WWW Hanbantota!

For this year’s Week Without Walls we went down to Hanbantota to paint and interact with children at two of the local schools that OsC set up after the tsunami. We split up into two different groups; the CHA group (11.1) and the CHI group (11.2) because there were two different schools. To prepare our trip we got together gift bags for the children and we planned out how much paint we needed and what the murals were going to be. Seeing it after, it might have been better if we did a bit more planning because on the day we went to the school we realized that we could have done a lot more, because the school didn’t really need painting, but they did need equipment such as white board, tables and books for the children.

My goals for WWW –  

·         Work together with people I wouldn’t normally work with.

·         Provide my complete service to what we have to do.

·         Interact with local people, which will provide me with a new experience.

·         Have fun in everything we’re doing.

·         Keep up a good reflection journal because it is part of the IB requirements and this was the perfect opportunity for service work.

Service day 1 –

As soon as we arrived at the school we introduced ourselves to make the children feel a little more comfortable and it was also a learning experience for the non-Sinhalese speakers because we learnt how to say my name is;

My name is Stephanie – Mage Nama Stephanie

We played with the kids, and Skylor was the leader of that and we played duck duck goose and we demonstrated head shoulders knees and toes. This really made me realize how different our situations are and how happy our visits made then, although they were a bit scared at first.

The kids left early which gave us time to look at what had to be done and we got started. We had allocated different groups to do different things such as the mural, maintenance and the equipment. Because I was part of the group that played with the kids I did a little bit of everything which I really enjoyed. At the end of the day we got quite a lot done and we were all pretty happy with what we had accomplished. In the evening we rehearsed for the concert we were planning on performing the next day. Here is what we were planning:

·         ‘Hey soul sister’ by Camie and Bharat

·         Head, shoulders, knees and toes by everyone 

·         A simple Sinhalese song by everyone

·         Skylor and Bharat playing the guitar.

The teachers at the school were very nice and they gave us coconuts and bananas and they were always making sure that we had everything we needed which again made me realize how much they appreciated what we were doing.

Service day 2

We had to finish everything that we wanted to today so we knew that we had to get together and work. We managed to finish everything on time when it started raining really hard but luckily all the paint managed to stay on everything. 

The children at the school had also prepared a concert for us and theirs was really nice with dancing, music and singing. It made me appreciate the effort they put into it and it also showed how different their idea of a concert is.

Yala National Park



On Thursday, the fourth day of Week without Walls we went on a safari to Yala. We had to get up at 4(!) in the morning and we drove one and a half hours to the park. What I really liked was that we got split up into groups with different people, again people that we wouldn’t really choose to go with if we had the choice, but it turned out to be really fun! Because our vehicle had a pulley system we went really deep into the forest and we only got stuck once, which was a pretty scary experience, but we had a very experienced driver so it was all good.

We managed to see two leopards one of which crossed the road directly in front of our jeep which was really exciting because often you hear about people that went all the way to Yala and didn’t see and leopard at all, and we were able to see two on such a close range. On the way back to the main gate our tire popped so we had to wait until another jeep came by and give us a spare tire, but it was all part of the experience. Because our jeep came back so late we didn’t have time to go to the temple to reflect on everything as we planned, so we went back to the hotel and just had free time for a while, which I found really good because we had woken up early and we were all still really tired from the visits to the schools. Later on in the afternoon we got together together and did some activities which gave us the opportunity to just have fun with our peers.

In the evening we had planned a musical evening but because we already had done a lot with music especially during the rehearsals for the concert we had put together for the school. But, the school managed to organize a DJ for us, which was really fun and we were all pretty surprised. Overall, WWW was once again a really good learning experience with plenty of opportunities to broaden your knowledge and experiences.