your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“The storm took everything we had, forty, fifty coconut trees knocked down, and our house was gone.”
Punitha Nilaalam is 47 and lives in Aliyaar, in the East of Sri Lanka, with her husband and two children. Her husband travels to Colombo for daily wage work, doing whatever he can find. That leaves Punitha running the household and keeping the family going day to day.
The children are both in school. Her son is in 10th grade and her daughter is in 6th grade. Getting them there isn’t simple. The school is far and there is no transport. The family bicycle has broken down, making the trip harder. Enrolling them each year costs money too, and Punitha has had to pay those fees more than once when things didn’t go through the first time.
At home, the family has no toilet. They use the facilities at a neighbour’s house. Drinking water comes from a well. These are gaps Punitha manages around, not things that stop her, but they add to the weight of each day.
She raises goats and chickens, tends a home garden, and does farming work. She sells eggs and manages the poultry costs herself. She currently has two goats and plans to sell them once they grow, which she hopes will ease the money pressure at home.
A while back, the storm known as Janaki Durai hit the family hard. It knocked down around 40 to 50 coconut trees. It took the house too. The family fled.
Money runs short often. But she keeps the children in school, keeps the animals fed, keeps the garden going, and keeps the household running while her husband works hours away.
What she dreams of is not big. It’s actually very simple. She wants to work hard, give her children some education, and see them move forward. So that they don’t live the life that she does.