your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“I stayed in a collapsing mud hut while raising my daughter, even sleeping with snakes inside.”
Soundharakumari lives in Naripul Thottam, in the East of Sri Lanka with her husband and their two children. Her daughter is 18 and her son is 11. Money is scarce, so her husband goes wherever he can find work.
These days he works in paddy harvesting in another village. Becauese where they stay is so rural, he can’t find work close to home. Traveling takes money for transport, but it means he can work for several days at a stretch.
Soundharakumari raises a few chickens and sells the eggs to help with expenses. It does not bring much, but it helps pay for food and school. Sometimes they get aid from the government, or her husband sells fish he catches.
School costs are hard to manage. Her daughter’s tuition is 15000 rupees. Her son needs money every day for bus fare. Some days he can eat at school if there is a meal, other days she has to give him money for lunch.
Life has been hard. In 2006, her husband was shot in the hand during the end of the country’s civil war and it still swells sometimes. When her daughter was born, they couldn’t even buy powdered milk for her. They stayed in a mud house that was falling apart. Later, with help from the community, they built a more stable place.
Soundharakumari works to keep the family going. She paid off loans she took for emergencies. She makes sure her children go to school and keeps the chickens and eggs running.
Her hope is that her children study and get good jobs. She wants her daughter to become a teacher with a government salary, and she wants her son to keep learning too, so that their future will be a lot more stable than today.