Inspireart & culture • • • •Sri Lanka is a wondrous place. Wherever you look magic fills the air. The sights, the smells, thesounds arouse your senses while the people are beautiful and naturally friendly. If one Sri Lankanwere to sit next to another at a bus stop, it would not be long before they were talking to eachother as if old friends.Nine Australians including myself were fortunate enough to experience such warmth first handas we bicycled 300km from Kandy in the middle of Sri Lanka to Galle in the country’s south west.A camaraderie grew between us as we rode past a constant barrage of brilliant smiles andcheerful waves from excited locals.We traversed rocky mountain paths, broken roads of tooting traffic, hills, hills and more hills andswept past beautiful scenery as we climbed Sri Lanka’s hill country.We visited rainforests and encountered staggering biodiversity: giant squirrels, jungle fowls, purplefaced leaf monkeys, all sorts of lizards, dozens of birds including the blue magpie, and frogsaplenty. Many such animals can only be found in Sri Lanka.This is why we were there: to help protect the rainforest homes of these animals.Ride for the RainforestOnly five per cent of Sri Lanka’srainforest cover remains, muchof which has been lost tofarming of commercial cropssuch as tea, coconuts, andrubber; logging; and to beused for firewood and otherproducts.By ObiMcDonald-SaintI was touched and movedby Sri Lanka’s natural breathtakingbeauty yet disturbedand unsettled that this richreserve could soon be lost. Ibecame committed to makinga difference in Sri Lanka and inthe process a difference wasmade in me. Who I was whenI left for Sri Lanka was not thesame person who returned.Back home in Mullumbimby, I was filled with spirit and energy. I had a driving force, a cause,and from this way of being I put on a movie night and invited local businesses to support me. Iorganised David Suzuki’s Force of Nature to be featured alongside Wolf Pack in Sri Lanka, a shortmovie I created about our ride across Sri Lanka.I wrote stories to promote the event, got newspaper and radio coverage, had the event sent outon mailing lists, and finished editing the movie the night before. There was plenty of work to dobut at no point was it hard. It all came together naturally, smoothly, easily. Every person I spoketo wanted to help.This was the most effective I have ever been in my life. Acting from this space of inspiration, themovie night was a great success. The venue was packed with only four seats left empty and theaudience was touched by their experience.The movie night raised contributed $2,000 to Rainforest Rescue’s Plant a Rainforest Project in SriLanka while our bicycle challenge contributed more than $20,000. These funds go a long way inSri Lanka and help plant and protect rainforests there and support local farmers, who live on lessthan two dollars a day and are reliant on the rainforest for their livelihood.thank you, Obi13injoy
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