Wednesday 29th January 2025

Having been told that this was my last day in Nuwara Eliya, I received a phone call late last night to let me know that plans had changed. I am now staying for one more night in Nuwara Eliya, and travelling to Pussellawa on Friday morning. My priority has always been to search for accommodation for volunteers there, and I will be working with Mr. Nawfer Aziz for the day on Friday to look round as many of the possibilities for accommodation as we can.

Having already found accommodation options for Nuwara Eliya last January, and also been able to do that for Maskeliya and Bogawantalawa this time round, it only leaves Pussellawa to be sorted out, as we are putting Ragala on hold for a while, and I am hopeful that I will be able to sort out accommodation options there next time I am out in Sri Lanka, with a view to then updating all the accommodation lists for each of the Tea Leaf Centres on an annual basis.

The reason this has been such  a priority for me this time, is because of the imbalance that currently exists with our volunteers, with almost all of them concentrated at Tea Leaf Centre Maskeliya and Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya. These Tea Leaf Centres have more students, but I was very keen (and remain very keen) to encourage volunteers to accept placements a Tea Leaf Centre Bogawantalawa and Tea Leaf Centre Pussellawa, with Tea Leaf Centre Ragala to follow.

I was supposed to be picked up at 11:30 to go to Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya in Nanu Oya, but there was some sort of glitch, so I just stayed here and got on with a backlog of paperwork, plus another WhatsApp meeting with a prospective volunteer, a guy called Manolis, who is Greek, but was chatting with me from Madrid! I have been speaking with prospective volunteers from all over the world, which is really quite amazing, and also very encouraging.

There are no new photographs today, so I have just picked out a few of my favourites from the past few weeks, apart from the first one, which is the most recent photograph of my family, taken at Ashton Court near Bristol on 24th June 2023, as an early celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary on 23rd July that year (I don't think that we have managed to all be together at the same time since then!). I chose it because my son Ben is 36 today! Spare me the comments that I don't look old enough to have a son of 36 (Joe will be 38 in July, and Hannah 34 in March), as I know that's not true! Where have all those years gone, I ask myself, and how did they all pass so quickly?

The last photograph is particularly poignant, as I was comforting Azmila, the Principal at Tea Leaf Centre Ragala, that day, because her father was seriously ill, and she was missing her husband. Very sadly, her father passed away the next day, so my heart goes out to her at this time.











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