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Once upon a time a 16-year-old girl in Sri Lanka didn’t want to go to school, and who knows if it was because her father drank and brought his buddies to the hut at night or if she had trouble with kids at school or if she was simply sixteen and not wanting to go. Who knows.

But the 16 year old’s mother had been working in Saudi Arabia for seven months because the fights with her husband were too much and she wouldn’t come home, even when they begged her. So the girl took care of her two younger sisters and her younger brother and her father sometimes traveled 50 miles to make 500 rupees a day ($5), and most of it was spent on travel and lunch before he even got home.

So the 16 year old wrote her name in blue chalk on the plywood walls outside of their hut. Her younger sister dreamed of drawing and art and being a teacher. Her youngest sister smiled and stared with big brown eyes at the strange people sitting in a circle of chairs. And her little brother clutched at the strange gifts they brought.

And this was the 16 year old’s life.

* * * * *

Once upon a time a Sri Lankan husband and his wife moved into apartments supplied by a factory on the condition that they work six days a week, ten hours per day. Which they did until after their second child when the mother tried to take a few days off and they got kicked out. So now they live in a hut with their five children and the oldest works at a hotel on the weekends so that he can pay for drum lessons and the father tries to find work on coconut plantations and makes 600 rupees per day.

And sometimes they do not have enough food, so the father and mother do without. And sometimes they have less food, so the older three children join them in not eating, and they can do it because they understand that life is hard. And sometimes, during the rainy season when they run out of food completely and have to stash all their stuff in the roof beams of the hut, no one eats, not even the little ones, and they cry all day in the mud because they are hungry and because they do not yet understand that life is hard.

* * * * *

Once upon a time, a 35-year-old man lived in Pennsylvania with his wife and four children. And he was disappointed because he lived in his parents’ basement for a short time, and the space seemed small – only a full bathroom with running water and a toilet, one large bedroom, a kitchen, and a living room, all carpeted and temperature controlled.

And he had access to fresh water and not much money but enough to buy groceries and pay bills and have two cars and educate his children. And he ate when he was hungry. And he slept without worrying. And his children had everything they needed, and could become anything they wanted.

Then he traveled to Sri Lanka and he met these people. And the amount of money required to change their lives – only $35 a month – caused him to sit quietly because he had just spent nearly $400 on his vehicle inspection before he came on the trip, and that would have covered a child in Sri Lanka for a year.

* * * * *

Friends, I have seen an amazing thing this week. As my friend Roxanne Wieman has written, I have seen the end of poverty. Perhaps not on a global scale, but I’ve seen a community be restored. After 15 years of involvement, World Vision has backed out of a small area of Sri Lanka, and what is left is a vibrant, self-sustaining community.

I don’t usually ask for much here at the blog, but this is something I’m asking you to seriously consider. I’ve seen what World Vision does in action. I’ve met the staff making it happen. I’ve seen the people helped.

And I’ve seen people waiting to be helped. People like the families in the stories I’ve mentioned above. Your $35 a month will change the trajectory of their lives. Please.

Click HERE to sponsor a child.

Photo by Laura Tremaine (aka Hollywood Housewife)

The crowd was full of dark eyes and bare feet and rustling movement. They were shadows and flowing clothes and rich skin. I wanted to go unnoticed, shrink down to a spec of dust and float in and out of their traditions. But I couldn’t, so I walked clumsily, thick-soled, through their festival. And they were gracious with my inadequacy.

Cows wandered the narrow walkways, thrusting wet noses and probing tongues, bucking massive foreheads into the crowd, searching for the leftover rinds of offerings already given. Men raised coconuts two-handed over their heads and smashed them into a broad tub so the milk dripped down through a reservoir, the loamy smell of it hovering over the crowd. A pleasing sacrifice.

One man, seeking a path through pain with the help of the gods, wore shoes made of upturned nails, the points poking into his feet. He was old. And toothless. A young boy walked ahead of him, clearing the way, swinging something back and forth, back and forth.

The nail-shoed man looked at me, ringing his bell, and people came to him from all directions, pressing bills into the dark hole of a small container hanging around his neck. Still he rang his bell again, his glance pushing up against me the way the cows probed the crowd, searching only for leftover rinds. I had nothing for him, except for the thought that I did not know that kind of devotion. But those were poor alms, those thoughts, so I turned away, and his eyes pressed into my back like the heat from a dying fire.

