Sri Lankan Dried Fish Project Ends, Automobile Mechanic Training Begins

Mr Murakami and Mr & Mrs Suzuki with local house wives

Mr. Murakami (center) and Mr. & Mrs. Suzuki with local house wives

A project run by the Nippon Skilled Volunteers Association (NISVA), which taught Sri Lankans to dry fish and thus extend their food supply, has recently ended. Over the course of four years, 400 local people learned how to cleanly and safely dry fish. NISVA has continued its work in the island nation with a new project to train automobile mechanics, a profession that is in great demand there.

Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a depression in the wake of both a civil war and a tidal wave. At the request of the Sewalanka Foundation, NISVA dispatched a pair of senior volunteers to the town of Tangor in the south of the country in September 2006. Seiichiro Murakami, and Yuzuru Nishiwaki, formerly high school classmates, spent six months teaching traditional Japanese methods of drying fish.

Mr Shibata (2nd from left), Mr Kanzaki (right)

Sizue Suzuki teaching (left)

By November, 2010, they had been succeeded by six different volunteers who taught the drying of everything from horse mackerel to sardines, in places ranging from Negombo, near Colombo, to Trincomalee and Jaffna in the north and Batticaloa in the east. Terms ranged from six to eighteen months.

While all kinds of fish were touched on, requests from trainees ensured that the course focussed on dried bonito, especially in Trincomalee and Batticaloa. The program went through an extensive period of trial and error, due to the differences between Japan and the perpetually hot Sri Lanka.

Since trainees started with no experience, they had to be instructed from zero, and learned such things as:
-Don't get sand on the fish
-Keep flies and crows away
-Keep the salt content low

Murakami (right), Nishiwaki (left) with Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of The Nippon Foundation

Ueno was the last volunteer

Following the project, a new one was begun, to train car mechanics. Following the civil war, Sri Lanka has found itself with a dearth of engineers and thus requested a new initiative in which highly skilled Japanese mechanics help rebuild this kind of human resources.

NISVA sent staff and volunteers twice to the northern town of Vavuniya to research the local needs. From March, three volunteers will go and run the project for 2 to 3 years.

Hiroyuku Oyaizu, chief of NISVA said, "Making dried fish was the start of our work in Sri Lanka. We're also considering ways to help deveop the nation's tourist industry."