Kyle is her name and she is just an adorable little girl, three years in age. She lives with her parents in a small little house a coconut estate in Kotadeniyawa, Sri Lanka, where I stayed for several weeks. Kyle entlightend my day just by being there. For me, she is a very special charakter, full of fun and adventure. If this young little princess has to be silent, she knows 'how to behave', but if you let her be, than she shows you what an active, alert, funny and most of all clever intellegent toddler she is, that just want to experience life and the world.
Kyle loves to sing old british nursery rhymes. Than she tries to imitate the words and gestures, listens carefully and gets totally excited. One of her favorite songs is about a lady, floatig on the back of a crocodile down the nile. The favorite part of the song is for Kyle, when the lady winks good bye. " She sails away on a lovely sunny day / on the back of a crocodile / 'You see', said she / 'He is as taim as taim can be'And they are floating down the nile. ..."
Her eyes are huge and sparkling. Brown and alert. She has an intense look. I never saw such deep brown eyes before. She is a very strong minded girl. She knows what she wants and with her young and inexperienced mother, she knows very well how to get it. Well, she is just a small little toddler.
Kyle grows up in a very silent and peaceful environment. There are no other children on the estate and she doesn't go to the kindergarden yet. Most of the day she spends with her father working on the estate, collecting coconuts, harvesting vegetables, feeding the tortoise or guardening the wild buffalos. She loves it. She loves the nature. Her are no unneccessary disturbances. She is good friends with roosters, dogs, squirrels and enjoyes every morning the silent awakening into a new day.
She is special, because she connects. She is the cultural bridge between Tamils and Singhaleas. She is a changer, she will change and she changes already.
Her mother, a young woman of 26 with a very shy temper, came three years ago as a married woman to his new place, not being able to communicate with any other person apart from her husband. Tamil is her mother tonge - all other workers here speak singhaleas. On top of the language barrier she had to bear up with a childhood locked into a small little room as protection for a violent and raping drunken father, while her mother had to earn the living. She can't read and write. But every day she sits at least one hour with Kyle infront of their house 'reading' children books. The first 1 1/2 years Kavinda had troubles to connect with the other women. First of all because of her shyness and unsecurity. Second of all because of here heritage. Being Tamil still means in this country to keep up with hate, anger and prejudgements as after taste of the thirty year war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers - a declared rebel and terrorist organisation. Not here tho, but there was still this reserved distance, this silent unease in the air not nowing how to act - on both sides. Kyle breakes the silence and opens her mother the door for arising friendships.
She is special, because she is herself. A curious girl with a big heart and a lot of fun enjoing life. You can see in her eyes the magic of her experience. She is magic.
Here at a place where Tamil meet Singhaleas, where dutch Burgers are married to Sri Lankans and volunteers from all over the world are becoming part of this family for a short time frame, the cultural exchange and understanding is immense. For a girl in such a young age in Sri Lanka she couldn't grow up in a better way.
