Features

THE LAZY SUSAN STILL TURNS

Published

3 weeks ago

2026/08/30

The handcrafted teak lazy Susan on our garden terrace, where it sometimes brings Badulla a little closer. (NOTE: All photographs by the author.)

Vestiges of a Badulla Household

Badulla, colonial Ceylon and the material inheritance of a family household

From the Pathfinder Collection

By Jennifer Moragoda
jennifermoragoda787@gmail.com

In my husband’s grandparents’ Badulla home, a large handcrafted teak lazy Susan occupied the centre of an always generous table, turning between dishes of rice, curry and other specialities. Decades later, it still stands on an antique round table on our outdoor terrace, where we sometimes sit for dinner. It remains useful, but it also carries the memory of a Badulla household and a way of life.

The lazy Susan is among the most enduring practical inventions for the table. Its appeal is simple: it brings shared dishes within everyone’s reach and reduces the labour of serving. Revolving servers evolved differently across cultures, from Chinese revolving trays to European dumb waiters and serving trolleys. In 1891, the American inventor Elizabeth Howell patented improvements to the revolving centre of a “self-waiting table”. The device eventually entered modern English parlance as the “lazy Susan”, humorously if somewhat unflatteringly immortalizing an otherwise anonymous Susan.

The timelessness of well-loved things

I think of the lazy Susan and the other surviving objects from my husband’s grandparents’ household as vestiges of their happy married life in Badulla during the wartime, postwar and early post-independence years. They also evoke the secure childhood of their only son, my father-in-law, and of my husband and sister-in-law, who spent many school holidays with their grandparents in the hills.

We are fortunate to possess—and, in many cases, continue to use—so many of these useful things that were once essential parts of their daily lives. They include an ornate cast-iron Queen No. 6 stove, a hot-water warming plate, a hollow glass rolling pin, several seamen’s trunks and a single-owner Morris Minor acquired in the 1950s and still kept in running condition. There are also my grandfather-in-law’s many wooden boxes of varying dimensions, including his toolbox, labelled glass apothecary bottles—one still filled with Macassar oil—and a repurposed cigarette tin containing part of his matchbox-cover collection.

My husband’s paternal grandfather was a proctor in Badulla, where he shared a practice with his elder brother; both served on the Badulla Urban Council in the pre-independence era. My father-in-law treasured a small carved wooden deer that had been given to his father by someone who had sought his legal advice, apparently in lieu of payment. He was a great collector of stamps, coins, matchbox covers and all manner of other things. I have found family genealogies in his handwriting tucked away among his books and papers. He kept a daily diary for many years, and we once had stacks of them; in true lawyerly fashion, however, the entries were largely work-related and terse. He also had an extensive collection of woodworking tools, vices and numerous specialized implements, including a brass bicycle tyre pump that is still in perfect working condition today.

: The well-designed pastry blender, still in use after decades, whose five curved wire blades efficiently cut cold butter or shortening into the dry ingredients

: Kitchen tools inherited from the Badulla household: the English glazed-earthenware bowl, Austrian enamelled-steel bowl, hot-water warming plate, hollow Pyrex glass rolling pin and pastry blender

: The ornate Queen No. 6 cast-iron stove, made by Smith & Wellstood of Bonnybridge, Scotland

: The marble-topped teak table on which my husband’s grandmother rolled pastry, now used in our own kitchen

I particularly miss the solidly constructed shovel and alavanguwa that we used for years and that could tackle the hardest ground. They evidently appealed to a workman too, for both eventually disappeared. I can only hope they have continued to be put to good use.

Among the more curious survivals is a revolving cigarette holder fashioned from a short section of a narrow tree trunk. The rough marks left where its hollow interior was hewn can still be seen. Such holders seem to have been fashionable at the time; I have seen a similar antique revolving cigarette holder on Sir John Kotelawela’s writing table at Kandawala.

Certain items remain especially useful: a marble-topped teak washstand adapted for pastry making, an English glazed-earthenware bowl, an Austrian enamelled-steel mixing bowl, and a perfectly designed hand-held pastry blender that I find indispensable.

Together, these objects evoke a household and a provincial way of life that can still be held in one’s hands. I am sure my husband’s grandparents would be happy to know that we value these things, care for them as they did, and continue to use them.

