Pairs

Good things come in pairs. Socks, Twix, eyes, badminton raquets. What good is one without the other? Ammi and Thathi are the same as any pair, for a short period of time things go on swimmingly, but tear the two asunder for too long and the universe gets flipped on its head. Add an exotic locale to the above and you'll find yourself a recipe for disaster, one so fine that even Aiya could not replicate. Have no fear, this isn't an entry where I rant about my dysfunctional family. Just the dysfunction that this trip has thus far been.

It seems that Thathi who is normally an extremely anal retentive person suddenly finds a prune juice like elixor when entering a tropical climate. To me it's completely inexplicable, because the heat does not change any level of analness in me. It actually seems to have hit a steady pace and has not fluctuated in a good 3 years I'd have to say. Vacations to the beach infuriate me because I feel like it's such a waste of time to be just sitting around and doing nothing. Don't get me wrong, I love my do nothing time, I find that it's the best way to procrastinate, but do nothing time is best enjoyed when you actually have something to do. That's the best way to savour it. Anywho, so it seems like Thathi has developed the ability to not think ahead. In Sri Lanka there are no hidden agendas, so when you go to the store to pick up some eggs it isn't code for, go to the store to get eggs, and on the way stop off at the hardware, lawn and pet store. Instead it's more like this.

Me: So what are we doing tomorrow?
Thathi: I don't know.
Me: Well, we haven't done anything since the Monday we came.
Thathi: There's still a lot of time left.
Me: You only have two weeks left and you haven't called any of the 30 something people you're supposed to have a meal with
Thathi: We'll play it by ear.
Me: You can play it by ear. I have plans.

At least I have a little bit of control. What this means however is probably doing absolutely nothing with Thathi in the next 2 weeks before he leaves. Thankfully I've kept in touch with my work mates from last year and don't find the company of my cousins insipid. Otherwise there'd be a big problem. It seems that Thathi and his brothers seems to be quite content to hang around around topless, with their man bosoms resting on their guts while they sit under a ceiling fan. To them it seems unfathomable why anyone would not take pleasure in such an exhilarating pursuit. For one, it's just not a pretty picture. To see four men who bare more than a passing resemblance to each other with guts out... I'll leave that mental imagery to you. They are all rather happy in each others' company, which is okay, because they are a tight knit family. I however find the heat stifling enough, I don't need to be further suffocated by overweight relatives. It is precisely for this and many other minor reasons that I have decided to start working ASAP. For sanity's sake I hope it's no later than this Wednesday.

When Ammi's around Thathi is manageable, because she can reel in the craziness. Without her here it's like a free for all. Guess that's why they've worked so well these past 30 years.

Spare Change

During our ill fated walk on Monday, Thathi and I got to talking about poverty and disparity rates, it's a topic that inevitably always comes up when hobnobbing with the proletarians. Sometimes it's really easy to forget that you're in an underdeveloped country. The vast majority of people live well below the "official" poverty line, which is determined by the amount of calories a person consumes a day. That is a very base way of trying to quantify poverty for various and obvious reasons, it does not take into consideration standards of living or social indicators.

On Monday we headed to Majestic City (<-- mildly humorous video link) for the requisite picking up of supplies. Usually at such an early juncture of the trip we are walking targets for a mugging. Since the exchange rate was really decent on Monday it was decided that all our dollars would be exchanged for rupees. The smallest denomination that either of us had on hand were 1000 rupee notes. Such a large bill doesn't make it conducive to giving handouts to beggars despite what inflation might be like. We hadn't even been in Sri Lanka for more than 48 hours so the poverty and filth are all still very raw to me. At this point I haven't reached such depths of apathy to begrudge a 10 rupee note and conversely wished I had some money to give.

There was a rather pathetic looking fellow in a wheel chair at the foot of the front entrance to the mall. He didn't have any legs, they were gone clear from below the upper thigh and also only stumps for arms. As thathi and I walked past him he asked us for some spare change. We had to keep walking as neither of us had anything to give him. We managed to do everything that we had set out for ourselves at MC and on our way out we saw the beggar again. There was a guy in a red Bata shirt whom I recognised as one of the clerks in the store, he had a 2 litre bottle of cold water and was washing that beggars face, arms and legs. Sri Lanka is not so caste dominated as India is, but that was nevertheless a very uncommon sight, people just don't do those kinds of things. Sometimes you see humanity in the most unexpected places.

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 ;)

Postcards from Sri Lanka: Vesak

Just finished off a long weekend here, the Buddhist holy days of Vesak where the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha are all celebrated simultaneously. Dude, Buddhists? Total multi-taskers. So as a result of Vesak folks here get a four day long weekend. The rich ones head off on holiday retreats while the poor ones enter into the city from the villages in droves in order to see the city lights and take in the festivities. After spending two mind numbing days at my grandparents’ place my uncle very kindly came to my rescue on Monday. He came and got me on his way home from Nuwara Eliya.

