It caused certain embarrassments to them too, and as a result, during the school quiz programs I was told to be silent until all the others had answered the respective questions. Though the reward I received was only a simple exercise book that was priceless to me, I enjoyed taking challenges; something that I had learnt from my parents, who had systematically prepared us to jump the barriers placed by others.

My village school, Thakshila Maha Vidyalaya became popular with the arrival of the new Principal Mr. R. Dharmadasa, another man of Vision who mastered the art of getting the teachers to motivate students. As a result, students from our school began to get through the Ordinary Level exam with best results during his tenure. I am one of the hundreds of village kids who will be eternally grateful to him for the guidance given.

Mr. Gunawardhana was my first English teacher, and the man who made us realize the importance of learning to communicate in a wonderful international language.

If not for him and the enthusiastic young teachers who taught us to 'jump barriers', I would have ended up as another chena farmer.

I got through the G.C.E. Ordinary level exam with good results and was admitted to the Central College Anuradhapura for higher studies. My aim was to study Bio Science. Anyhow, I soon realized that I had chosen the wrong field of study that did not suit me. To make matters worse, I couldn't adjust myself to the city life, and understanding it was a different question too, for a person who came from a rural farming background. At this stage it was two of my former teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Senarathna, who were by then teaching at Bulathsinghala Central College in Kaluthara advised me to join their school.

I finally turned up at their School, Central College, Bulathsinghala, Kaluthara to find that the 'advise' turned up to be a generous and kind offer of free boarding and lodging at their house. The short time I studied in that school was the most interesting part of my academic life but my fate didn't allow me to continue my education and my school life ended even before sitting for Advanced Level Examination. I was so shaken and bitterly disappointed after the premature end of my academic life because I knew this meant that my chance of finding a job was minute. In a country where university graduates are unemployed, I had lesser chances of finding employment.

I had taken up a few odd jobs to earn a living in order to begin a fresh start. Applying for jobs and going for interviews became quite a routine during this period.

Many of my classmates had joined the armed forces, and I too had passed the selection tests. Youngsters such as us are most welcome to the armed forces anyhow, handling an instrument that is made for killing was out of the question for a person like me who couldn't even kill a venomous serpent. I was not going to submit myself to this type of exploitation. I was anyhow confined to killing time for about four years until I was selected to become a male nurse at Asiri Hospital, Colombo. Pediatric ward was my favorite as I enjoyed being with small kids.

How I became a Teacher

While working at the Asiri Hospital, I decided to enroll myself for the DELIC (District English Language Improvement Center) program since I realized the importance of having a good knowledge of English if we, as a nation, had to be prepared when dealing internationally. Since Singhalese was made the official language in the 1950s, teaching English for children of rural areas was neglected, but was taught in better colleges that were very often unreachable for children of poor families. English was widely spoken in privileged homes but, nobody cared if we, village kids had a better English education. I passed the DELIC exam and was selected as a trainee. The understanding was that we would be appointed as English teachers after one year's training. I therefore decided to join the DELIC program in 1995 and quit my job at the hospital.

I was so fortunate to meet two good teachers Mr. M. B. Ilangasingha and Ranjith Pushpakumara. Under their guidance I learned English in a record time, but this period also brought back the bitter memories of the time I had spent with my teachers who were rather embarrassed about having to find answer for questions put by a 6th Grader.

During the time of recession there were other generous people such as Mr. and Mrs. Ekanayaka, both retired teachers, who came forward to provide me with free accommodation during the period I was without a job and they continuously encouraged me to continue my higher education in English. As a result, I was able to pass the Advanced Level with English as a subject in 1998. The two Ekanayaka sons, Chaminda and Pubudu, whom I met during the DELIC program, were a great help to me too, and we have remained good friends.

Passing the final DELIC exam meant another nervous period, since we learnt that the government had changed their promises about recruiting us. I was kept on the waiting list and was unemployed for a further year until I was finally recruited on condition that we agree to work for a much lesser salary that was almost 50% less than what was originally offered before we had joined the DELIC program. There was no other alternative but to accept the offer of Rs. 2500/= (30 US$), and we were called 'apprentice teachers', and put on a four year probation period.

Teaching at the Village Public School

Once confronted with the young and innocent faces buzzing with hope, I recalled the days when I was in the same position whenever a new teacher came to the school, and hoped that he or she would remain for a long time. We welcomed our teachers with dedication and love.

It was a pleasure to see how motivated these little kids were such as Little Radhika's (Grade 4) class who were very keen to learn English. They eagerly performed a few welcoming dances that they had learnt on their own, and I couldn't wait till the next morning to be in the company of these kids.

I taught the kids at the village school for about three years but found it very difficult to convince the education authorities about modern innovative methods of teaching that made studying a pleasure to the kids. It was expected that I strictly followed the syllabus and do only what pleased the superiors.

The willingness of these kids however gave me no other alternative but to devote my time after school , during weekends and even during school vacations to teach them. I had not forgotten how many people had helped me in many ways to continue my education, and this was the best opportunity I could pay tribute to all those marvelous people who helped me during my desperate times.

Students kept winning inter-school and district English competitions and got good results for English at the Ordinary Level exam as well. The handwritten English journal "The Horizon" I had initiated with the kids became a big hit and as a result, the Embassy of the United States of America in Colombo donated a computer to the village public school. Anyhow, there were persons among us who were rather unhappy about these developments, and it became necessary to push through my arguments. I certainly lacked diplomacy and could not care about people who had a slow phase of thinking. The result was that more resistance grew up to a point where I realized that continuing to stay might result students being harassed unnecessarily since they were the first to feel the consequences when I was being targeted. During a meeting with the responsible authorities I explained the situation and requested for a transfer. I had an obligation to help the unprivileged as I too came from the same background.

