Tuesday 6th January 2026

I spent the first part of the today working at Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya (in Nanu Oya). I was delivering training on the use of 'pair talk' in lessons, with a short version to the teaching staff, followed by a longer version with the trainee teachers. I think it went very well (I got positive feedback, but they are always very polite!). I certainly enjoyed it a great deal, as I think I was probably born to be a teacher and it really is so rewarding - even at my age!

Yad had invited me for dinner at hers, which is on the way back to Nuwara Eliya, so I had some time to kill in the afternoon, and I remembered that Donald had told me that Ladushan has his day off on Tuesdays. He lives in Nanu Oya (you can see the back of the Edinburgh Tea Factory from his home), so I called him and asked if I could visit him and his family. It turned out to be my best decision of the day, as I was very moved by my time with him.

Apart from Daya and his family, I know Donald and Ladushan better than anyone else I have met here, as they were teaching at Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya the first time I visited Sri Lanka in 2019, and I became very involved in their lives. Recent events in Ladushan's life demonstrate the terrible impact of the awful flooding and landslides that Sri Lanka has just experienced, and I was extremely moved when I found out what a tough time Ladushan has been through.

As with so many homes in this area, Ladushan's home sits on a hill with a large outcrop of rock above it, and the recent floods left that outcrop in danger of collapsing on top of their homes, so they were just one of 42 neighbouring families who were evacuated and spent one month in a local secondary school before it was safe for them to return home. It was just at this time that Ladushan's father went to Colombo to donate one of his kidneys to his sister's daughter.

As I have mentioned previously, it is very common for families to live together, and Ladushan's family and his aunt's family grew up together, so the cousin who needed a kidney (who is 30 - the same age as Ladushan) is like a daughter to his father and a sister to him. His father is 59 and I was very moved that he had undergone such a painful operation to enable his niece to have a better quality of life. It made me question whether I could have done that myself.

Although his scar, which is huge, appears to be healing up nicely, and he seems to be recovering well, he is unable to work at the moment and needs to make costly trips to Colombo twice-monthly for check-ups. This is an agricultural area, and he worked, as many local people do, with agriculture, but the flooding and landslides have even in the past month had a very negative impact on the local economy, with the prices of vegetables soaring.

The problems in the local economy have had a knock-on effect for businesses like Donald and Ladushan's, with the number of students dropping, as families feel unable to send their youngsters on courses that become a luxury, rather than a normal part of life. This has had a pretty devastating impact on Ladushan's family, and it could not have come at a worse time for them in terms of also having to meet the cost of his father's medical bills.

As you know, I rarely venture beyond four paragraphs in my daily blog, partly because I don't have time, but also because I don't want to overwhelm my readers every day. However, I felt that I had to share Ladushan's story with you today, because it is only one of hundreds - or even thousands of stories that you could hear from people in this poorest of areas of Sri Lanka, and it is what draws me back each year to work with this amazing community of people.

Having been so moved by my time with Ladushan and his family, I then went on to have dinner with Yad, which was another moving experience, but an entirely different one, as I was able to share her joy at becoming a mother after a long wait for a child. Little Aarav, as you will see from today's photographs is an absolute delight, and I spent a wonderful evening with Yad and her family catching up on all their news.

Today's photos show my time at Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya this morning, my time with Ladushan and his father, and my lovely time at Yad's this evening. Tomorrow's blog, I promise you, will return to its normal length (fingers crossed!).