1/2/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 3
泥土中的寶藏 Gems from the Soil
We’ve achieved a lot and personally it’s such a fruitful day for me.
Since I am in the soap and skincare product making, I am as well into natural remedies, herbs, essential oils, spice...etc. Reading books about essential oils, aromatherapy and herbal healthcare.
Sri Lanka is known as an agricultural country. Spice, rubber, coffee and tea are top world grower/supplier. The orientation week involved a day tour to visit the Spice and Tea garden, we get to see and learn from the local doctor about these gems from the soil.
I am especially fascinated by the spice garden. I have essential oils and spices at home in tiny little bottle sitting on my kitchen spice rack. Today, I see most of them first time in their original form. I am not a big fan of cinnamon but the aroma of the spice wood crumbled off the tree then into my palm, smells exceptionally soothing to my scent as compared to it on a cinnamon roll. As we walk along the spice garden corridor, sandalwood planted a few step away from the pepper tree, king coconut tree stand tall among all others, ripen bright orange yellow cocoa fruits hung on the tree which you won’t missed, then turmeric,aloe vera, nutmeg, ginger and numerous plants that I’ve never heard of which can cure lots of diseases and common health issues. After many stops at different plants and explaining each of their functions, we were stops at a shaded patio setup with at least 25 different natural remedies derived from the plants in the garden. Each of us get to try them and received a massage with the oil on the neck, head and back followed by a face massage with the sandalwood oil cream. The only guy in our group get to tried the hair removal cream on his hairy leg with a spot shaved without blade. The power of nature is amazing.
Tea garden is actually built on the hillside. Actually the entire Kandy is built on hills, I haven’t seen a structure built on flat land yet.
Sri Lanka is famous for its Ceylon tea, we get to see it from tea to cup by walking up the hill top led by the local dog🐶 (yes, dogs are everywhere in Kandy and they are owned by no one). This dog happened to choose the tea factory as its home and volunteered to escort us up where the tea trees are planted.
Ranawana Royal Temple Kandy’s oldest temple, stood the tallest walking statue of Buddha and others small Buddha’. Worshippers need to covered ourselves, no shoulder and tight leggings permitted, nor hat and shoes allowed. As a respect to the culture, we all walk up the hills bare foot and it is quite a challenge and my sport watch recorded a record high that 52 floors climbed throughout the day. Over 100 Buddha statues stood on the hill along the stair pathways up to the top where the tallest one located. Psalm 121 instantly sung in my mind, psalmist sees the gods/idols on the hill and wrote “我要向高山舉目，我的幫助從何而來，我的幫助從造天地的耶和華而來”. When the surroundings filled with
unpromising hope, recognizing the true God solidified the collapsing circumstances.
Insights: The one true God who created the world, who design every plants and human, which both originated from soil, draws between them a linkage. According to 河馬教授（張文亮）human only knows a very small percentage of all the plant species and every plant has its curing power. A lot of fatal illness without a curing remedy today might have an answer in God’s creation right from the beginning, we just didn’t get to discover it yet. Human needs plants, for food as well as for medication reason, ironically doing a lots of harm to the earth, making it a bad place for it to prosper, extinguishing the source of antidote for our sickness. Sigh...我的心呀！謙卑吧！脫下腳上的鞋吧。We are created by Him and made with soil. Walk bare foot up the hill, plead the creator for forgiveness, He hold the curing power for our body and our inner spirit. HE IS EVERY QUESTIONS ANSWER.
