If you keep alive traditions, you also keep alive a country’s culture. Whereas many families often only celebrate the first menstruation of a girl with a loud party and lots of alcohol, here in Little Smile the particular girl still is the centre of attention. According to traditions, there is a ritual washing early in the morning, the return as a young woman afterwards, a special meal, new clothes and the first gold jewelry. Anka makes sure that the tradition, which Bawani once taught her, is carefully followed on Abi’s great day at the beginning of July when she becomes a “big girl”.
Phase 64: July to September 2015  Theoretically there is free health care and education in Sri Lanka. In reality, however, these public services have shrunk to a minimum – many children for example have to leave school earlier because their parents can no longer afford all the additional extra costs. Here we help too, as we did for example in the case of this Tamil girl, who lives with her old destitute grandfather and has no means for shoes, a school bag or additional books and exercise books.  At the end of July, when the examinations of the third quarter are over, there are also celebrations at the Little Smile school. One of the highlights is the volleyball match between pupils and teachers. It was a hot day, extremely hot, and so it was no wonder that the older ones got out of breath.
 Assess yourself realistically – know when to stop! To build a tower with wooden blocks is also part of the competition between pupils and teachers. Here we also show that education means more than to learn things by heart and repeat them like a parrot.
 The little ones have plundered the kitchen and organized a market. Now they need to find customers. The apples were easy to sell but nobody wanted the raw potato. They learned about the basics with their game – about supply and demand. You can bet that their next market will look different with regard to the range of their products.  One man’s joy is another man’s sorrow! While for almost all kids the holidays start on July 30, the exam stress begins for those of the final class. Anita, too, is facing her A-level exams in Kalmunai and of course, her Lokuthatha, Michael Kreimeir, drops in before to whish the young Tamil woman, who came to Little Smile 13 years ago, all the best.
 To improve the education opportunities in a region that was troubled by civil war during many years and extremely hard hit by the tsunami catastrophe – in Kalmunai, a city on the east coast – Little Smile is building a three-storey extension building of the Maria Theresia college. After a lot of rather negative experience with building contractors Shiran Silva, manager of Little Smile, personally supervises the works supported by sister Lucrece.
 Whenever Michael Kreitmeir comes to the east coast he visits the girls homes in Palugamam. Those visits bring back many memories of a very difficult and dangerous time during the civil war when the director of Little Smile supported the three girls’ homes in the strongly embattled area with a high personal risk.  Due to the many thefts on the land we cannot guard day and night, we harvested the pepper already in June and July. For white pepper, however, the fruits must be ripe, and so the past weeks guarding our pepper were very tiring. In August then we harvested and dried it on the roof of the new factory of the farm in Dikkapitiya. 12 tons had been ordered from the German “Gewürzmühle AVO” (spice mill AVO), and as you know “no pains, no gains”. |