An Inspiring Story of a Woman I Met At a Tea Estate in Sri Lanka
Ella, Sri Lanka, 2017.
I was on my way back from a climb up Little Adam’s Peak when I came across this small shack pictured above.
A young lady stood in front of it.
A vibrant red draped down the pattern of her dress to the outline of her flip flops. A smile beamed across her face.
She greeted me with a hello.
I smiled back and approached her; her excitement spiked.
“Hello sir, this is my new shop, please come see what you like.”
Her name was Naveeshana and she had just turned twenty-eight.
She grew up in a small village, tucked right on the edge of the Greenland Tea Estate in Ella — a mere few meters from where we stood.
Both her parents are tea pluckers. They work at the tea estate, everyday, from the early mornings of seven am, late into the evenings of seven pm. They pluck the tea leaves along the narrow lush rows of tea plantations to earn a pay-slip of four hundred and fifty rupees per day.
Four hundred and fifty rupees.
That’s about $2.98 USD per day.
That’s one silly order of a tall skinny mocha cinnamon latté from Starbucks.