My uncle lives in a ‘gated’ community in Colombo. He works for the Sri Lanka Ports Authority and lives in a Ports Authority home in Mutwal now. They have a beautiful home of their own in Nawala, surrounded by a jungle, cows, the works. The place they live in now is pretty much in the very heart and soul of the city. Car horns can be heard at any time of the day and the rumble of big container trucks aren’t at all foreign. As a result of their proximity to the city there’s always something interesting going on.

Pandols and Dhansalas
On Monday night, the first day of Vesak was celebrated by the lighting of pandols and dhansalas. This was my first Vesak here in Sri Lanka since we left. Not that I remember anything about it from our time here; it was all a new experience for me. We went to see the pandols in Borella at about 9:00ish (the Buddhist wait for an auspicious time before they light the pandols so there’s no set starting). It’s difficult to explain what a pandol is. The best way I can describe it is that it’s like a massive brightly coloured billboard with Lord Buddha in the middle meeting a LiteBrite. Then there are small scenes from the Buddha’s life surrounding the larger picture. It’s lit up in such a way that in the dark it looks it really does look like someone did a giant Buddhist LiteBrite and the colours change and rotate. (I took a video of it, so if you’re really interested in seeing what it looks like, wait until I come home.) Droves of people line the streets to take a look at the pandols because of their sheer size, and supposed beauty, they’re easily a few storeys high. Along with the ever present street noises, there is a man who does a Sinhala freestyle over a really bad sound system telling stories from the Buddha’s life and thanking those who have given donations to the temple. It’s hardcore yo.

In the streets you can see long lines of people waiting to get into white tents that have Buddhist flags waving in front of them. These are the dhansalas where free food can be found. Essentially a dhansala is part of the Vesak celebrations, people in the community get together, take up collections and use the money to cook large amounts of food for the start of Vesak and continue on for a few days. The entire city is lit-up for Vesak, it’s like Christmas with all the bright lights, but instead of the colour palate being red, green etc it’s all yellow, orange blue and white.

Tour de France
After two solid weeks of inactivity and eating I thought it best to take advantage of the empty Colombo streets (during the day, because of Vesak) and my cousin’s abandoned bike. Shanga’s not much of a bike enthusiast, but it didn’t take much to convince her brother Amresh to head out into the mean streets of Colombo Tour de France style. We had a great time on Tuesday morning, rode through one of the slummiest areas of town, Kottehane where most of the Port labourers live. It’s absolutely filthy. So I braved the heat, catcalls and even took the whistles in stride (girls in Colombo don’t ride bicycles on the streets unlike those in Jaffna and Trincomalee).

I prefer biking to any other type of physical activity just because you get a bigger rush off of it than you would by walking (and I have zero endurance so running is out of the question) also, you can totally take in your surroundings and absorb what’s going on around you. I saw a set of white kittens playing on a rubbish heap, and wanted to bring them home with me, then there was the fluffy little brown puppies asleep in a gutter with their mother no where in sight and how could I forget the sight of the fat, black pot bellied pig eating rice on the side of the road. (And no, it wasn’t Aiya, he left on Friday remember.) If I had a house here it would most likely end up
being an animal menagerie.

There’s also all the interesting people and their homes. Not that I find squalor and poverty fascinating, and I don’t mean to be trite and sensationalize it either. But the fact of the matter remains that in Sri Lanka because our family leads an incredibly comfortable existence, this is the side of the Colombo which I hardly get a good glimpse at. Men drunk off of toddy (made from the sap of the Kithul tree, kind of like getting plastered on Maple sap, they make syrup out of Kithul sap too) before 10:30 in the morning, stumbling around in their sarongs smoking and cursing. Children in tattered and faded clothing running and filling the streets with their carefree laughter, playing high catches not bothered at all about their surroundings. Then there are the little girls who were fascinated by the girl on the bike wearing pants and a chapeau who’d wave shyly as we passed. For all their poverty, the people of this Colombo are like ‘a breath of fresh air,’ to use the cliche. (But more on why I think that at another juncture.)

Colombo Port
In the evening we convinced my uncle to use his Ports Authority pass to go biking through the Colombo port. Flipping AWESOME folks. A little bit scary yes, but that’s because there’s armed Navy and Army personnel everywhere, with their AKs in plain sight; completely juxtaposed against the the lights and banners which were up for Vesak. Yeah even the port was decorated! I felt so tiny in there, surrounded by the container ships, cargo and the brightly coloured cranes which can easily carry a few 45 tonnes of weight. When a truck rumbles past (very quickly I might add) the sheer force of it had the potential to knock me off my bike. We went past the yard where all the tsunami relief is being held. Because of the excise taxes that the government is charging on some types of cargo, a lot of it is just sitting there being pummelled by the monsoon rains and becoming useless. NGOs are unable or unwilling to pay the government to release the goods.

