Sri Lanka
by Abbey Snell
Capital and Population
The capitals of Sri Lanka is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte and Colombo. Sri Jayawardenepura is only 17 square kilometres in size with over, 21, 496, 594 people, rapidly increasing with up approximately 900 births and 300 deaths, every day!
Climate
The climate in Sri Lanka is very different during the year, there is two monsoons and a dry season. The maximum temperature for the year is 31 degrees celsius, the average is 28 degrees celsius and the minimum temperature is 22 degrees celsius. During the months of November and March the rain fluctuates. The two monsoons are from, May-August and October-January.
Religion
According to the census taken in 2011, 70.2% of Sri Lankan's are Buddhists, 12.6% are Hindus, 9.7% are Muslims, 7.4% are Christians, 6.1% Romans and 4% are Catholic and other Christians.
Customs and beliefs: Buddhists
Buddhists believe that their people are reincarnated with several lives which is called Nirvana, they are not to harm or kill living things, they are not to take or steal anything from anyone, they are not to lie and are not aloud to have alcohol or take drugs. A traditional greeting from the elders is to clasp their hands together and nod.
Customs and beliefs: Hinduism
Hindus believe that they are reincarnated as a living thing and what they become is determined by their behaviour, they have social status awareness and they believe in many gods such as, Ganesh, Shiva, Vishnu and Parvatand kali who are all an eternal source of everything.
Languages
In Sri Lanka there are a few languages spoken, 47.4% of people speak in the language of Sinhal, 23% speak the language of Tamil, 26.7% speak English and 2.9% of people speak a different language.
Education
On the island of Sri Lank there are 9,830 public schools with around 4,030,000 students in them. Sri Lanka has the highest literacy rate in all of South Asia.
Health
Sri Lanka does not have many doctors or nurses, which makes it really hard for them in serious medical issues. In fact they only have, 55.1 medical officers for each 100000 people, 6.6 dental surgeons for every 100000 people, 157.3 nurses for every 100000 people and 30.8 midwives for every 100,000 people. There are only 0.55 physicians per 1000 people in Sri Lanka and here in Australia we have 2.5 per 1000.
Living Conditions
In Sri Lanka there are many people living on the streets but most people do have homes. There are a total of 3,969,027 occupied houses yes that means the rest of Sri Lanka is homeless. Out of the occupied houses only 26.9% have water coming from a pipe. Only 73.1% drink safe water.
Economy
Sri Lanka mainly produces and exports tea, clothing and rice. They also earn money from tourists. The most popular brands made in Sri Lanka are Victoria's Secret and Tommy Hilfiger. They mainly export to the United States and the United Kingdom. 8.5 million people have jobs in Sri Lanka, and the average GDP is $3,200 per person.
Environmental Issues
Sri Lanka has many environment issues such as, losing more than 35% of their forest since 1990's and are still loosing 26,800 hectares of forest each year, due to deforestation for crops and large timber and fuel plantations, they also lost a lot of farming land because of horrible soil erosion, they have polluted waters from raw sewage and pollution from factories, they also suffer from the atmosphere pollution by cars and factories, and of course they have a lot of natural disasters such as, flooding, tsunamis and earthquakes.
Natural Resources
Sri Lanka has many mineral resources, but their natural resources are, rare clear sapphires, hydro power, which is used for electricity, limestone, which is used for many things such as, road bases, colouring toothpaste, medicines, animal food and cement and they also have phosphates which they use as fertiliser.
The Sri Lankan flag
Asia
Sri Lanka is located of the coast of India.
Map of Parts of Asia
FACT!
Sri Lanka used to be called Ceylon but in 1972 got changed to Sri Lanka!
Fact
Sri Lanka produces 311 million kilograms of tea each year!