We spent the entire yesterday and today afternoon giving the turtles a bath. Lifting these humongous creatures really need lots of strength, for the smaller size one we were able to lift them out of the tank alone or cooperating with two, however Mal (the turtle center coordinator) will help us lift them out. We thoroughly realized the Chinese saying “老鼠拉龜”, you have no where to grab a hand on. 🐭🐢The turtles need to be bathed once every 1-2 weeks, mainly to scrub the moss off their shell. As most of their shell are damaged by fishing net and a turtle was injured by an insane guy using a wood chopping tool on a turtle shell intend to eat and drinking its blood thinking that will help with longevity. Another one having trouble to eat because a fishing hook got stuck in his throat. Good news is, one of the turtle is mostly recovered the front flap issue caused by fishing net and should be ready to send back to the ocean next month. ☺️ Just by looking at the damaged shell already make me feel bad inside, touching it and feeling the crack with my fingers make me angry. Poor animal, so beautiful and does no harm to human were seriously hurt because of our stupidity.😡 We are using very primitive tools to bathe the turtles, a piece of coconut shell, sand and water, using these natural ingredients, so organic and local by just what is available. We continue to clean the tanks which require lots of labor, we all worked very hard to have the walls and floors of all tanks scrubbed and sand drain out. The turtle project is about to complete, we will conclude the project by cleaning the beach and autographing the wall for memory. Working at the turtle conservation center is hard labor, lifting, scrubbing, digging, cleaning, soaking in salty water everyday, including my own sweats. I am very impressed by Mal for he is working non-stop during the year (no vacation, just off the weekend)to keep these turtles living with dignity and preserving them by keeping their offsprings strategically reproduce.
這裡沒有五星酒店、沒有冷氣、沒有米子蓮餐飲，每天要自行到屋外冷巷的溝渠旁用最快的速度洗衣服（因為很多蚊子和昆蟲和巨型蜥蜴），洗澡沒有熱水，一星期只有一餐用葷，沒有Wifi (但明顯我有data SIM card)，可是這裡的美是粗獷、不修飾的原始魔力，花草樹木沒有限制地在地面上怒長，禽鳥、走獸無拘束地翱翔，或許是最貼近上帝創造時的模樣。天、地、海、錦繡山河、一切最原始的創造，總帶給人安慰、教人謙卑，也讓人縱使看一萬次也永看不厭。願這片土地永續不被污染。
After a long day travel from Kandy to Ambalangoda, I slept straight 12 hour in the simplest accommodation with just a ceiling fan with 5 of us in one room. It is stuffy and hot, luckily the huge fan in the common area helped us cool down a lot while we gather. Ambalangoda, city next to the ocean, lots of tourists come to surf at this untouched turquoise piece of water, the Indian Ocean.
The program manager gave us a brief orientation including safety and the purpose of the turtle conservation center. A 20 minute city tour for us to know the surroundings, where is the ATM, supermarket, ice-cream store and Internet cafe. There are two turtle conservation sites, just 5 minute walk from our accommodation and our house us just a few meters from the ocean. The Disabled Turtle Home and the Turtle Conservation Center. Then After lunch, we started working!
Our schedule everyday is different. We will start working at 9:30am at the turtle disabled home, consist of feeding and cleaning the tanks. Today is Monday, we cut up 355 sardines, preparing them to feed the 26 disabled turtle and babies. In the Disabled Turtle Center, they only kept turtles that are handicapped. Most of them lost their front limbs, one of them lost 3, I can’t stop my tears, poor animals, lost the ability to live but luckily got save by some fisherman and send them to this place. A few other turtles always floating on top of water, as they can’t dive as they lost their limbs and they have swallowed too much plastic, this turtle hardly survive and under the great care of the turtle center manager. My heart drowned to see them swim without limbs. We are feeding them and putting the sardines right at a distance so they don’t need to dive or swim to get it. If they are in the wild, they will be starved to death. These turtle are beautiful and smart animals, for those that can dive, if they didn’t catch the sardines and got sink to the bottom of the tank, all we need to do is point to the sardines in the water, they will be able to dive down and eat it, most of those that can’t dive, we helped them to dive down by pushing them into the water and they are smart enough to pick up the food.
First time safari visitor, we got to see a few elephants... walking right in front of our eyes, kicking it’s leg on the sand and his little buddy friend - a buddy, always accompanying him. 
