Do you know that scene when a white foreigner comes to an African village to teach English  at school? Everyone is running barefoot to see who the weird visitor is. The first few shy smiles and looks through the fingers.

 

That was my picture of the volunteer who teaches English somewhere in the world. I really wanted to try something like this. I think it became somehow one of my travelling dreams.

 

And what happened? I found an opportunity to teach children in a small village called Gewalseeay in the north-west part of Sri Lanka. I wrote to Heenkenda Gunarathna, an amazing host and person. He accepted me as the first volunteer. And thanks to that my dream became a reality.

 

To be honest my ‘dream picture’ wasn’t far from the reality. I was there as a second foreigner. During my first few lessons nearly half of the parents came to have a look at me, if I’m doing well. It took me few hours to get some reactions from the students. They were really shy, girls were hiding their faces behind their hands when I spoke to them and almost everyone had a problem to speak even in Sinhalese. And yeah they don’t wear shoes in the villages.

 

I stayed there for forty days. Heenkanda’s story and all the environment there was amazing. I felt like being at home after few days. We recorded few videos. The first one about his story:

Second one is about students:

And how it looks like, I mean school? It is building without windows. There are just few chairs, one podium and one table (for teacher). Here you can see my school:

This photography is last part of this post. Next time I will write about Sri Lankan nature, people and traditions. See you 🙂