Corner Boys

Hanging out on Stewart Street. Slave Island, Colombo, April 2024.

^{• 35mm • f/4 • 1/400 • ISO200 • Canon R6 & RF14-35/4L •}

Morning Tea on 4th Cross Street

John’s golaya keeping the holy water flowing. Pettah, Colombo. October 2023.

^{• 35mm • f/4 • 1/200 • ISO126 • Canon R6 & RF14-35/4L •}

A Long Tea Break

The creamiest sweetest glass of tea I’ve ever had, in a land known for its sweet strong tea. At least half sweetened condensed milk, the boiling tea is whipped up into a froth by being poured back and forth from a great height. Sammanthurai, Sri Lanka. October 2023.

^{• 24mm • f/2.8 • 1/125 • ISO1000 • Canon R6 & RF24-70/2.8L •}

Morning Tea in Pettah #4

John, doing his rounds on 4th Cross Street, supplying tea to the traders, naattamis, and lorry drivers busy with the work of hauling, stocking, and selling the dry goods that keep the city fed. Colombo, November 2023.

^{• 70mm • f/2 • 1/500 • ISO100 • Canon R6, with an RF28-70/2L from Canon/Metropolitan •}

Morning Tea in Pettah #3

Naattamis take a teabreak after unloading a lorry on 4th Cross Street. Pettah, Colombo. October 2023.

^{• 26mm • f/4 • 1/160 • ISO400 • Canon R6 & RF14-35/4L •}

Tea and the News on Keyzer Street

Mornings in Pettah, Colombo. September 2023.

^{• 24mm • f/2.8 • 1/80 • ISO100 • Canon R6 & EF-S24/2.8 •}

Night Tea

Sea Street, Pettah, Colombo. September 2023.

^{• 32mm • f/4 • 1/30 • ISO400 • Canon R6 & RF14-35/4L •}

To the Land of Tea

In the second half of the 19th century, after the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom, the huge swathes of montane rain forest that covered the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka were completely destroyed by British colonisers. The red earth of the mountains was swept clean of everything natural, flora and fauna; then replanted with the carpets of green bushes that even today fill the teabags and bank accounts of the world’s most famous brands. Bagawantalawa, February 2014.

Weighing In

Tea pluckers stand in line to have their first pick of the day weighed on a tea plantation in Bagawantalawa, in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka, in February 2014. Each basketload is, on average, 6kg, with the woven bamboo basket itself weighing a couple of kilos. Each tea plucker is expected to pick around 18kg for her daily wage, and is paid extra for anything over the standard. The best can pick as much as 40kg a day. The women, most of South Indian Tamil ethnicity, wear traditional saris to work, with a further wrap of heavier cloth around their lower bodies to protect them from the tough tea bushes and biting insects. Younger tea pluckers can often be seen wearing T-shirts instead of the traditional sari blouse. The long blue and white measuring sticks are laid across the tea bushes to make sure the picking stays level and even. The poles also aid balance on the steep hills and can double as weapons against snakes and scorpions sheltering in the shade beneath the bushes. Most of these women will work on one plantation all of their lives, beginning at the age of sixteen and continuing well into their fifties, picking the Ceylon Tea that goes into the world’s most famous brands.

The Road to Freedom

Children from a plantation workers’ community walk to school in Bagawantalawa, in the Sri Lankan Central Highlands, in February 2014. Education is key if these children (particularly the girls) are to break free of the cycle of hard labour and poverty that they have endured for over a century. Of South Indian origin, these workers were imported by the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to pick, for a pittance, the famous Ceylon Tea that is produced by some of the world’s most famous brands. In the Central Highlands, and other rural areas of Sri Lanka, children often walk long distances and endure bad weather and the threat of wild animals to obtain the education the state doles out in varying degrees of quality. None of these hardships have, however, crippled education for Sri Lankan children the way the Corona Pandemic has. Across the island, schools have been shut for over a year and a half, substituted with online classrooms to which children in remote communities, with no smart phones, computers, or the internet, have little access. With no date set by the government for the reopening of schools, the longterm effects on this generation of rural children seems of little concern in the halls of power.