2015 March 16: Global Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka finds itself in a strangely awkward position.

Life for many people is still very much conducted in third world conditions. Little or no indoor plumbing. Low wages. Menial jobs. Small houses with poor planning and little knowledge of basic things we take for granted, such as traps to keep sewer gas out of the house. I passed a cement block home on the main tourist street, Lewis Place, early one morning, that had its door open. There was a small clay oven against the wall outside, an outhouse in the backyard, and only one room in the house. It had a wooden chair against one wall and a pile of blankets in the corner.

Oddly, though, the average family only has two children, not the three to seven children that one would expect in such conditions given the average fertility rates in other similar countries. Family planning is very much in effect here. One woman we know told us that while she and her husband love their children, they will not have more than two because they are very expensive. She didn't mean to raise. She meant in case they get sick and needed medical attention. One trip to the doctor can cost 3000 rupees - 1/7 of the average monthly income. Thankfully, most pharmacies here do not require prescriptions. You show up, tell them what's wrong, and they give you the medication for it at a very reasonable rate. Or, if you are like me, you take a picture of your husband's heat rash and show that to the guy behind the counter, who then gives you the cream your husband needs for 200 rupees ($1.53).

Yet, for others, life is good. Very good. Hotel owners that we know paid $65 000 cash for a luxury car recently - 8.5 million rupees, or 32 years salary for the average worker. The gap between rich and poor is so wide that ordinary people are being shut out of their ordinary neighbourhoods, as land prices are on the rise exponentially in popular areas like Negombo.

Sri Lankans in general are very well-educated. According to wikipedia, "Education in Sri Lanka has a long history that dates back two millennia. The Constitution of Sri Lanka provides for education as a fundamental right. Sri Lanka's population has a literacy rate of 98.1%, higher than that expected for a third world country; it has the highest literacy rate in South Asia and overall, one of the highest literacy rates in Asia. Education plays a major part in the life and culture of the country and dates back to 543 BC." Girls have a slightly higher literacy rate than boys.

This focus on education has led to many Sri Lankans looking for work overseas. The Middle East is a popular option, as is Australia, Malaysia, and France. They are even finding their way to Newfoundland. This is in addition to the many people who left Sri Lanka during the civil war. Many of those who leave are the most educated.

And this has led to many Sri Lankan families becoming truly global citizens. One friend of ours has several children, all of whom live overseas. To visit them, he has traveled to Switzerland, France, Canada, the United States, Australia and Malaysia. Some of his grandchildren he can speak to - they don't know Sinhala, but they do know English. Other grandchildren he cannot speak to without a translator, because they speak French or another language as their mother tongue. But he, like many others who find themselves in similar situations, do not begrudge this one bit. They are happy that their children are happy, their grandchildren are happy, and that they were able to help their children rise to a level of success that would likely not have been possible here.

Even businesses reflect the diverse international community. Drive down any major street in Colombo, the capital city, and there are billboards and signs advertising jobs abroad and language classes in Japanese, Chinese, German, English, and a host of others. Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and Indian restaurants abound, North American chains such as Pizza Hut and KFC and Burger King are easily found. There are even restaurants that serve Swiss and German fare!

Steve receives many compliments on his ability to speak Sinhalese and Tamil. One tuktuk driver actually stopped the vehicle, turned around, and exclaimed "You're Sri Lankan?" when Steve gave him directions one day. Some Tamil fishermen we met on the beach near the hotel we stayed at for the first week we were here often greet me with "Where is your husband, the man who speaks our language?" if I run into them without Steve.

But it's different in Colombo. One tuktuk driver asked Steve why he was bothering to learn Sinhalese since it's not an important language. The answer is simple. Sinhala is an important language. While Old English was just getting started around 550 A.D., Sinhala had already been around for almost a thousand years, with a rich literary history that influenced the development of Buddhism, now with over 300 million followers around the world. While the Western world was floundering in the dark ages, Sri Lanka was famous as the "rice mill of the east" and was trading cinnamon globally.

And so, we come full circle to the awkward situation that Sri Lanka finds itself in, this strange mix of keeping long held traditions and culture alive, while moving forward and working its way out of third world status. This is why the government is pro-Chinese waterfront development, why it is involved in so many infrastructure projects to rebuild roads and town services, and why it is against huge Australian casinos being built here.

Sri Lanka deserves more credit for what it is doing right from the global community. Perhaps then it would not find itself in the strangely awkward position it is in.

2015 February 16: The Long Road to Chilaw

Map courtesy Google Maps.

The Negombo Bus Station. The clamour of drivers hawking the virtues of their particular routes. No orderly lines and ticket counters here - in fact, there are no lines or ticket counters period. We study the rows of brightly coloured buses in all shapes and sizes, find one that is going to Chilaw, and board. There are no timetables or schedules - when the bus is full, it leaves. No matter...all day long another is waiting to take its place. The assistant passes by, asking for end locations and accepting payments....three people traveling 51 kilometres (31 miles) is just 177 rupees ($1.38 US). As people disembark en route, the driver's assistant loudly calls 'ilaw ilaw ilaw ilaw' (short for Chilaw) to the passing throngs of people, trying to refill the bus and maximize his profits on this trip.

