We’re almost through our first full week at Kosgada Sea Turtle Conservation Project and have started to get into a routine and understand a simpler way of life where shoes are optional and curry can be happily eaten twice a day.
Decided I quite like the look of my office for the next seven weeks
We’re on our own as volunteers at the moment but expecting someone else on Sunday to share our home with as well as the mountain of food that keeps on getting put in front of us. Small portions are not the norm here and trying not to upset our cook who looks at me strangely when I ask for smaller meals without her thinking I don’t like the food – which is amazing!
The bread man here comes past in a tuk tuk about 0630 every morning playing classical music – watch the Alexander Armstrong in Sri Lanka programme if you don’t believe me – so know then it’s almost time to get up.
Work (if you can call it that) starts at 0830 with a check on our resident turtles – B can’t understand why I have to go around and say good morning to them individually – before a sweep around the sanctuary before visitors start to arrive. My new favourite game is to walk over the sand that has just been swept which really winds B up as that’s not the military way of doing it.
The aim is is education of conservation as turtles can be eaten here – meat and eggs, and the need to reduce plastic in the sea so every day we get school buses turn up and over excited children from nursery to A Level age descend on us. I’m finding hand signals work well with them when they’re trying to prod the turtles. Luckily as our Sinhala is non-existent, I don’t need to do any explanations but had a great group of 11 year old girls yesterday who wanted to practice their English by firing questions at me about my religion, children, name and age but did give me a sweet when they left. We had some A level boys today who pointed at a turtle and asked if it was dead. And 230 girls in one go just as it started to pour with rain. The best was the bus drivers who just as the kids got back on the bus decided it was tea break time and left them there for about 20 mins.
Monday was a PowerPoint induction – spotting the spelling mistakes and feeling like I was back at work and a quick tour around, then straight in with showing visitors around and explaining what the sanctuary does and all about the turtles – my Amazon purchases came in useful and good job we’d done some homework before we started. Highlight has to be exfoliating about 30 five day old Green Turtles with sand to remove the orange Algae that was growing on them. They seemed to quite like it and just laid there quite happily. Meant that they were nice and clean before we released some into the sea in the evening. Only 1 in 1000 baby turtles will survive to adulthood to fingers crossed these ones do well.
Tuesday was cleaning day – not my favourite job at home – where we emptied and cleaned all of the tanks, as well as cleaning the turtles. In the sea they have turtle feeding stations where small fish clean off the algae – bit like a fish foot spa, but here that doesn’t happen, so out with a scrubbing brush and we do it. Some are less keen than others to help and a flipper across the leg isn’t pleasant. You’d wonder how much mess a turtle can make in a week but my slime covered t-shirt says it’s quite a bit.
Wednesday – more children and visitor tours and the new born turtles had their first proper meal. They don’t eat for the first 3-4 days as they still have egg nutrients to get them through. Luckily B’s knife skills are better than mine so he did fish prep – very finely sliced for the little ones and then they took ages just playing with their food and waving it around in their mouths
Turtles don’t eat every day in the sea so today was feeding day for the bigger ones. I’ve never seen so much fish being chopped up and devoured
That’s enough for today so next time I’ll introduce you to some of our resident turtles – which I’ve obviously had to give names to
Hope you enjoy
B&J
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