Last night, we celebrated the 8th birthday of my son, Aidan. He’s a great kid, and he was full of smiles and laughs as we shared pizza and cake and he got a remote control car and a DIY Root Beer kit as gifts.

One week ago, yesterday, I celebrated the 8th birthday of Afra, my World Vision sponsor child. When I first met Afra, she was quiet, shy, and didn’t crack a smile. When our group showed up at her house a few hours later with cake, balloons, and gifts, we saw her beautiful smile for the first time. Thanks to Lindsey Minerva, I now have a few photos of that party to share with you. She even rubbed some cake in my face:

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The children of Willuwa say goodbye to World Vision.

One of the criticisms of development work — that is, when money from the US funds projects in needy places like Sri Lanka — is that it creates a “culture of dependency.” Not unlike the knock on welfare and food stamps, the theory goes that foreign money will only teach the lesson that there’s always more coming, thus there’s no reason to learn a trade, plant a field, or otherwise provide for your family.

As progressive as I am on many issues, I actually agree with this criticism. It worries me, both in the States and in the Third World, that we send money to places that need it, but little else. We don’t spend the time teaching the skills needed to make an entire economy more sustainable.

So it was really intriguing to me that on this trip to Sri Lanka, we witnessed World Vision’s last day in a village. It seems — and this was news to me — that WV has a 15-year limit on how long it will work in an Area Development Project (ADP). Thus, from day one in an area, the staff is challenged to partner with local organizations, to teach skills, and to prepare for the hand-off a decade-and-a-half hence.

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As with any trip like this, my co-journeyers are as much a part of my experience as anything else. They are a fantastic collection of individuals. We were brought together by sheer serendipity — we differ on theology, politics, and much else. And yet we have gelled into a cohesive and supportive group. I recommend you click thru to each and read what they’re writing about the trip. (All photos by Matthew Paul Turner, who is also on the trip.)

Shawn Smucker

Roxy at Roxy Composed

Laura at Hollywood Housewife

Joy of Joy in This Journey

Allison of O My Family

Darrel of Stuff Fundies Like

The World Vision Blog

I’d love for you to follow us on the trip and consider sponsoring a child as well.

Firewalking at the annual Munneswaram Festival in Sri Lanka

So, not to be a jerk or anything, but I’m pretty sure I did something on Sunday that you did not do.

After some sightseeing and shopping, Has, the World Vision staffer who is our guide and handler here, asked if we’d rather shop some more or swing by a Hindu temple to watch a ceremony that was taking place. The latter easily won out.

About an hour after her seemingly harmless question, we found ourselves in the middle of crushing throngs of thousands of people, watching men and boys walk across 1000-degree coals.

Being the only foreigners there, we very much stuck out. And, as a result, we were also afforded special access. Some generous police officer waved us inside the ropes, where we got to sit next to the families of all the men who were walking. At first, that seemed like a great idea. Once the ceremony actually started, it turned a bit crazy. As the crowds rushed in to the center and the police seemed suddenly absent, we held our ground as best we could.

We were at the Munneswaram Temple complex, which dates back 1,000 years. That temple is dedicated to Shiva, one of the three main deities in the Hindu trinity, known as the Transformer or the Destroyer. The temple’s main annual festival, the Munneswaram Festival, lasts for 28 days and includes an evening of firewalking, borrowed from the Timiti Festivals at other Hindu temples in this part of the world.

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to my friend, Tim, that I was going to Sri Lanka. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “One of my favorite authors is from Sri Lanka. You should read about Michael Ondaatje’s trip back there.” That day, I ordered Running in the Family.

Ondaatje, the Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient, grew up mainly in Canada, but he has roots in Sri Lanka. In 1978, he traveled to what was then known as Ceylon, to revisit his childhood and his ancestry. Running in the Family, about that trip, was published in 1982.

I began reading it on the flight over here, and I had it under my arm as Shawn Smucker and I walked from our hotel, across the street to the beach. I looked up to notice a man walking on ropes, high above us in the palm trees, pouring a liquid from pots into a pot that he lowered by rope to the ground.

Our very gracious hotelier, Tommy, saw us looking up and explained to us that the man was collecting the sap of the palm flower, which is subsequently fermented and made into a drink called the palm toddy and also further distilled into arrack. He told us that he’d serve us a toddy before lunch and some arrack after dinner.

After that little education, I planted myself on a chair on the beach, and opened Ondaatje’s book, wherein, after a few pages, I came across the poem, “High Flowers,” which reads, in part,

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These young dudes welcomed us to Sri Lanka today.

It’s been a long day of travel. I left Minneapolis just after mid-day on Thursday, and arrived at my destination on the west coast of Sri Lanka at the equivalent of 2am on Saturday in Minneapolis (11am here in Sri Lanka). The boys in the photo above gave us a nice welcome during our 2-hour van ride, but that was merely the final leg of a long journey.

From MSP, I flew to JFK, where I met the other members of the World Vision Bloggers Tour. They are, as you might guess, a wonderful and diverse group of people. We’ve already had some great conversations, about which I will post in coming days. From there we flew for 12+ hours in an A380, the largest airplane currently flying. We arrived in Dubai in time to hear the call to evening prayers as we waited in the line in passport control.

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Although you wouldn’t know it by my lowly Silver Elite status these days on Delta, I have done a fair amount of international travel. Later this week, I’ll be in the air for over 20 hours, traveling from Minneapolis/St. Paul to New York (JFK) to Dubai to Columbo, Sri Lanka. My fellow World Vision travelers and I have been trading flying tips on our Facebook group, and several trip members are worried about sleeping or not sleeping on the flights.

While I doubt any of us will take an $18,000 shower on Emirates Air, I’m sure we’ll all survive. That being said, here are my top ten trips for international flying:

1) Don’t beat yourself up. I don’t sleep much on flights. Never have, and I doubt I ever will. But I no longer bum out about that. Instead, I just know that I won’t be sleeping, and I’ll have to suffer through some exhaustion upon my arrival.

2) Don’t over-medicate. I’ll take a melatonin pill, but I think that the stronger sleep-aids are a recipe for disaster. They don’t necessarily put you to sleep, but they definitely make you groggy. And if you have any weird side-effects, you’re pretty much screwed.

3) Work out the day before. Being that I’ll be sitting and sitting and sitting, I make sure and get a serious workout the day before the flight. I mean a 2-hour, sweaty, intense workout. Get the endorphin rush, the lactic acid release, and you’ll possibly sleep more on the flight.

4) Don’t set an alarm. For the week before the trip, I go to bed as early as possible and sleep as long as possible. I won’t try to realign my sleep with Sri Lanka because it’s like a dozen time zones away. That would be futile. Instead, I will go into the trip well-rested.

5) Pre-hydrate. In spite of the warnings to avoid alcohol on flights and to drink only water, I will drink some booze. So I’ll make sure to drink a bunch of water in the 48 hours before the flight to compensate.

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