‘My heart remains in Sri Lanka’ :

British volunteer’s fascination for Lanka

After 30 years working in the NHS, a health care of her own made community mental health nurse Ann Terry reassess her life - a move which led to her working as a VSO volunteer in Batticaloa.

The experience has had a profound effect on her. She now feels her heart is still in Sri Lanka with the people she helped, and she has already grabbed the chance to make a return visit.

The international development charity VSO, which organised Ann’s voluntary service, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Since it first sent eight young men overseas in 1958, the charity has gone from strength to strength and today the average age of volunteers is 38.

It currently has almost 1,500 skilled professionals working in 34 countries and in its anniversary year, the charity hopes to hear from as many past volunteers as possible.

Ann Terry, who lives at Great Green, Thrandeston, first responded to a VSO advertisement in 2004. She had worked as a community mental health nurse for Norwich and Waveney Mental Health Trust for more than 30 years, but in 1999 was diagnosed with cancer and had been through a major operation and treatment course.

“I thought I would be too old for VSO and my diagnosis would count against me,” she said. However, it didn’t and she was invited for a day-long selection interview and a short time later was offered the post in Sri Lanka. “I was still in a full-time job at the time and there was no avenue for taking a year out, so I decided to take retirement so I could go,” said Ann.

The town she was to sent to work in is Batticaloa. Ann flew out to Sri Lanka in March 2005. The previous December, the island had been hit by the South Pacific tsunami, devastating its entire eastern coastline.

“When I heard the news I thought they wouldn’t want me,” she said. However, there was even more need for her expertise in the mental health field, and she arrived Colombo with five other volunteers.

After language and cultural training courses, she was sent to Batticaloa to begin work. On her first visit to the town she travelled with another volunteer. After leaving the green and lush west side of the island, she was shocked to find the eastern side to be dry and arid.

“We thought we had gone to the other end of the world and didn’t know how we were going to cope with being completely cut off because there was no way out except an eight-hour journey by bus or train,” said Ann.

While in Batticaloa, she worked with a pioneering psychiatrist, Dr Ganesan, who is constantly raising funds to improve facilities .

“There is a huge stigma about mental health in Sri Lanka. It often goes unrecognised or hidden because families believe it brings shame on them,” said Ann.

If you were ever a VSO volunteer, the charity would like to get in touch with you so you can be invited to events happening throughout 2008.

There is also a Norfolk and North Suffolk VSO Local Group which supports volunteers before, during and after their return from projects and helps to raise awareness of the charity’s activities with a programme of regular meetings, talks and social activities.

Treatment is also hugely different because the nurses don’t have any formal training in mental health, but I could see how their service could be developed into something phenomenal because they have the foundation for it.”

While Ann was there, a system of community mental health support workers was introduced.

“The infrastructure is awful. The hospital at Batticaola was really just a shell,” Ann said. “I used to cycle to the hospital most days and had to pass through three or four checkpoints, but it becomes part of your daily routine. It is a strange environment to find yourself in, but you adapted amazingly and the people who live there have known nothing else for decades.”

“I came back to the UK in September 2006, but I went back again last summer for two months to see how everything was going,” she said.

Ann believes her stint with VSO has given her a greater understanding of a different culture and society on a level she would never have experienced as a tourist.

“I love the way VSO works - that you don’t get any special privileges. You are living and working as a local person and you learn and absorb much more than you would any other way.

“I have a fascination with Sri Lanka now. It’s chaotic, exotic and mad. My heart is still there,” she says.