The Festival and getting out of Africa

After three hours, two trotros, a bus and a cab I arrived in the town of with my co-worker Clement for his town's yearly tribal festival. The town is up in the mountains east of Accra and the air is cool at night, although I still would sweat from sun up til sun down. The landscape is lushly green and surprisingly the roads are all well paved. The reason being that the area has spawned a number of people who moved down to Accra, become successful and then gave back to the community both in terms of cash and the influence to get the government to perform the necessary infrastructure work. According to Clement the only thing the mountains have going for them in economically was the cool air.

The festival commemorates the new year and is the type of thing which takes up a whole weekend but different towns/tribes have their own big day. Ours was Friday, the next town overs was Saturday. I was expecting something very traditional - dancers in crazy ensembles, beating drums, tons of gold clad tribal chiefs and maybe an animal sacrifice or two. What I found did not disappoint, all of the above minus the animal sacrifice but with a healthy dose of commercialism. Two story tall banners for various local beers, and every tent was sponsored by the mobile phone company MTN in our village, the next one over by Zain.

In the middle of largely impoverished West Africa - a land without constant electricity, running water or paved roads - an epic battle of capitalism is taking place between the mobile phone companies. MTN, Vodafone and Zain are putting their colors on every building they possibly can. You will find numerous walls, store fronts and entire houses brightly painted red for Vodafone or yellow for MTN with thier respective logos plastered across the center. Zain was slacking in Ghana, but their purple and teal was dominant in Burkina Faso. In this village, a very Victorian house standing next to the main road was painted entirely yellow as if it had been dunked in a giant vat of yellow paint. Clement informed me that it was an historic building and the oldest in the town. When I commented that MTN must have paid them a lot of money to submerge the house in yellow he was surprised, saying that he had never thought of it like that cause most people would want to have their houses painted so well. He may very well be right. Clement is a first year business student and one of the smartest people I met there.

The day-time activities consist of everyone gathering to pay their respects to the elderly chief who is seated on a platform in the town square and so gaudily adorned with gold that he can hardly move. In order to get him situated on the throne the other elders circle around him and obscure his movements with their robes, then a man must discretely hold his hand up as the other chiefs and elders come to shake it. The chiefs from the surrounding area enter the square with appropriate fan fare, seated upon what I can best describe as an ornate canoe with an umbrella/sun shade, that is held in the air by a handful of young men. Most of the chiefs carry at least one firearm, usually a shotgun and announce their presence by firing into the air while dancing in their seats to the beat of the drummers in tow. My favorite had a gold plated gun in one hand, a silver one in the other and waved them around like batons.

At night the youth come out, dressed fashionably in Ed Hardy, argyle, Air Force Ones and flat brimmed baseball caps straight out of a trendy American rap video. The streets are filled by a pressing swarm of dark bodies in the night, occasionally, momentarily lit up from below by headlights that streak through the melee of legs as a vehicle parts it's way through the throng on the otherwise unlit streets of the festival at night. The bars along the way sport massive arrays of speakers blasting music so loud that talking is impossible, they do so during the day as well while a handful of people sit around staring at their beers and each other. The scene on the streets at night was probably one of the most surreal experiences of my travels. The mass of black faces in the pitch black streets being lit up by the occasional car that was forced to inch its way through gave me the impression of a completely different world, while at the same time the style of dress was eerily familiar thanks to the prevalence of Americian pop culture. The music too had a familiar ring. Louder and harsher but infused with beats just a few notes shy of our rap songs and lyrics that translate roughly to the same themes - love, sex and power.

While in Ghana, I never felt uncomfortable within a situation, rather I rarely knew what to think. I also never quite knew what to do but I knew that whatever I did would be watched with fascination simply because I was a foreigner - if i acted with perfect tact it would be just as, if not more shocking than if I acted the typical American fool. Staring was to be expected, calls of 'Burni' (translation: white person) would follow everywhere as would requests for money and from the girls, marriage. For a culture known for it's hospitality, I found it incredibly isolating, alienating and mocking. One can say what they want about the shortcomings of America's approach to race but overall we are an incredibly accepting culture. A person of any color can walk down the street of a big city and be treated with an equal amount of respect or disrespect as anyone else. In the month I spent walking down the same road nearly everyday, never once did anyone ask me name or say anything to me but, "HEY BRUNI!" And occasionally, "How are YOU?!" To which I would respond in the local language, "I am good," (I don't know how to write it out) but all I really wanted to say back was, as they say, unrepeatable in polite conversation.

