Colombo Kites

Image courtesy of Sunday Times

I recently changed the name of this site to 'Colombo Kites'. It was originally called 'City's children, Children's city', but for a while I had been wondering if there was a more explicit way of describing where the project was headed.

It was at a time when I was starting to realise that perhaps the project is no longer selectively about street children. I was beginning to explore inner-city children, belonging to a spectrum of different economic groups, that despite their individual socio-economic conditions collectively face a common state of rejection and segregation from society, in varying degrees.

At this stage I moved to Colombo, in the hopes of beginning my fieldwork research. I'm still at the outset of that. However, the research I've carried out thus far, the walks about in Pettah and speaking to Colombo Divisional Secretary- Mr.D.P.Wickramasinghe, have validated this notion that many groups of inner-city dwellers of Colombo and their children, suffer, unobserved from varying proportions of exclusion and marginalisation based on their location and geography.

This spatial injustice, ensures the continuation of the cycles of poverty. Indeed, these 'cycles of poverty' are relative. However, my position is that while a street child will continue his life in the streets or in similar destitution and while his/her children will be born into the street and continue in that very cycle; a boy like Arosh (read more about Arosh here https://nanellejayawardene.wixsite.com/colombokites/single-post/2017/09/01/Mapping-out-the-busy-streets-of-Pettah ), a shop owner's son, will continue in his father's legacy.

The salient point is that without the capacity to aspire, these cycles are imperishable. The street child, doesn't have the luxury of education; Arosh does. The lack of a birth certificate and a permanent place of abode the street child is marginalised against education. Arosh goes to a prominent school, however, he sense that he is not a part of the privileged group of students, who gets A grades for their pea-pod assignments, resourceful homework. His biggest aspiration is to open a phone shop in neighbouring Maradana.

The street child and Arosh both lead extremely different lives, yet some form of exclusion from general participation, has stripped them both of their capacities to aspire beyond their assigned paths.

Then there was a kite festival in Colombo, the third of its kind. It was an annual affair and got a mass media support behind it. Adults and children alike participated and a bunch of awards and gifts were presented. The festival took place in Arosh's neighbourhood. I questioned him if he attended this well publicised event. He said he couldn't prepare a kite because he was studying for the scholarship exam. I found it rather puzzling- after all he told me he had no intention of applying for a different school. His mother promptly informed me that there is a certain level of pressure on children to one-up each other at school. My test street child here, Suda, certainly didn't attend the event- well because he was working.

Fast forward a couple of days- I was on my way to University of Moratuwa on the newly built motor-way. Passing the carpet of thick green tree tops and the tiled roofs I was seeing the most elaborate kites up in the sky- all the way through to Moratuwa. My taxi driver informed me that it was the kite season and it is a very common site out of Colombo.

This got me thinking. Colombo's inner-city children should get to fly kites; they should get to attend school and excel not based on their address of residence or whether they have a family, but by virtue of being a child. The project must look into an updated post-structuralist, primary education system that is loosened from the binary relationship of the teacher and child, that cultivate a more cognitive learning environment, burrowed from the natural phenomenon of street education. I should explore the design and planning of city structures, that will make the city a child's place, where children can grow, imagine and navigate the city to better understand their contributions to it. I shall aspire to culture a test bed in the inner-city Colombo where children can fly kites.