impressions of lanka

On the road to Kandy

Although I haven’t heard any statistics on road death in Sri Lanka, I’m quite sure it’s frequent.

-a graveyard, some stone markers, many white flags

-trucks so full of people that men stand on the open back, holding onto the top while standing like a door at the end of the flatbed, their toes holding on for life

-women beating their clothes in the river, washing wells or washing tanks

-motorcycles carrying huge towering bundles or boxes 4 times their size

-coconuts everywhere: great piles of them, or their husks

-mens' sarongs hitched up like miniskirts to relieve the heat

-women in colorful saris walking along the dirty streets with brightly colored umbrellas to protect their skin from the sun…the pharmacies have an amazing quantity of body lotions and facial products promising to whiten skin

-yellow butterflies everywhere, surrounding the car like so many dreams half forgotten in the moments between sleep and wakefulness

-temples, shrines, dagobas everywhere you turn serve as a reminder that the poor turn to God in whatever form they believe, while in cities God is widely forgotten

-dogs, everywhere is the same dog, every few yards is another of the same, which makes you wonder if you are really in a movie and they were just cutting down on the price of the sets by running the same background over and over again

-animals sleep on the road at night, the road retains warmth and the animals don’t seem terribly concerned about the cars...the cars in turn must take great care, because the animals can be numerous and quite big

-tuk tuks (three wheeler type cars/carriages/taxis) are not considered space on the road. Other cars pass them as if they do not exist, blithely swinging round even if there is a car coming from the other direction at the same moment.

-elephants in the distance in a clearing near the jungle in a wildlife reserve

-monkeys swinging from the trees above

-a poisonous water monitor slides into a pool of water and out of view

-chameleons blend with the trees and spiny plants

-a water buffalo founders in the deep muck of the paddy field that it’s plowing

-a bus has flipped off the road and into a ditch below, where it lies on its side. People are gathered. A military man radios for help. Our driver informs us that last week two Italian ladies and their jeep safari driver had an accident and died in the same place the week before. A few minutes later he shows us the jeep in a yard in town. The bus was there the next day.

-cows wander the streets...their owners are too poor to keep them on land, but I've been assured that at night they come home

sri lanka, the first installation

The last couple of days before holiday oozed by like racing sea slugs. I didn't sleep on the 20th, except for a 1&1/2hr nap before dawn. I managed a 1 1/2 hr nap in the afternoon of the 21st as well. It served only to remind my body that it was very tired and that I'd been drinking while packing.

A group of us went to the airport by speedboat (rented) for dinner and drinks. We shared four bottles of wine, finished in the bar and most were generally well schnockered. I met a Kenyan who kissed me goodnight as he ran for his boat.

Departures:
I curled up around my guitar and on my backpack. Sleep sped into my face only to slam to a stop as my flight boarded. I swayed and kept trying to clear the impact of the sleep from my face by using one hand as a windshield wiper over my eyes. Somehow I managed to board the plane.

Isle seat. Horrid. I slept anyway. Flight of a mere hour and twenty minutes. I woke to see everyone had finished a breakfast. Jealousy was followed by observation of distance to cart, calculation of time to request fulfillment, eating and landing...decision to sleep.

Landing. Everyone else on the whole plane was in transit. No line for immigration. I staggered there, still attempting to clear the fog a bit by holding my hand over my eyes, then sweeping it down. I had to walk slowly. No boarding card...fill out. So difficult. What was my name? What were the numbers on my passport? Flight? Somehow I managed. Time was running out before collapse. The man at the counter asked me how many days I was staying. "Twelve."
"How many DAYS?"
"Twelve"
"How many DAYS?"
"Twelve"
"How many DAYS?"
"TWELVE."
"Five?"
"No, TWELVE."
"Five?"
"ONE, TWO, T-W-E-L-V-E!"
"Twelve?"
"Yes."
Stamp.
Stagger, stagger.
Banks, change. Stagger.
I sat down. Out came the Lonely Planet. I exited customs and such. A man offered a taxi. I said yes. He said ?1500? I said ?1000.? He said ?1300.? I said ?1000 or I take the bus.? He countered with 1100 and I said fine. I was in no shape to negotiate a bus now. Two sleepless nights and the remnants of 12 hours of slow drinking combined with the impact of the car wrecked sleep that had hit my face from behind as it slammed to stop...

The taxi was a van driven by a fresh-faced young driver with a nice name beginning with ?A? and with lots of soft sounds in the middle. We began. My slow death by lack of sleep screamed to a halt as I was sleeplessly clutching the cushions of my seatbelt-less ride imagining so many impacts as we raced in and out of traffic, stopping only at the last moment before inevitable crash, darting to the other side of the road to go around and racing to get back before the oncoming traffic hit us. It was a hurtling van of terror. Luckily, I noticed that the front seat had a seatbelt and asked if I could sit there. He assented, and stopped to let me change.

