Found In Ceylon

11 December

6:00 AM: I wake up and pack my backpack carefully, trying not to bring too much for an one-night trip but simultaneously preparing for as many possible contingencies as possible. It will be a long two days. Nightmare scenarios include gastrointestinal discomfort (Imodium and Pepto-Bismol), more cuts on my already shredded-up feet (Detterol bandages), and a lost contact lens (replacement lenses). I bring a white shirt for tomorrow, a pair of gym shorts to sleep in, and my swim shorts to shower in (shower meaning pouring a bucket of water over my head in a not-so-private location). A couple of books, a liter of bottled water, and my camera tops off my survival kit. I make one last trip to the toilet, imagining that I will not see a working, sit-down one again for two days.

7:00 AM: Thusharra picks me up; on the way to the school, we pick up Gayan at his relatives’ house nearby. I get a message from the principal asking me to please come before 7:30. However, Gayan takes his time, however, and while waiting in the living room, I am stared at and served bananas and some kind of deep-fried banana-flavored muffin.

7:30 AM: We arrive at the school. My purpose: I am riding in a van with the Grade 11 students–the same ones who graduated almost two weeks ago–to the Ratmalana Deaf School just south of Colombo. They will take their O/L exams there in an environment suitable for deaf students, complete with teachers who will translate the test into sign language if needed. Ratmalana is five hours away and I will return the same day, late at night.

After sleeping over at the school, the school matrons and I go into the same van and ride in the opposite direction to Kataragama, Sri Lanka’s holiest site for Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. Kataragama is about four hours away, and we also return the same day.

Mr. Abeygunawardana says he will not be coming with me to Ratmalana because his uncle just died and he needs to go to the memorial service. Instead, one of the school matrons–his sign name is Moustache-Man–will replace him.

I am disappointed because I was looking forward to chatting with him on the way back from Ratmalana (some of you may think I am crazy for thinking this). Also, Moustache-Man is absolutely no fun, but later I see that the kids are relieved because they are away from the principal’s watchful eye. Moustache-Man does not know a word of sign language despite working at Rohana for one year, so we can say anything we want in front of him!

Only five out of eight kids are present; Roshani, Pasindu, and Ishara all live closer to Colombo than to Matara, so it makes more sense for them to bus directly to Ratmalana. I am surprised, however, to see Sanjeewani’s father and Chamali, Chintha, and Udaya’s mothers also here. It turns out they all will come with us to Ratmalana so they can sleep at the school along with their kids. Did I mention that parents in Sri Lanka tend to keep their children very close to themselves, and parents of deaf children even closer?

7:45 AM: We head into the van. There are no seat belts. Immediately the six of us, sitting in the back, start yapping away. I ask them if they’ve studied for their O/Ls. All of them have, although I am not sure if the boys have really tried all that hard.

8:45 AM: We drop off Sanjeewani’s father in Galle. I am confused by his sudden departure (the van slowed down very briefly and he jumped right off without very much warning) and after more questioning, learn that only Udaya’s mother is staying at Ratmalana; the other mothers will just inspect the hostel and then return back south with us, getting off at Galle. Udaya appears to sullenly resent his overbearing mother’s presence, and does not really speak to her during the whole trip.

9:15 AM: In Hikkaduwa, a popular beach town for foreigners, the girls ask me why I don’t wave at every white person we pass on the road. I tell them I am deathly afraid of other white people and don’t want to say hello to them.

9:30 AM: We have driven by a lot of beautiful beaches, and Sanjeewani tells us that she would like to stop for a while and frolic by the sea. “We didn’t get to do that last year,” she laments (this is the second time she will be taking the O/Ls; she hopes to get high enough scores to qualify for the A/Ls next year). I tell Udaya’s mother to tell the driver to pull us over for some chow and beach time.

9:45 AM: We pull over at a restaurant in Balapitiya and eat breakfast pastries. I think they are absolutely delicious and I eat three. We also drink some tea.

10:15 AM: We drive a bit farther north and stop at a beach in Kosgoda. The five students and three mothers immediately flee for the water. Many photos are taken.

10:30 AM: We notice that we are next to a turtle hatchery–Kosgoda is famous for their turtle conservation efforts. Chamali’s mother announces that we will all go in to see the turtles. I notice that the sign reads 10 rupees per person in Sinhala, but 200 rupees per adult in English. It is frustrating that as a foreigner I always have to pay so much more than locals do for admission to various things. However, Chamali’s mother convinces the ticket person to let me in at the local price. We proceed to see many baby turtles, which are all the same size, and many adult turtles, which are all many different sizes.

The girls giggle because there are two white women working at the hatchery, and I am encouraged to go talk to them. In a short conversation with one of them, I learn that her name is Liz, she is from England, and she has been working at the hatchery for two weeks. The girls are beside themselves with tittering at my display of boldness. This is turning into a really fun trip, I think.

11:30 PM: The girls are messing around with my camera, Lakmal and Udaya are asleep, and my nose is buried in my Lonely Planet as I read about every town we pass through.

12:00 PM: In Moratuwa, I see a traffic light for the first time in three months. The sight of the bright red, yellow, and green lights nearly drives me to tears.

12:15 PM: We arrive at Ratmalana. All the students are quiet. Ratmalana is the 800-pound gorilla of the Sri Lankan deaf school community; they are always winning the cricket and track tournaments. Their school is the biggest and supposedly the richest (but their O/L results aren’t any higher than, say, Rohana’s–that award goes to the school in Negombo). Lakmal cautions me that the Ratmalana boys are all thieves and that I should watch my wallet. Chintha says the girls there aren’t very nice either.

1:30 PM: Pasindu, Ishara, and Roshani have all shown up. After meeting the principal and paying the hostel fees, the boys and I eat in the boys’ cafeteria and then walk around to look at the school. I note with pride that Rohana’s classrooms are way better than Ratmalana’s. We encounter a group of thieves–er, Ratmalana boys–and of course, they are all very normal and very curious about me and my implant.

Ever-gregarious Pasindu strikes up a conversation with them all about Adam, while Lakmal and Udaya look on warily. Pasindu goes as far as to yank my implant off my head to show off my miraculous powers of magnetism–I am glad that many of the children at Rohana are now comfortable enough with my implant (this is a good subject for a future blog). After the four of us walk away, I tell Lakmal and Udaya not to be sullen and to make friends with the other boys while they are here–they are not all thieves.

2:30 PM: The boys and I go into the hostel. It is in a sorry state; the very dirty concrete floor is full of holes and many of the mosquito nets are torn. I am privately glad that I was told by the principal that I could not sleep at the school (my original plan was to stay there for a few days with the students, but the trip to Kataragama came up and I chose that instead). There are two available mosquito nets and three boys (apparently the Ratmalana students bring their own, and many have already left for the holiday and took their nets with them), but the crisis is resolved when two beds are pushed together so two boys can share one net.

2:45 PM: It is time for us–Moustache-Man, Chintha and Chamali’s mothers, and I–to leave. I start getting choked up, knowing that I may not see some of them again, but mostly because I am so proud of them and love them so much. I tell them to do the best they can on their O/Ls and not leave any question unanswered–guess if they must–and take some pictures. I also tell them to please, please come to the school to pick up their results in a few months and make sure that they see me.

3:00 PM: Finally we speed off and I now have the entire back of the van to myself.

4:00 PM: We are not on the main road but weaving through the back roads for some reason. I think that the driver is trying to find a mall so we can do some big-city shopping, but it is obvious to me that we are lost. I am reading my book.

4:30 PM: It has started pouring and I stretch out, lying across one of the benches lost in deep thought. I start laughing out loud when I remember a joke Jenny told me about the king of Thailand, and realize I have not really genuinely laughed in a couple of weeks. I conclude that laughter may be a universal language, but humor isn’t, and I start really missing my friends, my sister, other white volunteers, my languages–ASL and English-spoken-by-easy-to-lipread-people.

