Lee & Daz : Diary Update 2

Aragum Bay, Sri Lanka : 5 - 9 June, 2005 .

5/6/05

Kids surfing competition at the point, 9am, Darren is one of the judges. All the boys were pleased to be getting some coaching by some professional and non professional surfers and seemed to take the advice well. Surf conditions weren't perfect but the day went well with the final proving to be a very close contest between 1 st and 2 nd place. Everyone involved had a great time.

The prize giving was in the evening at the Hillton, (not paris' folks). With Kay from South Africa donating one of her sponsor's boards as first prize and various surf accessories donated from Yaluwa.

Junior 1st prize winner, Daz and Kay.

6/6/05

After the comp, we were speaking to the guys at Rupali's (Café on the point). After Rupali passed away a few years ago, his son, Asanka and cousin Richard have been running the café where surfers can leave their boards, have breakfast and watch the surf.

After the tsunami, there is little left at the point, just a small shack with open fire cooking and these boys are struggling to provide as more people are coming to the area, especially with the British comp later this month. We decided to help out and rebuild the beach side shelter/café where people can sit down, have a juice and take in the atmosphere. We designed the structure, mostly wooden to get round rebuild rules and work should be starting this week which will help out the family that looks after visitors to the area.

7/6/05

Woken up early by Rasool, after painting protest banners until the early hours of the night before, shouting about the thousands of people marching through town to the UDA Office (urban development association). We catch the action at the office amidst burning tyres, bewildered military and police and hoards of understandably upset locals. In a whole morning of protests no arrests were made in what was a peaceful demonstration. The outcome seems quite positive, any 200m boundary posts were soon ripped from the ground and the locals have bought themselves some time, at least for now. This event made national news which can only help Arugam bay lawyers obtain an injunction against this rule. More news as it happens..

8/6/05

Faru, the owner of the cabanas we are staying at, teaches at the local Muslim school, Ak/Al Aqza, which was battered by the waves and is being rebuilt by the Rotary Club of Kandy. During the 6 month rebuild stage the students are using temporary classrooms, so Yaluwa have provided cash for 2 40ft x 20ft structures to allow lessons to run as normal. Lee made the donation to the principal, and gave a 'little' speech to all the teachers who in turn thanked us for this generosity.

Entrance to local school.

9/6/05

Went to Potuvil to send footage of the demonstration to, undercurrents.org. which is a free press organisation based in the U.K., only to find that any media files leaving the country by post must first be screened in Colombo, thereby controlling the coverage the country has in the worlds media. At least we got a disc to some Austrian reporters Monday night so at least people in Austria can see our wobbly footage.

Mel Gunasena who runs the Art 2 Art projects here and Esther who has been building playgrounds for the kids, invited us to the official opening of the first play area. Here we helped out with the days activities and games, the kids really enjoyed making butterfly pictures and loved the ice cream at the end of the day.

Playground opening.

We met some officials from a nearby refugee camp and have agreed to supply 9 bicycles for the kids living there who still walk the 5 km journey to school each day, also text books, pens etc.

We've organised another surf comp for the seniors this weekend, with Spider donating a new board, Daz donating a fish, and Yaluwa donating runners up prizes, (see poster)

That's about it for now, 10pm and still typing, time to send this off and grab some dinner.....laters..

9/6/05

No luck with the net last night, bit of a long day, ended up trying to send huge file, smaller now, should be ok.

Went to Potuvil today, bought 10 bikes for the kids, getting them fitted with racks, bells and locks. We'll deliver them to the camp on Monday with schoolbags full of books, pens, maths kits and umbrellas for the girls, pics to follow.