The Queen No. 6 stove

Badulla lies in a secluded valley at the centre of Uva, surrounded by the coffee and, later, tea plantations that transformed the region during the nineteenth century. It was a quiet hill-country town, but never an isolated one. Planters’ clubs, schools, places of worship, commercial networks and railways shaped its social and material life.

Scottish and English planters introduced patterns of trade, taste and consumption intended partly to recreate the way of life they had left behind. Stoves, crockery, kitchen utensils, glassware, furniture, tinned foods and eventually motorcars arrived through these networks. Sri Lankan households absorbed and adapted these influences, combining imported objects with local ingredients, techniques and habits of domestic life.

The Queen No. 6 stove is a striking reminder of that world. It was made by Smith & Wellstood of Bonnybridge in Scotland and was in production by the early twentieth century. Its design descended from enclosed iron stoves used in the United States, which were adapted and recast in Scottish foundries, decorated according to Victorian and Edwardian taste and exported across Britain and the Empire. I suspect that a search through a contemporary Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory—the Ceylon Handbook Directory and Compendium of Useful Information, and the planter’s bible of its day—would turn up an advertisement for it.

Close up of the lazy Susan showing its distinctive wood grain and carved design details.

The stove’s elaborate floral castings, pierced upper cover, curved legs and decorative crest recall a period when manufactured household objects still retained the language of craftsmanship, before mass production increasingly favoured economy and standardisation. It was principally a heating stove, though beneath its ornate hood, lifted by a decorative handle, two small hotplates allowed a kettle or simple cooking vessel to be set on top, or food to be kept warm. Its missing flue would once have carried smoke and fumes out of the room.

Such a compact stove was well suited to Badulla’s cold and damp evenings. Freestanding and relatively easily installed, it could provide the warmth of a fireplace without the need for a substantial built-in hearth, while its small hotplates gave it a useful secondary role in the household. It evokes a family warming itself beside a Scottish stove while the evening’s activities carried on around it—rice and curry being prepared, cakes and pastries baked, and guests entertained according to Sri Lankan traditions of hospitality. Objects crossed cultural boundaries more readily than neat categories such as “British” and “local” suggest.

The marble-topped table

My husband’s grandmother loved Shakespeare and literature, and the Badulla house was filled with interesting books. She played the piano and was an expert bridge and mahjong player. She was renowned among the planting community as an excellent cook; together, they were gracious and warm hosts. It seemed that everyone who had lived in Badulla knew the family and spoke of them with fondness and respect. The green-baize bridge table around which so many happy evenings had been spent was later misplaced during a move, a loss my father-in-law often lamented because it was so closely bound up with his memories of his parents and childhood.

My husband has vivid memories of the marble-topped teak table on which she rolled out pastry for patties and pies. It had a compartment below and two rails for hanging towels, while the cool, smooth marble surface was ideally suited to working dough. I have always regretted that I never had the chance to meet his grandparents, but whenever I use that same table, now in my own kitchen, I think of her and imagine her in hers, rolling pastry and preparing the dishes for which she was so well known.

Her influence lived on in my late father-in-law, her only child, who inherited her enthusiasm for food and her considerable ability in the kitchen. He was an inventive cook and a gifted conversationalist, and around the family table there was always lively, intellectually stimulating discussion, echoing the atmosphere of the Badulla home in which he had grown up.

A cleverly designed revolving wooden cigarette holder and Garrick cigarette tin evoke an era of social smoking and objects made to last

Among his imaginative creations was a salmon lamprais, which he made in large batches over two days: first preparing the stock and the separate curries, then cooking the rice in the prepared stock, before finally assembling everything in banana-leaf packets. Cooking was a form of meditation for him, and he took great pleasure in preparing meals for family, friends and colleagues while living in The Hague. His frugal Dutch guests were often astonished by the spread of dishes on his table and the care he took to keep them well fed.

Kitchen tools in the tropics

The surviving kitchen objects reveal how different materials and designs answered different domestic needs.

Her hot-water warming plate had a hollow glazed body, filled through a small opening near the rim and closed with a cork. The heated reservoir kept food in the shallow dish warm at the table—an economical solution before electrical warming devices became commonplace.

