Morgalogue

This was meant to be my christmas report, then an account of a workshop I ran in one of the villages, then a goodbye Sri Lanka post, It’s been a hectic few weeks. I’m now writing from Kerela, South India where we are having a well earned rest at Kovlam, a touristy but really pretty nice beach resort. My camera has been stolen (along with my diary by baggage handlers) so I’ll spare you the photos. Our last weekend in Sri Lanka was spent with our affectionate surrogate family. We joined them and the chronically unfit Sri Lankan masses on a pilgrimage to the top of Adams Peak (2200m) to watch the sunrise. (more…)

Hambantota and Kalmounai are small towns that, a bit like Lockerbie or Dunblane, become defined by tragedy. Despite there being nothing much to see, before or after ‘History’ left its mark, you can’t view them in their rightful ordinariness again. After all the tsunami dead and missing were added up, first hand reports compiled and carnage quantified, these 2 unlucky spots came out head and shoulders above everywhere else on the island. It’s a label I’m sure they’d rather forget, but when everything from the school to the graveyard has a placard erected, marketing the generosity of a different country or aid organisation, it doesn’t seem likely for some time yet. (more…)

We had to get going. We had a 5 hour drive East to get to Amapara and the military imposed curfew began in 6. We’d spend the night there and make the trip to Kalmounai in the morning. Unlike the LTTE border I’d visited in the North, this one was pretty live. Very shortly it looks like Sri Lanka will admit to the international community what everyone here has known for months – civil war is back on. The Tigers have declared and end to negotiation, termed the ceasefire agreement ‘defunct’ and tried to blow up the Defence Secretary (the President’s brother). It seems like a fairly clear message to me. (more…)

Well, it’s official. The Poles are invading Sri Lanka too. A one-woman wave of imigration is headed this way on the 13th of December - my lucky day. By complete co-incidence Lidka has found herself a swanky job at the UN in Colombo doing geogphical data mapping. Conveniently enough, that’s where I live, so we will be living together for a month before spending Feb travelling South India. My surrogate family are going to let her stay because I’m ‘like a son’ to them (haven’t I done well !?). Otherwise, it’s a highly unorthodox move - my workmates have been seeing their fiances for 4 years and haven’t yet spent the night with them. Can’t be worse than a ’Wrath o’ God’, B&B up north. Can it ?

I have never been so well behaved in my life.

If you’ve heard about todays bomb blast in Colombo, don’t worry, I’m fine. It happened about 15 minutes ago yet I’m sure by now every Sri Lankan knows about it. The target seems to have been the Defence Minister . My workmates are all crowded round the TV drinking tea, eating biscuits and tutting …. A lone cameraman is wondering around the site being continually waved off by harrassed looking soldiers. It’s a weird, unedited, live feed. A car is still on fire and the soldiers rush off to move adjecent vehicles before they explode. The shaky camera sneaks off to explore, finding the remains of the suicide bombers moped and a gruesome, twisted body flung on to the roof of a car. It’s unbloodied but for the lack of a head. You can see the cameraman trying out a few compositions before moving on. Nobody seems particulary rattled by this sort of image … it seems that everyone in this country has seen a severed head or worse. I’ve seen two now. Yech …

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to do something native and as a way of combating the kind of pot-belly prolonged curry abuse will give you, I joined ‘an aquatic club’. I’m not talking about a bunch of health fantasists with shaved chests meeting up to discuss the best swimming cap here – we’re talking old photographs on the walls, flunkys, wicker chairs, billiards, a bar, and arguing across tables full of food and glasses, the kind of men who thankfully haven’t squeezed into their speedos in years. Yes, it’s true folks … I am living the colonial life. And ironically, it’s about the most native thing one can do in Colombo.  (more…)

I’ve adjusted. I noticed it the other day when I was walking down the road. I actually saw the road for one, not just angry fumes and machinery. I saw trees, I saw a few familiar faces, a tuk-tuk beeped behind me and I moved instinctively, without stopping or turning. A cow crossed my path and I wasn’t surprised. I wait at my bus-stop and take in the morning sky - towers of cloud rising from the city as the sun scorches Colombo dry. A month ago I just saw dirt and chaos.

I’ve decided I like this bit the best. Sure, the big ‘ka-blaaam’ culture shock bit is exhilerating. Innate impressions are formed. Smell suddenly becomes as vivid a sense as hearing. Hearing becomes useless as you understand nothing, so volume, rythmn and any new, exotic sounds are all that register. Taste becomes a security mechanism. Unfathomable strangeness is cautiously analysed and yet the resulting internal response might be something nuts like ”oh my god, I’m eating a sheep’s ball … didn’t I read about that somewhere?”. (more…)

I feel a rant brewing …. It’s 6am, I’ve been awake since 4.30am. This is not an unusual scenario though I wish desperately that it was.

6am in Sri Lanka is the equivalent of our 8.30am. People are up and about and going to work, dogs are barking, cars and buses are beeping happily at eachother, exotic birds screech, fervent religious chanting is tannoyed across the neighbourhood, drumming wafts back in response and the old man across the courtyard at exactly 6.10, spends 15 minutes hacking up phlegm. Despite the fact that people generally start work at 8.30/9am, by 6am the entire country is in full swing. Utter Bastards. (more…)

Trip two was a ride with the village boys up to one of our micro-hydro sites in the rain forest, high in tea country. My colleague Dasanayke and our driver Premasiri only speak a few words of English between them, which is about the current extent of my Sinhalese, so departing at 4.30am, chat was a bit thin on the ground. By 9am we’d reached the foothill town of Ratnapura, which sounds like the recipe for the curry we ate for breakfast in a grotty wee café. Cleanliness here is a notch above India people tell me. But it’s not easy; in the heat and general grime, if you leave a crumb for more than a minute it becomes an ant-hill. Their solution is to wrap your grubby plate in cling-film and eat off that. 

There is a meeting of representatives of from every micro-hydro village in the region scheduled for 10am in a conference room above a noisy bus-station. We meet the round little chairman and then, after a cryptic exchange, my colleagues rush off to a meeting in the next town and I’m left there. All will apparently be explained later  (more…)

Well readers, I left you last time with the cheery little tale of an old man being decapitated by a rather slow, but obviously very heavy, train. You’ll be pleased to know things are looking up.

Work have dispatched me off on trips to little villages on just about every corner of the island. I’ve got to know the inside of our little ‘loaf of bread’ mini-van with its fairground suspension better than my gaff. I have discovered that Sri Lankans spend approximately 97% of their lives travelling - wedged together, hurtling through the jungle in the rain, on the wrong side of the road, wherever there’s room, to the sound of some fantastic spangley-asian-rhumba music. The first trip was up north to Anuradhapura, the ancient capital and then on to some remote villages on the LTTE (Les Tigres Tamil) border. My colleague Bandula, a big loveable guy with the temperament of Baloo the bear, had taken his wife and two little girls along for the ride, so I figured was safe. (more…)