Life in Pitakele Village

As our language has improved, so has our immersion into the community. We’ve had several experiences that we don’t fully comprehend, but have been happy to come away with the small extent we understand and the education and enjoyment of engaging with the people around us.

Here are a few examples of cultural engagement, as well as some fun tidbits of our time here…

Once a year, the elementary school in town

Opening ceremony! A girl & boy from each team carry a torch

holds what we think of as a “field day.” It includes races, singing, a building competition, and other activities. We decided this would be interesting, so we attended, along with much of the community. The parents of the children build the houses the night before and are judged partly based on their inclusion of traditional techniques and representative traditional practices (like the way the rooms are set up and the tools they include in the kitchen, etc). The houses were impressive! One team built a house-like house, another built a peacock house, and the third built an elephant house! We loved seeing the palms, bamboo, bananas, etc. used to make these structures. The children were also impressive and quite cute!

The "houses" built by the parents of the elementary school teams with natural materials

The elephant house

The peacock house

Children listening to the announcer and singing

One day a carpenter friend of Tillekaratne and Someratne’s came by the field station to hang out. We got to talking and showed him a photo of the tiny house we built.  He was so impressed! He loved it and wanted a copy of the photo. He also invited us to his house to meet his family and have dinner with them. They made us a delicious feast of jak fruit curry, gota kola (a foraged green) and coconut salad, fruit, and of course pre-dinner sweets and tea. They showed us some of the things that Nanda Pala has made, including their house, furniture, and some cool bamboo cups. Logan hopes to go back and made bamboo cups with him one day. His mother-in-law also showed us a beautiful old traditional basket.

An old traditional basket

A bamboo cup Nanda Pala made

After dinner at Nanda Pala's with his family, Someratne's family, and Tillekaratne

Another day our researcher friend, Champika, brought us wild bananas that he found in the forest. They were more seed than flesh! Who knew? The flavor was good, but spitting out that many seeds was quite the chore… I can see why we favored eliminating them…











In an attempt to share our culture, Logan and I decided to make a pasta dinner for Someratne and Tillekaratne. To appeal to their taste, we went for an arrabiata-like sauce, adding a good number of little chilis. We had some Italian seasonings that my sister had brought us when she visited and added lots of garlic and onions. We also made garlic bread. It was delicious! They seemed to think so too… at least that’s what they led us to believe!

Pasta and garlic bread dinner with Someratne and Tillekaratne (sorry for the dark photo)

A few days ago, we found two lizards hanging out in the field station. One of them left later that day, but the other took up camp on top of our bug net! After the first night, we decided maybe he would like to be our pet, so we started feeding him bugs that we found around. So far, we have given her a couple of cockroaches and a beetle. She’s been here for 3 nights! I’m sure one day, she’ll choose to move on, but for now, her life seems pretty cush.

I think I’ve told you before that I really like drinking the water from coconuts… Since they grow all around here, we asked Tillekaratne if he could find us some to buy. Shortly thereafter, he took us to his uncle’s house where he proceeded to climb a giant king coconut tree and cut us down 20 coconuts. He put those on the tea truck that would deliver them up the hill that afternoon along with several sprouted coconut seedlings, so we could grow our own. Here is a video of Tillekaratne climbing the coconut tree. It took him a while to cut out the coconuts, so that part isn’t in the video.  Still, check out those climbing skills!

And a final aside... 

Sri Lankan transportation is not designed for folks over 6'!