I pushed my way to the edge of the crowd now ten rows thick and pressing up against a large corral perhaps fifty yards long and thirty wide. Already a thousand had gathered, filling the surrounding streets, peering, craning, jostling for a better view through the rows of shoulders and upraised arms and extended necks. Already the crowd began the transformation from a group of individuals to a single organism. A flock. A hive. Individuals can be read, their expressions interpreted – crowds are less predictable, and their moods change quickly.

Inside the circle, half-naked men used fifteen-foot sticks to probe the fire, break it down, spread the coals. The ground glowed, a particular brand of holiness, and while some men poked at it, others fanned it with giant fans, birthing sparks and a heat that drove them back to where still other men doused them with buckets of water. They sputtered in that coolness and smacked sparks from their skin.

Then, as dusk fell, a police officer asked if we wanted to watch from the front row. He led us inside the fence to a small area of empty space in the midst of the crowd. Matthew went up closer to the fire, and one of the men motioned that he wanted his picture taken. I felt like a visiting dignitary. Our movement to the inside could have been an affront to the large organism, the crowd, and I kept my eyes down, avoiding their disapproval. But they smiled at us, and their children stared.

I don’t know when the drums started, but I know they weren’t pounding quite yet when the first masses of people defied the fence and the police and pressed into where we had been given special access. Now we were surrounded, bodies pressing against ours. They shouted for everyone to sit, and at first we couldn’t bend our knees – everyone was packed so tight together. But with enough adjustments and half-turnings, we got to our knees, skeptical pilgrims. The man beside me threw small stones at people in the front who would not sit down. He yelled at them in Sinhalese, or Tamil, then turned to me with a smile and chose a few more smooth stones before throwing. The pebbles bounced off their backs like a beggar’s glance. Or unanswered prayers.

I don’t know when the drums started pounding, but I know that they pounded as the priest came from the temple carrying a large plant on his head, trailing a tail of men all wearing robes that covered only their waists. And the chanting. And the shouting. And more tending of the angry fire.

When the men began walking across the coals, the crowd made one last surge, and any form of individual was swallowed in it, and no one could stop it: not the police, not the men tending the fire, not even the fire itself. They pressed so close as to be scorched by the heat. Then the frantic crossing, the fast walk trying to stay just ahead of the burn, the shouting and feet plunging into water and in the background, always in the background, that shimmering image of the crowd, distorted by the waves of heat rising.

Fathers walked through the fire carrying children, and we looked at one another, and we raised our eyebrows, and we thought their devotion had strayed into the land of the fanatic. Why would anyone carry their child over those coals?

Then we pulled ourselves from the crowd that pressed in around us. There was a moment of near-panic, when we wondered if we could move. But the crowd released us reluctantly. We circled around it, trying to find our way to the car, and my feet felt stiff in the reflection of all those bare soles, all those eyes burning with devotion.

* * * * *

Two days later I sat in the shade of a tree with the boy I sponsor. To my right, the boy’s father: a large man with a massive mustache. He could have snapped me in two with a glance, but his shoulders were soft and his eyes carried decades’ of smoking embers. To my left, his wife, beautiful and quiet. Even though she spoke a language foreign to me, I could understand her by the way she moved her chin: down in embarrassment, to one side or the other depending on her level of agreement, or up with pride.

Their two-year-old son, not much smaller than my own boy 9000 miles away, refused to meet my gaze. He knew his eyes would give him away.

The father told me that eleven years before he had made a promise to the gods: help me to have children, he had prayed, and I will walk my firsborn through the fire. Two years later, he did it, forging through the coals and the shimmering waves and that organism called the crowd. And he carried his oldest son, thankful. Repaying his debt.

I stared at the two-year-old and I wondered about his older brother who had been carried through the heat and even there, in the shade of a tree, surrounded by giggling children and talking through the medium of a translator, I did not know what to say in the face of that kind of devotion.

So I said nothing. I leaned over next to the small boy and I handed him a box of colored pencils, and I opened the sketch pad, and we scribbled color on to the page. Blue the color of devotion, and green the plant the priest carried. Brown for the sound of the crowd.

And red, the color of burning coals.

World Vision is in the midst of this, forming relationships and leading communities out of poverty in sustainable ways. Please read more about what they do HERE and consider sponsoring a child.

