2015 June 6: The Secret Garden and Other Places

One of my favourite things to do when I am traveling is to get up early in the morning, just as the sun is beginning to rise, put on my running shoes and head out the front door. Not to run - I don't run! - but to explore. Most times I have no idea where I am going, and rare is it that I follow the exact same path twice in its entirety.

In 2002 I spent the summer in Beijing. Each morning I would leave my hotel at the crack of dawn, often not returning until late in the evening, bone tired from walking fourteen kilometers or more in the searing humidity - ground temperatures were often 50 degrees Celsius.

This was back before the era of digital cameras, and I still managed to take forty-two rolls of film! I saw sights that few Westerners have seen. For example, I visited one tiny little museum that I stumbled upon one morning that used to be the home of a very famous - to the Chinese - author. As I was leaving, the curator told me that while I was inside she had looked through fifty years worth of visitor logs, and I was the only Westerner to have ever visited the museum.

One of my favourite areas to walk in Negombo was among the myriad little streets and alley ways just to the north and east of Cemetery Road where our house was. I grew friendly with some of the people who live along those little streets, and never tired of seeing the abundance of flora and fauna in the middle of a big place like Negombo.

On June 6, 2015, I was walking along one of my favourite streets, listening to the singing of early morning birds and chattering people and blaring radios and squeaking bicycle wheels as children went off to school. I was taking photos of some of the flora on my way, when an older gentleman I had waved to and exchanged pleasantries with on several occasions asked to see my pictures. He was very impressed that I was so interested in flowers, and invited me into his yard to see his and his wife's beautiful garden - not visible from the street, all the while regaling me with tales of when each was planted and why they had included it.

True gardeners, we exchanged flower stories for quite some time as I took pictures of this hidden tropical backyard paradise. It was a very nostalgic experience for me, as many of the flowers that grow year round in Sri Lanka are ones that my mother plants every year as annuals back in Newfoundland..

 

I left his garden with handfuls of fresh roseapples, one of my favourite Sri Lankan fruits. With a texture like an Asian pear and a taste reminiscent of cardamom, I could not get enough. Steve and Elanor did not share my enthusiasm for this pink fruit with white flesh, but I ate them as often as I could. When our friends found out that I liked them, rare was the Sunday that one of the women from church did not bring me some from her garden.

As I munched along that beautiful morning, I stumbled upon a faint path that led down to the canal, where I was greeted by this gorgeous view, little seen except by the locals who use the makeshift footbridge to go to their homes in a poor neighbourhood hidden from sight from all who pass by....unless like me, they stray off the beaten path to discover the secret beauty all around.

2015 June 10: What Might Have Been

Last year at this time we were in Sri Lanka, having arrived two days previously on my husband's birthday. We were looking forward to a grand adventure - five months in beautiful Sri Lanka, one of my husband's favourite places on earth.

The first four months were wonderful without question. We traveled, we visited my husband's old friends, we ate the local food and in many ways immersed ourselves in having a grand time. I wrote many blogs during those four months to keep family and friends up to date on what we were doing. And since we have been back many of them have asked why I suddenly stopped writing before our trip was over.

The truth is...I just didn't have the heart.

At the beginning of our fifth and final month in Sri Lanka, I had a miscarriage, one with near debilitating complications and where I thought for a short while that I was going to die. After spending several days in hospital, and most of the two weeks following that in bed recovering, we attempted to put it behind us and to finish our trip on a high note.

But it wasn't the same.

This was the second miscarriage that my husband and I had had in five years of marriage. And to be honest, I have spent a lot of time since then wondering and pondering on the purpose of it all.

When I think that instead of holding a new born in my arms at the beginning of this year I just have memories of leaving a very small part of us behind in Sri Lanka....

Two small bricks that mark the place.

I cannot help but think of what might have been.

2015 July 12: Joyous Reunions and Bittersweet Goodbyes

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

Someone was at our gate. Before I could see who it was, I heard squeals of delight and hearty shouts of greeting.

I ran to witness a joyous reunion.

