Postcards from Sri Lanka: Attack of the Killer Long Weekend

Eek. What a great weekend! Work is really slow today, so I thought I’d blog while everything is still fresh in my head!

Beer Bellies and Rugby Matches
As an avid armchair athlete, when my cousin invited me to a rugby tournament I jumped at the opportunity. She works for CitiBank and they along with a crap load of other banks were having a mercantile rugby tournament sponsored by Carlsberg. It was massive (by Sri Lankan standards), about 40 teams with 15+ players along with spectators. She was slightly apprehensive about taking me, due to my behaviour at the last sporting event we attended together.

In 2001 Sri Lanka was hosting South Africa to a test cricket series (aka five full days of continuous cricket) we decided we’d go to the match for the fun of it. And I decided I’d act like an ass for the fun of it too. So I made posters with glitter etc., went and sat right by the edge of the pitch, screamed and caused a scene until I got all of us on TV. 3 times I might add. Fortunately for her I wasn’t given enough advance notice to pull anything of such magnitude off this time.

Granted this wasn’t any sort of professional rugby tournament or anything, but it was still fun. Kind of like an office softball tournament. Except a million times better. See with those things, part of the amusement lies in knowing the people who are generally out of shape and a little athletically challenged. In this instance however her office mates were beyond hilarity. 20 something old boys who drink like tanks and therefore have beer bellies, running up and down the pitch (taking the game very seriously I might add) and having to call time every 2 minutes are so b/c they need to sub off due to exhaustion. I know it sounds more sad than funny, but I suppose to see the full humour of the situation you have to witness it for yourself. But whatever fun I was able to have, it was multiplied that much more for my cousin, because these are all people she unfortunately knows.

This was a different kind of rugby that was being played. It’s known as ‘tap rugger’ (commonwealth countries tend to refer to rugby as ‘rugger’ and rugby players are ‘ruggerites’), as the title insinuates, there’s no tackling whatsoever. Which adds to the fun, as HSBC’s C Team was all girls, and everyone was rather eager to tap/see them being tapped.

CitiBank didn’t make it all that far in the tournament. They lost every game. But it was still a lot of fun. The more I hang out with Sri Lankans my own age, the more my opinion of them is changing. I mean, yeah a lot of them are really stuck up and you want to slap them, but there are a few who aren’t just tolerable but really cool. However, for the record, by and large they suck, but the few gems that I’ve met thus far have totally contributed to making this trip the best that I’ve had so far.

Ain’t no African Lion Safari
Another long weekend in Sri Lanka. This time it was the Poson Poya, which commemorates the day that Buddhism was brought into Sri Lanka from India. Every month there is a Poya day, they don’t all necessarily commemorate something, but the Buddhist believe that something ‘special’ always takes place on a night when there’s a full moon, it’s supposed to be auspicious or something. That’s why every Poya day has to coincide with a full moon. Because of this moon alignment, long weekends aren’t necessarily long weekends, but more like a random day off in the middle of the week. This month’s Poya day fell on a Tuesday, so everyone planned to skip work/school on Monday and head south.

We left early on Saturday morning (exhausted after the Rugby match which we didn’t get home from until 1:00am) to Kataragama wanting to get there at a decent time. It’s a 6 hour journey, which should actually should have taken a lot less time if the roads weren’t so crappy. Although Kataragama is a place where loads of Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists go to make vows, we were staying there because Ravi Bappa was able to book the Ports Authority holiday bungalow for the weekend. Apparently ‘Lord Katara’ (whenever there’s a ‘gama’ at the end of a word it means ‘town,’ and ‘watte’ means ‘estate’) is a Hindu god whose exclusive temple resides in this sleepy little town. It’s not the most happening place, as my pictures will prove but hordes of people descend upon it on Poya weekends to make vows. It’s a bit odd that Buddhists and Muslims come as well, but that’s the way religion is practised here, completely bastardised.