7:00 PM: It is slow going, but we have arrived in Galle, and the two mothers hop off at the bus station. I feel like I am getting to know Galle’s bus station area very well.

7:15 PM: We stop at a restaurant in Habaraduwa. For some reason, the cook cannot serve us the delicious hoppers he is heating up, so we–the driver, Moustache-Man, and I, content ourselves with spicy buns.

8:15 PM: We finally arrive back at school. The first questions I get from Amila, Damayanthi, and Chaminda is, “What took so long?” What, do they think Ratmalana is just around the corner? I lead them through some basic addition–five hours there, a few hours there, five or six hours back–and then they all agree that I came back at a good time. Damayanthi reminds me that we leave for Kataragama tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM.

8:45 PM: Chaminda leads me to the matrons’ shower room–I did not know they had one! It is private, so I do not need my swimsuit. There is no pressure for the showerhead, however, so I use a bucket of water. I find it difficult to get water up my underarms or between my legs, and concede I need more practice.

9:15 PM: I see that Amila is packing up everything he owns, and he tells me he will not sleep at the school anymore in 2007. The only problem is that he is not sure where he is staying tomorrow, so we take a hour to discuss his options (commuting daily to work in Matara from his mother’s house in Habaraduwa or staying at a teacher’s house among others). I tell him to stay at my hotel if anything goes wrong. He is a little nervous but can’t wait to finally leave the school.

He has been living there for several months as a non-student while apprenticing at the computer shop, and it has been difficult and confusing for him to be treated like a student and be expected to act like a matron at the same time. Case in point: tomorrow’s trip to Kataragama–all the school matrons have been buzzing excitedly about it for weeks. He wanted to go, but no one has really invited him. I tell him I can ask Damayanthi, but he is already too offended to even want to go on the trip anymore. It’s a casualty of his limbo-like status as neither a student or a matron, so it is good that he is looking for another place to sleep.

10:15 PM: Chaminda reminds me that we need to leave at 5:00 AM the next morning, so I go to sleep under the mosquito net.

12 December

12:15 AM: I wake up with an urge to do Number Two. I head to the squat toilet and do my business. However, I realize that unlike my previous trips there over the past three months, I do not have any tissue paper or wet wipes with me. I decide it is time for me to plunge into the dark world of the Sri Lankan toilet paperless society, so with a short prayer, I take my left hand and reach down, under, and boldly wipe. It is not the worst thing in the world, but it comes rather close to it. I wash off my hand with the faucet next to me (that is what the faucet is for, along with filling up the bucket of water which you throw down the toilet to “flush”). When I exit the squat toilet stall, I see happily that there is a bar of soap next to the sink and I wash my hands vigorously. I send a message to Bobby, who I imagined would be most amused of all my friends to hear the news of my recent bathroom endeavor. We go back and forth a couple of times on my phone, and I go back to sleep feeling very much amused.

3:00 AM: I wake up again, needing to do Number Two again. So I do it all over again–more quickly–and it is not so bad this time. Once again, I scrub my hands vigorously with soap and water afterwards.

4:00 AM: Chaminda wakes me up. Time to get ready for Kataragama! I cannot wait to see the Jerusalem of Sri Lanka, and I quickly get ready, donning my jeans and white shirt (it is a holy site, after all, so it’s always a good idea to wear a white shirt). Amila also wakes up and observes quietly my activity, and I feel bad that I’m going and he isn’t.

5:00 AM: All the male matrons assemble in front of the van, but Damayanthi and some of the other female matrons have overslept so we wait a bit longer.

5:15 AM: Moustache-Man notices Amila standing on the second floor balcony, looking at us. He asks him, “Hey, why aren’t you ready? Come with us!” Damayanthi, who has just arrived on the scene, asks Amila the same question. I angrily tell them both that no one told Amila that he could go with us to Kataragama. “Well, why don’t you come now?” Damayanthi asks. Amila responds that he doesn’t want to go, and that he needs to go to work anyway (he hasn’t been in for nearly a week because of a theater workshop he has been participating in). It is all a little too painful for me to watch how Amila has been thoughtlessly slighted by the people he works and lives with.

5:30 AM: We pack into the van, all 14 of us, and I comment how full it is. I am in the front passenger row, and there is actually negative leg room so my legs are bunched up on the platform in front of me, behind the driver’s bench. Good thing I have short legs, I think.

5:45 AM: We stop by Mr. Abeygunawardana’s house; he and his son climb into the front seat of the van. I am surprised because I did not know he was coming. The occupancy of the van has now increased to 16 but there is still a seat for everybody except for Haditha, the other cook’s son, who sits on her mother’s lap. Again, nobody wears seat belts. Nobody in Sri Lanka uses seat belts.

7:15 AM: At the eastern end of Tangalla, we stop by a restaurant to pick up several loaves of bread. I ask Samantha what they are for, and she says cheerfully, “Breakfast!” Just bread for breakfast? I think. So I hedge my bets by buying a fish bun for myself at the cheap, cheap price of twelve rupees ($0.12).

7:45 AM: We are somewhere between Ambalantota and Hambantota, and the environment has grown much drier and the plants more prickly than lush. We pull off the road by a nice stretch of beach. Mr. Abeygunawardana says to me, “The driver tells me you like beaches and took the students to a beach yesterday. Here is a beach that we can eat nearby.” I grin nervously, wondering if I have just been mocked at, and we pour out of the van. The two cooks–Ruchiru and Haditha’s mothers–start carving out thick slices of bread, and throwing some green-brown fish-and-vegetable stew (from a yellow ice cream container they brought with them) onto the bread slices. I gobble up my slice greedily–it is so good. I then walk to the water, take some pictures, and walk back. I am the only one to approach the water, and this action probably confirms Mr. Abeygunawardana’s suspicion that I am a beach whore (I really am not).

8:30 AM: We stop by a field. This is apparently the burial place of the Charlie Chaplin of Sri Lanka. His name escapes me, but he is supposedly buried in a spread-eagle posture evoking the irreverent nature of his art. Many of us (not me) take pictures of the field with their cell phones.

As I pass through town after town, they all start to blend into each other. People lament gentrification in America–how every suburb has a town centre with a Blockbuster, Starbucks, Costco, and Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s not quite as drastic in Sri Lanka, but every town has the same signs displaying the Coca-Cola, Reborn, Nippolac, Robbiolac, Dialog GSM, Mobitel, Rhino, Singer, S-lon, and Holcim brands. Like most other third-world countries, shops here opt to have big-name companies give them signs with the brand name on top and the individual shop name and address underneath in smaller letters. From Ratmalana to Tissamaharama, each town’s main street looks like the one before it.

9:00 AM: We drive into Tissamaharama. The roads here are simply gorgeous–all brand-new blacktop with bright yellow and white lines and beautiful blue road signs. I cannot believe my eyes; it is the first time I have seen such breathtakingly smooth roads in three months, and the coconut-roofed shops selling woodapples and watermelons along the road convinces me that I am not suddenly back in England or Australia.

9:45 AM: Praised be all the gods–we have finally arrived in Kataragama! My bottom is a little sore but I am not in any pain from the crouched position I have been sitting in for hours. We pour out of the van and head into the “Sacred Place” as the signs call it. City of gods, here I come!

10:00 AM: We gaze at the tall Kirivehera dagoba, which dates back to the 1st century B.C. It doesn’t look like a 2,000-year-old artifact to me. Obviously it has been maintained so well that it looks no older than fifty years, and it is hard for me to be impressed by it when there are so few visible signs of age. Everybody else offers flowers, incense, and oil to the various shrines around the dagoba.