You see, a couple of weeks after our first trip to the beach where Steve did his PhD research, we went back for another walk along the shore. I suggested to him that maybe we could ask the people who lived nearby if they knew what happened to the villagers who used to live on the beach. We thought we knew what had happened, given the evidence and the news reports, but we wanted to be sure. So, as we were leaving, we passed an old man sitting on the sidewalk outside a nearby hotel. Steve asked him about the villagers, and he responded that he thought some of them were okay. He didn't know where they were or what happened to them, but he thought some of them were okay.

Thus, with that glimmer of hope, we began our search to find Steve's friends.

I asked people as I walked through the streets of Negombo in the early mornings or late evenings if they knew what happened to the people who lived on the beach after the tsunami came. I asked fish truck drivers if they knew what had happened to them. I asked the fishermen along the canal and further along Negombo beach. We asked our driver to help us find them. I received various responses, most indicating that they thought some were okay but had moved 'far inland' and were no longer fishermen. Even our driver indicated that they had moved elsewhere.

But no definitive answers. Except that now we knew that at least some of them had survived.

Last week I again asked our driver if he knew anything, and a couple of days later he told us that some of the villagers might be living in the Tsunami Housing Scheme nearby.

Which took us to Wednesday of this week, when we asked our driver to take us there. As we walked through the complex of four story apartment buildings, Steve listened for any words of Tamil among the many people speaking Sinhala. As we neared the entrance again, he asked someone if they knew if anyone used to live on the beach now lived in the complex.

And someone did.

We were taken to their apartment, where Steve talked with a woman who was just a sixteen year old teenager in 2000-2001. Her mother was not in town, but she said she would let her know that someone was looking for her who thought he knew her.

So there was little question in my mind who had come to our house on Thursday morning as I heard shouts and exclamations of glee and joy and laughter as Steve reunited with his old friend Susila. He spent many hours in her family's house fifteen years ago. When I ran to meet them, I was swept into their arms in huge hugs. She and her daughters were so happy to see Steve and to meet Elanor and me, and she cried when we told her that we thought her whole family had been lost in the tsunami and we were so happy to see that she was okay. She and her daughters then told us what happened on that day and what has happened in their family since.

Susila was fortunate to be in Chilaw - 44 km north - on December 26, 2004. But many other people in the village, including her daughters and other relatives, were on the beach in their humble homes. Pushpa, her daughter, told us how life was just going along as usual on that day...until the police came along with loudspeakers shouting for everyone 'to run for your lives'.

And so, they ran. Part of the warning being broadcast said that a huge wave had already killed thousands of people in southern and eastern Sri Lanka and that there was not a minute to lose. They ran, leaving behind everything they owned, many of them with only the clothes on their backs and their children in their arms. Some only made it as far as the church when the wave struck, and spent many terrified moments praying that they would be safe. The wave crested partly up the brick wall that surrounds the church, flooding as far as the road a couple of hundred metres from the beach, and then receded.

But when they returned to their homes....there was nothing left. Everything had been swept away. Furniture, mementos, clothing, personal items, identification papers, the houses themselves... everything was gone.

Susila rushed back to Negombo from Chilaw, not knowing whether her family was alive or dead. She found them eventually, and was relieved to find her daughters safe even though everything they owned was gone.

When Steve asked about her husband, Ameer, one of the daughters answered, 'He left our mother. He ran off and we haven't heard from him since.' But later, Susila told us that he was in Galle, on the south coast of Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck, and that neither she, her family nor their friends ever heard from him again. She doesn't talk to her daughters about her husband's likely death and allows them to pretend that he is still alive, because it is easier for them to think he left her than to think about the horror he must have felt as the wave came and everything ended for him.

The local Don Bosco Catholic Church opened its grounds to those who were left homeless by the tsunami. In short order, they and others had built a shelter city consisting of tiny huts, one per family. But living conditions were very crowded and life was very difficult for the people living there, so the Father issued a plea for help. The Italian government responded, and within a year, had built the Housing Scheme for the Tsunami Affected nearby. Susila was issued an apartment there for her, her mother and her daughters.

