On October 16th we were greeted by rain, very warm rain.  Everything else was as always: the warm welcome by our friends, combined with a lot of food;  the checkpoints and the road blocks;  the traffic jams and the sound level of a big town.  And astoundingly enough, we got used to the slow pace of everything within half a day. 

Victor, our driver, had retired and had bought a little car.  He was only driving his grandchildren to school and picked them up later to bring them to his house, where he and his wife took care of them until their daughter-in-law came home from work.  It was a joy to meet him in Colombo and he appeared very content.

Together with Roy we visited three different kindergartens and it was an emotional up and down.

Close to Zariya`s house, a big organization had built a fancy kindergarten for 60 children soon after the tsunami.  Our eyes almost popped out at the sight of the toilets, as they would have easily suited a five star hotel. 

To visit the children together with Roy, as always, was a pleasure as he questions the grandparents and aunts, in ways we would not dare. Resla had become a teenager and was happy about some extra pocket money from her Auntie Monika.

Michel had made some calculations, as the bookkeeper:  even if the women only made small payments, there were sufficient funds for two new credits during the last year.

We handed over two more, one to Sifany with the rice mill. 

It was as always, a fixed point to visit Sifaya.  The picture of her shortly after the tsunami in the little hut, we will never forget.  Sadly and again, we could see that she was not doing very well with managing money and we took her for extensive shopping of groceries. 

To avoid the “stress” to say farewell to our friends’ right before our departure, we decided to meet them the weekend before, inviting them all for lunch in Colombo.