Sri Lanka’s natural heritage for pandemic and food security

Despite lack of insight from our policymakers to use traditional medicine and indigenous plant-based knowledge to handle the current health situation, there is a great eagerness by ordinary people to seek out rare herbs of Sri Lanka to protect themselves

By Surya Vishwa

To make this sojourn on earth harmonious, natural heritage of humans plays a key role. This keeps us alive by providing us oxygen, relieves stress, provides us food and helps keep the ecological balance of life. The natural world is a part of us and we are part of the natural world. Each land has its own unique tapestry of nature woven around it and the heritage of its people is shaped from this root. 

In Sri Lanka it is a blatant fact that for 73 years after independence from the British colonists, we have not developed a vision to safeguard, conserve and use our natural heritage for wellbeing, food security and biodiversity conservation. Yet, there are hundreds of people in this country; without much money, or power or fame who have the vision – for the long and short term – to protect the natural heritage of their land they were born into and the land which they remain faithful to. 

Sri Lankan citizens that equally belong to this land could be Sinhalese or Tamil or Muslim or Burgher. The Harmony page will look at narrating these stories in this COVID-19 backdrop which we are facing within concrete jungles far removed from the natural world where our valuable herbs, medicinal plants and nature protecting trees are.

Below is one such story; that of 41-year-old Suranga Lakshan Kariyawasa. 

Suranga hails from the Manana village in Horawala, Welithenna, some five kilometres from Mathugama town. He is a chef and ‘health-based recipe inventor’ who has committed himself the mission of safeguarding, promoting and educating on Sri Lanka’s natural heritage. 

He has created in the Horawala, Welithenna area a haven of rare plants of Sri Lanka, and is today filling a major vacuum by creating awareness among Sri Lankans about the natural health-based solutions of their land. 

Alongside his plant nursery is a sale outlet of fruits, vegetables and heirloom rice varieties of this country cultivated in the biodiversity method, which the nation little talks of, even amidst a ranging pandemic. His mission is to ensure the wellbeing of his people combining his experience as an international chef/recipe inventor, herb cultivator and educator on Sri Lankan natural heritage. 

In the past six years that he has started his plant nursery he has created products such as sundried fruits and vegetables.

Within the plant nursery is a small garden space replete with a stone table and bench where visitors can enjoy traditional sweetmeats, teas and coriander. 

“It is surprising how people around Sri Lanka come in search of rare plants and trees. Despite lack of insight from our policymakers to use traditional medicine and indigenous plant-based knowledge to handle the current health situation, there is a great eagerness by ordinary people to seek out rare herbs of Sri Lanka to protect themselves.”

Suranga who got an attack of COVID-19 which he sees as a semprathishyawa which becomes fatal only if a person has neglected his or her health, recovered within three days with the consumption of traditional herbs.

“I grow all the key herbs that our wedamahattayas use for getting the initial infection of COVID-19 out of the system. And when I became a victim of this ailment a month ago, I consumed the medications of one of the wedamahattayas; Amila Sanjeewa who is among the Lankan physicians who treat COVID-19 very successfully and effortlessly in less than three days, and was fully cured.”

“Although myself and many others recovered because we know our natural heritage and medical heritage, there are hundreds around us dying daily of COVID-19. This ignorance of our heritage is a crime against humanity and I am doing what I can to rectify as a citizen of this country. There are many others like me. 

“We like to make this appeal to all Sri Lankans; please plant at least 30 herbs used in Sinhala Wedakama for flu-like symptoms in your garden. Please know you do not have to die of this Semptrathishyawa-like disease. You just need to know your nation’s heritage and put it to use. Bing Kohomba and Yaki-Narang are two kinds of plants that are crucial in treating COVID-19 patients through Sinhala wedakama and I now have thousands of people around Sri Lanka asking me for plants of these varieties. This means that though the policymakers may be ignorant of our heritage, our ordinary people are not.”

So how does he collect these rare plants and from where? Suranga states that he provides the area people with the seed varieties or saplings which he collects from all over the country. He has cultivators around the country breeding these plants and enabling him to sell the small plants. 

Sometimes the villagers have some of these plants and they have opened small nurseries and sell them to me. From Ran Thambili to Thippili to Bulath to Bing Kohomba and different jackfruit varieties and a wide range of deshiya beeja vegetables. These I supply throughout the country.”

Suranga’s experience as an internationally well-known chef provides a solid base to approach the food world innovatively focusing on national heritage. In the Middle East where he had worked for over a decade, he has promoted Sri Lanka’s traditional fruits and vegetables globally. His initiation to cultivating local plant varieties had commenced based on inspiration from one of his foreign bosses abroad who encouraged him to start his own entrepreneurship route. 

Suranga has received unbridled support from veteran traditional physicians of Sri Lanka in identifying plants that have medicinal uses. His life story thus far is a lesson in perseverance. He had obtained his education at the Horawala Navodya Maha Vidyalaya; having completed his Advanced Level examination in the stream of Arts, his direction to the world of exotic cuisine had begun at the age of 18 when he started his career as a kitchen helper. 

After working in several key hotels in Sri Lanka, he got the opportunity to work in the Middle East in several hotels which had many nationalities whom he had worked with. The idea to get into cultivation had been first put to him by one of his foreign colleagues whose sister had started a flower nursery.

“When I worked in Qatar at a very famous hotel, I learnt a lot from the different people of diverse nationalities among which were Europeans and Egyptians.”

Suranga states that one key lesson he learnt in food preparation in the hotel industry was never to waste. For example, the thorny pineapple skin which is usually thrown away had been used for garnishing after being dehydrated. His exposure to dehydrating different fruits and vegetables had sparked off the first ideas on creating his own heritage food outlet parallel to a cultivation centre.

Early this year Suranga joined a Harmony page linked initiative spearheaded by mineral engineer and academic Dr. Sudath Rohitha for an island-wide movement to cultivate food security focused trees, especially jackfruit. Suranga few months back started experimenting with a series of jackfruit products. 

“We are in the midst of a major global health challenge but we Sri Lankans have our armour; our medicinal and natural heritage. What has to be done is take our people away from unhealthy foods and replace it with health-based products. I am now in the process of creating a jackfruit-based series of preservable products that include ‘instant jackfruit’ food alternatives which will have a completely herb-based alternative to the poisonous instant food in the industrialised good market we have. Being an expert in the food industry I appeal to refrain from such foods.”

Suranga is now cultivating diverse traditional rice varieties such as Batapola wee and Ran Kahawunu. The fact about our messed up COVID-19 management is that we have become blind to our heritage. As a country we are sitting on a goldmine and begging for help from other countries to tackle this crisis. This help does not come for free. It comes at a cost of billions of rupees and locking down the country because we do not use our medical heritage; it is costing us billions daily. It is only people rising to our heritage knowledge that will rectify this situation. Food is our medicine and medicine is our food.”