The authorities paid a deaf ear to my appeal and wanted me to remain in the same school. When things became worse, my last alternative was to quit the job. On October 10, 1999 I tendered the resignation.

My mother was very sympathetic towards me since she knew well that finding another job was incredibly difficult. Anyhow, she understood the helpless situation I was maneuvered in to.

To my surprise, the story about my resignation had appeared on the Internet in the IPS website, A journalist from Colombo (Mr. Gamini Akmeemana) who had interviewed the kids and me on a previous occasion, decided to publish the story adding the current happenings. LAcNet (Lanka Academic Network) had quoted the news article about me, and LAcNet contacted me, gave me the opportunity to join a computer project that was to be shortly started at a high school in Anuradhapura.

In the mean time the Regional Director of Education had informed me that he had not accepted my resignation and having heard about the LAcNet project, he transferred me to the high school in November 1999.

During this time I was fortunate to have met Miss Radha Blackman the Programs Administrator of I*EARN who came down to Sri Lanka. I also met Prof. Celia Einhorn, a mentor of I*EARN who came to Sri Lanka to do a workshop on how to implement I*EARN programs. Ms. Celia, introduced me to the World Wide Web. This was an exciting and interesting experience for me who was not used to this type of free means of communication, and we had our first e-mail account for the high school. I suggested that our local delicacy string hoppers (locally named Indi Appa) be renamed "WWW" when I jokingly pointed out at a dinner party, the similarities between the string hoppers, a delicacy with many string type noodles that join each other and form a round network.

While I taught at this school I had the opportunity of touring Beijing, Cairo and Miami. The greatest achievement I treasure from the short stint in of time I spent in this school was raising money to buy computers by organizing and coordinating an auction of Sri Lankan paintings in Miami Country Day School, Florida, USA.

I gradually trained another young teacher, Mr. Deepal Sooriyarachchi as I knew that I could never continue to work in the government sector because my understanding was that the current education system was too inefficient and I could not stand its slow pace. Deepal learnt computers in an extremely amazing speed and I was confident that he could run the computer project without me. I also felt that as long as I was located away from home, I couldn't pay much attention to my village kids. Children in the city could easily find replacements whenever a teacher is transferred but the village kids had to wait years for it.

Meanwhile the report on the IPS about my resignation had drawn the attention of a person who had attempted to contact me, and since I was no longer employed at that school he had written a letter to one of my students, Miss Nirmala Sarojini that was sent to the school address. This letter was not given to her by the school authorities and instead, they had replied the letter seeking financial help for the school from the sender of that letter.

A former colleague informed me about this letter, which had come from Japan, and the fact that the school authorities had hidden it. Nirmala's mother was however able to get hold of the envelope of this letter that was sent to Nirmala.
On the left upper corner of the envelope there was something written in Japanese, that was shorter than an overseas address, yet I wrote a letter to the unknown person and photocopied the Japanese text that was on the envelop and pasted as the recipient's address and posted a letter.

To my astonishment, I received a reply and a person named Donald had written to me saying that he is coming to Sri Lanka in December 1999 and asked me to meet him giving an address in Colombo. His letter was extraordinarily short and I was very curious. From the style of writing and the name Donald, I believed that this person is of American origin. On the day of appointment with Mr. Donald, on my way to his residence, I rang him to inform that I was on the way to his residence, and was pleasantly surprised that this imaginary American guy, who was a Sri Lankan answered back in Singhalese. This was my first meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Gaminitilake on the very first morning of the New Millennium. They greeted me very warmly and wanted to know everything about the kids in my village.

It was decided that I take the kids to the Nuwarawewa Guests House in Anuradhapura to introduce the children since they had planned a trip to Anuradhapura. We met as planned and the short encounter laid the foundation to form a strong bond between the two parties. Ever since then, they have been continuously helping the kids and myself. They have automatically become the foster parents, and in return kids love them like their own parents.

The Gaminitilakes have been the pillars of my success. Ever since I met them I have received constant help and encouragement in every possible manner. If not for them, I wouldn't have done quarter of the things I have done for the kids' betterment. They were the prime force which helped us to get a Pentium computer, giving kids the opportunity to learn computing. Mr. Donald taught me Web Designing and how to use other graphic designing software at his home, which would have cost me thousands of rupees, which I couldn't have afforded. He bought a scanner to scan the kids pictures for the website. After spending few sleepless nights and gulping down few cups of hot coffee Mrs. Gaminitilake prepared, the first version of the Horizon web site was up.

Mr. Dian Domes, the CEO of Slimline Pvt. Ltd. who had heard about me through the Gaminitilakes, offered me a job at Slimline. After giving it much thought and even going to the extent of seeking the advice of my teachers, I decided to join Slimline and quit working as a teacher at a government school. I joined Slimline on December 18, 2000 and work there as a Human Resource Development Assistant. I thoroughly enjoyed working here since one of my main tasks is to teach English to the machine operators.

In the meantime, I traveled to my village during the weekend to teach my kids English and computers. While being a free person who cannot be dictated by the bureaucrats, it became easy for me to achieve my main objectives of teaching the kids the very subjects that would enable them to be successful anywhere in the world, if there wouldn't be a place for them in Sri Lanka.

I took one year's no-pay leave from Slimline in July 2002, to dedicate my time totally for Horizon.