A heavy English glazed-earthenware bowl served a rather different purpose. Its substantial weight provided a useful counterweight when heavy bread doughs were mixed and worked by hand, while its thick earthenware body helped buffer the contents against rapid changes in the surrounding temperature. This was useful both in the heat of a tropical kitchen and in cooler Badulla, where dough could otherwise become too cold to rise readily. It thus provided a more stable environment in which dough could be left to rise. Although heavy, the relatively low-fired glazed earthenware remained fragile and had to be handled with care.

Other tools were particularly well suited to pastry making in a warm climate. A hollow Pyrex glass rolling pin, made in England under the J.A.J. name, could be filled with cold water or ice and closed with stoppers, helping to prevent the butter in pastry from becoming too warm. Together with the cool marble work surface, it made pastry considerably easier to handle in the tropics.

Two of the kitchen tools I value most, however, are my grandmother-in-law’s pastry blender and her large Austrian enamelled-steel mixing bowl. The pastry blender has a pale-green wooden handle with cream-coloured bands, a metal thumb rest and five curved wire blades that make it remarkably effective. The blades cut cold butter, lard or other shortening into the dry ingredients without the heat of the fingers softening the fat—the essential advantage of this deceptively simple tool. It is especially valuable in tropical Colombo, where butter softens quickly. I dread the day it finally gives way; modern pastry blenders I have tried have all been disappointing by comparison.

The Austrian bowl, probably given to her during the 1970s, is quite different from the heavy glazed-earthenware one. More than fifty years later, it remains one of the handiest tools in my kitchen. Exceptionally light, with opposing handles, it is easy to steady, turn, lift and pour. Its broad, rounded interior gives a whisk or spatula ample room, while the enamelled steel is non-absorbent and quick to chill, without the weight or fragility of glazed earthenware or glass.

The heavy glazed-earthenware bowl, the chilled Pyrex glass roller, the cool marble surface, the pastry blender and the light enamelled-steel bowl each answered a different need in the kitchen.

Our family kitchen remains a happy accumulation of useful objects from Sri Lanka, Britain, Austria and elsewhere, held together by culinary practice rather than geographical origin.

An economy of preservation and reuse

Like many Sri Lankan households of an earlier era, my husband’s grandparents retained an assortment of cigarette tins, wooden boxes, biscuit tins and glass containers.

Before plastic packaging became ubiquitous, a container was seldom discarded merely because its original contents had been consumed. Its shape, size and strength suggested another purpose. Cigarette tins could serve as measures for rice or receptacles for small valuables; Danish biscuit tins became sewing boxes or containers for cakes and toffees.

A Kandyan gentleman of an older generation once showed me his grandfather’s ceremonial dress. He first took the costume from an old metal trunk, then brought out a cigarette tin kept in his safe. From it he withdrew a finely worked 22-carat gold bo-gaha boralaya—the stylised Bodhi-tree pinnacle screwed onto the top of a Kandyan chieftain’s brocaded velvet hat. The humble tin was exactly the right size to protect it.

There was nothing incongruous about the arrangement. Frugality and utility were widely valued in a society less driven by consumption and more inclined to preserve, adapt and reuse what it already possessed.

The objects surviving from the Badulla household tell more than a story of thrift and preservation. Made in different places and for different purposes, they were absorbed into the rhythms of a Sri Lankan home, adapted to changing needs and passed from one generation to the next. Their value lies not simply in their age or craftsmanship, but in the lives lived around them—the meals prepared, conversations shared, work undertaken and memories carried forward. They have survived because successive generations chose not merely to preserve them, but to continue using them, keeping something of that Badulla household alive in our own.

On our terrace, at the centre of our antique table, the old teak lazy Susan still turns.

All News Advertisement

Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

4 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

International Peace Day was observed on 21 September. It finds Sri Lanka with a genuine achievement to record and a demanding test to meet. The UN’s theme this year was “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It also honoured the “everyday architects of peace”—people driving local action and building a lasting peace from the ground up. In the 2026 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka rose 30 places, from 97th to 67th among 163 countries. Over the same period, global peacefulness declined for the twelfth consecutive year to its lowest level since the index began, and South Asia suffered the sharpest regional deterioration. The test is whether the government will protect the civic space in which those architects of peace work.

