Nithmi Walpitage: Sophomore Nithmi Walpitage was born in Sri Lanka and learns from her parents’ experiences growing up there

A one-story cream house with gaping windows and a plot of coconut trees with swooping palm leaves sits unoccupied in Kottawa, Sri Lanka.

It’s sophomore Nithmi Walipitage’s second home. 

Her family still owns the ranch but has only visited once since moving to the U.S. for Nithmi’s parents to pursue higher degrees when she was 3. Green card struggles and schedule conflicts make it difficult for the Walpitages to fly over 20 hours to Asia. 

As Nithmi grows up in Prairie Village, she continues to celebrate her Sri Lankan heritage and learn from her parents’ experiences growing up there.

“I know I’m different, but I act like everyone who was born here,” Nithmi said. “When I go to Sri Lankan events, I feel very whitewashed, but I still try to celebrate my culture.”

Nithmi doesn’t know anyone else at East with ties to Sri Lanka, and she’s used to people assuming that she’s from India. She’s never learned about Sri Lanka in class, and her family has yet to find a Sri Lankan restaurant within 100 miles.

“I wish more people could try our food,” Nithmi said. “It’s kind of in between Thai and Indian food, but it’s not the same.”

Every Sunday, her dad Lakmal cooks the same traditional lentil soup, kale salad with scraped coconut and red chili chicken curry that his mom would cook for him and his brothers when they were little.

“It’s very spicy, but the kids love it like how I did when I was their age,” Lakmal said.

The Walpitages celebrate Sri Lankan New Year in April with network of Sri Lankan immigrant friends from Manhattan, Lawrence and Kansas City in gatherings of a few hundred people with games, dances and prayer. Sometimes the family drives to the nearest Buddhist temple in Lawrence, Kansas to pray for other special occasions like the Half Moon celebration. 

“If we were in Sri Lanka, we would go to the temple at least once a month,” Lakmal said. “But we can’t do that here. It can be very difficult to fit in, but we try as much as possible. We’ll go to the high school football games and love to be part of the community.”

Lakmal’s adolescence in rural Sri Lanka was a whole different world than Friday night football.

“It’s a really remote village without electricity where I grew up,” Lakmal said. “At 10 years old, I’d wake up at five in the morning to catch the first out of three buses and get to school in the city around 7:30 a.m.. After school, I’d help my grandparents by working in the rice paddy field.”

At the time, Sri Lanka was deep in a civil war. Lakmal’s parents would ride separate buses to work to ensure that he would still have one guardian if the other was struck by a suicide bomber.

“The fighting was always on my mind,” Lakmal said. “Not everyone in Western culture knew what was going on.”

Now as a parent, he wants his kids to be informed of both local and international news. In the car on the way home from cheer or rowing practice, Nithmi tries to stay updated by discussing Sri Lankan politics and events like the ongoing economic crisis with her dad.

“One big difference here is the academics,” Lakmal said. “Where I grew up, the margin for error was very low. If you missed a few exams, you’d be out of the system and not able to continue to higher-level education. I was very focused and earned my place. I want my kids to work hard and focus on academics but also get to do sports and other activities to enjoy their lives.”

Nithmi is grateful to attend East, especially after her visit back to family in Sri Lanka the summer before her freshman year after a long wait due to restrictions with green cards. The trip was filled with gasoline shortages, frigid water-heater-less showers and no air conditioning — nothing like Prairie Village.

“Random insects and frogs would just crawl around everywhere, and it was just normal to my family there,” Nithmi said. “There are a lot of things that I realized are a privilege to have in America.”

Some of her fondest memories of the trip involve sampling traditional foods. In the mornings, she’d eat warm strawberry sugar-coated Gnanakatha cookies that her grandma bought from a street vendor instead of her typical granola bar.

“Oh my gosh, I still think about the food there,” Nithmi said. “It’s so good. My favorite is milk rice from street vendors. There’s different kinds of fruits like guava, passion fruit and naminam, which is like a sour green apple but better.”

She also visited historical sites like Buddhist temples from 2000 BC and caught up with grandparents, uncles and cousins — a look into Sri Lanka that she’s grateful to have experienced.

“I couldn’t fully speak to my grandparents, but the trip still made me feel more connected to my family,” Nithmi said. “I definitely want to go back before college. My main goal is to relearn how to speak Singahlese.”