To Kallar and Beyond

Oh my gosh, where the heck do I even begin. SO much has happened in just this past week that I don't know what to say without overwhelming you with words...who am I kidding though, that's inevitable.

Well for those of you that don't know, the girls and I decided to join up with the YMCA (yes, take a minute, sing the stupid song and get it over with) last week and took the 8 hour drive to the other side of the country to a small town called Kallar. Oh man, you could never imagine this drive, even if you tried. It was the bumpiest, windiest (wine-d-est), small road, monkey filled ride I've ever taken. We finally got to the YMCA in Kallar late Saturday evening and took our first little stroll around the village. All I can say is that you have to take a few huge breaths every once in a while or you'll just stop breathing all together. The damage is incredible but, and I'm not exaggerating when I say this, the people's spirits overshadow all of it. They are so resilient and the kids bring SO MUCH joy to the community...as the week went on, I learned that first hand.

We have met some amazing people, who have since come and gone and are still coming and going, from Australia, South Africa, Palestine, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong, France and England. It's such an awesome thing to hear at least 3 different languages a day! If nothing else it gives me a BAD case of the travel bug and it makes me think I won't be back in the states for long. Together we are doing amazing things to help get the community back on it's feet in the areas of water purification, destroying houses that are deemed unsafe, children's programs, food/clothes distribution, electrical, medical distribution and education and lots more.

Here's a little bit of what this past week has been like for me:

I start every morning underneath my frilly pink mosquito net that is blown by the wind entering through a small window to my right of what used to be the library for the YMCA, on a side street about 1 km from the ocean (which we just realized is really the Bay of Bengal. How cool is that?) in a little town called Kallar. After I realize how hot I am already at 8am I get changed in our little changing room and go down stairs to our communal room and dine with my international friends. I wish that it was all as glamorous as it sounds but I sleep on my sleeping bag on a thin pad on a bamboo mat, our changing room is really just a small concrete square that has about 1,000 water bottles in it and dining really just means eating white bread from the corner store over and over again for each meal. I'm not lying when I say that the majority of the things I eat now are either white bread or white rice with this food called dahl. Look into it, you won't be very impressed. But on the bright side, I've never enjoyed the variety that peanut butter brings so much.

One morning we unpacked what seemed like hundreds of boxes (apparently they heard we were good at that) of children's school supplies in our big room and hundreds of kids at a time have come in throughout the week. It has been one of the most amazing things to see these kids faces light up over getting a new drinking bottle, back pack, notebooks, 2 pens and a pair of shoes. Honestly, you'd think we were giving them gameboys or shopping sprees. When in actuality, these kids have no possessions left at all. Because there is a little peninsula right off the coast of this town, it's formed a little lagoon and when the tsunami came these people were lucky enough to have a little bit of a warning and not many people died; however, the damage was still done to their houses. So even though these kids are blessed to have most of their family and friends around, no one has clothes or homes. Everyone within 3 blocks of the ocean lives in tents or with family further from shore and pretty much wears the same thing every day.

The beauty in this culture is beyond me. It's so simple and yet so overwhelming at the same time. Without children this village could never rebuild itself. I've never seen so many smiles or heard so many laughs even from kids back home. It's like a parade every time we walk down the street because you'll hear laughing and "hello's" from every direction. It's impossible to not stop, wave and smile at these kids whose smiles are 100% contagious. I will never again underestimate the power that a child holds.

It's hard to remember that girls in America are wearing make-up, buying $70 outfits, living on the computer or TV and spending most of their day trying to impress boys at 12 and 13 year olds when on the other side of the globe the girls here are wearing the same clothes everyday, living in tents with no running water and barely spending much time with boys at all. They have some of the most natural beauty I have ever seen in my life.

The beauty of the beach is another story all together. We try to walk over to the beach every day as the sun sets. As we do we walk through piles upon piles of unusable brick, glass and trash that have been moved by the ocean. We walk past families that know our faces because we helped set up their new canvas home, which most people would just call a tent but is much, MUCH more to them. We walk the quarter of a mile across the barren sand, that seriously looks like desert because of the flattening the ocean has done to the beach. It's something only nature could do. Since we don't bring anything with us, we just flip off our shoes and run in. I'm amazed at the temperature of the water every time, as if it was my first and I look back at the beach to see the glowing silhouettes of the palm trees behind the black outlines of the people who have come to watch the white people swim. It's without a doubt my most favorite part of the day. I don't know if words in general, let alone mine, can really describe the beauty that my eyes get to see every day.

I've since been put "in charge" of photography/journalism for our YMCA. I'll continue taking pictures of what's going on in the community, and hopefully some surrounding towns, and potentially getting a web site to constantly share what we're doing with the rest of the world. I might even be putting presentations together to share within the country to show the great physical and emotional rebuilding that the YMCA has helped bring Kallar. I'm sure specifics will change but it's great because I get to do what I am really passionate about and share some really great news with the country and hopefully the world at the same time.

So at this point, we are back at "home" in Colombo with our AMAZING family. Man, we love them so much and I couldn't imagine being here and not knowing them. We'll be in the city until around Wednesday or Thursday renewing our visas and stocking up on supplies to bring back to our new home. Once we get back there, our internet/phone access is pretty limited - which is good because it keeps us completely focused on life there. Which is obviously a 180 from almost everyone who reads this. We don't know for sure how long we'll be in Sri Lanka, but for now it looks like we're exactly where we're supposed to be...and that's peaceful.

Be in touch for the next few days if you can (j10m@hotmail.com) and hopefully I can get some lovin' before I take my rickety little van back to the beach.

Love, Love, Love on this Valentines Day!

Jasmine