The weekend between weeks 3 and 4 of volunteering in Sri Lanka was quite an enjoyable and relaxed experience. There wasn’t a planned trip to go on, and I was happy to save money and stay at the accommodation and not plan a trip for that weekend either. I had the company of my roommates and we had a good time.

We were lucky enough that there was a new volunteer arriving on the Friday, which meant that we had good food available to us – the food at the location had been a contention for many in the first few weeks. A lot of people were unhappy with the lack of variety and with the portion sizes and there were a few complaints. Online, they had stated that we’d get the chance to enjoy a diverse range of Sri Lankan cuisine, and that hadn’t happened yet. Only after those few individuals had spoken up, was there a change in the meals that we were given. I wonder if next time something like that happens, whether I’ll be brave enough to speak up about it.

That weekend we spent time in Hikkaduwa doing some souvenir shopping and enjoying a lovely lunch, as we don’t get catered for at the accommodation over the weekends, and we picked up some bits and bobs to make ourselves a dinner for that evening. I grabbed myself a packet of instant noodles and crackers, which I intended to sprinkle over the noodles to add a bit more flavouring and a crunch. Eleanor gave me an odd look at that, but she didn’t get to taste it – it was actually devine. Eleanor made herself a cheese sandwich and we shared fruit and biscuits for desert.

It wasn’t anything glamorous for sure, but it was fun and kept us full until the next morning, which was slow and quiet. I managed to do some exercises and drawing in those hours before we went out to dinner at a restaurant down the road. Everyone was to be back at the accommodation by curfew time on Sunday, so throughout that evening, our fellow volunteers began making an appearance at that restaurant in a steady trickle as they all arrived back and had no other place to eat dinner at, (and nowhere else to buy proper food to make a solid meal either).

Everyone had enjoyed themselves that weekend, which was just as well, because the third week of volunteer work was hard.

On the dog project, we were left alone to our own devices and were only aided in starting a fire to cook the rice, and in driving the tuktuk around the village to feed the stray dogs. We were still given no help in preparing the vegetables, often overly rotten, or in gutting the fish, often impossibly frozen. We had to provide the sanctuary dogs with medication without any guidance or help, which meant that, in our unqualified hands, a lot of it was spilled and unfortunately wasted when the dogs understandably wriggled and complained. There was still no help in washing the dogs either, which, now that I’ve had more time to think back on it, was probably was rather dangerous, considering they were strays. But what can you do.

On top of this, we were always asked to do more. So after a very enjoyable and calm weekend, I found my stress level on the rise pretty quickly.

It didn’t help that the third week was my fellow dog volunteer’s last week there, and that the single new volunteer that had arrived to help with the dogs had gotten so terribly sunburnt within the first few days of her being there that she was blistering and had to go to the hospital.

I was getting increasingly nervous for my last week of volunteering, which became all the worse when our sanctuary pups, Chino, Latte and Biscuit, suddenly lost their appetites and became lethargic and sick. Us volunteers quickly identified the problem, however, as the staff had brought in a sickly pedigree spaniel puppy from an abusive breeder.

The poor dog was throwing up and had diarrhea, but frustratingly, he had no quarantine period upon arrival and, although he had no direct contact with our sanctuary dogs, WE had direct contact with him as dog volunteers. Seeing him so sick, I tried to keep my distance from him as much as I could, and wash my hands after any interaction.

But it wasn’t enough. The sanctuary pups contracted parvo. I tried to be so careful, but it must have come in on our clothes; our skin; on the bottom of our shoes. We had to ask the staff to take us to the vets with the sickly dogs – they never went in to the sanctuary if they could avoid it, and they did everything that they could to avoid it, so it was a complete wonder how the place could function as a ‘sanctuary’ at all.

It just wasn’t the best situation and only managed to give us dog volunteers a world of stress and an awful feeling of guilt at what had happened.

It was only later, much later, that we overheard, that, on the rare occasions that someone on the staff did make an effort with the sanctuary dogs (when the volunteers weren’t there over the weekends, because of organised trips) they would just use the same food bowls for the house dogs as they used for the sanctuary dogs. They would feed the sickly spaniel with the same bowl they would then take into the dog sanctuary to feed the street dogs with…

It was awful hearing this, but we didn’t know what to do, and it was obvious that there wasn’t enough care in the place for the dogs to be looked after properly if there wasn’t a volunteer there to do it.

And it pissed us all off because that entire situation could have been avoided if the damn place was an actual dog sanctuary, and not a money making scheme which it was seeming more and more to be like.

I wanted to get out of there quickly, and luckily for me, the penultimate weekend came around in no time at all. I had a planned trip to look forward to. I was going to get out of the accommodation and away from it all and I think it was that knowledge that kept me going throughout that third week of volunteer work.

For sure, this experience wasn’t shaping up as I had anticipated….