10:30 AM: We walk along a very long boulevard to the most important shrine at Kataragama: the Hindu Maha Devale, which supposedly contains the lance of the six-faced, 12-armed war god Skanda. I see my first temple monkeys. I scream, “At last I have finally seen those famous monkeys!” Of course, I am afraid to approach them, and I warily watch my sunglasses on my head; I’ve heard too many stories of monkeys snatching purses and cameras out of unsuspecting tourists’ hands.

Fortunately there is a puja happening right now, and while the Maha Devale is completely full, Mr. Abeygunawardana is able to get us inside the neighboring temple dedicated to Ganeesh, the elephant-faced god. It is very fascinating to me how Hinduism and Buddhism have evolved into complementary religions in Sri Lanka with temples routinely displaying holy figures from both mythologies. The holy men chant around the image of Ganeesh on the tapestry, and spread incense around the small room. Many of us are given red marks on our foreheads and spoonfuls of sweet curry by the holy man at the temple, and I am grateful to be allowed to watch this ceremony.

Outside, we see a line of people, each holding a coconut with a flaming cube of sugar on top, waiting for their turn to smash it upon a rock–an Hindi ritual I have never heard of but am amused to watch. I admit, however, that the whole “Jerusalem of Sri Lanka” experience is rather underwhelming given all the hype I’ve heard for a month now. It is really just a dagoba and a few Hindu temples–but I suppose Buddhists could equally say that the Western Wall is just an old brick wall. “But at least it looks old!” I would protest.

11:00 AM: We have some fun feeding a baby elephant outside of the Hindu temple area.

However, even though it’s all very educational, I suddenly start really missing the people I’ve traveled with. I take stock of my previous travel experiences and note that this is the first time I am traveling with people who do not know ASL, who are not are very fluent in English-that-I-can-lipread, and many who are not really my age. Even though I am having somewhat of a good time at this holy site, I think of how much more fun it’d be if I had some of my old travel buddies with me instead–even if they didn’t know as much about Kataragama as my current tour group does. Even though I am always surrounded by people who are fascinated with me and children and adults who love me, volunteering in Sri Lanka has its lonely moments where pidgin language just does not get the point across.

11:45 AM: By then I am experiencing a wave of culture shock–they still come every now and then after three months here where I am simply overwhelmed–and kind of shut down, silently looking at the landscape around me. In the next hour and half, we are led through an enormous bazaar with at least a hundred shops all selling the same cheap plastic trinkets, roasted peanuts, and bags of flowers, fruit plates, and coconuts for temple offerings. I wonder how so many similar shops could survive; the amount of money spent in this place must be spread out so impossibly thinly. We visit another Hindu temple, but it’s all just a blur until we head back into the van and leave Kataragama. Chaminda asks me if I’m okay, and admits that Kataragama wasn’t really all that great for him, either.

1:00 PM: We head to another Buddhist/Hindu-fusion temple nearby; as we walk on the road leading up to it, everyone starts throbbing to the music blasting out of the temple’s loudspeakers. Unfortunately, my implant cuts out at this moment, and my replacement batteries are back in the van. There is no dagoba but there are plenty of Buddhist flags flying around Hindu statutes. We sit through a prayer service and drink some delicious Ayurvedic tea.

A holy man also gives me a yellow bracelet for 10 rupees (Chaminda insists on paying for it) and this, along with the tea, buoys my spirits. Finally, I have a holy bracelet! I think. I have been waiting for weeks for a monk or other holy person to give me a bracelet; I looked enviously at other people wearing a white string (given by a Buddhist monk) around their wrists and wondered when I would get mine. However, I am the only one with a yellow bracelet; everyone else has red or orange. When I ask Chaminda about this, he says, “Yellow is for foreigners.” Ouch, God-sanctioned racism.

1:45 PM: We pile back into the van and drive back down the road to Tissamaharama (beautiful paved roads again!). We stop by a very large dagoba–it is almost 56 meters high, and dates back to two centuries before Christ. It is also thought to have once held Buddha’s tooth and forehead bone, and King Kavantissa, who built it, is the father of Dutugemunu, the Sinhalese hero who liberated Anuradhapura from Indian invaders in c. 150 B.C. All very ancient history, but unfortunately, this dagoba also looks pretty new–maybe circa 1950, and it is hard for me to appreciate it. I conclude that, for most foreigners, when you’ve seen one dagoba, you’ve seen them all.

2:00 PM: We ride to a small clearing along the very large Tissa Wewa lake; it is a beautiful body with water lilies peppered along its shoreline. Behind us are many large rice paddies, and we eat pre-packaged rice and curry prepared by the two school cooks. It is very good and we all finish quickly and go back into the van. I think that we are finished with the trip and heading back to Matara now.

3:00 PM: I look up from my book; we have pulled off the road (it has long ago returned to its squalid, bumpy state). Mr. Abeygunawardana is talking to a man standing on the side; I wonder what it’s all about. Suddenly, he, Chaminda, and Damayanthi all start fingerspelling furiously at me. To make this a bit more difficult, Mr. Abeygunawardana is fingerspelling in ASL, while Chaminda opts for Sinhala and Damayanthi for BSL. After darting my eyes among six hands and three languages, I figure out that we are near Yala West National Park, a large safari-style nature reserve.

“Do you want to go to Yala?” Mr. Abeygunawardana asks me, as if I have the sole power to decide if we all should go in or not. I am feeling very tired and not up for looking at wildlife, so I tell him, if everyone else wants to go, then sure, let’s go. He nods and immediately a safari jeep pulls up–I take this as my signal that we are going to visit Yala.

We pile into the back of the jeep–it is a tight squeeze–and I get my second wind. This will be fun, I think! We’ll get to see elephants and lions and crocodiles like on a real safari–wait, this is a REAL safari! Why didn’t I want to do this before?

3:15 PM: We head to the park office to buy tickets and pick up the guide. Mr. Abeygunawardana pays for all of us, and when he returns to the jeep, he tells me, “You are sure expensive.” He shows me the receipt and I am astonished to discover that while 14 people (the driver didn’t come) were charged a total of 420 rupees at 30 rupees per person, I, the “adult foreigner” on the receipt, was charged 1,449 rupees. I am mortified and quickly tell him that I will pay him back. He says okay.

3:30 PM: We enter Yala and I see a beautiful peacock right away. We also see hippos, water buffaloes, crocodiles, various birds, and half of a leopard’s tail (we couldn’t see the rest of him). It is very beautiful, very bumpy, and very Africa-like.

4:30: We pull into the coastal part of Yala, and are given time to explore the coastline. There is a tsunami memorial there; 47 foreign and local visitors were killed at this spot when the waves hit. How scary it must have been, I imagine, to go on a safari to see elephants and leopards and, in the brief moment during the entire safari that you happen to be near the water, a tsunami comes roaring at you.

Samantha pulls me away from the memorial and asks me to take pictures of her and others by the water. I oblige; it’s a very lovely scene. When we sit back in the jeep, we are all already very tired and are no longer excited by further wildlife sightings. Nevertheless, it is sunset when we exit Yala.

5:45: A deep, slightly painful rumbling bubbles up inside me just as we are finishing Yala; it is time to do Number Two again. We stop by the park office again to drop off the guide, and I run to the toilets. I pick a clean-looking sit-down toilet this time, and do my business. Of course, there is no toilet paper, but I am now a seasoned hand-wiper, and do it. Then I discover with horror that the faucet next to me is not working–my hand is smeared with my excrement and I can’t wash it off. In a panic, I flush the toilet and then reach down into the new bowl of water to wash off my hand. There isn’t much in there, so I flush again and no water comes out this time.

Feeling the dirtiest I’ve ever felt in my life, I pull up my pants with my right hand and stumble out of the stall, heading for the sinks. There is no soap, and no water pours out of the faucets. Moustache-Man emerges behind me, apparently waiting for me, and tells me, “No water!” He looks a little upset too–had he just done Number Two as well?

