For a magical week Sri Lanka made itself at home in Orgill School. The children tasted its coconut milk rice and other delicately spiced dishes, danced to its music, dressed in the warm colours of its flag, adorned themselves with its floral garlands, counted in its language, created images of its elephants, and reverently exchanged the Buddhist greeting, Auybowan, with their special guest and guide, JJ. Under the spell of its oriental courtesy, they gasped in wonder at the beauty of one another’s elephants and saw one another with refreshed respect.

JJ had taken leave of his Cafe in Egremont Market Place to help the children and their teachers create the atmosphere of his homeland in the heart of Orgill estate. With the help of posters donated by the Sri Lankan Tourist Board he had, in a special assembly on Monday morning, stirred the imagination of the children so deeply that not a single child would miss a single day of the week that followed, and many crowded into after school activities focused on dance and music, textiles, cookery and cricket. He opened the doors and windows of the minds of children he quickly came to regard as his family.
In this way he helped the school celebrate its twinning with Thotogamuwa Vijayabahu School and helped to raise funds for that school to set up its English Language Classroom. The school was virtually destroyed by the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, and Orgill's own Reception teacher, Rachel King, had narrowly survived that terrible morning when she was caught up by the might of the wave and miraculously dropped on the beach hundreds of metres away. She had raised funds herself the following year to bring aid to the people who had helped her on the way to recovery from this terrible experience. When JJ and Roopa opened their Cafe, she brought her class to find out how they prepared food and cared for their customers, and, in a way, Sri Lanka Week grew out of that visit.
Rachel explained that Sri Lanka had made an impressive recovery from the disaster, with its key buildings beautifully reconstructed, and now needed support for its own attempts to open the minds of its children to the language and culture of other countries, including our own. Orgill and Thotogamuwa Vijayabahu have been able to exchange stories and images, fascinated by differences in culture, but, at the same time, finding so many things they had in common. The special efforts of that week had raised more than £300, to which Egremont Today will add its own contribution in the name of all our readers.
A few years ago, in a generally favourable Ofsted inspection, Orgill was criticised for failing to prepare its children for life in a multicultural society. If those inspectors had returned for Sri Lanka Week, they would have been thrilled.

To read how Rachel was caught up in the tsunami and of how she returned to bring aid the following year, go to our website and search "tsunami".

Editor Loses Control

After two years of holding the line at 24 pages, the Editor has reluctantly given in to the demand of readers to have more of their stories included. More printing, harder work in collating, more weight on our shoulders when we deliver! He’ll try to get his control back next month.