Sri Lanka’s improvement is real and deserves acknowledgement. In this year’s review, issued a few weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged progress in the form of action against corruption, arrests and investigations linked to political killings, enforced disappearances and the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and continued official denunciation of racism. A ranking, however, records conditions at a particular moment. It does not guarantee that they will last. Sustainable peace will depend on three factors. These are whether the government addresses the unresolved causes of conflict, whether it strengthens accountability for past and present abuses, and whether it protects the civic space in which peace is built from below. On the first two the record is incomplete. On the third, the draft NGO law threatens to weaken the very organisations that press for the other two.

What holds Sri Lanka back from a higher place are the same things that fed the war at home and also feed international conflict that rages elsewhere in the world. These are racism or ethnic nationalism that is narrow-focused, corruption and lawlessness. Equality, accountability and the rule of law are their remedies. The present government has committed itself to these, and is a significant improvement over governments of the recent past. But these pillars are not held up by governments alone. Peace is made in villages, workplaces and university campuses. It is made by families who insist on the truth about their disappeared, by journalists and lawyers who expose abuse, and by community organisations that bring Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese into practical cooperation.

Unfinished Work

The UN High Commissioner’s report to the current Human Rights Council session, covering October 2025 to July 2026, shows how much remains to be done. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still being applied, producing arbitrary arrests and long detention without charge. The report calls for a moratorium pending repeal and for the release of long-term detainees. Military-occupied land has not been released, memorialisation lacks support, and tensions over land and religious sites persist. The Batticaloa district illustrates how such problems endure. In the past three years, two Presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have visited and instructed that the dispute over grazing land in Mailaththamadu and Mathavanai be resolved. It is a dispute between Tamil cattle farmers and outside Sinhala cultivators, and it has not been resolved. When two Presidents issue instructions and nothing changes, the fault lies in the machinery of State. An unresolved dispute does not stand still. It hardens into the next grievance.

Accountability shows the same pattern. The report documents torture and deaths in custody, and surveillance and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society. Serious cases remain stalled for years, among them the killing of seventeen aid workers of Action Contre la Faim in Muttur two decades ago. Sharper still is the case of the Eastern University refugee camp at Vantharamoolai, where in 1990 the army took away 158 persons in a single day. They were never seen again. The camp’s officer-in-charge, Dr T. Jayasingam, later Vice Chancellor of the university, identified the officers responsible. More than three decades on, those officers have not been questioned. These cases are still remembered because families, survivors and independent witnesses have refused to let them be forgotten. Meanwhile several commissions of inquiry have completed their investigations but nothing further has happened.

What South Africa, Argentina and other post-conflict societies have found indispensable are four pillars of what is called “Transitional Justice” which are truth, accountability, reparations and non-recurrence. In Sri Lanka’s circumstances, truth means credible, independent investigation of what happened to the disappeared, and support for memorialisation. Accountability means prosecuting Muttur, Vantharamoolai and comparable cases, and removing credibly accused persons from senior office. Reparations mean compensation for victims and the return of military-held land. Non-recurrence means repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, releasing those held under it in the meantime, and resolving local disputes such as Mailaththamadu before delay hardens them. A country that buries its past does not escape it. The past returns in the next generation.

Civil Society

It is against this background that the draft NGO law is most troubling. The proposed legislation contains sweeping provisions for State oversight and control of civil society organisations. Among these are enforcing a licensing requirement on NGOs, which is to be renewed every three years, and severe penalties for not submitting reports on time, or for spending on emergency flood relief (for instance) when the NGOs mandate is peacebuilding (as an example) with possible sanctions including deregistration and having to shut down. Civil society groups have warned that it would confer excessive discretion over their registration and operations. Officials in Sri Lanka have abused such powers in the past. Additional power without effective checks invites further abuse. Sound regulation would have clear criteria for registration, an independent registrar and a right of appeal to the courts. What cannot be justified is a regime in which registration becomes a licence to be withheld from organisations that scrutinise policy, expose abuses or advocate for the rights of citizens.

