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Trapped in the vicious circle of poverty, these children from Ratnapura
have no opportunity to go to school. Kumudini Hettiarachchi reports
It is Friday morning and in Pompakelle in the heart of the City of Gems life is going on as usual. Or is it? Most of the men are in their homes. Some are struggling to get over the previous night's kassipu hangover, others are ill, their bodies wracked by diseases such as TB. A few have gone out to earn a living as shoemakers or labourers. The women are pottering around in their tiny shacks, some red-eyed and hazy from the leftover dregs of kassipu they have gulped down from their husbands' sili-sili bags while others wonder what to throw together to give their children a scrap-meal. Can it get any worse? Yes, the most tragic and pathetic is that children of all ages are hanging around or going walkabout in twos and threes, wasting precious time as the clock inexorably ticks on. It's a bright and warm school day but most of them have either dropped out or have not gone to school at all. They are caught up in a vicious trap not of their making, for their fathers and forefathers have been born poor. Not only the filth and squalor but also the conditions of the one-room hovels they call home are indescribable, a picture hard to erase from one’s memory even when one is back amidst the veneer of prosperity in Colombo. The conditions in Pompakelle, deriving its name from the fact that the water for Ratnapura is pumped from the tank in this village located within the largest forest reservation in the country, are deplorable. Though there is a tank in Pompakelle, most of the 471 families, with a large number of children, have no water. They have to walk long distances to get a few pots of water for their basic necessities or buy it at a princely sum of Rs. 100 for five pots (kala gedi) from the fortunate few who have access to water. In a sense, the people in Pompakelle could be a model, for all three communities, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim live here and mixed marriages abound. Sajith Priyantha, 12, is home alone. His home is a tiny, dingy, wattle-and-daub room with a tin roof. A steep incline leads to the little yard strewn with excreta in front of his home. His family does not have water neither do they have a toilet. His mother has gone to a "bangalawa" close by to work as a servant. His father had hanged himself, unable to cope with his recurring bouts of asthma and his inability to feed his wife and four sons. Sajith stopped going to school a couple of years back. A few houses up the road, Marie Sarojini, 40, sits on her doorstep, with the hathiya (pant). Mother of seven children, she sadly acknowledges that most of them do not go to school. "My husband is a shoemaker who earns about Rs. 200 on a good day. He drinks kassipu for about Rs. 50 and we have to eat with the balance. How can we send our children to school when all that will cost extra money?" Does she down a drink? "I used to drink but now my children have told me many times not to. So I have stopped," she says though her eyes belie her answer. Her 13-year-old son, Suresh dropped out of school because he did not have any books and her 15-year-old daughter, Suganthi because she was sent as a servant to wash clothes for an affluent family. "They pay her Rs. 50 a day," says Sarojini. His mother leaving the family and his home collapsing led to Thusith Priyantha, 14, giving up his lessons. "My mother quarrelled with my father and went off, leaving him to look after my nine brothers and sisters. Then our home collapsed. My father was a labourer in the Municipal Council, but is now retired," he says. Marie Janaki's four sons are also at home. "They have to pull their weight and wash the clothes because I have to go out and earn some money to feed them," she says pointing to a heap of dirty clothes. She sheepishly concedes that one son is working in a pathala (mine). Kalimuththu can hardly walk. Coughs wrack his painfully thin body. He and wife, Weeramani, live in a home without part of the roof. He worked in the gully bowser of the Municipal Council and used to drink to overcome his revulsion towards his filth-filled job. Now he is a sick man and Weeramani toils in a home as a maid to give their three children at least one meal a day. "My children go to school on and off," she says. "Now they don't bring sili-sili bags with kassipu in their schoolbags," pleads Chandani* (name changed) about her two teenage sons. Yes, she heard that they brought hooch in their bags for their father but she put a stop to it. "My daughter has been very ill. My husband is also now in a Colombo hospital and I do not have the means to send my sons to school," she laments. In a slightly better environment lives Fathima Fazlina, 13, though her home, in a gully is a shack with a UNHCR tent as its roof. "My father is ill and the year I attained age I stopped going to school," she explains. A recent survey done by Sarvodaya in the area shows up some shocking data. Of 417 boys and girls in Pompakelle only 227 go to school while the large number of 190 do not go to school. No books, no pencils, no bags, no shoes, no food. How can these children be expected to go to school? As the world celebrates Literacy Day tomorrow, September 8, and Sri Lanka boasts about its high literacy rate, why has no one taken the trouble to get these forgotten children into the classroom? Or are they just an expendable statistic when politicians pay lip service to the fact that we have a free education system where every child has the opportunity to go to school? Reasons
for drop-outs There are a host of factors such as poverty, shifting populations, women-headed households contributing to this. These children come from vulnerable communities including estate workers, border villages, war-affected areas and slum-dwellers. No statistics are available on the number of children not going to school. Mr. Medagama said the ministry was conducting several literacy centres all over the country including 125 in Sabaragamuwa under which falls Ratnapura, to "catch" these children who have fallen through the system. “I
want to become something in life’ He and his little brother whom he keeps close to his side, have both not gone to school. The chances are that they will drop out from school forever, like the rest. "I love to study, specially English," he tells us painfully attempting to overcome a stammer. "I can spell my name and my father's name. I got 70 marks for English, the highest in Pompakelle," he says proudly answering a few simple questions correctly. His father hanged himself when he and his brother were quite little and their twin siblings were just a month old. The refrain sounds familiar -- his mother works as a servant to keep the home-fires burning. Often he does not have anything to eat for lunch but a boy in his class whom he helps with Environmental Studies, brings an extra packet from home and gives it to him, he says. "I study hard because I want to become something in life," stresses this boy who does not own a pair of socks to wear with his one and only pair of shoes, which gape open at the front. On being offered two ballpoint pens, he immediately gives one to his brother. Is there any succour for him or is he too doomed to live a life of penury sans an education, caught up in a karma from which there seems to be no release? |
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