Boating on Madu Ganga
The mother of all rivers is The Ganga, known to the English world often as the Ganges. The Ganga is THE Ganga. Other rivers are lesser gangas – so you’d have Mississippi Ganga or Hudson Ganga. Sunday morning I was able to join several friends for a paddled boat ride on a large estuary called the Madu Ganga, in Balapitiya south of Induruwa. And oh yeah, this is creative reuse of USAID tarp – no doubt used orignally in temporary post-tsunami shelter – to create rain and sun protection on the boat. Talk about useful development aid!
The lilies were lovely!
This is the best shot you’ll get of the boat, taken as this guy had just wiped the deck so we could all board a high and dry boat – it’s a catamaran, in a way, though without a sail. (Does that make it not a catamaran??)
On a personal level, I gotta admit this hasn’t been easy. I left China on very short notice – leaving behind a country I’d grown to love deeply (and hate some of the time, as well) and where I felt very comfortable and really quite at home; leaving an office where I knew the ropes and an AIDS project that I was proud of, with the possibility of other projects opening in the middle future. Not to mention, of course, the pride in having successfully handed over the Street Children project to a national staff team that – with strong guidance from my beloved Margaret Ward, former MSF FieldCo – has apparently been just doing fantastic stuff since MSF said goodbye on March 31 of this year. I’m a flexible guy and love the excitement and variety that comes from working in these contexts – but I had sort of wrapped my mind around Chinese lessons, and vacation plans (seeing friends or acquaintances here and there in China, Japan and Vietnam) and so on based on being in BJ through December.
Some local kids enjoying the river: unlike our firewood collectors lower down, they didn’t seem to be working hard.
Coconuts and cinammon are among the local crops we saw. We gorged on fresh coconuts.
I’m flying!
Collecting firewood on the Madu Ganga.
Guard’s hut: they sleep here to prevent freshwater prawn poachers from the collecting nets.
Clouds over the Madu Ganga. It’s inter-monsoon season, clear almost all mornings with downpours around 4 every afernoon and all evening. So I told MSF I’d be ready to stay in SL through December, then after six weeks it looks like I may have to cut it all short and be at loose ends in Paris or the US again – because there is no way I could finish this mission now, and then head out for another one right away. I’d simply have to take a couple months to clear my head from the boomerang whack of these recent months before I’d feel stable enough to head back out to a new (and likely unstable) context again. And closing an office, let alone a whole mission, isn’t any fun for us administrators: we’re the ones who handle final payments to employees and shake their hands and say “thank you so much,” always keeping tissues on hand for the inevitable tears. We’re the ones who make sure the houses get cleared out and the rental deposits get paid back…and yada yada yada. It wasn’t what I came here for, but I was prepared to do it – I’m here to do the work MSF needs, not to complain about it. Then we’re staying, but as you’ll see from that blog article (have you read it yet?) we don’t know for how long, and we really don’t know if we’re going to be able to get medical teams here again and we don’t know how long we can wait, when there are urgent needs in other places as well. And so on.
Views from the Train
You get the idea. Roller coaster is one way to describe it, and not a bad way either. Just about every day since September 30 I’ve gone through at least one full cycle from “Damn, I really don’t want to leave: there are people who need us, there’s really good work we can do here, it’s a fascinating and truly beautiful country with tremendous history, and I’m not ready to give up yet” back over to “Oh god, I can’t take any more of this, get me out of here, and oh by the way tortilla chips do not exist in Sri Lanka and how can a Californian live without tortilla chips for longer than a few days???” And then usually back and forth a few more times, all in one day. That means as of today I’ve cycled through it all at least 24 times, and I’d have to say it’s more like 50 times that I’ve made my peace with leaving (“ok, we’ll visit the folks in Bargteheide, see the friends in Rome and Zurich, then eat torilla chips and bagels with jalapeno cream cheese every day for a month in San Francsico, then we’ll be ready to work in Sudan for six months”) then recommitted to staying, doing good work, keeping focused, keeping the national staff focused and energized and not too depressed or worried. I’ve had a few headaches, I gotta admit.
ars in NYC except that the doors are open so you get the fresh sea breeze, and vendors pop in and out selling various delectables.
Turtle Hatchery
So that’s really it. Here we are: can Mom and Steve join me at Angkor Wat in late December and early January while I take a break from my work in SL, or will I be back in the lower 48 for the end of year holidays? Will MSF be able to meet our mandate and take care of populations here in SL whose access to medical care is severely reduced, or will we sadly have to leave, and redirect our teams to other areas? Will Paul have access to salsa and tortilla chips, and bagels and jalapeno cream cheese, in 2006? Or only in 2007? Stay tuned to the MSF websites, stay tuned to So Much World Turning, So Little Time, and maybe you’ll find out!