Despite English being the official language, I was largely unable to communicate with those around me. Their English totally different in verbiage and sentence construction, plus being thickly accented made it nearly indecipherable. I still get messages on FaceBook and the CouchSurfing network that I find almost unreadable. All the words are English but they make only vague sense. To make the situation worse no one will listen if you try to correct them. The common come back to me was, "Well we speak British English." I tried to say that it wasn't the case, I'd spent the previous several months in the company of Brits and they didn't speak like that at all, but it was to no avail. Without Clement, who was used to my way of talking and at the festival his friends for whom he could translate, I would have been completely alone in nearly every way yet surrounded by dozens of familiar things.

It would be that constant feeling of alienation that would lead me out of Africa in the weeks that followed. Even before the festival I had set in motion a plan to travel through West Africa, to Senegal and from their catch a cheap flight to Madrid. My scheme began on the first day of classes when a man came to the school selling maps and I made the mistake of buying a world map, hanging it up in my room and then after hours of staring at it, realizing that Europe really wasn't that far away. Next came the realization that after my stints in Sri Lanka and India, I knew people all over Western Europe and thus I was determined to get out of Africa.

...and a few weeks later I was back in the midst of civilization, although the route had to be changed due to horrific bus trips, terrorists in Mali ("Yea they killed a French guy up north last month, but he was old," is what I was told in Burkina Faso.) and visa issues. So I ended up booking a last minuet flight out of Ouagadougou whose airport resembles a large garage and even though I was flying the same airline all the way to Madrid with a stop in Casablanca it was impossible to check my bags all the way through because the computers don't link.



Undeveloped Country |udi'velupt 'kuntre|
noun (pl. -tries)
1 a nation in which the simplest tasks become difficult: the lack of running water in the undeveloped country made showering a memorable experience

Ghanian food

If I had a therapist he would say that need to write this:

The food in Ghana...

The food is hardly edible - big balls of uncooked dough known as 'fufu' and 'banku' eaten with a watery soup usually involving a mildly putrid piece of fish that was probably caught several mornings ago, ripened in the sun for awhile, smoked to death, ripened further by the sun and then served. I understand that the lack of refrigeration is a problem, but seriously - there has to be a better way to do fish than one in which the end product smells more like food for fish than food for people. Overall, I personally prefer my starches cooked and my fish on the raw side.

I can find no explanation as to why the food is so umm... interesting. There is an abundance of tomatoes, onions, carrots and you commonly see vast strips of chilies drying on the roadside. Every family seems to own goats and chickens but I almost never saw the meat eaten and the few tomato, onion and egg omelets I had were great but rare. Once I came home after dinner without informing them that I would do so and was greeted with a great omelet, made even better by the mother explaining that they had made fish but I had missed dinner, so I would have to settle for an omelet.

When meat was served it often came as a large piece of gristle. I was told that this is the hide of the animal? I think something may have been lost in translation during that particular conversation, but what ever it is, the locals think it's really good. I can't say much about it other than that it has the taste and texture of a massive piece of rubbery gristle. Every once in awhile I would find a stand selling sausages and stop immediately to get one. They are partially precooked and then upon ordering, it is deeply scored, rubbed with a seasoning salt, drizzled with oil and cooked fully. With the addition of ketchup I could see this becoming quite popular back home.

When chicken was served with the Fufu and Banku it commonly came as a collection of boney and rather meatless joints which I was never entirely sure what to do with. After a few meals during which I explained "But I'm eating all the meat?!" I began to get legs and breast pieces. The fried chicken in the roadside stands came as a spine with the shoulders, ribcage and about one bone's worth of each wing still attached. Not all that crazy until one learns who it's eaten. The entire piece, bones and all is to be devoured. The furthest I ever got was to chew up a few of the softer rib bones, but I hear that the spinal cord has great flavor.