In the ship yard on a flatbed truck was a little red aluminium boat named ‘Baby Pradeepa’ which was badly beaten up. During the tsunami this boat, which belongs to the Galle port’s lighthouse, was tossed about in the sea and eventually ended up in Yalle (which is an animal reserve in the south). On Saturday it found its way into Colombo to be repaired.

Unfortunately I was unable to take any pictures of my bicycle travels. In Kottehane I probably would’ve been jumped (for the camera) and in the Port a sniper would’ve finished me off even before my flash went off. But this has all reasserted to me the pressing need to get a motorcycle licence and ride across Europe. Screw the backpacking kids.

Postcards from Sri Lanka: I can't find my Polydent!

Even though it’s only 9:07 PM on a Friday night, I’ve got my PJs on and am in bed. Two weeks of fun have officially come to an end today. Aiya left for Toronto at 8:20 PM. So what does this mean? Life alone with my 84 year old grandparents. This means waking up at 7:00 AM every single morning to my slightly deaf grandfather blaring the radio. Breakfast at 8:00 AM sharp with or without me. Lunch at 12:00 PM, and dinner at 8:00 PM every day. Life runs on the clock, it’s amazing what habitual creatures they are. They’ve been like this as long as anyone can remember, and most likely they’ll continue on in the same vein until they die.

Fortunately for me I have been able to find a way to break up the tedium that will eventually be a 21 year old becoming a pseudo senior citizen. Wednesday I start my job at an NGO which is dedicated to ending corruption and promoting good governance. I’ll be working on a project that’s investigating whether or not funds collected for the tsunami are being used in a proper manner. I’m stoked. The only not so exciting part about all of this is I’ll be travelling from Ratmalana where my grandparents live (think Ajax) to Borella (think downtown). This apparently means, that due to the insane amount of traffic in Colombo I’ll have to leave at the 7:45 at the very latest in order to make it on time for work which starts at 9:00. When I went to drop Aiya off at the airport today, it took me two hours to get there, and two hours to get home! All because of rush hour traffic. Eek.

Well although Aiya’s gone and I’m bound to lose a lot of mobility and independence I will have a bit more time on my hands for important things. Like watching all the pirated Hindi movies that I’ve acquired over the last couple of days. And of course replying to your e-mails and blogging a bit more (which means more than once a week ;))

Postcards From Sri Lanka: Lexiconic

So it’s been awhile since I arrived in Colombo, and this is the first essai that I have made at writing something up for the blog. The truth is, it’s almost impossible to get a chance to sit down and type out anything coherent that anyone would be remotely interested in reading. It’s so hot here the last thing I want to do is wilt away in front of a computer screen. Fortunately I’ve been able to catch a few minutes to myself here at my aunt’s place. (securely placed underneath a rather powerful ceiling fan might I add.) So before I give you a little rundown of what I’ve been up to, here’s a lexicon of important terms that are a part of my every day life here in Colombo.

Amresh (Blackie): Ravi and Dhilumni’s youngest son (14)
Athula: Aiya’s bad ass fish machete
Aunty Dhilumni: Ravi Bappa’s wife
Aunty Dushy: Niranjan Bappa’s wife
Chandra: Mamma and Pappa’s cleaning lady
Dhinushka (Bola): Niranjan and Dushy’s youngest daughter (16)
Kiara: Nirjanjan Bappa’s fat Labrador retreiver (3)
Lucky Bappa (Percy): Thathi’s second brother, the one who came and lived with us in Canada for 6 months
Mamma: Thathi’s mother
Manika: Niranjan Bappa’s cook
Nilanga: Niranjan and Dushy’s oldest daughter (18)
Niranjan (Johnny) Bappa: Thathi’s third brother, the one who comes to Toronto once a year on business
Pappa: Thathi’s father
Rani: Nirjanan Bappa’s cleaning lady
Ravi (Chutti) Bappa: Thathi’s baby brother, the only one who's never been to Canada
Shanga (Lucy, Josephine, Jos): Ravi and Dhilumni’s oldest daughter (15)
Sunil: Niranjan Bappa’s driver
Susantha: our trishaw driver, we want to give him a gift of a GPS, his sense of direction is worse than mine, and that’s me being kind
Trishaw: the three-wheeled mosquito looking vehicle that we travel in every day due to a lack of a car. Since it’s open, and there’s no such thing as ‘emmissions testing’ here there is a good chance I will develop lung cancer before I come back home
Vimala: Mamma and Pappa’s cook