Archive for the ‘Sri Lanka’ Category
A photo recap of Sri Lanka
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Slums and the ’so what’
Friday, March 26th, 2010
slum |sləm|
noun. a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people. • a house or building unfit for human habitation
The slums of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, certainly fit this description. This is not an area fit for human habitation, though thousands of men, women, and children do. It is squalid. It is overcrowded. It is ignored.
It is not a pretty place.
Dirt pathways are swept by fervent moms as their children play amongst the small shanties nestled row on row. Garbage is piled on the beach, next to the lone communal tap. There is a quiet desperation yet an obvious pride found in the people here. They might not have much, but it’s a place to call home.
So what? You know there are poor people in the world. You know there’s slums and poverty and people who need love and care. Why do you need to hear more?
For me, I guess I need to share these stories because we can’t ignore it anymore. We’ve seen and met people whose entire lives could be transformed for a few dollars a day. People who would love their kids to have a chance at life, a chance to grow and become who they were meant to be. We’ve met them, sat in their homes on the best chairs available, which are sometimes chairs we’d find relegated to the trash or the burn pile. We’ve seen the desperation and the fear. But that’s why we care. Why should you care?
I think it’s because God cares. He cares for the sea of unknown and forgotten, the poor and destitute. The Lord cares for these people. These unknown people on the other side of the world. And He knows each and every one of them by name.
the slums | photo of the week
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
The view from a 10×10 shack, someone’s home here in the slums of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
Here’s to the final stop
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
We found ourselves waiting in a seemingly endless immigration line in Colombo, Sri Lanka, exactly 24 hours after we left our accommodations in Kenya.
An early morning start, long bumpy drive, two planes and a five-hour layover in the middle: we were absolutely exhausted. We finally made it through, found our luggage intact an headed out into the throngs of Sri Lankans to meet with our final field partner, Reverend Ranjan Fernando.
At first glance, many things struck as the same, many different, compared to other countries we’ve been.
Similarities: in the airport a sea of people waiting outside barricades for loved ones to return home, and taxi drivers lobbying for your fare. A joyful similarity to most other airports was the clean ‘regular’ toilets. Other similarities included driving on the left side of the road, tropical trees, little vegetable stands where women sell their meagre offerings for cheap. There were crowds teeming in the streets, and twice as many vehicles, bikes and people on the width of the road than there should have been.
The biggest similarity to other countries we’ve traveled is that the people are just as foreign in their ways and customs to me as everywhere else we have been. It’s a whole new world to explore and experience. As soon as you get off a plane you’re immersed in it and there’s no way to just dip your toes. You’re in the deep end of a new country before you have the chance to rub the grogginess from your flight away.
Differences: Sri Lankan languages have their own alphabets. Signs often had a mix of Sri Lankan and English writing, making for a unique combination unlike in Kenya and Uganda where most writing found was in English. The people are brown instead of black; the accents are very different and I keep thinking I’ll see the Kwik-e-Mart around the next bend. Women are dressed in saris, some men in sarongs. Tuk tuks pass us by on the congested streets, spewing out a haze of black smoke.
