Jim and Queenie Sri Lanka visit

SOMETIMES it is called the sub continent. Coincidentally, a couple of the papers, the ones I can read, there are four in English, have in the last week run pictures of an LTTE, terrorist submarine captured by the “victorious forces of the motherland”. It looks a bit like something out of the thunderbirds.

In Unawatara the owner of hotel we are staying in introduces us to Ronin, the owner of the dive shop next door. He is non-chalant, confident type and we are invited to come out in the morning with some German divers to a wreck nearby. We talk about Arthur C Clark who “discovered” Unawatara!. I had read a book by him a few weeks earlier about treasure hunting a little further south somewhere near a lighthouse.

I digress. Everyday is warm and hot and mornings are a relief to the intensity of the midday sun. I walk into the dive shop at the designated time, 9.30. We have been up since six. Ronin has a white board explaining the dive, The wreck is from 1840, but later it turns out to be a steamship so ultimately wonder if fish have a concept of steam or the industrial revolution for that matter.

For one of the diver’s It is the 12th year he has been here. The German and his dive partner are getting ready to go down. I ask the German’s dive mate what part of Germany he is from, he replies that he is Dutch.

They jump off to swim down to the wreck, a ship in the distance looks like it is sinking, when I put my glasses on it rights it self. Queenie and I swim in the warm Indian Ocean, the water here is about 30m deep, below us the divers are lurking about in a seaman’s graveyard, we are swimming about two kilometres out from the Galle Fort.

When we get back we pack up and head into Galle for the train ride back to Colombo. A quick look around the Galle fort. This is the first time we have visited an obviously tourist destination. We skirt around the outside and linger in the shade, and come across a crowd of Sri Lankans transfixed by an older man delivering what sounds from our distance like a religious sermon. We get closer and he has about twenty or so small suitcases of varied sizes, slowly and methodically he pulls out snakes from them and almost caresses them, some people are giving him money. Over the road, I catch out of the corner of my eye, outside the rundown public toilet, a well-dressed man hands over some money to a middle-aged woman.

Queenie just wants to get on the train; the tourist thing is not her bag. We pass the Fort cricket ground, the main stadium has been renamed after current president Mahinda Rajapakse, outside a young woman and her family sit beside a few bits of cardboard, I think it is their house. I give them some rupees.

On the train ride Queenie makes friends with some local kids, they play this endless exchange of lollies and bits of fruit rite of friendship.

Back in Colombo we walk from Mt Lavinia railway station along beach to my mum’s hotel, have a beer. The local brew is Lion.

Next day is Saturday, which is over ten days ago. So much for writing this diary blog thing!

We (me, Queenie, my brother David and his wife Sirya) to Sirya’s village in a place call Kulapitya, which is roughly 8kms south east of Colombo. Our mode of transport is van with a driver. I wont go into the crazy hectiicness of drivers here, but it is crazy and it is hectic, constant beeping, constant swerving, constant near misses, and constant mayhem. It is quite exciting, but it is also great having someone else driving.

We get to Sirya’s village and their house with its 6acre coconut/ beetel/ ginger/ pineapple/ etc plantation is actually quite flash – I was expecting something a bit more down market. The roads a small and windy dirt things, running through paddy fields and coconut palms, with the occasional tropically rustic house.

Sunday is David’s birthday. It seems lie the whole village is here. People sit round in their different family groups. Attempts are made at breaking language barrier. The kids have a treasure hunt and a lolly scramble. Later David opens all his presents. Just about everyone has bought him glasses. The party is deemed a success.

We are invited up to a village in the tea country. Hamantha, a local, is going to pick up his wife and their baby from her parents place in a remote area high in tea country near a place called Haddon.

We get up at about 4am and eventually are winding our way through narrow country streets to our, in my case- unknown, destination. We are travelling in a truck which has couches tied down on the trailer which are the seats. Quite comfy. It is nice travelling at this time of day, not to hot. Kids are walking along the country roads to get t o the school bus, the girls in their white pinnies, boys in blue short and starched white shirts. The standard uniform sums up in many ways how the country is – dirty stinky city-scapes aside – but there is something very old worldy, even new houses look like they have been built fifty years ago, yet there is a constant attempt to keep, what in many cases is rundown, things clean and tidy. The sound of sweeping is a constant; every morning things are being swept from the front yard. We pass a woman sweeping leaves as an elephants ambles up towards her, might need a stronger broom for that mess.

We stop for breakfast about 8 and I have a fish curry thing. When we stop again about ten in a town called Ginigathera, which is near our destination, I really need to go to the toilet to expel the remnants of the curry. Eventually find a side street toilet, it does not matter how dirty a toilet is, when you gota go, you gota go.

