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I arrived at Colombo airport and Harsha was waiting to meet me. The heat hit me straight away and I knew that I would not need the jeans and jumper that I was wearing!

The journey down to Wasgamuwa took us through a number of small towns with shops at the front of the houses. The roads are fairly bumpy but we were too busy looking at all the new sights to notice too much.

We were coming up to the turning leading towards our house and we had to go through the electric safety fence (to keep elephants out of the village).  We then started to go up this really bumpy mud track and came to the top of a hill and were told that this was the house. It was very dark and about 1:00am in the morning!  We walked down a small track and saw what looked like a mud hut, our house!

When we woke up in the morning you could see the whole view around the house - it was impressive looking over the lake and seeing the mountains in the distance. After a short time we became very accustomed to the house and really enjoyed the different surroundings.

In the National Park we managed to see a herd of about 100 elephants that were pretty close to the vehicle - a great experience!  We also had the opportunity to visit the local safety fence and the tree house that the conservation unit uses.

All of the local villagers were very happy to meet us and always smiled and waved. At times it can seem a little intimidating because everyone stops to stare at you and call their friends over to have a look, but a wave and a smile back is normally well accepted.

The teaching can be hard work but was very rewarding. It can take a lot of repetition for the children to fully take in information, but you can see that they are keen to learn and will keep trying. The abilities range from some children who have no experience of English at all to some of the children in the higher grades who were very competent.  We had two very helpful male field scouts who would attend classes with us to help explain tasks to the children and translate some information for them in their own language.

The nearest town to the project house is Hettipola and this can take about 40 minutes in one of the local buses, but don’t expect the buses to run on time they seem to just turn up when they feel like it. The town will have most things that you will want at very cheap prices.  The cold drink at some of the local stores was always appreciated.

The evenings are very dark from around 7:30pm.  You will have time to read a book, play cards or one of the games in the house.  You will also have the opportunity to relax and just listen to the sounds around you. 

Overall this was an excellent experience that I will always remember.  The children were amazing and great to work with and the location of the house really helped us become involved with the whole village.  Also seeing and speaking to the locals was an important part of the whole experience. Most of the locals don't speak English so be prepared to be very patient and have good sign language. The Sinhala phrase book can be very helpful to pick up some of the simple phrases. The Sri Lanka Lonely Planet book is also very helpful if you are travelling around Sri Lanka.

Rachel (above) and Emma (below)

Well!! We couldn’t have asked for a more eventful stay!!! Where on earth do we start?! The whole trip has been so much more than we could have hoped for; from the amazing house to the crazy experiences! Its all been a dream come true!

The wildlife is a joy to behold, a surprise around every corner! We scoop frogs out of the sink every morning, check for Cobra around corners, step over the house dogs to reach breakfast, dodge tortoises on the way to school, share a swim in the lake with water buffalo and of course there are the elephants!! But I’ll get to them a little later!

The kids are a handful to say the least! Very energetic and boisterous, but above all eager to learn, like absolutely no children we know back home!! This makes every lesson rewarding, even if it can also be quite trying at times! We’ve taught classes with a massive range of ability ~ it can be quite frustrating teaching one child to spell CAT over and over, while another is ready to learn grammar! We had to re-learn all our nouns and adjectives etc! In retrospect we loved every class, although we have to admit we often dreaded teaching Grade 1 who can’t even write in Sinhala yet, let alone in English!!

The weekends are always fun! You soon learn that a five hour bus ride is the norm, 2 hours is nothing!! Kandy is beautiful, a welcome break into near-civilization with internet and cold drinks!! Oh the novelty!! Go to “The Pub” on a Friday night especially if the cricket is on, its brill! The Koffeepot next door has the best internet and heavenly fruit juices!! Adams Peak is a must!! Do not be put off!! It is a big slog, bloody freezing at the top and leaves you limping for a week, but it’s all worth it!! The views are amazing!! Climb at night for the most perfect sunset and a good run down in the dawn! Nuwara Eliya is a stunning English-style town in the middle of the hill country.  Make sure you visit a tea factory and you get to wear a sexy green uniform complete with hat – so exciting!!  The cultural triangle is a must – Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambulla and Sigirya.  Sigiriya has fantastic views and Dambulla has extremely impressive caves filled with beautiful statues of the Buddha. White water rafting at Kitulgula, all over body massage in Kandy (next to Hotel Suisse), shopping (Majestic City and Odels) and even clubbing (H2O and Zanziba) in Colombo!!

Willies is a short bike ride away, turn right at the road! The pool is an oasis after a chaotic class but the food is questionable – do not try the mixed veg salad!!!  But enjoy an amazing papaya juice and cold sprite!!

The National Park… what can we say? Don’t get too close to the elephants!! Our Manager (Chinthaka!!!) really made us feel like a part of the herd, we watched about ten elephants tucking into grass and looking after their babies. It was amazing, so close… a little too close!! Next thing we knew we were surrounded by aggressive elephant females, growling and inches away from the jeep! We piled into the middle, trunk dodging, the field scouts no help whatsoever (Thushara and Mahesh!!)!! It didn’t take long for the jeep to be perched on two wheels as one elephant head butted the passenger side door and the others moved ominously into attack positions!! Thank god the clutch held out this time!! We managed to speed away after several terrifying minutes, only to be chased by the entire herd in full charge mode! Chinthaka has never driven so fast!! We made it through alive though (just!) and it’ll be a good story to tell to our grandchildren.

