---
type: Video
title: "Kind Sri Lankan Family Gets A Reward 💰🇱🇰"
description: Down the residential alleys behind Colombo's food street, where a man invites Harry into his home and describes what the economic crisis is doing to it — food and electricity prices, and a family he cannot manage on.
tags: [sri-lanka, colombo, economy, giving-back, hospitality, aluthkade]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T18:10:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRzDvy5mGI
video_id: mYRzDvy5mGI
upload_date: 2022-03-13
duration: 1029
---

# Kind Sri Lankan Family Gets A Reward 💰🇱🇰

Harry and [Ali](/people/ali.md) turn off the Aluthkade food street in
[Colombo](/places/colombo.md) into the residential alleys behind it, get invited
into a home, and end up with the clearest account in the whole series of what is
happening to the country.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. The family are private
individuals and are not named or described here beyond what bears on the account
they give; there are children present and they are not described at all.*

## What the alleys are like

- **Residential and predominantly Muslim** — Harry greets people with *salaam
  alaikum* and is told it lands fine either way.
- **Brightly painted houses, washing strung between them, power lines
  everywhere.** He says it would be an Instagram spot if anyone knew about it.
- **They get narrower and narrower** until he can barely pass, and then loop back
  round.
- **Nearly everyone stops to talk.** His own comparison: if a stranger wandered
  around his neighbourhood at home filming, the reaction would be different — and
  he immediately qualifies it, saying he shouldn't assume everyone here is pleased
  either.

## The economy, from inside it

The most substantial thing anyone says to Harry in Sri Lanka, from a man who has
lived in the same house for **33 years** and invites him in.

- **Food prices are very high**, and the phrase he keeps repeating is that it has
  become **very difficult to manage the family.**
- **Electricity is very high.**
- **It predates the current government**, and the current government has promised
  reductions.
- **His work is intermittent** — some business, sometimes none.

**Harry says he has heard the same thing from many people.** That matters: the
single passing remark in the market video three days earlier turns out to be a
theme he has been hearing repeatedly and had not put on camera until now.

The video was filmed in **March 2022**.

## Passing it on

He gives the family **$50**, and is explicit about the reasoning in two ways
worth keeping separate.

- **Why them**: the man wanted nothing, simply offered to show him his
  neighbourhood, and Harry's view is that people like that are the ones who
  should get it.
- **Why now**: **a stranger paid for his meal two days earlier**, and he describes
  this as passing that gesture on rather than repaying it.
- **Whose money it is**: he says plainly that it **is not his** — it comes from
  viewer donations through PayPal and Patreon, and he thanks a specific donor on
  camera for $100 of it.

He finishes by saying he wants to do much more of this, and with bigger sums. See
[reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md).

## Key moments

- `[00:37]` A Muslim neighbourhood, and which greeting to use.
- `[01:08]` The colours, and the alleys nobody photographs.
- `[02:34]` On being welcomed by strangers, and not assuming everyone is.
- `[04:09]` The alleys narrowing to nothing.
- `[10:02]` Thirty-three years in the same house.
- `[11:04]` Food prices, electricity, and managing a family.
- `[11:37]` "I've heard many people tell me this."
- `[14:22]` The $50, and the chain it comes from.
- `[15:36]` Whose money it actually is.

## Extracted pages

- [Sri Lanka](/countries/sri-lanka.md)
- [Colombo](/places/colombo.md)
- [Ali](/people/ali.md)
- [Reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md)