Emily Scott-Long (1992-97)

If I’d ever managed to map out a plan for fulfilment in adulthood, how I live now would have seemed illusory in the extreme: a home in the tropics, a job at a western-run clinic caring for sick, wounded and abandoned animals with nowhere else to find the love and sanctuary all creatures need, and days bracketed by walks at sunrise and sunset on beaches bordered by swaying palms and a rolling sea.

Such is the stuff of dormitory dreams, to be sure, but hardly likely to be achievable in the world that lay beyond years of preparation for a more conventional life at Orwell Park, Marlborough and Newcastle, where I completed my degree in English literature in 2005. Like so many of my generation, I headed into my 20s with a scarcity of ideas as to how I was going to make my way in life beyond the safety net provided by the Bank of Mum and Dad.

Looking back now, though, it feels as though Providence was playing an unseen hand. With modest savings earned as a manager of a busy Cambridge pub, and a deep yearning for fresh horizons after losing my beloved mother Jane to breast cancer in 2017, I flew east into the night from Heathrow three years ago on what was to have been an extended backpacker’s holiday. Sri Lanka — a country I had first visited on family holidays when my parents lived in Delhi in the 1990s— was my first port of call.

After my first nights in a rough-and-tumble hostel in Colombo, it dawned on me that I might have made a terrible mistake. But a chance encounter a few weeks later with a stray kitten outside a roti shop near Tangalle led me to get in touch with WeCare Worldwide, an emergency animal hospital on the southern coast of Sri Lanka founded and run by an English vet from Newcastle, Janey Lowes, who took me in as one of the expatriate volunteers who have helped run the clinic since it opened its doors in 2014.

I soon knew that I had stumbled onto the perfect job. Everything about it seemed tailor-made for my passions: a consuming love of animals, particularly those in distress; a yearning for immersion in foreign cultures; and a deep fondness for the hubbub of the Indian subcontinent, ingrained in me since my parents were posted there by The New York Times during my years at Orwell Park. Added to all this, there has been the eternal beach bum in me, as compelling as ever now that I am in my late 30s and a virtual pensioner by backpacking standards. But alongside all of this has been the desire to make a tangible difference in an often harsh world —the fulfilment that comes with doing something that answers to the cries of those in need. For an animal lover, what can compare with the joy of a freneticallywagged tail, or a nuzzled hello, from a creature who has survived life-threatening injury or sickness through the care and nourishment provided by their human carers?

What began as a three month volunteering stint evolved into an offer of a modest living as assistant practice manager. I accepted immediately. Relocating to Sri Lanka on a permanent basis raised a few eyebrows from well-meaning but puzzled friends, who would question how I could choose a life so far from the comforts and rewards of the family life many had made for themselves at home, ‘You can’t just move to Sri Lanka!’, they would say, to which Ireplied, ‘Actually, I can! Watch!’

Oblivious to the global pandemic then looming, I began my full-time job ready to do anything at all in aid of the dogs —and the occasional monkey or cat — who are our main clientele. Little did I know that the next 18 months was to be the most testing in the clinic’s history. Covid-19 compounded what was already an existential challenge. We lost half our international staff when many chose to head for greater safety from contagion in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and a host of other western nations that were their homelands. Airport closures, quarantines, travel restrictions, shortages of essential medications, and an unceasing entanglement with Sri Lankan and western bureaucracies, have made it almost impossible for new volunteers and medical supplies to reach us, leaving us to soldier on with our loyal and hardworking team of Sri Lankan staff. Without them, we would surely have had to close our doors, with all that would have meant to the dozens of animals who at any one time are our clinic inpatients. WECare is one of only two animal hospitals with inpatient facilities outside Colombo, the capital of a country with a population of 22 million, and we are always at full capacity. The waitlist gets longer by the day, and until recently we have survived with no nurses and, in Janey, our only vet.With an estimated 3 million street dogs in Sri Lanka, most of whom have little or no access to other veterinary care, we have a revolving door of sick and injured animals who seem to have missed the pandemic memo.

Cats and dogs who have suffered road traffic accidents, bone-deep maggot wounds and savage boar attacks are an everyday occurrence. Then there are the legions of dumped puppies we find on the doorstep at first light each day, who need nurturing and, ultimately, Sri Lankan families ready to take them in. We do our best to find these on our “adoption days”, when we head out into local neighbourhoods with a loudspeaker truck, appealing for families to join the lists of those ready to take them in.

We shed our share of tears over the heartbreaking cases of creatures who are too sick or wounded to save. But there has also been plenty of joy over the creatures who make it through treatment to recovery— sometimes after weeks at the clinic, sometimes months. The camaraderie among the clinic’s mostly female staff has a strong resonance of my early days at Orwell Park, when I was among the first intake of girls in the early 1990s, struggling for acceptance by ragtag boys not altogether convinced of the virtues of gender equality.

With worldwide pandemic restrictions now easing, the cavalry is on the horizon in the form of much longed-for vets and nurses arriving one-by-one, each to a hero’s welcome, and donors who have stood with us through thick and thin.The light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel has allowed us to breathe a little easier, on our own behalf and the animals’, to celebrate what Janey and the rest of the team have achieved in the last 7 years, and to look forward to a less stressful future.

It’s also afforded me time for reflection on some of the qualities that have helped me through the adversities of clinic life, qualities that have been at least partly rooted in the experience of English boarding school life. At Orwell Park, and later at Marlborough, I learned early lessons in putting the interests of the team ahead of my own, of building morale in the face of setbacks, of managing a personal life far from home, of caring for others when their fortunes falter — and of cherishing the family lives we’ve all left behind.

WECare Worldwide (“WECare”) is both a UK registered charity (1162386) and a Sri Lankan NGO (SL FL- 159116). Janey Lowes started WECare Worldwide in 2014 to serve the street dogs of Sri Lanka. We offer a wide range of veterinary services to our patients including both emergency and non-emergency treatments, vaccinations and neutering. WECare aims to provide UK standard veterinary care for street animals in need around the world and started operations in Sri Lanka due to the huge overpopulation of street dogs, often with extensive injuries or severe disease. Since 2014, WECare has grown from a one-man-band to a dedicated team of 20 or so individuals, working together to help, treat and educate. We’re a mixed bag of vets, nurses and animal lovers from the UK, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand.