We headed off a northeastern direction towards a town called Anaradhapura. We were to spend the new few days at the Don Bosco Catholic orphanage lending our time to orphans and at-risk youth.
The 3 hour bus ride there was an absolute zoo. At the front of the bus was a TV showing some Bollywood flick. The sounds were BLARING throughout the bus. Periodically vendors would enter the bus for a stop or two to call out their items at the top of their lungs. Beggars and cripples handed out papers describing their disability in the hopes that the riders would throw a few rupees their way. The driving itself was erratic and borderline dangerous. The bus driver would put his pedal to the metal, pushing the outdated bus to its limits, forcing other motorists either off the rode or be subjected to endless honking. Both of us felt dizzy and sick most of the ride. We briefly contemplated yakking out the back door of the bus, which was left open the entirety of the ride.
When we arrived at the bus stop, we were greeted warmly by a white robed priest named Father Robin, the headmaster of the vocational school, and the senior of the four priests who volunteered full time at the Don Bosco Training Centre. The owner of the hotel in Negombo was dear friends with Father Robin and connected us to him.
We were escorted us to our room, which used to house the local reverend, and promptly given us a tour of the compound. The school was funded by the Catholic Church, but they raised pigs, harvested coconuts, grew aloe vera, and farmed the land to supplement their income.
That night we broke bread with the four priests who volunteered there, along with two of the helpers. If they were confused as to what we were doing there, like we were, they didn’t show it. Instead they seemed grateful that they had foreigners for a few days who were there to hopefully brighten up the students’ lives for a temporary period of time. All four of them were kind and gracious hosts. We peppered them with questions about the Catholic faith and the relationship between the Church and the Sri Lankan government. Afterwards, we attended evening Mass with the priests and the kids.
The school runs on a tight schedule. The orphans living on the compound are woken up by claps and whistles, old school, at 6am on the dot. The next hour is spent doing chore work, until it’s time for prayers. A quick breakfast precedes eight hours of school, with a brief lunch sandwiched in between. Each of the students have jobs, which last for several hours in the afternoon until dinnertime. Finally, they get one hour of leisure time before the nightly Mass.
Needless to say, we were not obliged to abide by their rigid schedule, although we did have full days ourselves.
The night prior, one of the other priests at the table, Father Jerome, told us for the previous four years he had been studying and doing missionary work in Jerusalem. He was thrilled to share his experiences with us of Israel with us and practice his limited Hebrew. Out of the other six people besides us at dinner, only he and Father Robin spoke English enough to carry a fluid conversation. It was Father Jerome who took us to the classrooms to interact with the students.
We were no longer in Delhi, Mumbai, or even Colombo. This was rural Sri Lanka. The school and the surrounding town isn’t within a 100 miles to either coast. The attendees of this school were young, poor, and most hadn’t traveled outside of the immediate vicinity. It was not often they had visitors who were not from the Church, let alone white ones. There was a palpable sense of unease in every room we entered. Most seemed curious about us but too afraid to speak. For us, we’ve been traveling for a while now so being out of our element is nothing new for us.
Sinhala and Tamil are the two official languages of Sri Lanka, neither of which are spoken anywhere else in the world. For this reason, one of the main focus of the school curriculum is for the kids to learn English at a passable level. With us around, the students could practice what they had learned, or at least this was the plan.
Father Jerome first took us to the nursing program classroom, where 12 females, aged 17-21, observed us closely as we took our seats in front of the class. Jerome told the students this is one of the rare opportunities for them to interact with a foreigner so feel free to rapid fire questions about anything that comes to mind. Crickets. Nobody said a word. Nadine and I tried our best to get them to open up by asking questions about them. What’s your name? How old are you? Why do you want to be a nurse? How long have you been at the school? How long is the program? Where will you work after? Nothing seemed to break the ice…more silence. Father Jerome left in the hopes that maybe without his intimidating presence the girls would relax a bit. Minutes later one shy student hesitantly raised her hand and asked, “Can we take your blood?” Yessss. Finally something juicy. We weren’t sure how sanitary the needles where, nor did we know how trained the girls were, so we immediately took a hard pass. However, one of the other girls volunteered, so now we’re in business.
It was at this point Father Jerome comes in and starts laughing. 20 minutes before, extracting any information from these girls was like pulling teeth. Now we were hovered around a makeshift hospital bed in the classroom with a needle in this poor girl’s arm. The next thing we knew, it was Father Jerome lying in the bed, with NADINE, without ANY formal training, was sticking a needle in his arm drawing blood. No insurance or waver forms necessary.
It was a rocky start, but there was no shortage of smiles and laughs all around as we exited the classroom in the direction of the IT department.
Our past experiences with computers are that we own two of them. Nadine is proficient in Excel and Photoshop, and Ben took a keyboarding class in 9th grade. No joke. We know next to nothing about the inner workings of computers. With the guidance of the students, we raced to disassemble and reassemble computers. Nadine and her team of all-females destroyed Ben’s all-male team, mainly due to the inability of one of the guys to properly use a screwdriver. It was embarrassing. The 30 minutes we spent in the non-AC tech room taught us nothing except that in order for computers to function, all cords must be connected on the inside, and the outer cord must be plugged into a power outlet.
Tours of the electric, mechanic, welding, and art departments followed. On top of hosting orphans and providing elementary level education for youngsters, Don Bosco is also a licensed vocational school, which provides the necessary skills and qualification to enter the workforce. Graduates are then connected with partnered companies for internships and jobs. It is not required, but many former students continue to check up with the school in the first few years in order for the school to help monitor their progress. Without a support system at home, the orphans look to the priests and classmates as parent and sibling type figures. There is a lot of love and devotion at Don Bosco.
In the middle of the day we went to a fruit market on campus that was run by the younger students around 6-8 years old. Most of these kids will end up working in some sort of shop, so it is important for them to learn how to sell their goods and negotiate prices. These kids were not orphans and did not live on campus, so their parents came and assisted them. Nadine and I bought some tea, coconuts, and peanuts. After the market Ben went to the local Don Bosco aesthetician training and got his eyebrows shaped with string. Let's just say they school has some work to do.
That afternoon Jerome took us into the village to meet some of his students who were a bit older and already in the workforce. Ranging from early 20’s to mid 50’s, each afternoon they attended classes to increase their English level. On the ride over, Father Jerome told us that although perhaps they had seen foreigners before, they had never actually had an interaction with ONE. In broken English, they gave us an informal tour of the neighboring city of Anurandhapura.
Although these women went took classes at the Catholic school, all six of them were Buddhists. In Anuradhapura they took us to two temples and explained a bit about the rituals and beliefs of their religion.
We made a decision that the next day would be our last in Don Bosco, so we decided to cook dinner for the priests. The day prior we had promised the cooking students that we would show them how to properly cut a whole chicken. By “we” it means Nadine, of course.
First we had to take a quick trip into town to buy a chicken, along with chickpeas to make a new version of garlic hummus.
Much of the afternoon was spent preparing the hummus and chicken, as well as meeting our old friends from yesterday who swung by to pay us a visit. They also brought us a rice coconut treat!
As is everything that Nadine cooks, the food was delicious!
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