your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“We are so weighed down by debt, I don’t know how we can ever afford to repay it.”
Vejayaleka lives in Batticaloa in the East of Sri Lanka, with her husband and their two children. Her 13-year-old son is the eldest, and her younger child is seven. The four of them share a household, and Vejayaleka has been the one holding things together day to day.
A while back, she made a decision to send her husband abroad for work. She took out a loan of over five lakhs to make it happen. It wasn’t a small thing. That’s a serious amount of debt, and she took it on because she believed it could change things for the family. Her husband has now come back.
While he was away, Vejayaleka kept both children in school. That matters to her. The boys have been going, and she’s kept that steady even while carrying the weight of the debt and running the household on her own.
The debt is still there. Over five lakhs doesn’t just go away quickly, and the family hasn’t had time yet to work out what comes next. She doesn’t khow they plan to pay it down, but Vejayaleka is clear that it has to be paid.
Right now, the family is in that in-between place. The risk she took to send him abroad is still sitting on their shoulders, and they’re at the very start of figuring out how to move forward together.
What she wants is for the debt to be cleared and for her children to keep going in school, so the family can get to a steadier place than where they are now. This is what she is working towards, and where all her hope lies.