Visitors, pregnancy and hospital trips . . .

The monsoon's arrived . . . !

















It's been great to have John and Sally visit from Liverpool. They survived a packed week getting to know our local and expat friends, being dragged half way round the country to see quite a few of my construction sites, the beach, a silk factory, photography, and much more. Sarah and Sally had a Sri Lankan cookery lesson from our next door neighbour Devika while John and I snook off for a swift half . . . who got the better deal?


On their first day here we took them cross country visiting church friends in the tea plantations in the local hills. This was exhausting but great fun in a 4 wheel drive minibus. It felt like driving off road straight across the lake district - we got back at 2a.m.. Seemed like a good way to start their trip off at the time!





This is what church looks like in a tea plantation!








There's been many requests to hear more about my work - so here's a fewphotos. Engineer friends are not allowed to look . . . . (No remonstrating emails please!). Work seems to swing between feeling like we're really achieving something, to feeling like we're banging our heads against brick walls, then back again - often all in the same day. We're progressing well with school construction, but school toilets are painfully slow - the contractor is deliberately trying to wind us up so we'll end the contract. We're charging him liquidated damages, but he doesn't seem to care. Phase 1 of housing was completed by October last year, and now the second phase is coming to completion in the south.






This is one of nearly 180 tourist shops that we've rebuilt on the coast near Kalutara (south of Colombo).









Casting our own blocks on site . . . err I rejected this batch . . . !















It's the building or his toe . . . whichever one survives gets to stay.


Hard hats and steel toe capped boots haven't quite caught on here just yet . . .

More seriously, this is a project called Kontheruparingiyawatte - and yes I can even pronounce that in my sleep - a series of 49 town houses (2 storey terraces). Large enough to swing a mouse.











Impressed with the acro props and edge protection barriers? Ooops.

We're still at Kontheruparingiyawatte . . .









One of our many houses . . . and a Health and Nutrition sector project - a vegetable garden, containing Kohila, Cancun and Lady's fingers. Yummy.








Slight lack of space on this site. We're cramming a 3 storey 6 classroom block in. You can see they've really got shoring down to a tee.







Unfortunately it's much harder getting things done in the north and east. I had a great trip to the east 2 weeks ago - 11 hours each way speeding across bumpy partially paved roads. The east is lovely, but still devastated by the effects of the tsunami as the internal tensions prevent effective reconstruction. We're embarking on some low technology wastewater treatment works at 5 different locations in the N, E and South, and I've been asked to design them all, which seems a bit daunting as there's not really any wastewater industry here, so I will be just about entirely responsible for the outcome unless I can find a decent consultant, which I've not been able to so far.



Sarah is now 30 weeks pregnant and beginning to feel it. She's looking forward to coming to the UK in just 4 weeks time now. Poor old Joe has Atopic Dermatitis. We think it's brought on by the heat. It got really bad, quite rapidly, so his skin was raw all over his arms, legs, chest and back, but thankfully a trip to the Dermatologist in Colombo means he's now looking almost better. Keeping him in a cool environment is a challenge and the cure involves 3 baths a day and constant creams and medicines.


Bye for now!