Surrounded by machine guns

During the months of April to October the fishermen from our village move their boats to the fishing port in Colombo due to the monsoon sea. As we had not had the opportunity to see the boat which is now over 7 years old, we wanted to check if it was in a good state of repair. We set off early in the morning and got the train to Colombo.

We returned to the hotel and as we were approaching via Hotel Road, the police whom we had seen earlier had been joined by what we now know to be approximately 500 members of the presidential guard, who were posted everywhere including the rooftop of the hotel. As we drove in, it became apparent that the GM was waiting to meet the president of Sri Lanka for a special event. We pulled up in our three-wheeler, dirty and carrying our bags of fish and then we realised that the soldiers were armed with machine guns, which were trained on our tuk-tuk.  Later in the afterrnoon we walked to the beach and realised that there were camouflaged soldiers everywhere, as well as gun-boats and helicopters. Once the president left, everything returned to normal.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to blog about yesterday, when we had the pleasure of seeing Prasad (who is one of the village boys we have been sponsoring for some time) proudly play in a rugby match for his school team. Don (being the rugby expert) was very impressed by his performance as a ‘winger’ and said that he was one of the best players on the field.

Prasad (centre)