Democracy is based on checks and balances. Those who press for accountability are part of those checks. The contradiction is plain. A government that has pledged accountability, equality and the rule of law ought not to be preparing to weaken the very organisations that press for their fulfilment. The organisations most exposed are those working on disappearances, land, memorialisation and reconciliation in the North and East, where the State’s record is weakest and the need for independent witnesses greatest. Silencing them would not remove the grievances they document. It would remove the channel through which those grievances are addressed peacefully. The government appears to be relenting, which is welcome, but a pause is not a withdrawal. The bill should be withdrawn and any replacement drafted in genuine consultation with those it would govern.

Investment in peace as called for by the UN in its International Peace Day theme implies commitment over time, with returns that come slowly. Sri Lanka’s 30-place rise on the Global Peace Index is a first dividend and nothing more. It can be built upon only if the government matches its commitments with action: withdrawing or fundamentally redrafting the NGO law, repealing or suspending the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing Muttur, Vantharamoolai and Mailaththamadu to resolution. A higher place in a global index is not a certificate of success. Sri Lanka’s higher ranking is an encouraging start, but it will endure only if the space in which citizens speak, question and organise is protected. Peace is built from below, and a government that is serious about it will treat civil society as a partner rather than a threat.

Features

Africa is buying: Sri Lanka must start selling

Published

4 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A call to Sri Lankan exporters and agencies: Can Sri Lanka compete with China and India in Africa?

By Kana V. Kananathan
Former Ambassador

Sri Lanka has spent decades concentrating its exports on traditional markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Yet across the Indian Ocean lies a rapidly expanding market that remains significantly underdeveloped by Sri Lankan exporters: Africa.

The opportunity is not theoretical. Sri Lanka already exports packaging, textiles, rubber products, pharmaceuticals, paper, machinery and electrical goods to African markets. The question is whether these modest beginnings can be transformed into a serious export strategy—and whether Sri Lanka can compete against the enormous commercial presence of China and India.

The answer is yes—but Sri Lanka must compete differently.

Kenya: Gateway to East Africa

Kenya should be the starting point.

Sri Lanka exported approximately US$32.08 million to Kenya in 2025, while importing US$11.41 million. But US$32 million is tiny compared with the opportunity: Kenya imported more than US$24 billion in 2025. Even a 1% share of that market would represent nearly US$240 million in annual exports.

And the commercial base already exists. Sri Lanka’s 2025 exports to Kenya included approximately US$9.99 million in paper and paperboard products, US$9.73 million in knitted fabrics, US$3.64 million in pharmaceuticals, US$1.24 million in rubber products and US$1.20 million in machinery.

Kenya’s import structure is equally revealing. In the third quarter of 2025, industrial supplies represented 34.4% of imports, machinery and capital equipment 19.2%, food and beverages 9.0%, and consumer goods 7.3%. The opportunity for Sri Lanka, therefore, extends well beyond consumer goods—we can become a supplier to African industry.

But competition is fierce. Asia supplied around 70% of Kenya’s imports in 2025, with imports from China rising 16.5% and those from India 11.3%.

Sri Lanka cannot challenge China and India across every product category. Nor should it try. We must target sectors where quality, specialisation, reliability, technical capability, smaller production runs and flexibility matter more than simply offering the lowest price.

Where Can Sri Lanka Compete?

Packaging is an obvious starting point. Cartons, boxes, bags and labels are already among Sri Lanka’s exports to Kenya. Importantly, some Sri Lankan companies operating in Kenya are themselves importing these products from Sri Lanka. The market already exists; the challenge is to scale it.

As Africa’s food-processing, pharmaceutical, apparel and consumer-goods industries expand, demand for sophisticated packaging will grow with them. Sri Lanka already possesses the manufacturing capability and industry experience to capture a larger share.

Industrial rubber products, tyres, gloves and specialised rubber components offer another opportunity where Sri Lanka has established manufacturing expertise.

The apparel supply chain is equally promising. Rather than competing directly with African garment factories, Sri Lanka can supply fabrics, elastics, labels, packaging and specialised textile inputs.

Some Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing and export companies already established in Kenya, Togo, Ghana and Ethiopia are importing several of these inputs from Sri Lanka. The supply chain, therefore, already exists. The next step is to move beyond supplying Sri Lankan-owned factories and become a competitive input supplier to the wider African apparel industry.

