your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“I never know what’ll happen to me. I can collapse at any time because of my condition, so I can’t find any work.”
Nirosha lives in Anuradhapura, in Central Sri Lanka, with her husband and their five-year-old son. There are three of them in the home, and life is built around whatever work her husband can find on any given day.
Nirosha has a condition that causes her potassium to drop without warning. When it happens, her legs give out and she falls. She’s needed help just to eat, to drink, and to get to the bathroom. It’s landed her in hospital more than once, and when she’s there, she can’t be with her son.
Sometimes no one is able to come to her either, and she’s said that’s the hardest part. She doesn’t know when it’ll happen again or how bad it’ll be. Because of this, she stays home. Her husband is the one who earns. He takes on sesame harvesting and whatever other day labour that comes up, but work isn’t there every day.
When it isn’t there, he goes to the tank and catches fish so the family has something to eat. Nirosha’s mother steps in during hard times too, bringing rice and vegetables to help them get through.
They don’t have paddy fields of their own. There’s a highland field at her father’s place in Kitulwala, but it’s far away and too expensive to farm regularly. They tried it once and couldn’t keep it up.
What they have built, they’ve built themselves. The two of them cut bricks and stacked them up. They put in a well by hand. Her husband broke three granite stones from a quarry by hand. They haven’t been able to build the house yet, but the work they’ve done toward it is sitting there, ready.
Their son is in Montessori now. Nirosha’s hope sits squarely with him. She wants to give him an education and see him grow into someone who stands on his own in the world, through his own effort, whatever path he ends up taking. She dreams of a future that is brighter and better than what they have.