I wipe my hand on the wall (what, would you have a better idea?) and run to the jeep, asking if anybody has any water left in their bottles. They think I am upset because they have drank all my bottled, purified water, but I try and explain to them that it’s because I need to wash my hand. But there is no water left at all, but Damayanthi, bless her heart, manages to find a full water bottle from one of the guides and hands it to me. I use up about a quarter of it washing my hands free of my shame. Sitting in the jeep, I try to not touch anybody until we reach the van, with my backpack in it containing my Purell waterless hand sanitizer.

6:00: My hands are clean again (relatively) and I breathe once again. I am ready to go home now. Then Samantha says we are going to see another dagoba now. Silently, I scream “NO!” but I suck it up, grin, and tell her I can’t wait to see it. But as soon as we all sit down in the van, we all pass out and wake up a hour and half later in Hambantota.

7:30: I note with mirth that we have apparently skipped the dagoba and are speeding home now. But first, we stop by a restaurant in Hambantota where we eat hoppers. I only imagine what the others were thinking when the van unloaded a blind teacher, a child with Down’s Syndrome, two deaf Sri Lankans, older-looking cooks, a school principal, and a deaf foreigner. What a motley crew, but we all eat hoppers just the same, and after about fifteen minutes, we walk back to the van.

Mr. Abeygunawardana says to me just before he steps into the van before me, “Now we will go to my home for dinner.” I think, are you freaking kidding me? We are at least two hours away from Matara and we just ate and we are all so exhausted and dirty and now you think we want to go to your house–the principal’s house!–for dinner? I thought it was a joke, and asked Damayanthi if this was true. She said she had no idea; it was the first she had heard of this, too.

9:30: After a hour of very painful and very bumpy driving between Tangalla and Matara, we pull up at Mr. Abeygunawardana’s house for dinner. He steps out, and Chaminda, Moustache-Man, a different male matron, and I all step out too and follow him to his house. Halfway up the path, I look back and see all the women still sitting in the van, looking out and wondering if they had been invited into the house, too. Evidently this dinner is a surprise to everybody. Mr. Abeygunawardana also notices this and yells out in Sinhalese. Soon everyone is inside the house, and I eat a delicious meal of noodles, fish, and dhal. His house is very nice by Sri Lankan standards–two stories, a marble tile floor–and judging from the looks on everyone else’s eyes, it is their first time in the principal’s house, too.

Sitting in one of the chairs, I reflect on my two days of transit–400 miles covered; twenty hours of driving time total. The drive up to Ratmalana with my students was the best part, of course, and despite spending most of today in a stupor brought on by culture shock and language isolation, I did appreciate the opportunity to see Kataragama and Yala. At the very least, I took some gorgeous pictures of the other staff; they will love prints of it as they love photos so, so much. But most of all, I cannot wait until tomorrow where my break really begins and I can spend eight whole days just relaxing until my sister comes next Thursday.

10:00: The dinner is very short and we are all quickly back in the van except for Mr. Abeygunawardana and his son, of course. We drop off a couple people on the way to the school, and finally we are home. I immediately call Thusharra to pick me up and take me home. Chaminda, Samantha, and Damayanthi are all surprised that I am not sleeping at the school again. Honestly, I just want to go back home to my bed, alone and away from everybody, but I tell them how I am paying for this room every night whether I sleep in it or not, so I better sleep in it, right? This satisfies them. I depart the school in Thusharra’s three-wheeler and by 10:30 I am fast asleep back home at the Beach Inns.

December 13

9:30 AM: I wake up to this view right outside my bedroom door. My Week of Serious Rest has now begun. I couldn’t be happier.

Despite the impression that my recent blogs have given, my stay in Sri Lanka isn’t a constantly breathless event. It has its quieter moments (usually on the weekends). However, being in a foreign country (the poorer the better, maybe?) is like being given permanent front-row seats to a private viewing of the boldness and colorfulness of life in its rawer forms.

Break
School has ended for the 2006 term, so I am looking very much forward to the next few weeks off. December break is one week less than everybody expected because Mr. Abeygunawardana announced to the abbreviated student body last Friday morning, the last day of school, that the 2007 term would begin 2 January. Not 8 January as everyone had thought (and planned) for weeks prior.

Highlights of my shorter-than-planned break include scuba dives, luxuriating in the sun reading books, preparing English lessons for next year, working on the school website, writing postcards, and visiting the holy city of Kataragama with the school matrons. But best of all, I will be climbing mountains, visiting ancient Buddhist sites, and seeing the best parts of this magnificent island with my sister, Liz!

Half of Sri Lanka knows about her impending arrival (and what she looks like, her martial status, her age, her job, her education, and that she is my only sibling). The earlier start date of January 2 has its silver lining; it means Liz will get to see the school in action (but think sloth-like action. 3 January is a poya holiday, so most students probably won’t show up until 4 or 8 January,). I can’t wait, but I keep having nightmares of not being able to communicate with her because I supposedly have completely forgotten American Sign Language.

Lactose-Based Products
Sri Lankan yogurt is the best yogurt I’ve ever had. I’ve never been able to tolerate eating American-brand plain yogurt–it always had to be flavored with mixed berry, strawberry, blueberry, or some other berry. But here, I’ve had nothing but plain yogurt and I can’t get enough of it.

Curd, on the other hand, isn’t so great. Sammi eats it every morning for breakfast (except for days where he has fallen under my insidious influence and is compelled to eat Froot Loops). I’m still not exactly sure what curd is, but it comes from a cow, that’s for sure, and is usually eaten with honey.

And ice cream! Sri Lankan ice cream has a distinctive, almost ice-y taste that qualifies it as either the most authentic or most fictitious ice cream in the world. I am partial to vanilla. The boys have picked up on my great love for the local ice cream, and are always eager to keep me well-supplied with small bowls of the white stuff if that day’s sponsored meal includes it.

Cheese, however, is a non-entity in Sri Lanka. As Jenny pointed out when we discussed this very important topic, there are cows everywhere–why is there no locally-produced cheese? The only cheese available is the Austrian-imported Happy Cow Cheese; its label is so distinctive the children have a sign specifically for this product. WIth a small wheel (eight pieces) retailing at 200 rupees, it’s little wonder that schoolboys Supun and Prasad got into a fist-fight over one allegedly stolen piece.

Mr. Bean
In the eyes of the Sinhalese, I apparently bear a striking resemblance to Mr. Bean, the clumsy Briton played by Rowan Atkinson.

It started with the principal a couple of months ago when he remarked to his secretary, “He looks like Mr. Been, doesn’t he?”

“Who?” I asked.

“B-E-E-N,” he spelled.

“Been?”

“The comedian, Mr. Been.”

“Oh, you mean, Mr. Bean?”

“Yes. You look like him.”

So now every other time I chat with him in his office, he brings up this doppelgänger. One time, the office floor had been just mopped and I was treading carefully on the slippery tile. “Mr. Bean!” the principal exclaimed while pointing at me, and the secretary immediately fell into stifled laughter.

I have to assume that Mr. Bean is very popular in Sri Lanka because there is a specific sign for him, and it isn’t just Mr. Abeygunawardana that’s using that sign anymore. Many of the girls at the school now point out this resemblance, and it has spread to some of the boys as well. Specific congruences include my nose, my stride, my hair, and my expressions.

So it’s time for me to watch a Mr. Bean DVD soon so that I can refresh my memory. I just hope it won’t be like looking into a mirror.

Rice and Curry
Sri Lankans eat rice and curry three times a day. Sure, there are exceptions; sometimes a fish bun will do for breakfast, or a family will have a slab of fish for dinner. But from my observations, people are eating from a plate filled with rice and various curries, dhals, and stews for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I can’t really complain. The school cooks (Ruchira’s mother and another cook who also has a son with Down’s, Haditha, attending the school) do a marvelous job of cooking for everybody.