This is a great video by my new friend and fellow World Vision blogger, Tony Jones. He met his sponsored child on Tuesday – a beautiful little girl named Afra. It was her birthday, and we were fortunate enough to celebrate with her and her family.

Tony has written a lot of great posts about our trip (including more about Afra). Be sure to check those out over at his blog.

Please consider sponsoring a child through World Vision: we’ve seen the work they do, and it’s amazing.

Photo Copyright World Vision. Photo by Matthew Paul Turner

The earth in Sri Lanka is dry this August, drier than any August most of the people can remember. The flat land, harvested in the last four to six weeks, is either a tan stubble or scorched black from fires that cleared new fields for the next planting.

On Monday morning, World Vision staff drove us along the edges of these fields. We entered a community where they have been working for fifteen years. The vehicles bounced up and down on bumpy, paved roads. Off in the distance I saw a huge crowd gathered – they were waiting for us.

The bus pulled over, and we walked up the shoulder towards eight girls in white ceremonial dress. They stood completely still, arms out in front of them. Then, when the drums began, they danced, erupting in an explosion of movement and the sound of small ringing bells that were attached to their clothing. Every so often their dance moved them back up the road, and we followed them – ours was a bigger group now, made up of not only our ten but additional World Vision staff and community leaders.

Then the dancers stopped, scattering. In front of us two lines of people, each perhaps a hundred yards long. Some of those in line were small children waving balloons. Others were adults smiling and bowing their heads as we passed. They gave us gifts as we walked between them. Children ran up bearing flat green leaves, pushing them towards us, then bending down and touching our feet, awaiting a blessing.

We waved, unsure as to what we had done to deserve such a welcome.

And so the day continued, from place to place, and everywhere we went people welcomed us with gifts and blessings and thankful tears. At one stop, two old women danced in yellow dresses, their ancient feet stirring up dust, their voices chanting. When they stopped, one of the women couldn’t keep from crying – she kept covering her toothless mouth with one hand and wiping her eyes with a threadbare handkerchief clutched in the other.

They welcomed us, and they gave us gifts, and they cried with joy at our arrival. But it wasn’t because of anything that we had done – it was because of this man, my new hero.

He is the ADP Director for World Vision in Sri Lanka, and everywhere we went, he was the guest of honor. You see, for 15 years World Vision has been helping this part of the country: organizing schools and medical care, building sustainable solutions to address the shortage of fresh water, providing counseling to help families manage their finances and prevent abuse, teaching families how to grow gardens and profitable crops, and many, many other things. For the last 15 years, World Vision has been transforming this community.

And today, the day of celebrations and gifts and tears, marks the day that World Vision leaves.

But they do not leave the people empty-handed – they leave them prepared for a sustainable future. For the last three to five years, World Vision has gradually handed over the responsibilities to the community, so that by the time this day rolled around, World Vision had zero full time volunteers at work in this area. The people there have assumed all responsibility for the management of their community. The World Vision staff has moved on to another community, one we will visit on Tuesday.

And it is a beautiful thing to see: people who have been given hope and dignity. People who now have a future.

Please consider sponsoring a child through World Vision. Your donation of around $35 per month helps children and their families, transforming the communities in which they live. Click HERE to find out more.

Here, where all is sand or gray coconut bark or the tan husks of braided palm fronds, there is no point in painting something beige. So the boats are neon blue and the chairs are turquoise and the buses a patchwork of primary color. Things which in the US, have been taught to blend in? Here they have a voice.

“I am Sri Lanka!” they shout. “I am alive!”

Listening to the voices of Sri Lanka, I recline in a chair on coarse sand. Wind tears at the red flag on the beach, warns of a retreating tide and rough seas eager to devour this Pennsylvania boy. I stare beyond the foaming anger of persistent waves and marvel that somewhere out there is the southern tip of India. Floating west, and missing that, I would linger along the constellation of the Maldives. Still further, the east coast of Africa: Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania.

* * * * *

Earlier, a man stood on a tightrope at the top of a coconut tree, thirty feet up. He hacked at a branch with a curved knife, drew it back, wrestled with the branch, then cut again. He fastened a pot to the sweetly severed stump, his feet gripping the rope like extra hands.

Those same ropes connect most of the palms on this beach, high wires this man walks from tree to tree, gathering what they have given up. He is a spider, the ropes his web. Some of the pots have been lowered to the ground, filled with a foamy liquid: the sap of the coconut tree.

