Building Our Future Home

Our land is quite far from Colombo to drive daily. It is around 50km away from where we living in Colombo. There are two routes that we can take. The Low level Road via Kaduwela and Hunwella is the shorter route which is around 47km. The road is quite narrow, but takes a long time to go due to slow moving traffic. The High Level road is the longer route which is around 55km to the land. The road is wide and carpeted and traffic moves smoothly. I love to drive in this route. The story does not end from there.

The Debegama - Napawala Road is not motorable. We have to walk along this hilly road nearly one kilometer. The villagers have concreted half of of the road with the help of the local authority. But still, nearly a 500m long section of the road is left which is not motorable. Due to the absence of side drains, rain water flows along the muddy road surfacing rocks and forming ridges in the middle. Walking along this difficult road is a daunting task. We have to walk 200m more along our private road to go to the Estate. The 12ft wide private road is ours and it was previously used to transport rocks from the quarry operated in our Estate.

Building a house was not in our plans. We first thought of renting out a house nearby. But the old house that we found was infested with various kinds of insects including few types of ants. I am afraid to keep my five year old son, Ewan; in the insects infested, muddy, cold and soggy old house. We really don't want to sleep on the bare floor and walk in the wet and muddy floor after hard works of a long day. My mom complains all the time about ants and rat infested kitchen that has a leaky roof. After thinking hard, I decided to build a house for us.

First we thought of using the half built concrete structure to form a one bedroom house with bare minimum facilities. But we found that the old structure was in ruin. We want our house to be cozy, warm and comfortable place for us to live. At the end, the plan for the one bedroom cottage house was changed to a three roomed cottage.

Old half- built Concrete Structure

I went to the Estate yesterday with my sister, brother and cousin brother to start building the new house. Here in Sri Lanka, people are very superstitious when it comes to building houses. They believe the effect of planetary positions on you and your house. The magnetic and electric energy patterns in plant earth will be influenced by the other planetary positions. In order to absorb positive energies from universe, the shape of your house and its directions are important concerns.  In order to draw positive energy from the universe, you need to draw the right design which is specific to one's birth chart and needs to have an entrance to the right direction. A house is started to build at a positive time (auspicious time) after performing religious activities. We didn't want to deviate from this common, well established practice. Yesterday, on 27th of April 2011 at 9.11am, we started building our house ceremoniously. Here are some photos of yesterday's ceremony.

The Builder Performing Rituals at the Building Site

Place Dedicated to Deities

Offering to Deities

Helpers Cutting the Foundation

Removing the Trees from Building Site

Providing Basic Facilities for Workers

The rubber trees of our Estate was tapped for last five years. The quarry was also in operation until last year. I wonder how people worked there without basic sanitary facilities.

The mud hut is in a delapidated condition where it needs repairs immediately. The roof is leaky in many places, the timbers in the main frame are rot, the clay walls are full of holes and the floor is uneven and covered with dust. I am in a hurry to cover holes in the walls, make the floor flat and repair the roof before workers come for work.

The biggest issue is the absence of facilites. The toilet is now under construction. As the weather is quite bad with heavy rians during the afternoons, I don't know how long it would take to complete the constuction work.

There is another half built concrete structure that we need to repair. I have got a plan prepared for a two roomed house.  The construction work starts at an auspicious time on 27th April. Hope everything goes well in the Estate as planned.

Running the Estate at a High Risk

We could not still resolve the problems with tappers. The working family who promised to work in the Estate did not tern up on the Sunday morning. I am so frastrated and helpless, but keep on looking for people.

The decendants of the Indian Tamils who were brought to Sri Lanka to work in the plantation estates are the professional tappers in the big plantation estates. They are being provided housing and a daily wage of Rs. 410.00 (US $ 4.00) for tapping for a day. Because of heavy rains duirng the months of April and May, the income for workers in rubber plantations drastically dropps. But, in addition to tapping, the estates make sure that they are getting a resonable monthly income through manual work such as weeding .

The estate houses are overcrowded with extended family members. The younger generations of the estate workers often look for nontraditional work outside the estates mostly in service sector. Some of them are unhappy members of extended families who look for work at a higher wages. The family that we were looking for belongs to this catagory. Despite of our promises of providing better housing and high wages, they let us down. I think the main reason is my waring agaist the alcoholism. Most of men in the estate families are adicted to alcohol. No matter where they live, the want to drink locally distilled licqure every evening. With this bitter lesson of experience, now I understand that finding non-alcoholic workers is not possible in Sri Lanka.

It rains heavily everyday. Even tappers are brought, they won't be able to tap the rubber trees during this period. The money I have at hand is draining out to improve workers' quaters and to provide the sanitary facilities before the arrival of workers.  I am very desperate with the prevailing weather and my inability to find tappers.

Smallholders in Plantation Management

Where more than 70 percent of total world rubber production comes from Southeast Asia which includes countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka; more than twenty million smallholders grow rubber. The farmers in Sri Lanka who hold lands extending from 0.5 to 20 ha (1 to 50 acres) belong to the smallholders. The rubber small holders in Sri Lanka have been contributing significantly to the national production. Their contribution in 2008 had been 71.7 percent of the national production, while the contribution of Regional Plantation Companies (RPC) was 26 percent.

While the large scale plantations had undergone significant structural changes in mid 1990s, due to underperformance as state-owned entities; the smallholding sector thrived in Sri Lanka particularly in tea plantations contributing substantially to the economy by achieving close to international standards. However, it was found that the progress of rubber smallholder development was less than the achievements of large scale rubber plantation development. The productivity of rubber smallholdings of Sri Lanka is in the region of 1,290 kg/ha where as in Malaysia it is around, 1,330 to 1,440 and in Indonesia it is in the range of 1,250 to 1,500 kg/ha.

The majority of rubber smallholders are still so poor in the regions, in spite of the fact that the world rubber prices are significantly high. The situation of smallholders is same in Sri Lanka. Farmers still use low agricultural technologies such as low yielding clones, indigenous practices and lack of management strategies in their production systems. They are inefficient in decision-making processes, have very little initiative in innovations, and a low level of education.

The rubber smallholders in Sri Lanka face the following problems;

·         Lack of proper institutional and policy frameworks,

·         Lack of directions and education about the availability of resources and information,

·         Nature of peasant type of production,

·         Lack of information and knowledge about high yielding clones and improved management practices and production systems,

·         Lack of soil fertility improvements

·         Lack of market orientation

·         Reliance on traditional technology, family labour and management.

The smallholders need to pay more attention to improve soil fertility, farming system and management and soil fertility for specific crops. They are required to maintain quality of product that affects the farm income. They need to apply manure and grow cover crops to improve soil fertility. In order to increase the yield, the smallholders need to use high-yielding clones. As smallholders normally use any clone that is readily available to them at the time of planting, it needs to make available high yielding clones that are appropriate for specific areas, and improve their knowledge of clone selection.