There’s also those sponsors, who come between three and six times a week, and some sponsors bring so much food that students have to stop eating before they’ve finished off their plates.

All these has resulted in a situation where I am more than happy to eat institutional food and will sometimes go out of my way to get at it, meaning I’ll stay extra-late so I can have a school dinner instead of eating hotel food (not as great). Saves me money, too.

Thursday night, I slept over at the school. Friday was the last day of the term and there were so few boys left that I didn’t have the heart to say no to their “will you sleep over tonight with us?” pleas. Luckily, Thursday dinner was sponsored and it was a feast in every definition of the word. My plate must have weighted two pounds and I finished off every last piece of rice.

Per usual, a few of the sponsors stood nearby intently watching me eat–the sight of a white person semi-expertly mixing up rice and curries with his right hand is irresistible to many. One person even took several pictures of me with his camera phone.

It has been a process to learn how to eat with my hands. The food, is of course, exquisitely prepared for this very method of consumption, but it took me a while to get it (Americans don’t run around squeezing filet mignons). Originally, I would just gingerly put food next to each other, slightly mash it all up (avoiding any possibility that the shape of individual pieces might be altered), and slowly throw it into my mouth.

Now, thanks to the boys’ tireless lessons, I vigorously rub every piece of food together until all of it has dissolved into a light brown and green mass (it can look very red if beets are served during that meal). “Work it–hard” is my mantra; the food, is after all, inert and will not object to being squeezed within millimeters of its former self. The harder I press different curries and rice together, the better the resulting concoction is.

Memory: Gayan and Sanjeewa, two schoolboys, were treated to an American-style dinner at a hotel in Mirissa. Sanjeewa did just fine using a fork, but Gayan tired out after a while. I looked on with horror as he mashed together french fries, ketchup, tomato-onion-lettuce salad, and grilled fish pieces into round red-yellow masses and threw each one into his mouth.

The really great part about this particular dinner last Thursday, was that Supun, who was sitting next to me, suddenly served me a ball of everything mixed up. He motioned to me to eat it out of his hand. And I did. I then immediately mixed up a similar ball and served it to him; he ate it out of my hand.

And I repeated this with four other boys – Sanjeewa, Jeewatha, Prasanna, and Priyankara. Each ball tasted uniquely because of the different concentrations of curries and rice that each boy mixed.

It was just this wonderful moment of friendship with us eating out of each others’ hands. It was testimony that oceans of distance could be forgotten and new cultures embraced. For what could be more personal than serving food by hand to other mouths, with nary a utensil to increase the distance between feeder and feedee?

I was reminded of this story David told me once about this mother who still fed his son food by hand even thought he was in his mid-20s and married. In fact, this mother barked at the son’s wife that only she, and certainly not the wife, could feed him.

I dread going back to a country where south Asian food is served in restaurants with accompanying forks and knives–because that’s just not how it is meant to be eaten.

Tidbits
On a rainy morning, I observed from my three-wheeler a man walking along the street with one hand holding an umbrella and the other hand occupied with brushing his teeth. Since then I have learned that people seem to like to walk around brushing their teeth for a very long time; they will walk outside their homes and look around their neighborhood during this morning ritual. It is odd to me because I really can’t brush my teeth for longer than one minute, maybe a minute and half at the most.

The Sinhalese seem to be constantly falling in love with my blue eyes. “They are so beautiful,” they exclaim. They also believe there is nothing more beautiful than a white person wearing a white shirt. Even though Sri Lankans should be used to be seeing white people, it is very difficult for me to remain anonymous. This is especially so when I am walking down the street and endure stares, waves, and yells of hello-and-whatever-else-they-are-saying-but-I-can’t-hear-them from every person that passes me by. I keep wondering if I have a piece of spinach stuck between my teeth or have left my fly open, but it’s really just me that they’re fascinated with.

Fairness cream is in popular demand throughout Sri Lanka. This cream supposedly makes you skin more fair, although I have yet to see it work as described. This infatuation with whiteness is probably why many characters on Sri Lankan teledramas do not bear the dark Sinhalese skin that I see everywhere around me (and that is a fact I lament).

And to touch on the topic of food again, fish buns are wonderful no matter the time of day, and I have to say with smug pride that I consistently surprise my companions with my ability to withstand very spicy curries on a daily basis. Take that, you lousy capiscum!

I think it is remarkable how quickly I have gotten used to taking very cold showers in a room that is both a shower stall and an entire bathroom (After a shower, I have to wipe off the toilet seat and the mirror above the sink; they’re all really that close to each other).

It is distressing (and hard to believe when living in the peaceful area that is Matara) that Sri Lanka is embroiled in a civil war. It angers me that it is the same old stupid story again–an ethnic conflict between two groups. We have all seen this story played out so many times on so many stages around the world, and we all know it does very little good for anybody except defense contractors and weapon manufacturers. Why have we not learned yet?! It is not a hard lesson to master but it is likely one of the hardest of all if you are part of the ethnic group entangled in the conflict.

Please include peace for Sri Lanka and all other ethnic hotspots–Sudan, Israel, Northern Ireland, Oaxaca, East Timor, Tibet, Kashmir, Iraq, Lebanon–in your year-end meditations.

Ayubowan!

I strolled onto the campus Friday morning filled with pride. All the preparations were done; the monk would come at 3:00 pm and we would have a ceremony that the graduates would remember forever and that would be so awesome the school would simply have to do it every December from now on.

Then Samantha came up to me and asked, “What’s going on at three o’clock today? Mr. Abeygunawardana just told us about some function and that a monk was coming here?”

“Graduation, of course. You mean he didn’t tell you before?”

“No. He didn’t tell anybody. He just told all of us about it this morning.”

I was dumbstruck. I had been assured by Mr. Abeygunwaradana that the teachers had known about graduation all along; after all, many of them had seen the certificates and gowns. What did they think it was for, my own staging of King Lear behind the girls’ dormitory?

A few more sympathetic teachers approached me later and said they probably could not make it due to the principal’s short notice but they would try. The feeling I got from the rest was that none of them would be able to attend. What is a graduation ceremony without teachers? I thought.

Then I recollected myself and reminded myself it was for the students, not for the teachers. Also, less teachers meant less chairs that we would have to move from upstairs into the main room.

Throughout the school day, I kept reminding the Grade 7, 8, 9, and 10 boys and girls that as soon as they finished their Sinhala and Buddhism exams, they had to help move the chairs downstairs and set up the room for graduation. Then, and only then, could they take the rest of the day off.

But when they finished their exams, they did neither. They all assembled around the Grade 11 students who were graduating, and started saying good-bye. Two students had borrowed their parents’ cell phones and were taking pictures of everybody else with it. I joined in the moment, taking many pictures of them. As usual, the students reminded me that I must not forget to print them out by tomorrow morning at the latest, and I told them I would do it within a few weeks.

However, it was getting a little late, past 12:30, so I told a few boys who were sitting around, bored, to start moving the chairs downstairs.

“What for?” Jeewatha and Sameera both asked.

“Graduation!” I said.

“What about graduation?”

“Three o’clock today! I’ve been telling you every day this week! Graduation! Grade 11! They! Go! Bye-Bye! Event! Gown! Sad! Finish! School! Monk! Come! Three o’clock!”

They continued sitting there, not quite understanding the tall order I was asking of them.

Finally, I took a chair and carried it downstairs. This action worked, because everybody immediately noticed the white American teacher performing actual physical labor–a big no-no–and sprang into action.

Jeewatha took a broom and started sweeping the floor, and almost all the kids took two chairs each and carried it downstairs. I began grabbing the black plastic teachers’ chairs from the primary classrooms, and Gayan ran up to me, saying, “No! Don’t work, we’ll do it. Sit down over there.”