Known as Boscopura ('Bosco City'), this series of block apartment buildings soon became home to families from all over Sri Lanka who were rendered destitute and homeless by the tsunami. Many people have moved on as their circumstances became better, with steady employment and the ability to purchase or rent their own place again. But more than two hundred families still live there, including Susila. Her neat and tidy four room apartment consists of a large kitchen, a small bathroom, two good sized bedrooms with large beds, and front room that is used for entertaining guests, repairing the neighbour's fishing nets, eating, and sleeping. Her family has also grown to include several grandchildren. At least one of her daughters, maybe all of them, were married to abusive men whom they have since divorced, and they live with their mother again. One daughter works overseas, usually in Saudi Arabia, for two years at a time as a domestic servant, and then returns home for one year.

They still have little. And they still are generous and warm and loving and expressive. And happy. They smile a lot. They laugh a lot. They hug a lot. They have been through hell, but they live as though they are in heaven.

And Susila explained that in a way, they are. They feel that they are blessed to have what they have. From a palm frond hut with a sand floor on the beach to an apartment four times the size with running water and electricity - they are in no rush to leave.

Later that evening we were treated to a wonderful reunion supper at their home, with grandmother and mother and daughters and grandchildren, and neighbours wondering why a white family was visiting them wandering in and out. It was truly a wonderful reunion.

And tonight we were invited back for a goodbye supper. It was bittersweet, having just found them after thinking that they had all been swept away and then learning that most of them, at least, were okay, to now have to say goodbye again. From tears of joy on Thursday, to tears of parting tonight.

But it was worth every tear to hear the joy in Steve's voice as he reunited with these beloved friends.

2015 February 19: Remembering the Tsunami of 2004

Lament for the fisherfolk of Sri Lanka

From October 2000 to July 2001, my brother Steve was in northwest coastal Sri Lanka gathering material for a dissertation (Negombo Fishermen’s Tamil: A Case of Contact-Induced Language Change from Sri Lanka, Cornell University, 2004). He worked extensively with the inhabitants of a small, Catholic fishing village a few miles from the city of Negombo. Last night he sent the following e-mail, with permission to publish it here.

The news just gets worse and worse. It appears that most or all of the people who were my research subjects and my friends during my stay in Sri Lanka are dead. Negombo was hit quite hard, and the people whose language and lifestyle I documented lived in frail cadjun [coconut-leaf] huts within meters of the high water mark, on the sands of the beach. They knew nothing but God, family, and fishing, and have not, to my knowledge, dropped bombs on anybody or fought any wars on drugs or mass-produced pornography and land mines; yet they are all apparently dead and we remain. Not only that: I could not have gotten my status-conferring, income-enhancing Ivy League PhD without their help, whereas they got along just fine without mine – yet they are gone and I linger on, PhD and all.

Nor can I take any consolation in their being “human beings just like us,” because they aren’t like us, not at all. They have the same DNA, they have many of the same passions, to be sure. But they also have no comprehension of our wisecracking, self-absorbed cynicism; they are (though it sounds cliche to say it) blessed with a certain childlike absence of guile. They place community above all other things and choose not to trouble themselves with the world’s problems. They do not live their lives in “I can give you 15 minutes of my valuable time” mode, ever. They always treated me like a dignitary and usually insisted on preparing excellent seafood dinners, which they couldn’t afford. There was never any suggestion that they were ashamed of their humble living quarters. Their huts were always clean, and their clothing always neat. I paid to help them build a cistern of their own (an untold luxury) in the sand behind their hut. It consisted merely of a 15-foot deep hole lined with metal, but it gave them fresh water for washing and drinking for the first time, ever. I fancied that, in buying them a well – not to mention a pile of clothing and household goods I got for them right before my departure – I was repaying them in part for helping me achieve my ambition.

Now the well and the household goods, as well as the houses and inhabitants, are probably gone, along with those of tens of thousands of others like them, all alike in their poverty and simplicity, all utterly unlike us. Maybe the old, abominable racial theories are correct, in a perverse and unanticipated way, for there really do seem to be two completely different moieties of the human race: the one, perpetually lapped in comfort, snugly insulated from the brunt of mother nature (most of the time), and able and willing to unleash hellfire and bombnation on the other half at the slightest provocation, real or imagined; the other, perpetually under the yoke of the first, always fodder for the cannons, chaff for the economic downdrafts, grist for the millstones of mother nature.

Anyway, enough hyperbole. Suffice it to say, I’m really bummed about this. Call it survivor’s guilt or whatever, but there can’t be too many people out there who’ve seen their PhD subject matter obliterated.