Back up the street I start following some monkeys running along the electricity wires. My David Attenborough moment is halted by the sound of a crash and then screams. It had to happen, a three-wheeler has tipped over right next to our truck and a woman’s leg is trapped, probably broken underneath it. The three-wheeler is righted and people gather round, the woman is still screaming, a police officer wanders up and looks disinterested and wanders off. The woman is piled into another three-wheeler and it motors off, and everything returns to normal within minutes. I zoom my camera into the blood on the road.

We reach Hamantha’s in-laws. They are, excuse the cliché, simple country folk. The house is down about 200 steps made from rocks on a steep incline, the valley drops even further below the house and the steep hills are covered with tea bushes.

The hospitality is overwhelming, we have toddy and wild boar, and then when I am just feeling a bit full, it is time for lunch.

Hamantha is ecstatic to be back with his wife and child. The system here is that when the first child is born the mother goes and stays with her mother for the first three months, part of the motherhood learning curve.

When we leave at about 3pm, there are many tears. Hamantha’s wife’s sister’s daughter knows her big sister is leaving and starts crying, knowing that her Aunty is going away, for good. As we get into the van, everyone is crying.

We head off, descending this time. Near Haddon a game of cricket is in progress on a rough dry surface, a number of villagers are watching. It is true what they say about Sri Lankans, they re cricket mad. Everywhere you turn, beaches, construction sites, empty lots, if there is a spare moment a makeshift cricket pitch is made and it is game on.

It is a long day and a long journey, but we are back in Kulapitya about 8pm. Tomorrow there is rice to be cut.

It is a Tuesday and I orgainise talking to a few local people about David and Sirya returning to the village. It works as a suitable excuse not to get to involved in the rice cutting, better to leave it to the professionals. I do start to cut some rice, but it is all a bit token and they laugh at me, I hide behind the camera and film the women chatting incessantly whilst cutting the rice stalks at a powerful rate of scything.

It is hot day in the field.

The next day we head to Kandy. We are doing a long round trip back to Colombo. Kandy is one of the many former capitals of Lanka. It is also the home of the temple of the tooth relic. The temple houses the tooth of the Buddha, which came to Sri Lanka in about 600Ad, not sure about the dates. But the ownership of the tooth was prerequisite to any power in the land, so it was fought over and was and is still an important taonga. The temple was bombed some years back by the LTTE, so the security is fairly full on. Like most tourist things here, tourist pay quite a bit more than locals. It is a beautiful lavish temple, golds and reds, incense and elephants. People are praying, and it does seem, and is, sacrilegious scampering around it in tourist mode.

The other main tourist attraction of Kandy is the Perydenia Gardens. Every tree you can think of layed out in a beautiful sprawling 140 acres.

We get back to Colombo quite late, our driver got a bit lost when We made it back to Mt Lavinia eventually.

The next morning my mother and brother Roger headed back to NZ via Singapore. Spend the next two days day swimming and make a few phone calls, buy some sarongs, go to an optician, catch up on a little work from back in NZ. Nothing too extreme.

I had organised on Friday to meet Susilough de Silva, secretary of the Colts cricket team at the Colts cricket ground here in Colombo. Susilough is involved with an exchange scheme sending young cricketers to NZ to study. His team, the Colts are about to win the Colombo premier cricket league. Nowhere more than the realm of cricket have the trappings of the old colonial days been kept in such authenticity and reverence. Susilough is lounging watching the cricket in a beautiful wicker chair in a large, cabanahish ground level member’s stand. It is not plush, but very old school. Photos of former club presidents and great players line the walls. Out on the pitch great players of the present and possibly the future are looking intense under the late morning sun. Chaminda Vaas is playing and Susilough asks if I would like to interview him. Of course. Vaas, who is not playing in the one days side (there is an India/ Sri Lanka one dayer about to commence at Premadasa Stadium), but he will undoubtedly be b back in the side as he is one of the ‘rocks’, read for crickets aficionados – Mcgrath like player, of the Lankan cricket team.

When the side take a lunch break he comes down and had a chat. He is unassuming and charming. I feel honoured. More later.

Watch some more cricket, and eventually walk back to Galle Road. Pass quite a few army stop points. I carry my camera around all the time, like very good tourist. I linger a bit long near a check point, a bus load of people this time, and an officer comes up to me, I delete any ‘incriminating’ photos in his presence. He asks me in stilted Singa/ English- “Are you angry with me?” He is carrying a gun, but not threatening. “No, you are just doing your job,” I reply. He nods and wanders back to the check point.

The next day I contact Merrill Fernando of Dilmah tea to organise an interview

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