Restaurant Guardians?
After our outing on the Madu Ganga, our group settled into a gorgeous Ganga-side hotel restaurant for a rice & curry lunch. (I’m getting better and better at eating with my hands. American kids would love Sri Lanka: you get to play with your food, and eat it with your hands!) These guardians stood at the entry to the restaurant area, and the gingerbread-fringed Victorian house was a little side house that I guess can be rented for a group.
What’s Nice in Colombo
The weekend after all the hubbub, when our home had settled back down to a fairly small complement of only four expats (a surgeon and a nurse both waiting in case we were able to restart rapidly in Point Pedro…they’re both gone now), I used the weekend to see a bit of Colombo just in case it was my last chance. I was determined to find some nice spots. And I did find a few. Sadly, I only found a few. Colombo’s not bad, but it’ll never be on my top 10 cities list. It’ll never be on anyone’s. There are abundant reasons to come to Sri Lanka, whether for the natural beauty and beach vacations or for historical and cultural tourism in the great ancient capitals of Anuradapura and Polonnaruwa and other such places, or for the dozens of other great places and the generally wonderful people – who really are wonderful, except those who are trying to kill each other. And then there’s the food. I mean, yeah – there’s TONS to like about this country. So you see, it’s all a bit confusing. In any case, do enjoy these views: they’re about as good as Colombo gets, to be honest.
Look – it’s Colmobo city hall!
Look – it’s a great big Buddha in Vihara Mahadevi Park!
Look – it’s city hall with a great big Buddha from Vihara Mahadevi Park!Downtown Art & Architecture
Hindu temples, here, are called kovil. This one’s pretty much in the heart of downtown. I really do love living in a city – in a country – of such religious diversity. Especially when the land of my birth has fallen prey to rabidly insane self-righteous Christian lunatics who insist on some self-serving divine right to force their narrow-minded interpreation of truth down everyone else’s throats. (But no, I’m not bitter. Not at all.) Ramaddan is ending today with the festival of Eid al Fidr here in Colombo (random fact: Ramaddan starts and ends on different dates in different countries, based mostly on when the moon is in the correct phase or position), and somehow I’ve been even more aware than usual of the Mosques and Muslim presence in Colombo and when I went south; and of course the dominant religion is Buddhism, of which this Boddhisatva – also from Vihara Mahadevi Park downtown – is a symbol. I’ve no clue about the stone pillar (on the edge of VM park – didn’t bother to cross the street to find out more), but my guess is it’s a monument to the religion of mercantile colonialism as practiced by the British here for a couple hundred years after the Portuguese and Dutch took their turns trying to dominate this poor island.
Temple on Lake Beira
…And a downtown sunset as seen from one of the canals leading out to the ocean. This city has most of the elements necessary for true beauty: coastline, water in the city proper (Lake Beira occupies a big chunk of downtown, but they just don’t do very much with it; and there are little canals in many neighborhoods that sadly look more like sewers than like the goldfish-filled canals of Lijiang [cf So Much World, So Little Time January 2006 edition], tropical climate that creates much lush growth … but it just doesn’t any of it hang together. Colombo, I know you, I’ve worked in you, I’ve found lovely spots in you … but Colombo, you’re no San Francisco.
Another Afternoon by the Ocean
(There was some sort of kite festival going on, it seemed…)And, as always, what are we looking at? Judith – head of mission – has left (sob!), and Roshan – deputy head of mission – is leaving very shortly (double sob!), but, to quote Elton John, “I’m still standing.” (That IS Elton, isn’t it?) So here are a few shots from a brunch and lazy oceanside afternoon at the swank Mt Lavinia hotel, to bid these two important and much-loved colleagues adieu. Thanks for the memories and support, guys.
The funny thing about my life right now is that, though I’m in a context that’s far less settled than what I experienced in China, my day to day life is rather a dull overabundance of office work that takes up at least 60 or so of my waking hours each week, balanced by periods where I lock myself into my room and read, at the moment, Tintenblut while listening to soothing muzak. If you’ve been following the blog, you may understand why I’ve developed an insatiable appetite for Bee Gees muzak. NOT! (BTW, if you’ve not heard of Claudia Funke’s wonderful fantasy series about the intersection of written word and “real world,” do check it out: It’s a book-lover’s series, and I think at least book one is now available in English, though I admit that I’m finding this installment a more gripping read than book one, Tintenherz). Yes, my current surreal existence does mean I continue to need regular doses of fantasy literature in order to retain a tenuous grasp on what we like to call reality.
