your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“He drank and hit me and the children. I suffered for ten years, crawling, injured, with no food.”
Damayanthi lives in Batticoloa, in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, with her two children. Her son is nine and her daughter is six. They go to school, but life at home has not been easy. For ten years, her husband drank a lot. When he came home drunk, he would hit her and the children. She got hurt many times. Once he broke her hand. Another time he broke her hip and waist. She had to crawl and take care of herself and the children with almost nothing to eat.
Now he is gone, and the police helped make that happen. Damayanthi does wage labour to earn money for food and bills. Some days her mother, who is seventy, brings a little flour or something for them to eat. Sometimes they go to neighbors’ houses just to eat. The house floods when it rains. Water comes inside and rises about two feet. On those days, Damayanthi has to lie in the water with her children.
She is trying to make sure her children get an education. Her older son is in fifth grade. Her younger daughter is in second grade, still learning to read and write. She is thinking about sending her younger child to a hostel so she can study better. She wants them to grow up and get jobs so they will not have to suffer through life like she did.
She still owes seventeen thousand and five hundred rupees in debt. Every day she works hard, pays bills, buys food, and tries to make a little money last as much as possible. She tells her children about her life and her dreams for them so that they understand why she keeps working so much.
She wants to make things better for them so that they can have a safer life and a future that can make them happy.