15th March

Our last day of work on the East coast!

Scare-elephants

Late last night at about 1.00 a.m., Charlie was outside in the hotel grounds, making a phone call to England. He told me straight afterwards that he could hear a man chanting. He was surprised by another man in the hotel grounds. He asked the man if the chanting he heard was prayers. The man said "No". Apparently last week two people were killed late in the night by wild elephants, who come into the area looking for rice! The man was chanting to ward off elephants! In England we have scarecrows - in Sri Lanka they have scare-elephants!!

Packed like sardines

Our first show of the day was at a community centre at Alayadyvembu. It was a small space, into which 200 children were packed like sardines! It seemed even hotter than usual, and 2 minutes into my warm up routine I was dripping with sweat. I don't know how Charlie copes in his clown costume! The children were entertained for about 90 minutes with the usual chanting and clowning. Again, it proved a highly successful show, with the kids shouting us off with our chant of “whoooa - boomchaka!” I'’m constantly amazed at the response we get from the material we have. I believe the success lies in the fact that the children revel in the experience of white people taking a genuine interest in them, and are willing to play with them on their level!

Undertone of mockery

Our final show in Ampara, and indeed the East, was an unbelievable event - quite beyond anything I had experienced so far! We were in the grounds of a mosque at Kalmunai Beach near different I.O.M. camps. At first I thought it was going to be a small affair, with maybe 50 children. This is a Muslim area and the children seemed to be a cross between friendly and curious, with an undertone of mockery and violence! These children are quick to slap and punch each other in their excitement of seeing white people, and I decided to get Razeem to explain that for the duration of our session, this was not going to happen. If they started to slap, then we would go home! They got the message thankfully.

Bigger and bigger

It seemed our final show was going to be a small affair not a large one - but hey, the children present obviously needed some entertainment. Another well chosen venue by Razeem. It was going to be a small, tough audience, but rewarding, I thought. As the show progressed however, I realised the crowd was getting bigger ... and bigger ... and bigger! Our performance space was getting smaller and smaller! We kept having to stop the show to get the crowd to give us more space. We were facing an abandoned buliding and I looked up to see children who had cliimbed to first and second floor balconies to get a better view of us. Razeem estimated there was well over 400 people pushing and shoving to get a look at the show!

A fitting end

We started the show by using our van as a backdrop - by the end of the show we had been forced back to almost behind the van! It was an amazing, if a little scary experience - but it felt like a fitting end to our tour of the East!