The road is lined with street vendors of all sorts, everything one could imagine available as we pass by....pastries, candy, fruit, shots of liquor, t-shirts, dresses, shoes, kitchen strainers, vegetables, water, pets, farm animals....

Nainamadama....a town filled with tiles factories, with their hot kilns and mounds of clay ready to be made into roofing tiles and bricks.

We pass the Coconut Research Institute, a very important and prestigious government department, with its acres and acres of coconut plantations, many of them doubling as cow pastures as they attempt to maximize the use of the land.

Cathedrals, Catholic schools, shrines, white robed nuns, uniformed school children line the entire length of this Catholic corridor, and everywhere, everywhere are leftover signs welcoming the Holy Father, Pope Francis, who visited Sri Lanka in January of this year. With 1.2 million Catholics in the country, this made worldwide news, as did the mass that was celebrated in Colombo, the capital city, with some estimates of over one million attendees.

Marawila....waiting for more riders, the intoxicating fragrance of row upon row of bakeshops fills the senses, a sharp contrast to the sweetly acrid and smoky air in Nainamadama.

To our right....ancient tanks or wevas (reservoirs), constructed up to 1700 years ago, filled with waterfowl, yellow lilies, pink lotus flowers - part of an irrigation system envisioned by King Parakrama Bahu the Great (1153-1186), who declared "Let not even a drop of rain water go to the sea without benefiting man."

To our left....mile upon mile of rice paddies and marshes, resplendent with myriad types of fowl, including three kinds of egret surrounding the cows peacefully grazing.

Madampe....vast coconut plantations, canals filled with pampas grass, fences lined with sweet smelling jasmine, Hindu temples, Buddhist stupa, shrines to the Horse God, the Roman Catholic Church of San Sebastian, a mosque complete with Ladies Prayer Room and women's clothing store pass quietly by.

Sewer construction causes a small traffic jam as motorists and pedestrians of all sorts attempt to get through. No careful city planning and pipe placement here...to build one's sewer line simply dig a trench from one's house to the sidewalk, line it with concrete blocks, lift the concrete pavers covering the sewer ditch and hope it slopes properly. Then, replace the concrete paver to turn the ditch into a sidewalk again. Block traffic while doing so.

The Madampe Bus Station....just a widened part of the road at a vacant lot where people gather to wait for their bus. We wait for more passengers. In a nearby storefront I spy women's blouses for 350 rupees ($2.74), men's dress shirts for 295 rupees ($2.30), complete children's outfits for 150 rupees ($1.17). A group of white uniformed giggling schoolgirls flee when Steve catches them staring wide-eyed at his huge scary American self. 

Fully loaded once more, we return to the main road, passing vendors lining the fence outside a brightly painted blue Hindu temple surrounded by coconut groves.

Kakkapalliya....40 kilometres (24.5 miles) into our journey. An odd building that looks like a viking boat complete with Chinese dragon head and a door where the mouth should be gives us pause...it's called the Bum Boat. Mynas, egrets, and cormorants line the canal.

Chilaw at last. The driver's assistant finds a bus for us to a well known Hindu temple in Musseswaram, found in the Tamil Region. We are one day early for for the Shiva festival Sivarathri, but it cannot be helped - we have to be in Colombo tomorrow. We buy fruit for an offering - it being a Hindu temple we feel this is okay as the money goes towards feeding the poor, the offering is to be eaten by us afterwards, and Hindus believe in the sanctity of all religions and all gods/Gods. Our guide is delighted to hear Steve speaking Tamil, gives us a personal tour, explains the ceremony and the temple's shrines to us.

The many faces of Shiva, "Great God".

Sariswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, wisdom, arts, music       and learning.

Our guide.

Afterwards Steve quickly makes friends with two of the men and a woman at the stand to buy fruit for offerings. As Tamils, they were very impressed that Steve had been to Tamilnadu and many of the shrines found in the parts of India that he has visited.

As our host takes us to meet his friend, a tuktuk driver who can take us back to Chilaw, others call out insults in Sinhala. He quickly chastises them, "They speak Sinhala so you better watch your mouth", with a shake of his head and a dismissive gesture of the hand. His friend agrees to take us back to Chilaw and stops several times along the way so we can do a little bird watching, and when asked, takes us to an eatery that he knows of, Wadiya Restaurant.

A huge flying fox colony.

 Water buffalo and sacred ibises.

Open billed stork.

After a delightful meal of curried dal, beetroot salad, green onion salad, hot okra, rice for the three of us, and spicy fish and devilled prawns for Steve and Elanor (1100 rupees or $8.60, including three litre size bottles of water, and one small bottle of water), the quality of which was no doubt aided by the owners' surprise to hear Steve speaking Sinhalese to him, we head back to the bus station for our return journey.

Past the cows wandering the side streets of Chilaw, past the rural areas just to the south with the numerous Serene Gardens Coconut Plantations, past the rice paddies with their red-wattled lapwings, past Marawila's beautiful rivers and furniture carvers and egrets and bee eaters, past the storefronts and street vendors and beautiful houses and tropical gardens of Katunariya, Wennapuwa, Nainamadama, Waikkala, and Kochchikade....

Back to Negombo.

 Fishermen in the late afternoon.

A murder of crows at breakfast.