small children. An difficult place to experience emotionally.
� Went to visit a special education day centre. Joined in music and dance therapy with the children who come from extremely poor families. Sister Jacantha does a lot of outreach work and helps mothers to stimulate the children who, in some cases, have had no movement for years. Some days are so intense.
� Up at 5.00am to get to army HQ to pick up buses for transporting 300 tsunami camp and Shanti children to a �party in the park� sponsored by Dilmah Tea. Dilmah are the main sponsor of the Sri Lankan cricket team. The children were given breakfast & lunch and received a cap, Tshirt and a gift. They enjoyed unlimited rides and we all provided a lot of �entertainment�. Deborah, with a Red Cross worker, had to take to hospital a small boy who fell and cut his head. It was remarkably efficient and, after some stitches, he was fine. It was good to see children who had lost so much having fun and smiling. It was a long, exhausting but great day. The �party� had a good write-up in the local newspaper.
� Visited an elephant orphanage and washed an elephant with a piece of coconut husk.
� Inspected the girls� (volunteers�) hair for lice. One was affirmative! My �nit comb� came in handy
� Glad to read in newspaper that various international Red Cross branches are now providing psychological trauma counselling to tsunami families in many areas.
� Went to buy 88 chairs for use in pre-school clubs with money kindly donated to us and began to paint them.
� Started teaching at local government school for girls. Nice to use the experience we gained in India. Girls come from extremely poor and difficult homes.
� Wrote another syllabus to aid continuity for volunteers when teaching English
� Based on observations, presented a report of some suggestions to improve/change/add to the working practices to help make improvements to the communities and people�s lives in the areas supported by Shanti.
� Tanali, a girl to whom Deborah gave interview practice, got the job she applied for (not necessarily a correlation!) at the Bank of Ceylon. She is from such a poor family with a drug addict father who beats the mother who neglects the 4 children of which Tamali is the eldest. Often there is no food at all.
� Read in paper that, using the poverty measure of living on US$2 per day, 44% of Sri Lankan people are below this poverty level.
� Visited ancient city of Anaradhapura and stood in line with 100s of pilgrims moving bricks from hand to hand to restore a dagoba (stupa) that is the tallest brick building in the world containing 92 million bricks.
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