I still wasn’t too trusting of them to finish the job, so I kept moving the chairs. Udaya, a Grade 11 boy who had installed himself as site boss, berated the younger boys, “Look! Adam is carrying a chair! A TEACHER! You lazy bums! Finish your jobs! Move those chairs!”

Within thirty minutes, the main room was done, and everyone went to play at the pavilion. The mothers (no fathers came to the graduation ceremony) started arriving at around 1:30.

Sanjeewani came up to me a few minutes after her mother arrived and said, “We have to leave at 2:30. I can’t go to the ceremony. Talk to my mother, please!”

I approached her mother and asked her to please stay until at least 4:00.

“No. We have to catch the bus at 3:00. Mr. Abeygunawardana told us the ceremony was 2:00.” I knew this was not true because I was in the room with the parents two weeks earlier when the principal clearly said 3:00.

“Please stay. Your daughter will be wearing a beautiful gown, and she will get a gift and a certificate, and she will give a speech. She has been here for years, what’s another hour?” She was unmoved. “A monk comes here at 3:00 to give blessings; won’t you stay so he can bless your daughter? Please?”

She refused, and Sanjeewani started sulking in the corner.

“Please?” I asked one more time.

“Okay. But we must leave at 3:30,” she said.

“Thank you very much,” I said, and went up to Sanjeewani to tell her that she could make it after all.

“But it probably won’t be finished at 3:30,” she said.

“Don’t worry; you’ll make your speech first before the other graduates, and then you can leave.”

She appeared mollified by this. With the family dispute resolved, my thoughts turned to another matter. The principal was not here at the school and it was almost 2:30. Where the hell was he? Would he miss his own school’s graduation ceremony? Was it that unimportant to him?

As if to reinforce this point, Kumara, a Grade 6 boy, came up to me and said, “What’s the chairs that we moved downstairs for?”

“Graduation. Remember, I told you many times?” I responded.

“Oh, yeah. But why? We already gave our gifts to them this morning,” he said.

“I told you to wait until 3:00 to give them the gifts at the ceremony!”

“Oh. But why?”

The uninformed teachers. The absent principal. The uncaring mother. The preoccupied students. At this moment, I decided that I had been going about all this wrong. No one cared about graduation. Despite it being celebrated at other schools and universities, graduation was obviously a completely foreign concept to the Rohana community, like trying to teach the Eucharist to Buddhists monks. Why couldn’t I have left well enough alone and respected their cultural norms?

Then Mr. Abeygunawardana came riding on his bicycle, saying that he had a meeting that went on longer than expected, and asked if all was ready for 3:00? A few minutes later, two other teachers came walking through the school gates, ready to watch the ceremony.

Then Iresha, a Grade 9 girl, said, “Isn’t it almost time for the ceremony? What should we do now?”

Maybe there was still hope. It was now 2:45, so I told the eight Grade 11 students to come to the library to put on their gowns. And as soon as I saw them giggling when they looked at each other wearing the funny costumes, I was reminded why I had done this in the first place: to recognize and celebrate the graduates.

From left to right: Ishara, Lakmal, Sanjeewani, Chintha, Roshani, Chintha, Pasindu, and Udaya. They loved their outfits and some of the other kids started looking into the library, wondering where we had all disappeared to.

I told the eight graduates to come outside for photographs. The boys came out first, showing off their maroon gowns.

However, the girls were mortified to be seen wearing these gowns. “It’s like we’re at university!” Chintha squealed. With the exception of Ishara, they came out huddling together, trying to hide from everybody else who were watching from the central courtyard.

Many photographs were taken, including one of all the students who happened to be present and not sleeping (a few boys stumbled out of the dormitory after the photo shoot, wondering what they had missed).

The mothers were all seated in the pavilion, watching the commotion at the playground, so after I had taken the photos, I told each graduate to come grab their mother for a family picture. The one exception was Ishara, whose mother unfortunately couldn’t make it because she was sick and her home is twice as far away as everybody else’s.

Sanjeewani, when it was her turn, came up to her mother, said, “Okay, we’re done fighting, right? Let’s take the picture,” and her mother smiled and walked with her to stand in front of my camera. Peace in our time!

Finally, it was time, and I told everybody, including Mr. Abeygunawardana, to come sit down in the main room. Then the monk came, and suddenly the boys went wild.

“The monk is here! The monk is here! Go get flowers! Candles! Incense! Where’s the white sheet for his chair!” they all screamed.

I realized I had not taken the time to think about how to properly welcome the monk. Everyone stood up in the room for ten tense minutes while we waited for the flowers to be collected, the incense lit, and the tray with a cream soda bottle and glass prepared, and all offered to the monk before the ceremony could begin. I kept imagining next Tuesday’s meeting with Mr. Abeygunawardana, being scolded for neglecting such time-honored and sacred rituals.

After this offering had been made (the monk revealed no emotion during all this), I welcomed everybody to the ceremony, especially thanking the parents who had traveled far just for this moment. Then the monk spoke for about ten minutes, with the former principal’s wife/teacher interpreting to the graduates and me copy-interpreting back to everybody else. It was more of a prayer than a speech because everyone had their hands clasped together, and the monk repeatedly asked for blessings to be given to the students to do well on their O/L exams and to support them in their quest for a good life.

Then Mr. Abeygunawardana spoke to the audience. First, he spoke in Sinhala, then he repeated it all in sign language. If you have met Mr. Abeygunawardana, you will know that he likes to talk. And talk.

It was already past 3:30, and I kept looking to Sanjeewani. She had a pained expression on her face, probably imagining her mother yelling at her later for making them late for the bus. I kept whispering to her, “I’m so sorry, so sorry!”

By the way, the principal’s speech was really nice, and he validated all my hard work by saying it was so important to recognize these eight graduates who were wearing beautiful maroon gowns and how they had grown up at the school and would be very missed. It was very good for me to hear that from him.

Then it was time for the eight valedictorians’ speeches. Sanjeewani went first.

When she was done, she bowed down to her mother, who had tears in her eyes. I was thrilled that she could be convinced to stay to watch this ceremony and be proud of her daughter.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to see any of the graduates’ speeches because I was too busy taking pictures and giving the diplomas and gifts to either the principal, the monk, or a teacher (we kept changing the procedure as we went along) to officially give to the graduate. Still, I’m sure they were great although a few clearly came down with stage fright and forgot what they were planning to say.

However, Sanjeewani, after a couple others had given their speeches, approached the principal to bow to him and say good-bye. Instead of touching Sanjeewani’s head, he turned to her mother, saying, “No. Please stay a little while longer.” And of course, you can’t argue with the principal, so her mother stayed put in her chair, and Sanjeewani walked back to her seat with a huge grin on her face.

Chamali and Lakmal:

And Ishara receiving her diploma and gift from Samantha (the shorter one), another teacher, and Principal Abeygunawardana:

After all eight had made their speeches, the former principal’s wife/teacher then gave a short speech, and I also gave one talking about how deaf people could do whatever they wanted or something like that; I really don’t remember. And then it was all over and I could scarcely believe it. A few graduates had wet eyes as they hugged other students good-bye and bowed down to teachers and matrons.

I told them to put their gowns back in the library (so future classes could wear them for their graduations), and they picked up from the principal’s office a new savings account book with an initial deposit of 500 rupees (USD $5.00) each.

And all too quickly, pairs of mother and child, with luggage in tow (many could fit their worldly possessions in a small duffel bag), walked out through the school gates. I want to type here poignantly “out of the gates for the last time” but they all actually come back 11 December to take a van to Colombo to take the O/L exams so I will see them again and give them prints of their graduation photos.

