Page 109 - Hemas_Piyawara_Book

CHAPTER 14

Being an Angel……

he lilting melodies wafting from a tractor plying along the dusty and rutted sandy The toys have been carefully chosen by the Hemas Outreach Foundation team
Ttrack draw them from their humble homes, for they herald the good news that the members. The handover in early December to the army team which would be
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area has been chosen under the ‘Be an Angel’ Project of the Hemas Group. distributing them has been on the 9 floor of the Hemas Group’s offices at Braybrooke
Place in Colombo, with no tamasha. It is a token handover with a few photographs
It is December 27 , 2021 and the children run and skip, some in rubber slippers but being clicked to document the event.
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most barefoot, to stand in tiny knots at their gates, giggling, gesticulating and enjoying
a little excitement in their mundane lives full of hardship. So do the adults, with their In Kanagarayakulam and Kulukunawa, grandmothers give toothless smiles, hugging
pet dogs and cats and their cattle, goats and chickens. their grandchildren who, in turn, are clutching their gifts, while a tiny tot overcome by
emotion hides her head in her sister’s skirt.
Manning the tractor and a truck full of gifts of different shapes and sizes wrapped in
bright colours are ‘Santas’ who have donned red suits over their military uniforms to As the evening shadows lengthen, the tractor and the truck accompanied by teenage
join the Hemas Group to bring a little cheer to the lives of children in villages in the cyclists drive into a rousing welcome in the compound of the little St. Anthony’s
Kanagarayakulam and Kulukunawa areas, where also the elephants and crocodiles Church, lit up with strings of twinkling lights.
roam, in the Mullaitivu district.
The team from the Hemas Group and the army personnel are ushered into the church
The villagers depend on the sale of the little milk that they get from a few kiri-harak by the Parish Priest and led to seats right at the front, after being garlanded at a table
(milch cows) that they own and also the cow-dung -- the odour of which hangs heavily stacked with rice and coconut and a pot decorated with mango leaves, where burns
in the air -- to keep starvation from the doors of their half-built huts. an oil lamp.
The tractor with its ‘reindeer’, Christmas tree dressed in sparkling lights and balloons While there is a crib with Baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes in the corner of the
billowing in the light breeze and the truck, make many a stop, while the Santas altar, many items including carols linked to Christmas are performed by the children
hand over toys – cooking sets, bulldozers, dinosaurs, buses, dolls, school bags and for the benefit of the visitors from Colombo who have come bearing gifts like the three
instrument boxes – to these children, who unlike those in the cities, may never have Magi in the nativity. There is an air of expectancy here too as children of different ages
got one in their lives. await their gifts.

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