This week I have been in a Catholic day care centre, run by nuns. The morning is spent with 2 year olds, before the older pre-schoolers (age 5) arrive at 11:30am from class, in time for lunch and the afternoon. The room is pretty sparse, but the kids make good use of the toys that are there in the baskets. They particularly like using the paint app on my tablet and watching kids music videos. There are generally only 7-8 kids in the day care to start with and this rises to about 30 when the others arrive from their morning class.
When the slightly older children arrive, we help them change out of their uniform into their own clothes and prepare them for lunch. Lunch is always a hot, rice based dish and our job is to feed the 2 year olds and any of the older ones who seem to give up midway. Here is where my respect lies for a woman that works there who can feed 3 kids at a time - and at a decent speed too. We leave after lunch because it is nap time and the kids all go to sleep on mattresses on the floor and we come back to the house and have a nap too - 4 hours of playing with toddlers is hard work!
I feel like even the 2 year olds are much better trained than UK kids. They help us tidy up at the end of each activity, something which I still can't get 8 year old Brownies to join in with in the UK. I must be missing something...
I have also been out to visit some families in their homes. This has been very interesting. Some of them live in rather nice little bungalows, others are still building their homes around them and some have very basic places to live. They have a focus on natural products (goats milk in one case) and home cooked food. The people I have visited are all Buddhist and have shrines in their homes. You always take your shoes off at the door and they are all very hospitable. There are schools for children with special needs, but these are costly - the family I met who use one has a 20yr old child in attendance. Costs of living are high here, in the same way our cost of living in the UK is high - it is all relative to what you earn. Lots of families are made up of house wives, whilst the men work and drive tuk tuks on the side.
Some of these families live in very small 2-3 room homes that almost resemble garages that are still being built. In one home 6 people slept together in one very small front room. These small homes do have electricity and running water. Some had a water filter whilst others had to boil the water for it to be safe to drink. There are issues though with drainage, which is an open drain along the front of the houses, meaning there are also lots of mosquitos for them to worry about.
Education is free and the poorer families focus on their children's education in the hope that they can get a good job and support the family. Children in Sri Lanka only go to school for half a day, so are mostly finished by midday at the latest, but having started by 08:30. They still get homework though - that is most definitely universal. Some of the families are investing in extra (paid for) tuition for their children to help them do as well as possible.
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