Make a contribution to Selva's well-deserved retirement fund

Her full name is Selwamani Sellamutthu but most of us know her as Selva. Her ID card says she was born on February 15th in 1962, while in reality this was the year of 1964. Fire destroyed the house of her family in Kadugannawa, Selva was about 16 years old at the time but was not at home as she was already working in Colombo. Her ID card got destroyed in the fire, and when applying for a new one she decided to change her year of birth by two years: “I wanted to go to the factory and work”.

An ID card with a false date of birth is only one of the many things that make Selva exceptional…

Over the course of the last two years, we have had the absolute pleasure of having Selva as our live-in help. She is the cornerstone of our household and especially appreciated for:

• Her delicious and also creative way of cooking.

• Her always friendly smile and good mood.

• Her willingness to help whenever and however possible.

• Her humour and affectionate laugh.

• The great affection she has for our little sons (who are currently nearly 4 and 1 year old).

• Her motivation to learn new things, for example looking after our big dog and a newborn baby.

Before us, there were sixteen other families whom Selva cared and worked for. I tried to capture Selva’s story after I interviewed her while enjoying a nice cup of tea. I hope you enjoy reading it because her story is quite remarkable:

• Selva was born into a Tamil Hindu family living in Kadugannawa in Kandy district, she was the youngest of seven children.

• Although Selva was initially sent to a local Tamil school when she turned 5 years old, her family did not have enough money to buy her books nor a slate which meant she was not allowed in the classroom. Most days she would have to stay outside and was beaten by her teachers. Her time at school was not successful and short lived, after two years she quit: “I am still very sad about that. That is why even now I try to help any child that wants to study – I will give money, no problem for me”.

• Selva then started working at the age of 7 years. She joined her older sister in Colombo who was working as a cook for a Burgher family in Mount Lavinia. Initially Selva worked unpaid, as she still had to learn how to undertake household tasks: “I would polish the table, mop the floor and sweep”. Later the family started paying her 10 Rupees a month, Selva laughs: “10 Rupees, madam, 3 months’ work, 30 Rupees, big money! I go to shop and buy clothes and food. 50 cents one egg, today 70 Rupees one egg”. Reading this may make you think Selva was not in good hands, but the family was kind and caring – she would play with one of the daughters who was exactly her age and recalls that the father would give them ice creams on Sundays after church. The mother and other children in the family taught Selva how to write Sinhala but she also gradually learned how to speak English.

• When Selva turned '18 years old', short after the fire at her house, she worked in a clothes factory in Borella, Colombo. She did this for a period of 3.5 years and learned to work various machines to manufacture clothes. With a beaming smile she says: “I can do the flat lock machine, madam”. She explains to me that at first the working conditions and pay was fine, but this got worse over the years which made her decide to return to domestic work.

• Thankfully, an opportunity presented for Selva to find work soon. The family from Mount Lavinia where she worked as a child needed help for one of their now grown-up children. Not in Colombo, but in Oman which meant that the then 19-year-old Selva moved overseas. A chapter of her life that lasted about 10-years, and where she got to live and work not only in Oman but also in Singapore and Vietnam.

• Upon return to Colombo, Selva started working for what she refers to as 'English families.' This started with work at the Australian embassy where her sister was working as a nanny at the time. Selva was asked to join the team and helped with cooking. This was in the 1990s and at the time she had progressed on from her childhood salary of 10 Rupees a month to 3500 Rupees per month! Lovely and good as Selva is at her work, she gathered nice recommendation letters and was easily referred to other diplomat families. Over time she worked for various Australian and British families – all whom she recalls vividly and tells me stories about.

• In the meantime, things were also changing in her private life. Through church in her hometown, she met her husband Jaya, and got married. She recalls this was an arrangement recommended by the pastor: ”We saw each other in the church three times, and then we got married. We didn’t know each other”. One year later her son Hansa was born. Selva left the Australian family she was working for at the time and went home to look after Hansa until he was 1.5 years old. But soon after this she had to start working again as the family needed money. This time Selva ended up in Dubai to work there for just under two years for a local family. Upon return to Sri Lanka, she was hired again by a family from the British embassy. For most of his early childhood Hansa was cared for by his grandmother, Selva’s mother-in-law.

• Five years after Hansa was born, Jaya and Selva had daughter Ruth. Again, Selva took a break from work to care for her daughter. She did small local jobs next to it, such as cooking meals and cutting jackfruit which she sold in little bags at the schoolyards in order to make ends meet. Selva’s own school experience made her extremely determined to change things for the better for her own children. She explains to me that even though Government school is subsidized, you still need money for the uniforms, books, and other materials but she also wanted to save 200 Rupees a day so that Hansa would get some extra tutoring. Ruth, at the age of 5-years-old was sent to a Montessori school kindergarten.

• In 2018 when Ruth started high school, Selva returned to Colombo to work full-time again or more than that. She started working as a live-in help in one of the high-rise apartment buildings in Colombo 2. Although she was fulltime with a Colombian family with children, Selva explained she needed more money: “my madam, agreed I could do extra work. I really needed that money for the two children in school, the extra tuition fees, and Hansa’s music classes. In the nights I went to other families in the tower, for ironing and babysitting”.

• Once the Colombian family left, Selva stuck around the ‘On320 apartments’ to many of her part-time jobs and eventually met a lovely American couple for whom she started cooking including cooking classes. Over time Selva and this family grew a strong bond which was the start of an ongoing friendship. At the time Selva combined the cooking work with caring for an elderly lady who needed care and some minor medical assistance in Borella. When it was nearly time for the American couple to move back home, I happened to bump into Selva in one of the various elevators. She greeted me friendly and made my cheeky one-year old laugh so we started chatting, Selva explained she would soon be looking for a job and I took her number. For that serendipitous meet-up I will always be grateful.

After two years of work for our family but 53 years of hard and dedicated work for seventeen families in total, it is now time for Selva to go back to her own house and family. To live in the lovely cool hillside town of Kadugannawa where she is extending her house with a professional kitchen. In this kitchen she plans to cook school meals for children from the local government school. This way she will still generate some income for her family, do what she does best and loves most: cooking, and help children from the local community to have a successful time at school. Her story becomes full circle!

We have set up this fundraiser to make sure that she can pay off the loan she took for her kitchen construction, to make the finishing touches to her kitchen, to buy the essential equipment, but also for her to finally sit back and have a well-deserved quiet days once the school meals have been prepared and packed in the early morning.

Selva – you are much loved and appreciated by us and our two children and likewise by many more families who you have worked for in the past, as well as their friends and family who visited their houses. We tried to reach out to as many of these families as possible for you – not just to raise funds but also to create an opportunity to reconnect and rekindle relationships.

We thank you so much and wish you Jaya, Hansa, and Ruth all the best!

Lots of love and merry Christmas,

Willemijn, Anton, Nate, Aiden & Luna (the dog)

P.S.:

Please note that the Go Fund Me payment portal is set-up in a way that all donations will be securely transferred into a personal Euro account in the Netherlands (W.E. de Bruin, ABN AMRO). However, Go Fund Me is an international website and will allow for various types of online payments. I will close the fundraiser in January 2025, transfer the funds to LKR and deposit it into Selva's local account. For the sake of transprancy, I intend to share a bank statement to those who donated.

Moreover, note that the points above are just snippets of Selva’s story. I also intend to work on a full write-up of what she told me and upload as a PDF as soon as possible.