Summa Cum Laude
Posted in Sri Lanka, 2 years agoWe’re sitting on our balcony at the Amaya Reef hotel in Hikkaduwa. I will warn you that the hotel’s website is a superb example of the manipulative power of photography, but the pool is really that pretty.
I think that it’s time to write a blog, so I grab Liz’s BlackBerry and ask her what the title of this blog should be.
“What about ‘Rule of Four?’” I suggest idly. She’s reading the Caldwell and Thomason book now after blazing through four other books during the past week and half. We did have a lot of down time in our van traveling among ruins and knee-and-calf-muscle-shattering mountains so our literary thirst were more than quenched.
“I miss college,” she says with a start. The Rule of Four takes place wholly within the environs of Princeton University so it’s bound to trigger nostalgia for those good ol’ Animal House days.
“I should have tried harder,” she adds.
“Me too,” I say. “I shouldn’t have gotten that C in Technical Writing.”
“Screw you. You graduated with high honors.”
“Highest honors,” I remind her. Then I tell her I will write exactly this exchange for the blog.
After she admonishes me for proclaiming her self-admonishing words to the world, she returns to her book.
Literature becomes reality and I think how great it is that we’re sitting together in a balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean, ready to greet the New Year (by the Christian reckoning; the Sinhalese and Tamil people celebrate theirs in April) in about seven hours.
No matter where you are in the world, I hope you are all doing the same, marking this occasion with the people you care most about. As long as that’s true, you’re at home.
Happy New Year!
Commence The Almost-Island-Wide Tour
Posted in Sri Lanka, 2 years agoLiz arrives tomorrow–sometime between 3:15 PM and 5:15 PM, depending on which website you check. I really cannot completely express how much I am looking forward to her visit. As remarkable as it may sound, she will be the first full-blooded American I will have seen in three months. But that’s not why I’m so excited (I could care less about nationality if it wasn’t for that stupid accent-lipreading issue).
I sorely want to talk to another person–if that person happens to be my bestest and lifelong friend, then, all the better–in my language without always trying to make myself understood. Whether it’s in spoken English or signed Sinhala, it gets exhausting after months and months. I imagine all the words boiling and bubbling and spilling out of myself as soon as I see her exit the long corridor at the passenger end of Bandaranaike International Airport (CMB for those of you who are avid aviators).
I’m so excited to show her off to the Pointe Sud crowd, to my deaf friends in Matara, to the Beach Inns, to the Rohana community, to Mr. Abeygunawardana the principal, to Thusarra my three-wheeler driver, to Indika my scuba diving instructor, to Duminda and Jamna the computer shop proprietors, to Rosy in the rebuilt tsunami village of Madiha West, and more. I cannot wait for them to be astonished at how alike we look and how cool it is to watch us furiously speak to each other in ASL.
I’m crying even as I type this–it’s overwhelming to even think about it. I really can’t wait to see Liz and travel a new country–a new side of the land I have grown to know and love the last three months–with her.
We will be visiting the following locations: Colombo, Matara, Kandy, Sigiriya, Polonnuwara, Pinnawela, Sri Pada (Adam’s Peak–read Jenny’s stirring account of her climb up the sacred peak), Nuwara Eliya, Galle, Hikkaduwa, and all the assorted sights within each location. Put Ambalangoda, Ratnapura and Yapahuwa on that list as optional locales if we’re feeling up for it. Some may notice the absence of Anuradhapura, but it’s pretty far north and I was told that the very ancient city is harder to appreciate when compared to the younger Polonnuwara.
It will be a grand trip!
My Auditory Status
Posted in Sri Lanka, 2 years agoMy cochlear implant is broken. No, not the part inside my head–just the external, behind-the-ear processor. Luckily I think I’m getting a replacement next Thursday, couriered across two oceans by Liz, no less! It has caused a fair amount of self-questioning about my status as a deaf person–prompting me to write a blog for DeafDC.com.
Please read Deaf Identity, Interrupted. And despite the tone of this blog, I really am not a poor, tormented and hapless soul–I’m fine, really! My balance is definitely off, so navigating on the roads as a deaf, stumbling-over-myself person does make it a slightly more harrowing experience, so I’m sticking to the three-wheeler for now.
Kataragama or Bust
Posted in Sri Lanka, 2 years ago11 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.
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