I mean, I could report the interesting items that come up, for example on the Reuters news feed, but they’re not really happening to me, and y’all can check those out on your own time. I also don’t figure I’m well positioned to provide the weekly or monthly news summary. Oh, why not…the worst that happens is they kick me out of the country for a well-developed sense of humor, huh? For those of you don’t check the news on your own, here’s a small example of the otherworldly reality that is now ours here at Oh So Much World, So veeerrry Little Time….one fine tropical day week last week, in the course of half a day, the reports I saw could be paraphrased, in sequence, roughly as: 1) Government of Sri Lanka categorically denies Monitoring Mission (aka Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, the group charged with monitoring the now sadly tattered Cease Fire Accord that brought a much-needed respite to this truly remarkable island, back in the halcyon days of 2002) reports that it [GoSL] has agreed to renewed peace talks with those terrorists, 2) government reiterates its firm commitment to the peace process, 3) government clarifies that it is extremely eager to talk, but only if those terrorists agree never, ever to fire another shot or do anything to harm anyone ever again, no matter what. Meanwhile, from the other side of the aisle, come regular reports that every time the government breathes, more civilians suffer and die.
The sad thing is, it seems increasingly true clear that the actions of both sides are causing fear and loss to more and more civilians all the time, despite each side’s repeated assertions of commitment to the peace process. Actually, rather scarily, the tigers said not long ago (after government forces retook a small area that was strategically important to them) that in their view the government has now firmly broken the accord, and now the rest of the island will learn what suffering means just as much as the north of the island has had to learn it.
Then there’s the very strong anti-NGO sentiment on the island, much of it rooted in the post-tsunami backlash: too many NGOs who landed on the island after the tsunami, some of which maybe didn’t do the best work and some of whom probably didn’t behave very respectfully or respectably. Then there’s all the usual reasons a government and military faced with an apparent resumption of civil conflict might not want NGOs around. So you’ll probably understand one’s need to develop a shell, and it seems mine is humor.
So let’s get back to the important stuff: my life as an overloaded office worker. Whilst still in China, I enjoyed thinking that China had invented bureaucracy at a time when my ancestors were still living in caves and hadn’t yet figured out how to cook meat. Silly Paul, that’s like thinking America’s so-called government couldn’t get any worse than the living nightmare foisted upon us by the rich back in the 1980s! Come to find out that these former British colonies down here in South Asia take bureaucracy to whole new levels of development! My brain is an alphabet soup of ministry acronyms that form my daily rounds, in the process of trying to acquire visas and working permits for our colleagues (and oh by the way, for me too…). It is a good test of recall: when I don’t feel like I’m starring in Kafka or Beckett, I wonder if there’s some highly evolved alien life form taking notes of my reactions, a la rats in a maze: “it took him only two weeks to figure out how to get his application out of ministry A and all the way to ministry C! Clearly he has the ability to learn from experience.”
(No, these are NOT the same shot: notice the crowds in this one, related to the above-illustrated kite festival.)But what legacy will I leave behind, I ask myself occasionally? When I asked a Sri Lankan colleague if she’d ever worked with hanging file folders of the sort that have been omnipresent in all American businesses I’ve known since the late 1980s, she said she’d seen them on television (as in, on American television shows – how fabulous is that?!), but had never had the chance to work with them.
(But is it water polo, or water volleyball? Neither net nor goal gave away the secret…)
You understand, of course, what I mean: my life is boring! If the biggest excitement I have to report is the introduction of hanging file folders to MSF Sri Lanka, I have to think you’d rather watch reruns of Oprah. So let me not hold you back. More some time, dear friends. Let us all repeat Elvis Costello’s mantra: What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?
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Super Viking!
I begin with one of my favorite visuals here: the buses. I count at least four different cultural referents here: Lanka (Sri Lanka) Ashok (a deity, I believe, of Indian origin) Leyland (presumably from British colonial days) – and last but certainly not least for us Scandinavian-Americans: it’s the SUPER VIKING! A far cry from NYC transit buses, and rather more interesting, wouldn’t you say?
Streetside Shrines
Little street-corner and streetisde shrines were one of the first things I noticed, driving to my new home from the airport in the wee, wee hours of August 20. Here you see two shrines from street corners very close to me: here, a tuktuk parked beside one corner shrine…
Here, Buddha seated behind pennants at one down the road a small piece…
And here, the gorgeous, huge tree that shades the second shrine. Gorgeous, huge trees are omnipresent here.
(so much world, so little time....) 