Monday 27th January 2025

I had been asked to go to Tea Leaf Centre Ragala today and tomorrow, so I had breakfast at 07:00 before Reggie picked me up at 07:30 to take me on the 45-minute drive there. It is a beautiful journey from Nuwara Eliya to Ragala, passing through some stunning scenery, and it was a very pleasant morning, so the views were all the more stunning for that. Reggie also happens to be a very entertaining companion, so it was a particularly enjoyable journey all round.

It was a rather emotional day at Tea Leaf Centre Ragala, and it wouldn't be appropriate to share the details of that, but suffice to say that I certainly felt that I happened to be in the right place at the right time today, as they needed all the support that I could give them. I was able to sit in on two of the lessons (both 'double' sessions), which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I also fitted in another online meeting with a lovely prospective volunteer called Abirami, who is from Colombo.

I left at 16:30, and I finally got back to Sky Heaven at 17:30, so it had already been a long 10-hour day, before I had an online meeting with my 'boss' Mr. James. I have known James for more than 10 years now, since I first appointed him to his first teaching post, when I was Headteacher at Courtney Primary School in Bristol, and I was his boss! A twist of fate has now meant that he is my 'boss', in the sense that he has line-managed my time out here this time in Sri Lanka.

I had a great meeting with James, as he also oversees my role as Volunteer Coordinator for Tea Leaf Trust, and has spent some time helping to streamline our volunteer programme. We chatted through that, the issues I have had with my workload, and my remaining programme for this week. It is a sign of an extremely effective 'boss' that I felt all the better for having spent an hour or so chatting with him, and I was hugely grateful to him for his time and his support.

Today's photographs are a selection of the ones that I took today during a rather eventful time at our recently opened Tea Leaf Centre in Ragala, including a lovely one of me with the newly appointed Principal, Azmila Ajmal, which makes me look like some kind of giant!








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