Of course we didn’t visit the temple at all, instead the highlight of our trip was a tour of Yala which is a national park located on the south east coast of the country, and because of its proximity to the sea, parts of the reserve were severely affected by the tsunami. I’ve mentioned to all of you before that Aiya and I are a considered the ‘thin’ cousins. You’ve seen thathi, the rest of his family is much like him, ‘big made’ would be the politically correct way to describe them. We needed to hire a nine seater jeep to take into the park because none of my uncles wanted their cars ruined in the off road conditions that we’d be faced with. So it was like a real safari that we were embarking on. Naturally we ended up with a jeep that had mechanical issues, and the driver kept blaming it on the ‘weight,’ using our collective fatness for the rumbles, coughs and spurts that were emanating from the engine. I still can’t believe we decided to go into the park with that jeep, because everyone thought it would break down at any minute. But the deposit had been paid and my cheap uncles were going to use the jeep no matter what. As a result we didn’t get to see that many animals, the sputtering scared everything off! But it was still a load of fun. We packed a basketful of food, and did what we do best, eat.

Despite the thick coating of red dust we received we all managed to have a good time.
Animal count:
- 4 elephants in the park itself, one as soon as we entered crossing the road
- loads of peacocks (who were stunning!) and ‘peahens’ which I only discovered is the female version of a peacock, who would’ve thought?
- jungle fowl (wild chickens)
- wild boars
- warthogs
- crocodiles
- alligators
- a tonne of tropical birds from flamingos, storks and pelicans to intricately coloured hummingbirds
- I could go on. But I shall stop for now

Efelumps
Although the wild Elephant count was pretty poor, we saw a whack load of some tame ones being bathed in a river during one of our jaunts in the area. Since it’s the Poson Poya some Buddhist temples were holding parades to mark it, and no Buddhist celebration or for that matter I guess any celebration in South Asia is complete without an elephant. Larger temples have a stock of elephants on hand for occasions such as this, one of the male elephants even had bronze plated tusks in place for the event. Because this area is a touch on the arid side, there is an irrigation system which has been put in place to help with the cultivation of rice. The paddy fields (rice fields) are incredibly lush as a result of this system which was put into place during the time of the ancient kings, nothing has been changed except perhaps the addition of a little bit of concrete here and there. So as a result of this there are reservoirs running throughout the town cutting across here and there, the water isn’t very deep, just below the waist. These elephants (which are much smaller than their African counterparts) lie flat down on their sides fully immersed under water with only their trunks peeking out. They are very content to lie motionless and be scrubbed by their keepers with the rough outer soft shell of a coconut. But take heart, if my description falls flat you can catch it on tape.

Tsunami Zone
Most of the work that I’m doing here is tsunami related, although I haven’t done any real grassroots relief work, all the project proposals that I’ve drafted have to do with getting funds and projects approved for the reconstruction process. In a way I wanted to go and see some of the tsunami affected zones, just so I could get a deeper understanding of what occurred, but also I must shamefully admit because the voyeur in me just wanted to see. When we were at Yala I was able to see the depth of devastation, there were huge trees which were just uprooted and flung aside, homes that were levelled to the ground. You guys have seen the pictures, and seen the videos so there’s no point in my giving you a point-by-point analysis on that. But the sheer magnitude of the event really grabs you when you stand on the edge of the beach and look around. I didn’t feel like taking pictures at all. It didn’t feel right, I felt like I might be trivialising the situation by doing so. So many people had died where I was standing, and I think it would have been disrespectful to be snapping up pictures. Plus it was totally unnecessary anyways, because those images are seared in my mind.

Speaking of the tsunami, June 26th is the 6 month anniversary of it. Ammi and thathi mentioned that there’s been a lot of hum in the news about it back at home. Even here in Colombo events are going to be held to commemorate what happened. Personally I find it all a little bit distasteful because they’re just trying to keep the tsunami in the international headlines. Even though it’s supposed to be for the victims, it will actually become a media circus.

Well, my time in Sri Lanka is slowly coming to an end, but there are a few more exciting things to be experienced before I come back home and hit the books. Hopefully work will continue to be slow so I can keep updating regularly ;)