But it doesn’t make this good-bye any easier for me. Because I’ve gotten to know all of them as real human beings with minds and hearts, it’s scary to know that possibly only a few of them may triumph and many of them may not. In my eyes, they deserve every last chance they get and more.

This is my first graduation as a teacher; how do people who have worked in this field for decades deal with the constant uncertainty surrounding their students’ futures? Do they get used to it, much like funeral directors supposedly get used to death?

Pasindu was the last residential student to leave, and the most father-like figure to all the other boys, so we all followed him to the bus stop down the street for one last goodbye to the graduating class. Before he boarded the bus, he told me to please tell all the other volunteers at the school, Nerissa, David, and Sammi that he will never, ever forget them. That’s him in the middle, between the needlework teacher and Prasad:

In a community of about than 100 students, Chamali, Chintha, Ishara, Lakmal, Pasindu, Roshani, Sanjeewani, and Udaya have been the pack leaders. They walked away from the school feeling acknowledged, honored, and proud–but most of all, with the knowledge that, in a country indifferent to their struggles, they are valued, loved, and will be missed. That’s all I wanted to accomplish.

Congratulations to the Class of 2006!

“This is new for us,” Mr. Abeygunawardana said slowly, signaling that the school community needed time to understand what graduation is about. We were in another one of our meetings discussing preparations for the graduation ceremony to be held on Friday the first of December.

Rohana’s history with graduation is haphazard; prior to 2005, there was no ceremony to recognize departing students. There was a small ceremony last year where volunteers Jill and Peter equipped graduates with cell phones, but my students didn’t cough up additional details. One thing was for sure: they apparently did not receive diplomas.

When you consider that many graduates have spent all their childhood living at the school, letting them walk out of the school gates without any recognition or a certificate is criminal. In fairness, however, the concept of high school graduation is a little muddled in Sri Lanka.

After Grade 11, the students take the Ordinary Level (O/L) examinations, a grueling nationwide testing program that lasts for one and a half weeks and queries test-takers on all school subjects from Buddhism to agricultural studies and Tamil. So it’s only until after the students take the tests that they are officially “graduated.” And even with that, some can opt to come back to school to study the O/L tests so they can retake them the next year and get higher scores. And if they do, they can also come back to the same school to study for the Advanced Level (A/L) examinations, which is their ticket to university.

So high school graduation in Sri Lanka, because of its not-so-finality, isn’t exactly one of those milestones. But still, Rohana Special School is, in my eyes, a special case, and was deserving of a graduation ceremony because of how the students have lived, studied, played, and grown up together in a residential community with an unique communication environment for so many years.

So it was when I expressed these thoughts to Mr. Abeygunawardana that he appointed me as the school’s Official Graduation Day Planner. To make extra sure that I wasn’t imposing some foreign cultural event on the hapless Sinhalese, I asked Mr. Abeygunawardana last month if universities and other secondary schools had graduation ceremonies, and he responded affirmatively–”but only some of them, not all.”

So I began the preparations right there. Every graduation ceremony must have two things: gowns and certificates. Here’s how I accomplished each:

Gowns
Rohana’s colors are maroon and gold (hey, just like Torrey Pines! Go Falcons!). I dug up some photos of my RIT graduation, loaded them onto my camera, and showed them to the principal.

“See, that is what a graduation gown looks like,” I said.

“But this is not an university. They cannot wear university gowns.”

“But are any of them realistically going to university? This is a special school; let’s make this special,” I retorted.

Later, I saw the fallacy in my argument: a lot of people will not get Ph.Ds–does that mean they should get the chance to wear Ph.D regalia regardless? Still, let’s ignore logic here, okay?

He pondered this for a moment and said, “O.K.” Then he pointed, in the photo, at fellow graduate Amanda and our faculty adviser, Eileen Biser. “Is this your sister and mother?”

After I told him no and showed him for the umpteenth time the other photos of my family, I went to the fabric store and bought 20 yards of semi-shiny maroon fabric. The next day, Chaminda, the new deaf male matron, and I visited four local tailors who all declined to make our gowns (I was showing them the same photo of Amanda, Mrs. Biser, and myself at our graduation).

Then Chaminda had the brilliant idea of asking a teacher, the wife of the former Rohana principal, who lived nearby. She pointed us to a tailor shop behind the deaf association building. We walked there and Chaminda took over right there, detailing the entire outfit while I sat watching everybody speak Sinhala. It would all be done on Wednesday the 29th, the tailor said.

The next day, I went to talk to Mr. Abeygunawardana about something else, and he brought up the graduation gowns. He asked to see the photograph again, and I showed it to him.

After he pondered the photograph for a while, he said, “We cannot make this graduation gown.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because they look like lawyers.” (Sri Lanka’s legal system, similar to the British one, has lawyers dress up like American judges.)

“So?”

“In Sri Lanka, it is against the law to dress up like a lawyer.”

“Oh,” I said, imagining my perfect graduation ceremony burst into flames. Fortunately, Chaminda saw our conversation, and came to my rescue. He suggested adding Mandarian collars and school badges to the gowns, and pointed out they were maroon, not black.

“If you make those changes, then I think it will be okay. But I–not you or the students, but I–may have problems with the authorities,” the principal said.

So Chaminda and I went back to the tailor shop, handed him the school badges, and told him to make the necessary changes. We picked it up on Wednesday evening and they looked wonderful. I showed it off to Mr. Abeygunawardana Thursday morning, but he sat at his desk quietly, contemplating this strange outfit.

“Put it on,” he finally commanded.

I obliged; he then called a few teachers to come into the office. After a few minutes of giggling and tittering to the principal in Sinhala, all at my expense, they left. He told me that the teachers liked it, but thought it was still a little too similar to a lawyer’s gown. He had a few ideas, however, and would let me know in a few hours.

I was napping in the dormitory when one of the matrons woke me up and flashed a small bottle of gold glitter glue in my face.

“For Christmas cards?” I asked. We had gone through a few bottles of that same glitter to make hundreds of Christmas cards two weeks earlier.

“No, for the gowns!” he said. “I’ll write down the name of the school on the gown like Mr. Abeygunawardana asked, and then it’ll look perfect.”

Gold-glittered Sinhalese letters glued on graduation gowns? I thought. But I didn’t care anymore; I just wanted it all to be finished already.

“It’ll be done tomorrow morning,” he said.

On Friday morning, he handed me a bag of eight gowns, all inscribed with the school name in gold glitter. Surprisingly, it looked pretty good. I brought one sample to the principal’s office for him to see. I asked him to please tell me quickly if it was okay; maybe there was still enough time for me to give it back to the nearby tailor for last-minute alterations.

He quietly observed the gown for a while. Then he said again, “Put it on.” So I put it on. He then again called for teachers to come in and look at me. Again, they giggled at me.

“I think we should take a picture of Adam,” one of the teachers said. I motioned to my camera on the principal’s desk and the teacher took it. I picked up one of the diplomas to display for the camera. “Be sure to include President Mahinda Rajapaske’s portrait in the picture,” the principal said.

The teachers walked out of the office, still giggling, while I showed Mr. Abeygunawardana the image on my camera.

“Yes, this works,” he said. “Thank you.”

Certificates
About two weeks before the graduation ceremony, I asked Mr. Abeygunawardana if he had diplomas for the students (this was the same meeting where we discussed the gowns). He said no, and I told him I would make them for the school. In addition, they would be bilingual in both Sinhala and English, with Sinhala on top, of course. He seemed delighted at that idea.

I started working on them the next Saturday back at the hotel. I looked for a Sinhalese font online and found Malthi. After installing it on my laptop. It took me about ten minutes to type three words in Sinhala: Rohana Special School (I was working from an photo I took of the big sign in front of the school).

