Our wish to find a sponsor for the kindergarten had become true and we would like to thank Mrs. Hofer very much.

The kindergarten teacher had built the kindergarten at the house of her mother-in-law, as the NGO that had built the house allowed additional buildings.  At her own house from another NGO, she was not allowed to build but here, that regulation had been overruled.  Or there was simple nobody from the NGOs around anymore to take care of it.  Half a year ago she had contacted Roy with the request to move the kindergarten to her house and he had forwarded that request to us.  Even if we could not imagine how she would manage that, we gave our permission.

Well, it was done the Sri Lankan way.  They had removed a wall from the house of the teacher and had taken the old kindergarten apart into reusable pieces to build a big annex to the house.  Whatever was not used for the construction, they had sold and had bought roof tiles and paint with that money.  The playground equipment was all set up and they had added a couple of things.  Children and teacher appeared to be quite happy.

We had bought a whole bag of Kinder-Surprise eggs (the size of chicken eggs made out of chocolate with a little toy in the middle that has to be assembled).  The children received them with big eyes and hardly one knew how to open them.  They ate them with their fingers as they did not know what to do with the little spoons that were attached.  With sticky fingers, we started to assemble the toys. 

As always, it was a challenge to the ears when the children started to sing.  Very proudly each one of them handed us a painting for Mrs. Hofer.

The look of the abandoned house of the kindergarten teacher’s mother-in-law and the empty foundation plate was depressing.  On the other hand we got an idea about the distance between the two houses;  it was much further than we had thought.  Obviously, she recognized our feelings and told us that the mother-in-law had to sell the house to get the money to enable one of her sons to get employment abroad.  Because of the foundation plate that could be used for a shop or something similar, she might be able to ask a higher price. 

We highly doubted that she would be able to sell the house at all.  There were so many houses in Siribopura for sale and there was still no infrastructure.  We had to admit that the new solution was much better for the teacher;  and that this was much more important than our mental state.