Steve Bonta
27 December 2004

And so it was with some trepidation that on February 19 Steve led Elanor and me to his friends' fishing village, site of about forty homes on the beach in Negombo. He wanted to see with his own two eyes that it was really gone, but still garnering some small hope that maybe, just maybe, the news reports that said that all beach communities - and the people in them - were lost were wrong.

But when we stepped onto the beach...we knew. Instead of the small close-knit fishing village bustling with the work of processing the daily catch and the raising of small children and the daily cooking and cleaning and washing...we were greeted by an open stretch of sand.

Steve was devastated. The people he knew and loved, their humble thatch and palm frond homes much like the one found below, the well that he dug for them in thanks for all of their help so that they would have clean drinking water...all gone.

For video of our visit, please click here.

2015 May 24: Flags In

It's Memorial Day weekend back in the United States, so to commemorate in a small way I created a Sri Lankan inspired traditional American meal. It's nothing compared to the backyard BBQs, camp outs, and picnics back home, but this year, for reasons that follow, I wanted to do a little something even though we are not in the States.

First, I made plain rice. We never know who is going to show up to visit, so I always make a lot of food on Sundays, and rice is quick and easy and filling.

Next, instead of potato salad or baked potatoes, I made the potatoes that we all love, the ones that I bake in the oven with onion and garlic and turmeric and which are always a hit with visitors and even with the readers of our blog who have tried them.

Instead of devilled eggs, I just made boiled eggs. There are two reasons for this. First, mayo goes bad quickly in the heat, so leaving the mayo out of a dish is a prudent thing to do. Second, I suck at peeling eggs. My friend Champika told me to add salt to the water and the eggs will peel perfectly. It works for her.... but my peeled boiled eggs continue to look like someone used power tools on them! I shouldn't be surprised - thirty years later my family still loves to tease me about the time I burned the boiled eggs. 

Finally, I made coleslaw. Steve doesn't like coleslaw - he will eat it if I make it, but he doesn't like it. But me? I love coleslaw. I think it runs in the family. I remember when my brother was younger - he may have been in Grade 3 - and he would ask mom to make coleslaw every night. He could not get enough.

I put a Sri Lankan twist on today's version, however. Here is the recipe:

Put the following into a large bowl:

• 1/2 a shredded purple cabbage
• 1/2 a shredded green cabbage
• 1 very thinly sliced purple onion
• 2 very large grated carrots

In another bowl, mix together:

• 2/3 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup of your favourite white, cider, or white wine vinegar (I used coconut vinegar)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon of curry powder

Taste and add more salt or curry powder if needed - it will vary depending on the type of vinegar.
Pour over vegetables and mix well.

A friend from church and her twelve year old son came to visit after church, so we shared our simple meal with them. They both loved the coleslaw, and I have to admit that it was pretty good. And hey, if a twelve year old boy likes it, it can't be half bad!

But I digress....

The summer between Grade 11 and Grade 12 I was blessed to have won a speech contest. It was sponsored by the International Order of Oddfellows and Rebekahs, and the grand prize was a bus tour with two hundred seventy other youth from across North America of Ottawa and thirteen states, and four days at the United Nations. The program still exists, and I would highly recommend it. You can learn about the Pilgrimage for Youth by clicking here.

One of the places that we visited was Arlington National Cemetery. I remember walking though the acres and acres of clean white crosses and being overwhelmed by the sense of loss and sacrifice that was represented there. It was truly one of the most memorable experiences of the trip for me. Little did I know about my own connection to this place.

Courtesy http://www.redrosestudio.com/Arlin%20Natl%20Cem.html

On this Memorial Day weekend, I would like to pay tribute to a family member that I learned about recently from my father and his cousin Marjorie Hodgson, who lives in Vermont. In addition to being an avid genealogist, Marjorie continues to paint even though she is now, for all intents and purposes, blind. Normally I reserve such sentiments as those that follow for Canada's Remembrance Day, as can be read about here, but it is fitting that I tell this person's story today.