The hotel was dreadful. The man in the office wore only a towel wrapped around him and then tied in such a way that suggested a huge (and long) phallic knot coming from his center. They tried to charge me for 2 nights because of my early arrival. I said no flat out. They argued that that was their policy. Their woman who took the reservation however, had said nothing. I said that I could quite easily solve this by going to another hotel. I wasn?t responsible for what their staff didn?t say. He agreed to my paying for one night.

I slept. I could still sleep. My phone isn?t working.

Later that day??
A block from the entrance to my street was a magical sign, ?phone repairs?. I went in. He took apart my phone and asked if I had gotten it wet? ?Why??, I asked, thinking of the many showers and times I?d dropped it in puddles in the rain. He showed me the rust. Yeah, a few times. He offered to repair it for 2500 rupees. I said no, it?s a cheap phone. He tried to tell me that here, my phone was 16,000 rupees. I just raised my eyebrows, looked at him for a minute in calm disbelief and said, ?I paid $20, new.? He looked a little bit disbelieving and repeated it. Eyebrows still raised, I affirmed with a calm nod and another, ?$20?. He looked bummed. Then he dropped the price of repairs to 1500. ?Last price, madam.? I asked him what he would do, got a satisfactory step-by-step of a ?total service? and agreed. I?m to pick it up later.

The next two hours were happily spent in a real bookstore. I blew $25 on English books for classes. This was followed by 2 more hours of browsing in an actual mall. I bought 6 DVD'S, one of which was a 3-in-1.

Exhaustion still looms. I?ve also become aware that with only patches of sleep, I?ve only actually eaten 4 cheese sticks lately and that was about 20 hours ago. These were preceded by 8 sushi rolls and 12 Pringles potato chips some 6 hours before, and 6 pieces of sushi some 20 hours before that. Fortunately the calories from the 12 hours of alcohol before my plane seem to have filled the blank spaces.

the afternoon is full of dreams, my love

The sun has returned, the sea is as a mirror reflecting another world within. From the jetty one can see a wealth of life: sea turtles, stingrays, sharks, giant clams, coral and many brightly colored, spotted, striped and seemingly painted fish of all shapes and sizes.

I have just finished my first set of English courses and am in the process of typing up certificates of completion and achievement. Today and tomorrow are to be spent administering the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). Thursday will be more typing and sorting of records, then packing my bag, swinging my guitar over my shoulder and heading to the airport for my first earned holiday!

I will be heading to Sri Lanka, my 22nd country to date. I will spend two weeks discovering the ancient cities, shrines and Buddhist temples. The first few days will be spent with a friend doing the tamer touring, but after she heads home, I plan to do some serious trekking in the jungles around the ancient cities, and possibly some white water rafting.

Stay tuned!

a whole new world

Yesterday I tried diving for the first time. As we made our way out of the lagoon and over the reef, the world dropped away. Water peacefully enveloped my body, rendering the weights and hefty tank weightless on my back...then panic at realising that my only source of air was the piece in my mouth. You have to work a little to breathe. The compressed air is cold and doesn't feel like a proper breath.

As we descended, visions of my lungs and ear drums exploding had me constantly equalising the pressure in my ears. One ear wouldn't pop though, and we had to go up a few meters to give me a chance to equalise.

The world looks different underwater. The sky is a shimmering ceiling which when crossed, changes everything. Underwater you can move in any direction. There are no gravity limits. Moving your feet a little propels you much further than when on land. Fish watch you in apathy, vague interest or in some cases, annoyance at the clumsy stranger in their land.

On your first dive you don't think much of the fish around you- but rather of yourself. How do you move? Are you doing everything right? Remember to breathe. The first dive is a struggle with yourself. Everything is wrong, and yet you know this is what you chose to do and the instructor isn't alarmed...

Feeling the cold surround you as you sink further and further down the side of the reef...remembering to breathe...equalise...what's that over there? In a moment you half forget yourself as you watch a large fish doing somersaults trying to eat something off of a rock. What's in the cave? You can't ask. You can't speak. You come closer to the sparkling ceiling and stop moving, bend your knees backwards and sink. Equalise. Don't touch the coral. Slow breaths. How do you clear the water from the mask again? Good. That's done. Small triumphs. Equalise. You realise that the when you are several meters down the compressed air feels better in your lungs than it did closer to the surface.

It's a lovely day. Equalise. Don't touch the coral. Look at that tiny beautiful creature...didn't you see that in Star Trek once? Or was it a dream through the looking glass? Bright colors swim away like a tiny magic carpet.

Time to go back.