Other sectors deserving systematic market development include pharmaceuticals and medical consumables, processed foods, biscuits and confectionery, coconut products, cinnamon and spices, electrical products and cables, industrial chemicals, ceramics, light engineering, agricultural equipment and food-processing machinery.

Sri Lanka should also look beyond physical goods. IT, fintech, banking technology, engineering, healthcare, hospitality management and professional services largely escape the freight disadvantage confronting merchandise exports.

The Tariff Problem Can Become an Opportunity

Market access cannot be discussed without tariffs.The East African Community applies a Common External Tariff with bands of 0%, 10%, 25% and 35%, while certain sensitive products attract still higher protection. Simply filling containers in Colombo with finished consumer goods will therefore not always be commercially competitive.

But that obstacle points towards a bigger opportunity: manufacture in Africa.

Sri Lankan businesses could export intermediate materials while undertaking final assembly, manufacturing, processing or packaging in Kenya. Packaging companies could establish converting plants; electrical manufacturers could assemble locally; pharmaceutical companies could explore manufacturing or packaging partnerships; and food companies could undertake final processing closer to consumers.

Kenya would then become more than an export destination. It could become Sri Lanka’s manufacturing and distribution gateway into East and Central Africa.

With the East African Community now comprising eight partner states and extending geographically from the Indian Ocean towards the Atlantic, establishing a regional presence is increasingly more important than viewing each African country in isolation.

West Africa Cannot Be Ignored

Sri Lanka simultaneously needs a West African strategy.

Ghana offers potential as an English-speaking commercial gateway and host of the AfCFTA Secretariat. Nigeria, with its enormous population and consumer economy, should be approached as a major market in its own right, despite its greater regulatory, currency and operational complexity.

ECOWAS tariff bands of 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 35% again make product selection critical. Sri Lanka should concentrate on products with sufficient differentiation and margins to absorb freight, tariffs and distributor costs.

Pharmaceuticals demonstrate both the opportunity and the challenge. Nigeria imported approximately US$766 million in pharmaceuticals in 2025, with India supplying roughly US$394 million and China US$131 million. Ghana imported approximately US$301 million, with India supplying about US$140 million.

Sri Lanka cannot simply offer another generic product and expect to beat India on price. We must identify specialised products, reliable supply arrangements, partnerships and, where commercially justified, local production or packaging.

Stop Promoting Sectors—Identify Products

Sri Lanka now needs an Africa Export Opportunity Study based on individual products, not broad sectors.

The Export Development Board, Foreign Ministry, chambers and private sector should jointly identify 15–20 priority products. For each product, Sri Lanka should calculate the HS code, African annual import demand, principal suppliers, Chinese and Indian market shares, applicable duties, freight from Colombo, regulatory requirements, distributor margins and final landed price.

That will tell us where Sri Lanka genuinely has a competitive advantage.

The Commercial Test

Before spending resources promoting a product, apply one simple test:

African import demand + Sri Lankan production capability + tariff + freight + distributor margin + regulatory cost = final landed competitiveness against China, India and local African production.

Only products that pass this test should receive concentrated export-promotion resources.

This would move Sri Lanka away from exhibitions, delegations and general discussions towards what ultimately matters: specific products, specific buyers, specific distributors and actual export orders.

Give Our Missions Targets

Commercial diplomacy must become results-driven. The Government should set clear annual trade and investment targets for every Sri Lankan mission in Africa.

Missions should be evaluated not merely on diplomatic activity, but on buyers and distributors identified, business introductions made, investments facilitated, market barriers resolved and measurable exports generated.

In a competitive Africa, our missions must become active economic frontlines not merely diplomatic outposts.

A practical strategy could operate through three commercial gateways: Nairobi for East and Central Africa, Accra for selected West African markets and Lagos for Nigeria.

Sri Lanka’s total exports of goods and services reached approximately US$17.25 billion in 2025. Capturing even a small additional share of Africa’s enormous import market could, therefore, make a meaningful contribution to export earnings, investment and foreign-exchange generation.

Africa Will Not Wait

Sri Lankan exporters must stop looking at Africa as a distant or difficult market and start treating it as a strategic growth market.

