etuktuk visits Weliganga Village
Writing by kosala on Wednesday, 10 of May , 2006 at 3:23 pm
When I reached Kothmale on 10 May, the eTukTuk was already in its lair — a converted kitchen in the Kothmale CR building — having been driven the 150 odd kilometers from Colombo to Kothmale by a visibly tired Ben and his crew. But there was work to be done — a field broadcast was scheduled that evening, the eTukTuk’s first community OB (Outside Broadcast) event in Kothmale, at the village of Weliganga.
Weliganga (’river-flats’) clings to a hillside a few kilometers downhill from KCR. As the tuktuk rolls into a
small clearing with a dilapidated shed at its far end, alight monsoon rain begins to fall. Within minutes the crew has fired up the transmitter and laptop, and cables snake across the wet grass.
The tuktuk’s transmitter is a vintage 50 watt FM exciter, a clunky beast that goes back to the early days of KCR and is too big fit anywhere except on the rooftop rack. (This is an obvious worry for the Kothmale station — you don’t carry sensitive broadcast equipment on an exposed rack in the monsoon — and they are raising the funds to buy a sleeker model that will fit inside the tuktuk). I watch bemused as an 18 foot antenna mast is swiftly put together from three lengths of galvanized iron pipe clamped end-to-end.
Sunil Shanta, KCR’s relief announcer launches into a practiced spiel that’s fed into the twin speakers mounted on the tuktuk’s roof. Soon, the clearing and the shed fill with an expectant crowd — mostly women and children — some carrying plastic chairs and mats.
Weliganga is a Dalit village, a hamlet of drum makers and subsistence farmers, generally shunned
by their better off neighbours. Sunil Wijesinghe, KCR’s station manager confides to me that only a
few days earlier, a local monk had stormed into his office, outraged by the contents of a recent programme. Apparently, the radio station had aired the comments of Weliganga’s villagers, who said
that they were not allowed entry into the local temple. Even their children, said the villagers, had to travel long distances to study elsewhere as they were discriminated against in the local school.
This could well be true, as I soon learn. Bright-eyed Achala, a 9th standard student, tells me that she goes to school in Ulapane, some miles away, as do her friends Nirosha, Niluka and Nilukshika who cluster around her and nod vigorously.
With monsoon clouds rolling overhead and the shed’s roof leaking like a sieve, the show gets underway. Achala launches into a Sinhala prayer song. Livelier numbers follow, and soon the shed is filled with singing, clapping and dancing youngsters, with three drummers maintaining a steady beat.
Ben Grubb dashes into the eTukTuk to check on the equipment, and swears under his breath when he finds an audio cable plugged into the wrong socket. Buddhika Sampath, KCR’s content creation specialist, shoos Ben away and takes over the audio recording. Inside the shed, Sunil Shanta, the programme presenter, works the crowd and keeps up a steady banter.
The rain dies down to a sporadic drizzle. It is half past six and too dark to see, but the unlit shed is still alive with song, drumbeats and girlish laughter. Reluctantly, Sunil winds up the proceedings. The hill roads are muddy and punctuated by puddles, and the eTukTuk splashes its way back to the station driven by Nishanta, the strapping volunteer-driver.
We are persuaded to stay behind and visit a local ‘kovil’. The shrine, little more than an out-house, is bedecked with a startling array of Hindu and Buddhist deities and presided over by a generously proportioned shaman. Smiling broadly, she assures us that she has the power to locate lost objects (”Ask her what happened to my MiniDisk recorder,” mutters Ben) and perform nameless acts of sorcery.
This is an excerpt from an article written by Sajan Venniyoor entitled “eTUKTUK, TAKING INFORMATION DOWN THE BUMPY DIRT-ROAD IN SRI LANKA” and appeared in Frontline, the prominent Indian news-magazine.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20060714002009000.htm
Category: field visit
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