Some New Arrivals. November 01, 2005.

Francesca Writes:
Today at 6:30 in the morning Christopher Chin and Brandon Bond arrived in the village. Jet-lagged and weary, they dutifully followed me along as I began to tour them through the village, the training dive site and the school. Kirk and Jason had picked up our two new volunteers from colombo and drove them here, down south, on the perilous and circuitous route that is the journey to Madiha.

Just this past Friday, Brandon (an assistant instructor) had literally jumped from one plane (returning from his segment of recovery work in new orleans as a disaster preparedness manager for Kaiser P.) to another plane to join us in our training mission. I think he is still overwhelmed from the extreme sensory overload of NOLA, and now we are giving him even more to digest. Poor guy. Like me, he too was greeted in sri lanka by the curious occurrence of missing baggage. But we have our fingers crossed that all of his clothing and personal belongings will arrive sometime soon.


I cannot believe that my three weeks are nearly up. It has gone by so quickly, and is a bit surreal. I have developed a deep connection with these people, one that is very palpable and real. It will be bittersweet to leave. But I know that Christopher and Brandon will definitely try to carry on our metaphorical baton.

Today we will be continuing our open water session with the young divers at our makeshift dive site. Vlad and I will be showing Christopher and Brandon the ropes so they can 'dive in' tomorrow.

The training dive site is located about 50 meters out from shore (compass reading of 270 degrees), in front of one of two local hotels called the Sabine, which is owned by a super friendly guy named Anhoura (sp?). It is not a very deep site and it is very surgey, but it is serving our purposes for the time being. We have fashioned a few rocks, as our anchor/sand screws, a yellow nylon cord as our descent line, and two blue plastic fuel bottles are acting as our float. Ingenuity and creativity abound! We have to take advantage of high tide at 2:00 in the afternoon so we get the most out of our depth - a variance of  3-4 meters maximum.

We have named the site Paramuwala, which means 'mullet fish well' in Sinhalese. This is how the locals refer to this particular area, although CDC instructor Tom Yang and I discovered a whole family of huge spotted rays when we were first exploring the site while skin diving.

The morning students are the younger students in our class - Ravindra, Thushara, Buddhika, Chathuranga, Osman, Jayantha da, and Inidka G. The names and the pronunciation of these names are now all very familiar but were definitely a challenge when I first arrived.

Tomorrow we will begin the open water training of the older fisherman; many have some dive experience, but they all need to be retrained as their current diving methods are risky at best. The good news is that they are very eager to learn and are extremely comfortable in the water.

And since both Kirk and Jason are here in town we are having a big party with the students tonight. What this essentially means is that lots of Arrack will be poured and consumed. Arrack is the local tequila of choice - liquor made of coconut and sugar - trust me when I say it is an acquired taste and that all of our students are connoisseurs of the Arrack. Their favorite kind is the 'extra special' bottle. What the exact difference is I don't know, but I do know that they absolutely love it.

Since our rental house is now full with the guys, I am giving up my little room and moving over to the Beach Inn, which is where we take all of our meetings and store our perishable goods. I will miss the beautiful and timid King Fisher bird who visits my window every morning.

The Beach Inn is a great little hotel that is owned by Indika G.'s family. Indika G. is a 22-year-old guy who is always smiling and has been a godsend for the project as both an organizer and a translator - he speaks fairly good English. If and when Bill Oakes, the Course Director from CDC, decides to come back next October to conduct an IDC we will certainly put him up at the Beach Inn, since he is a creature of comforts :)

There is much to do before I leave to be able to transition all of the pertinent information over to the new volunteers. And tomorrow I will be presenting our program efforts to a local school for deaf and blind children. A British woman named Nerissa Pope has asked us to present. Nerissa has been instrumental in our program's success because she kindly donated the use of her beautiful pool, so we'd be able to conduct the confined water portion of our training in a calm setting. Nerissa and her husband David live about 2 kilometers north from the center of Madiha in an idyllic house, nestled atop of a beautiful mountain. Nerissa generously volunteers for many local schools.

I will write more as time allows, and perhaps on the plane I will decompress and fill in the details of our daily routines.

Time marches on....
Francesca
November 01, 20