We cannot compete with China and India on scale, but we can compete on quality, specialisation, flexibility and reliability. Exporters must identify country-specific opportunities, establish strong local distributors, build partnerships with African businesses and use Sri Lankan companies already operating on the continent as gateways into regional supply chains.

Where freight and tariffs weaken competitiveness, businesses must be prepared to move towards local assembly, joint ventures and manufacturing in Africa. Exporters cannot do it alone. They need aggressive, measurable and results-driven commercial diplomacy from Sri Lanka’s missions.

Africa is buying. Its markets are being captured now. Sri Lanka must stop watching from the sidelines. We must enter, compete, build our presence and secure our share.

(Ambassador Kana Kananathan is a businessman, Diplomat, lobbyist and an expert in African affairs, with over four decades of experience on the African continent. A long-time resident of Africa, he served as Sri Lanka’s envoy to Uganda and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to 22 African Nations, and was the permanent representative to UN Habitat and UN environmental Programme. Over the years, he has been the Elections Monitor across the continent, working closely with African governments, and built enduring partnerships with African leaders. He also served as Economic and Investments Advisor to former President Professor Alpha Condé of the Republic of Guinea)

Features

Memories and Midnight Magic: Recipe for a perfect 31st Night dance

Published

4 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

The heart of a great 31st Night dance is memory, and memories come rushing back when those 70s, 80s and 90s golden oldies begin to play — those timeless tunes that make revellers, young and old, rush to the floor and dance the night away.

A perfect 31st Night is not just a party. It is a journey. A journey through time.

The music should flow like a love story. Start slow, start soft. Let couples glide into a waltz for romance. Let the floor come alive with a twist, a rock ‘n’ roll, a jive. Let nostalgia build with beautiful sing-along oldies generally associated with a New Year’s Eve dance.

This is the art that many of our entertainers seem to have forgotten.

The final hour, before midnight, is sacred. It should be collective energy at its peak. The entire crowd, on the dance floor, linking arms, swaying together, singing, at the top of their voices, those sing-along favourites.

Yes, I’m referring to those immortal, nostalgic favourites that unite the world: ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘When The Saints Go Marching In,’ ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ ‘Celebration,’ ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ and so many more.

One wonders if some of our modern entertainers have even heard of these nostalgia anthems that traditionally lead up to the dawning of the New Year! This is not just music; this is ritual.

Then comes THE moment: Lights dim. Music pauses. A hush falls. The countdown begins — 10, 9, 8… — hugs, wishes, tears of joy, and then … ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Hands crossed, voices united, bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. That moment makes or breaks the night.

Here is the truth that many genuine 31st Night revellers feel but hesitate to say — an overdose of baila music at New Year’s Eve events is NOT welcome.

Of course, baila is required. Baila is our Sri Lankan heartbeat! But a 31st Night dance is for everyone.

When it’s ONLY baila, the twist and rock n’ roll lovers, the waltz kings and queens feel left out. And they are the very people who MADE nostalgia! They are the die-hard revellers who have kept the 31st Night spirit alive for decades.

A family mentioned to me that they went along with friends for a 31st Night dance, in the city, to usher in 2026, and were thoroughly disappointed with the setup.

The bands in attendance, they said, failed to generate the excitement generally associated with a 31st Night event.

If given a free hand, the music at certain Colombo venues will be mostly baila, and that is going to disappoint many. Some are already worried that it will be just a baila scene this year, as well.

A memorable 31st Night respects all rhythms … yes, a waltz for romance, a twist and rock n’ roll for that 60s magic, a cha-cha, a slow foxtrot, and then the baila, after the countdown anthem.

That balance is what makes it inclusive, classy, and truly fun-filled.

Organisers, especially in Colombo, should keep this in mind: let it be 70% nostalgia – Western, and 30% baila, with the last hour left for pure baila madness, after the New Year is in!

Organisers must work out the programme for their 31st Night and instruct the entertainers to follow those instructions. The band should not dictate the night; the spirit of nostalgia should.

This New Year, let’s give Colombo what it truly wants — memories, midnight magic, and music for every soul on the floor.

Let’s dance into 2027 with class.