It is a normal life so unlike my own.

It is quiet here. Even the road is rarely used. Occasionally a scooter or an old van will rumble past, loaded down with people, and I wonder where they are going or how they spend their days or if they like their life here. I’m eager to talk to people. I’m greedy for their stories.

No matter. Life here moves at a pace that cannot be forced. The wind through the palms is the raspy voice of an old man, and it mingles with the salty smell of the ocean, the laughter of Sinhalese children, the gritty feel of invisible sand.

9000 miles away the Amish farmers harvest corn and tobacco from the fields around my parents’ house. The grass there is soft and green. Autumn is not far off – already the mornings have cooled. But here the workers water thick-bladed grass and the hotel manager walks through the heat in a stiff collar and a crisp tie and I can’t imagine that summer will ever end.

I wonder if they can comprehend how far away I live from here, because I can’t.

I sit in a very white bed in a high-ceilinged room and peek through the narrow gap in the gold-colored curtains to the courtyard outside my door. A group of Sri Lankan people are having wedding pictures taken. Their voices fall silent during each picture, then rise muffled and loud, speaking a beautiful language I do not know.

A man in a black suit leans in towards a woman in a striking red outfit, her face made up in purples and blues and the whitest of smiles. His skin is the almost-gray of a weathered palm tree. They must think my room is vacant because they laugh and look nervous and linger on my small, covered porch. Are they the parents of the bride? Are these other people their friends, smoothing their clothes, moving a stray hair, watching with quiet smiles?

Then, when I’m no longer paying attention, they vanish. My ceiling fan spins, a propeller. The courtyard is wide, the sky a golden haze. The slanted shadows of short palm trees linger where moments before the wedding party posed.

* * * * *

Forty or so hours ago I sat in a barely vacant spot along the wall in the international terminal at JFK Airport. It was loud and bustling and very much New York. Two large police officers inspected an unattended camera bag left on a counter, berated the janitor for originally sending them to the wrong aisle, then stared suspiciously at the small bag while asking people to step back. The janitor chattered on in a foreign language while sneaking peeks at the package, clearly interested in collecting its contents if it showed an unwillingness to blow up.

It was with typical New York cynicism that even the people in the next line over refused to move – they didn’t want to lose their space in line over what was obviously just a stray camera bag. Eventually a third officer arrived with a dog that stood on its hind legs and sniffed the package. Nothing to see here. The police men gently picked up the bag and left, the janitor trailing behind.

* * * * *

Fifteen hours ago? Twenty hours ago? (I’m not sure about time anymore – it seems unreliable at best, deliberately deceptive at worst.) The ten of us roamed downtown Dubai, then ate pizza outdoors. The heavy heat was like a crying child on a middle-of-the-night flight: completely unignorable.

We caught our third airplane of the trip at around 2:30am Dubai time and landed in Colombo, Sri Lanka in the morning, a good thirty hours after I had left Philadelphia. Men stood at attention throughout the airport, armed with small sub-machine guns. We navigated through a gauntlet of taxi drivers to where two World Vision buses waited.

The drivers loaded our luggage then weaved along the paved road. Everyone seemed quite happy to pass even with oncoming traffic, beeping their horns persistently. Bikes and mopeds mixed with motorcycles and three-wheeled taxicabs. Cows loitered in the dirt alleyways. Dogs jogged lightly along the road and under the eaves of colorful houses, stopping in the shadows of corrugated steel buildings.

90 minutes later we turned left on to a small, bumpy side street. Soon the Indian Ocean rolled to our left while small houses lay scattered through the trees to our right, their cement block walls covered with roofs made of tightly woven palm fronds. We passed a spot by the sea where fifty small rowboats gathered in a large group on the sand, some with outboard motors, others with oars that had their own stories.

Then we arrived, and we were here. We fought off sleep with showers and lunch.

The ceiling fan hums overhead. Outside, another girl in a red dress with golden accessories smiles in the gathering shadows of what is either an early sunset or the hint of an afternoon thunderstorm on the way.

I can’t believe I am here.

For the next week I have the privilege of blogging in Sri Lanka for World Vision. Would you consider sponsoring a child? Find out more about the awesome things that child sponsorship can accomplish HERE, and help me spread the word this week by sharing my posts (as well as those written by my fellow Sri Lanka bloggers).