It's Super Environmentalist

So tomorrow at the ungodly hour of five a.m. I am off to Varuniya. I'm going to do the impossible, somehow impart environmental lessons to people we aren't suppose to present environmental lessons to. I'm hoping I have all this wrong. See the good folks in Varuniya are working on an EU grant to help a group of internally displaced people basically re-establish their lives. In the grant proposal they put in a bit about including environmental lessons, because that's what you do these days, you add a bit about the environment (because of that scary global warming thing). You know, to make the proposal look good. Turns out the government won't let them do that bit unless the Health Department (don't ask) is involved. And the health department just does all these really odd lessons like why burning rubbish is good for you (I made that last bit up -- I don't actually know what lessons they are doing, but I was told they were not really environmentally based).

The funny thing is that I've already met with this group of Sewalanka staff and they weren't really interested in my suggestions. This was that prep meeting I went to immediately following Wedding Wednesday last fall. I said (without even knowing all this crap with the Health Department) that the environment really shouldn't be a separate thing -- that they should just incorporate it into everything, because that is what the environment is, it is everything. But those words were lost in the translation somewhere.

They asked if I'd come up and help and I said yes. Who am I to reject a trip to do what I was supposed to be doing for the last year?

So anyway I'm off. I'll be gone until Thursday. Don't worry.