I then typed in a formal Old English font some fancy language about how the student, upon having satisfactorily completed the studies prescribed by the school administrators, was now hereby awarded this diploma on the first of December. Then I typed up some Sinhalese placeholder gibberish so others could see where the Sinhalese text, once somebody translated it from the English, would go on the diploma.

Amila and Chaminda visited me later that Saturday and I showed them the certificate. They both pointed at the laptop and said, “No! Wrong!”

I thought they were pointing at that gibberish text, so I explained that it was just there until somebody could give me the correct Sinhala translation. Chaminda shook his head and said, “No, no, you spelled the school name wrong.”

I looked at it, wondering what I did wrong. I had, after all, carefully re-typed it from a photograph of the school sign. Maybe the school sign was also misspelt?

“No, the sign is correct.” He pointed at one Sinhala letter. “This incorrect letter, for example, is very similar to the correct one, but there is just a little line that’s supposed to be there, but isn’t there.” I showed him the Malthi character map and he pointed at the correct letter. I replaced the wrong letter with the correct one, and we did this a few more times.

I suppose the closest analogy in English would be the difference between the letter i with a dot and without the dot.

“To be honest, this looks almost exactly the same as it did before,” I said to Chaminda.

“Yes, Sinhala can be very subtle, but this was wrong before and now this is correct.”

I asked him to write down the Sinhala translation for the English text I had written, but he said he thought it was better if the principal could see it first.

A few days later, I brought my laptop to Mr. Abeygunawardana’s office and showed him the diploma, asking him if the English text sounded okay.

He pointed at one English letter and asked if it was a b, h, or v. “I can’t read this. Are you sure this is English?”

“Yes, it’s English.”

“But it does not look like English,” he retorted.

Belatedly, I realized that to the untrained eye, Old English script might as well as be Klingon. I quickly changed the text to Arial.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Now I can read this.” Then he started shaking his head. “No, no, I already have some language for you.”

He then pulled out a very official-looking Sinhala diploma with a red seal on it from his files.

A little aghast, I asked why we weren’t using that one.

“Because this is from 2001,” and to stress this, he pointed at where it said “2001.”

“Oh, okay, but you want me to use the same language on this diploma for the new diploma?”

“Yes.”

I motioned to him to give it to me.

“I cannot give this diploma to you because this says 2001. I will have the secretary retype it for you in Word so that it says 2006.”

I said that wasn’t really necessary because I could just change the 1 to a 6, but he insisted, so I gave my USB thumb drive to the secretary. At least I can just copy and paste the Sinhala text without retyping it, I thought.

Before I left the office, he said to me, “In English, this must be called a certificate, not a diploma, because the students have not taken their O/L examinations yet.” I agreed, not in the mood to argue the nuances of academic English.

A few hours later, I picked up the USB thumb drive, inserted it in my laptop, and opened up the new document. It was garbled–apparently I didn’t have the right Sinhala font. After getting the Sandaya font off the secretary’s computer, I saw that I would have to, once again, re-type it in the Malthi font I was using for the diploma–er, certificate.

I did just that, then asked Samantha the deaf teacher to come in and help me translate it into English.

She looked at the Sinhala text first, and just like Chaminda last Saturday, pointed out dozens of mistakes I had made where I mistook one letter for another very similar-looking letter. “Sinhala can be tough, isn’t it?” she asked.

Then she started translating each word into sign language for me to type back into English. The word-for-word translation made no sense to me, so Samantha said, “Wait. Let me sign it all at once, then you type it down, okay?”

We did that, and to confirm the translation, I signed the English text back to her. “Yes, yes, it’s perfect,” she cried.

Chaminda, who knows English very well, came in a few minutes later to look at it and agreed.

The next day, I took the laptop with me to class where I had each one of the eight graduating students tell me his or her name in English and Sinhala. This was tricky because many students did not know how to write their second name (sort of like a middle name) in English, or how to write their family name initials (H.G., M.L.; these are often written in English) in Sinhala. But they were very fascinated with my laptop and how I was typing their names in both languages, so quickly and without too much trouble, I had eight certificates ready to be printed.

Then Pasindu asked, “This laptop? Do you have all the pictures you’ve taken of us on it?”

I said yes–all 1,528 photos and movies.

“Show us!” they all exclaimed, and I ran a slide show for about a dozen students to watch until the laptop battery ran out.

At the Beach Inns where I live, Indika is sort of the manager (his family owns the hotel), my scuba instructor, and my companion when I sit at one of the tables in the evening. He had just hung two large, colorful signs advertising his scuba diving services, so I asked him if he could take me to the print shop where he had those signs made. Perhaps I could print out the certificates on nice paper at the same shop.

He said that print shop didn’t do smaller jobs like that, but he would take me to a different printer. On Tuesday evening, I hopped onto his motorbike and we set off for the printer.

I wasn’t expecting a Kinko’s, but at least a shop with a couple color laser printers and copiers. Instead, I saw a very small, dusty brick-wall shop with two large antique-looking printing presses and a dirty computer in the corner. Where modern buttons and displays should be, I saw levers and pulleys.

“No, this is too much; I just need a little color printer,” I told Indika. “Like an actual computer printer, not a big press.” The man at the print shop, after looking at my certificates on my USB thumb drive, confirmed what I said. He explained that they used templates to run off copies–in other words, a real printing press–and because I had eight certificates, they would have to make eight templates for one copy each, and that was just silly. But he was really nice about it and gave me ten sheets of heavy, stylish paper perfect for printing certificates.

We motored to Nilmini Matara, a private post office that had a new Canon color inkjet, but the owner said we couldn’t use our paper in it. We rode to the Nine Hearts digital photo printing lab thinking we could print out the certificates on matte paper, but the woman there said they were out of matte. So we tried the Fujifilm photo lab, and this time, the man behind the counter said they had matte paper, but couldn’t print from a PDF file for some reason.

So Indika told me, “Well, let’s try my color printer. The black isn’t working too well, but it’s worth a shot.” Back at the hotel, we did just that, but true to his words, the black would fade out halfway through each copy we printed.

The next morning, I asked Amila, who works at the Fine Bit Computers shop, if they had any color printers. He said absolutely, so after school, I went over there. Duminda, the manager, told me that they did have one, but it was old and out of color ink. He called a few shops nearby, but none of them had working color printers.

Does nobody in this entire town have a working color inkjet? I thought. I just want to print out eight certificates!

Then he said, “Why don’t you try the deaf association building? They have a new printer which we just gave them. A very good one, too.”

I thought it was poetic how the tailors who made the gowns happened to be right behind the building; that particular village block was turning out to be very useful for me.

I took a three-wheeler to the deaf association, but the doors were padlocked and there was was a sign in Sinhala. The driver told me it read that the building would be open today at 4:00 pm.

It was already 5:00 pm, but then I spotted somebody taking a shower using a well and a bucket behind the building. It was one of the association members, and luckily he had the keys.

Opening the doors, I ran inside and started up the computer. It didn’t have Acrobat Reader and the internet connection was so slow it’d take two hours to download it. Luckily, I found a pirated copy of Photoshop on the PC, so I used that to print out the eight PDFs on the very nice, very new, and very slow printer. After nearly a hour, I had eight gorgeous full-color graduation certificates ready for the principal’s signature.

On Thursday morning, I showed them to the principal’s secretary and she immediately pointed out a letter where the vowel line was supposed to be straight, not squiggly. “This is the difference between ‘ou’ and ‘oo,’” she admonished.

All my hard work ruined because of a squiggly line! I was ready to burst into tears when she said, “But the principal won’t notice, so go for it.”

I gave them to Mr. Abeygunawardana. He said they looked very nice, and that it was very important to laminate them as soon as possible. The angels in my head praised hallelujah as he put pen to paper. I got them laminated that afternoon and later in the evening, everybody at the Beach Inns remarked at how nice they looked.

Finally, it was time for graduation.