We conducted our first program yesterday afternoon.
About 7km in land from the coast there is a new village inhabited by Tsunami survivors: amongst these families there is one Christian lady who invited The Salvation Army's Community Capacity Development (CCD) team to visit and assist her in building community amongst the people in the new village. (A "Society" in this context is just a group who gather for fellowship, encouragement and learning.)
Since this invitation a Women's Society has commenced with 40-50 women attending weekly and a Children's Society, with 27 in attendance yesterday.
We arrived to find all these women and children waiting for us: seated on wooden benches and on the ground in an open field surrounded by cinnamon bushes on two sides, coconut plantation on another and houses on the fourth - a water buffalo and a couple of dogs joined the back of the group.
We were greeted by three beautiful young girls doing a cultural dance for us, before we entertained them with a puppet show, and attempted to teach them an action song before splitting the children away into their own group. Gill, Gael and Gay introduced the ladies to the delights of card making, whilst Ian and I played "under-over", "cat and mouse" and poison ball with the children.
The program came to a climax with the presentation of prizes, by the team, for a Vesak Lantern competition that had been organised by the CCD team.
And that brings to an end our visit to the tsunami affected community work that is being done in the South East. On Sunday we head in land for a few days, up toward Kandy, the Elephant Orphanage at Pinnawela and programs at schools in Kandy and Rambukkana and meetings at Hewadiwela.
