For those of you following the blog, you may remember my trip to Sri Lanka, where I met Senerath, a Sri Lankan man who worked as a driver for the Taj Hotel in Colombo. On my second day in SK, I signed up for a day trip to Kandy, a hilltown about 3 hours away from Colombo. Senerath was my driver, and we spent the day galavanting around, sampling the local cuisine, visiting temples and tea plantations and playing with elephants at the Pinwella Elephant Orphanage. It was a great day, but what made it so much better was the time I spent with Senerath. He shared so much of the country’s history with me, and he told me about his life in SK, his work and his family.
Throughout the day, he would offer to take pictures of me at various places, and I took a couple of him, and then we started to get other people to take some pictures of the two of us. Later that evening, on the drive back to Colombo, he asked me if I could send him some pictures and when we arrived back at the hotel, he wrote down his address for me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I got home to the States that I was able to print out the pictures and send them to him. Still, I sent them along with a little note telling him about the rest of my travels and how I hoped to return to SK one day soon.
To my surprise, I received a card from him just before leaving to come back overseas. It was a card wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year, and within it he had included a note. He told me that he was still working for the Taj hotel, and about how happy he was that the Civil War in his country had come to an end. He wrote of how he looked forward to travel to places within his own country that he’d never been able to visit due to the war. He talked about how good it felt to live in a free country now.
It warmed my heart to hear from him! I will keep in touch with him, and I hope to make it back to Sri Lanka soon. This gives me yet one more reason to do so.
