Video
Kind Sri Lankan Family Gets A Reward 💰🇱🇰
· 17 min · Watch on YouTube
Kind Sri Lankan Family Gets A Reward 💰🇱🇰
Harry and Ali turn off the Aluthkade food street in Colombo 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.
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.