Photo by Asyrique Thevendran/The Gazelle

Meeting the Staff is a new series of articles that aims to bring closer NYU Abu Dhabi’s staff to our readers. Every other week, The Gazelle will talk to a staff member and introduce you to their stories.

Chandrawathi Rathnayaka is a security guard at NYU Abu Dhabi. She hails from a small village near Nuwara Eliya, in southern Sri Lanka, where she travels every year to visit her 11-year-old son. After getting married and losing her retailing business in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, Rathnayaka moved to the UAE in 2005. Having previously worked as a security guard in Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates and a bank in Fujairah, she joined NYUAD in 2009, before students arrived.

I liked Sama Tower better … because it had a lot to do. Now, if you see here, [there is] nothing to do. The campus is big, but we don’t have to do anything. Sometimes I feel bored here. In Sama Tower, if you would sit at the reception … the time is passing very fast … Here, all the work has become divided in too many locations … and I never see most of the students and my colleagues.

I enjoy the most when all students, all staff are here … When the campus is empty, I don’t like it. I like it when all is busy and everybody is here and I can do something for them; I am most happy when I help someone.

Normally when we join in the yearly party. We have a get-together with the staff in some time around Christmas and it is the best. There are like dancing parts and singing and everything is in a very nice hotel … they prepare everything for us and it is a very good day… I also like the Staff Appreciation Day, because it’s from [the students] heart, their love for us … They cook, they serve, they come, call us and give us a portion … it’s really the best. They express their love for us, so we feel more close to them. And every year we get something small.

I have plants … I have a plantation and I am enjoying with that; I don’t go anywhere … There [are] some flowers, vegetables and now big pumpkins have come out, a lot of stuff to eat … Also I missed green — Sri Lanka is green, you know? So I am trying to keep being friends with the green color … It’s hard to grow here. In the whole accommodation, we have a ladies separated part, and only in my room [they grow]. Sometimes people even come and take photos.

[She laughs]

I am planning to go back and do my own something in Sri Lanka … and stay with my son also there … I have two ideas: one is, I am thinking to make ... a small hotel, a restaurant, and the other is in the tourism side … rent some vehicles or something to join the tourism, because in Sri Lanka now, we have many tourists.

When I will complete paying my loans here. My son is now growing up and he needs me … He has stayed without me too many years: He is always asking, “When will you come?”

Yas [Island] is good; Yas is very nice. It has a very nice green color. Most of it is trees and flowers and it’s very natural … and it’s completely quiet. I like nature. The city, I don’t like: it’s too busy … [although] the Corniche is also good.