Weekend Engagement - A Meaningful Trip To Sri Lanka

What is one of the best things that happened on your trip to another country.

I have gone quite a number of trips in the past decade and each trip is memorable in its own way, be it meeting interesting people, seeing breathtaking sights, or just enjoying good food. So I sieved through all my travel photos and I thought my trip to Sri Lanka in 2010 is definitely worth sharing!

The objective of the trip was for a Community Involvement Programme and we were supposed to spend about 5 days to help rebuild a local primary school. There were quite a number of items on the list to be done. One, to scrub the rust off the playground equipment and put on a new coat of paint, and then to level the ground at the playground. Two, do likewise for the window grills (scrub rust and paint). Three, paint the chairs and tables. Four, clear the drains and put a new coat of cement. Finally, to build a school room, and that was what I volunteered!

Basically, we were supposed to dig around the perimeter of the school room to about 1 ft deep for the foundation. So this was the result after 2 hours of hard work! In the end, we didn't manage to complete the depth of 1 ft, but we had to call it a day as the sun was setting. It was a team effort because even the kids were helping us out too.

More digging continued the next day, and we finally reached the correct depth.

Next was putting the foundation. We have to mix sand, water, stones, and cement to make concrete. Unlike typical construction sites, they didn't have any machines so all the work, e.g. transportation of the materials, mixing of the materials, were all done manually.

All done! Took the whole afternoon because we had to do a couple of cycles to make the concrete. The locals there are really experienced, when it comes to all these work. I guess the hardest work was really the mixing, because it's really not easy to mix sand, stones, water, cement as evenly as possible with just a few shovels.

For the third day, it's time to fill the spaces with the bigger rocks. With the remaining afternoon, we cut and bent these metal bars for the corners and then made and poured the concrete to fill up the 4 corners.

Time flew by and we only managed to complete 1/4 of the wall. Because our time was up, we had to leave it for the locals to continue.

Here's the repainted table and chairs, playground, and the new drainage which the others did!

After that, as part of the itinerary, we had a few days of sightseeing but there's another story for another day. Personally, I recalled that I really had fun out there getting dirty, shovelling cement, and playing with the children. Although I didn't interact much with the locals, my few encounters with the Sri Lankans made me feel that they were really warm and friendly people.

When one goes on trips like these, it really makes you treasure what you have, especially for many things that city dwellers like us take for granted, be it shelter, or even just a functional playground, or proper tables and chairs to study. And interestingly, these people live their day with a smile on their faces and make the best with what they have, and that's something for us (or at least myself) to take home and reflect. So for me, that's one of the best things that happened on my trip to Sri Lanka. :)

P.S. Looking back, I probably would have come back with aches and pains all over if I were to do it now, but I guess it wasn't an issue for my younger self. Hehe!

So that's all for my sharing this week! Hope you enjoyed reading and let me know if you have any comments! Have a pleasant week ahead!