Everything has been unforgettable!! We’d recommend this placement to anyone willing to enjoy their world and bike ride a lot! Do not be tempted to spend too much time in the comfy chairs! Get out there!! Talk to the kids (sign language is always good!), jump off bridges into lakes, celebrate the many festivals and generally enjoy Pusselayaya and the surrounding area (esp. willies!). It is possible to completely immerse yourself in the culture of Sri Lanka in this peaceful village, but only if you go for it!!

In a unique teaching exercise the use of a parachute allows the children of Gamboraya village to "learn how to be cooperative instead of competitive, as there are no winners or losers."

by ROHAN CANAGASABEY

Being able to speak and understand English is the key to employment or business opportunities in the urban commercial sector. But in Sri Lanka's archaic learning-by-rote system, learning is not usually associated with fun and enjoyment.

So when one sees giggling children running around a multi-coloured parachute as part of their English lesson, it is certainly worth investigating.

With the southern boundary of Wasgamuwa national park just behind them, a kilometre away, and with the peaks of the Knuckles mountain range, north of Kandy in sight, the children of Gamboraya village have for the last eight weeks been learning English the fun way, with two retired teachers hailing from the county of Hertfordshire, England.

Carole Bennett and Roberta Bird were here on a self-financing voluntary project organised by www.travellersworldwide.com of the UK, which was facilitated by the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society's (SLWCS - www.slwcs.org) Saving Elephants by Helping People programme. The connection between helping to conserve elephants and teaching English is understandably not obviously apparent. Gamboraya, like the other villages in this area, is a relatively new farming settlement, established in the last few decades, and consequently part of the human-elephant conflict zone, with the associated crop destruction and occasional tragic human deaths.

The main focus of SLWCS's work here is to maintain and continue expansion of solar-powered electric fences around threatened villages, whilst also researching wild elephant numbers and roaming patterns outside of Wasgamuwa national park nearby.

Facilitating the learning of English, argued SLWCS Project Director Chandeep Corea, gives farmers' children the option of seeking a livelihood other than through farming, thus eventually reducing the demand for cultivated land in this human-elephant conflict zone.

Though Ms. Bennett and Ms. Bird were not English teachers as such, at this level, when even native English speaking A-level school leavers are placed on voluntary teaching projects in many villages throughout most of Sri Lanka, they have brought a wealth of experience, particularly Ms. Bennett, who was involved in teacher training in the UK.

And the use of a parachute, said Ms. Bennett, has been employed for some time in the UK, progressing from a single-colour military parachute to a specifically designed multi-coloured one, as it gained in popularity as an innovative method for teaching, at the basic level to young children.

Here in Gamboraya, the parachute was used in the under-12 class. It begins with the distribution of different coloured ribbons corresponding to some of the colours on the parachute. With Ms Bennett and Ms Bird at the helm, the children respond to instructions, which apply to one set of children at a time, depending on the colours of the ribbons given to them.

The actions asked and conducted by the children can range from running around the parachute, to running back and forth under it in the fastest possible time, sometimes after picking up a hat.

At the end of the session, which included keeping a red ball in the air with the parachute, they all huddled together for a few seconds under it, in quick response to an instruction.

And afterwards the children continue to linger, having enjoyed this once weekly novel teaching experience, as the other afternoon classes during the week are conducted in the classroom.

These two foreign volunteer teachers were assisted by local youth employed by SLWCS as field scouts, who in the morning conduct research into wild elephant roaming patterns a few kilometres away. Watching the young children of Gamboraya laughing and enjoying themselves, through this English lesson, on an overcast day recently, left me wondering if this was playtime or an actual lesson.

But there is serious side to this fun. As Ms . Bennett explained, the use of the parachute allows the children to "learn how to be cooperative instead of competitive, as there are no winners or losers". In this case, it is achieved when children with one set of coloured ribbons have to cooperate, to complete the tasks.

The different coloured teams are created only to manage numbers, as they do not compete against each other. The other point, apart from encouraging cooperation instead of competition, is the obvious one, as "it is fun way to learn, using colours and numbers as well as enabling the children to understand and follow instructions", said Ms. Bennett. In the next class for the older children, Ms . Bennett and Ms. Bird also used role-play.

This for example, meant one of them holding their stomach and acting out being in pain, while the other went around the class with a card on which was written the words stomach ache. The children clearly enjoyed watching their teachers act out different words. Another method used in the classroom was interactive learning, and as it implies, an actively participatory way to learn English.

Whilst Ms. Bennett and Ms.Bird have finished their time here in Sri Lanka, and will very shortly be returning to their respective families in England, they leave behind with the children of Gamboraya, an eagerness to continue learning English, and hopefully, said Ms. Bennett, with other volunteer teachers from Travellers Worldwide.

On the question on what they had achieved in their eight weeks of teaching, both said that they had succeeded in giving the children confidence to speak in English, which they had already learnt at school, but were previously reluctant to use.

Perhaps there are lessons here in the teaching methods used by these retired teachers for the school teaching profession in general in Sri Lanka, that the Education Department should consider incorporating, as, a cooperative, fun and interactive way to learn could be achieved, with or without a parachute.