Sarah Maude Pittman was born December 21, 1896, in Hickman's Harbour, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, to John and Mary "Polly" (nee Blundell) Pittman. She was the third of seven children, and was my father's mother's sister...my great aunt. Maude, as she was known, served in World War I, and somehow made it to the United States where she married Albert Blundon. She and Albert made their home in Somerville, Massachusetts. In August 1927, at age 30, she died while giving birth to their first child, and the babe died just two months later. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

When I saw photos of American soldiers planting flags on each of the four hundred thousand graves in Arlington National Cemetery this past week in their annual Flags In day, I could not help but think that I am so grateful that someone has been remembering this lost member of our family every year. With her emigration to another country, her dying so young, her husband now long gone, her only child passing so soon after her own death, there is no family nearby to lovingly tend her resting place, to remember her as they pass by, or even to simply clear her grave every now and then as those of us who regularly visit cemeteries do just because a grave needs some attention or because the surname is familiar. For eighty eight years her grave has been tended with care and her service during WWI commemorated by groundskeepers and soldiers and perhaps a passing tourist or family members of others buried nearby.

Courtesy http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/flags-arlington-prepares-memorial-day-n363051

Whether one agrees with war or not, whether one supports war or not, it is important to remember that some of us, our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, cousins and friends, are willing to put their lives on the line for us and for their country. Please honour them, and my great aunt Maude, by taking a moment to watch this touching short video.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane....

Well, actually it's this 'flying' snail....

But this is a plane.

Negombo is close to the international airport, which also serves as the main air base in Sri Lanka. (There are a total of twenty air bases throughout this small island.) We usually see military planes flying overhead once a day. But yesterday I went to a wedding that was further inland, and they were flying overhead, on average, once per hour.

Sri Lanka's air force is relatively young. It was founded in 1951 as the Royal Ceylon Air Force, and is currently known as the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF). It has just under thirty thousand members, both in regular service and in the reserves, and one hundred sixty aircraft. Women have been admitted to all branches of the air force (except as pilots) since 1972, including the regiment and air force police, and can become officers.

The SLAF played a major role in the country's twenty-six year civil war which killed between eighty and one hundred thousand people. I am not going to go into the politics of the whole thing, for a number of reasons, but the SLAF was responsible for providing air support to government ground forces, troop landing, and air strikes.

While the SLAF has been involved in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti since 2004 and was part of the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad, events of April of this year were historic for the organization. When the country of Nepal suffered massive earthquakes, the SLAF was used for the first time in a rescue mission to a foreign country, where it transported medical and other personnel and aid supplies for disaster relief.

2015 May 19: Artsy Fartsy....Or, Supper at Lords

We ate at Lords again last night. I know I have said it before, but I am going to say it again: The food there is some of the best I have ever eaten. Maybe even the best. Elanor had her favourite...large rotini served plain with a bowl of cheese sauce for dipping. 'Don't play with your food' has no meaning here for the kid's meals are interactive! Steve and I both had the mushroom and corn burger. You know it's good when Steve has the opportunity to order meat (which I don't cook because I am vegetarian) and he chooses the veggie burger instead! Stuffed with mushroom, corn, cashew, onion, and curry leaves, it's the best burger I have ever eaten.

Lords also serves as an art gallery for local artists, and while most of the artwork is for sale, some pieces are part of the decor.

Sometimes I just like to take pictures of stuff that other people might find weird. Sometimes it is weird. But sometimes I get beautiful shots that I adore.

Steve asked, "WHY are you taking pictures of water?" Well, because it's not a picture of water.

"[T]here are three types of photographers. There is the technical photographer. He is all about the equipment and the formulas. He can give you millimeters and focal lengths. There is the subject photographer. He takes photographs to study the object itself. He knows breeding habits, plumage differences, longitude and latitude. Then there is the artist. The artist has no idea what she just photographed or how she photographed it, yet somehow creates the most pleasing pictures." 
http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/becoming-a-great-photographer.html#b

I repeat.... It's not about the water. It's about these shots of my water glass, with the art installation lights shining through.

It's about these shots of my water bottle with an oil bowl burning behind it, with the camera turned sideways, one without flash, one with flash.

And it's about this shot of my drink, a dreamy concoction of ginger beer and coconut cream and pineapple, also sideways. It wasn't really purple, but it turned out that way because of the lighting.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. -Confucius