A Typical Morning In Ghana

I've been meaning to put this up for awhile but had wanted to add some punctuation and take out a few of the more vulgar words. Turns out that I can't be bothered to do so as it would take valuable time away from doing things like wandering aimlessly around ancient European towns and touring the Prado. Life is too short for grammar or censorship.

The following is pretty much a typical morning in the life of the dysfunctional family I stayed with. The only thing that changed in four weeks is that the rooster's wake up call was replaced by the equally early and much more disturbing sound of goats bleating. I heard a baby pig get butchered in India and it was no where nearly as awful (granted I got to eat it later). I can't even begin to phonetically create a word that accurately represents it's horrific-ness, but the best way to describe it would be to say it's like the sound you expect to hear coming from something being slowly and systematically beaten to death. I believe it was simply mating season.

Anyways, hopefully it makes sense.

My Second Morning in Ghana:

4am-ish (maybe earlier): fuckin' rooster
6am-ish: fucking rooster
7am: expletive expletive rooster expletive rain expletive
7:30: would you like your coffee? yea, that would be great. but please I'll just grab it. No, no, no. please sit. ok ok.
7:35: she went to get bread, wait ten minuets.
7:40: 3 year old grandson does something wrong, is reprimanded by grandmother, ignores, young aunt goes to stop him, he attacks with feet and fists.
7:50: coffee arrives with bread. Thanks, oh and i forgot to say thank you for the eggs yesterday, they were great. you want some today. oh no, don't worry about it. No no, eggs are coming.
8:15: awesome egg, tomato and onion omelet.
8:20: Can you show me how to do the laundry. Bring it and I'll do it this time. Half-assed attempt to insist on doing it myself, followed by ok, but just this once.
8:30: it is pointed out to me that the male duck has mounted the female duck.
8:45: grandson annoys large duck. duck bites kid. kid runs to porch crying.
9:00: I think I am supposed to be at the school. Wait we will take you when we are done.
9:15: dog who has been ignoring the world, at times half covered by dirty clothes, and empty buckets, must feel naked without them, wakes up and begins snapping at flies. a kitten follows suit. soon both are consumed by attempting to consume flies.
9:30 the washing is done, the ladies have gone inside to eat, and avoid the grandson who had just taken to whacking things with a long, narrow piece of plastic tube and then crying whenever one of the young aunts grabs the other end and tries to control him.
9:35: having forgotten the previous encounter with the ducks, the grandson starts acting uber hyper and running around them with a toy pistol.
9:38: with a flurry of wings and quacking the male duck jumps onto the boy's side, latching on with his webbed feet, wings still beating and tries to bite the boys back.
9:38 and 10 seconds: both boy and myself realize that while he can go toe to toe with his aunts, he is no match for the fury of a pissed off white duck with a red face.
9:38 and 12: tears and screaming ensue.
9:38 and 13 seconds: I hop off the porch and whack the duck with my book. duck hisses while the boy clings to my leg before I hoist him onto the porch and he goes running to his Grandma.
9:50: The incident has been forgotten.
9:55: the ducks are fed. why do you keep them around, what are good for? they keep the snakes away. fair enough.
10:15: Leave for school.

Accra to Ouagadougou

I decided that after 4 months in the tropics, it was time to escape to Europe. Here's some of what happened on the way back to civilization.

If anyone asks me what it means to be a developing country, here is what I would say: It means that they have yet to develop ways to do anything easily. And trying to take a bus from Accra, Ghana to Ouagadougou (pronounced wa-go-do-goo) in Burkina Faso is a perfect example of this. To begin with one must go through no less than five phone numbers listed in various places to find one that works. At this point you are told that reservations can only be made in person, and as a matter of fact the person you are talking to has on idea if there are seats left. Next you are informed that there is a customer service center at a filling station just around the corner so you go there. They call the depot and inform you that yes there are tickets, but they are running out and no the customer service agent cannot reserve one for you. Then you wonder what this person in an office at a random filling station actually does for 8 hours everyday, but figure it's best just not to ask - after all, it's a state run company.

The next step is to go to the depot, it's one day before departure and the agent has already told you their are tickets available. There are, but they are in Kumasi, the next big city about five hours away. The nice lady at the depot calls them for you but the assistant answers as her boss has gone home for the day. Only he can reserve a ticket so you are advised to show up 2 hours early to get one in the morning. I later learned that they had told several guys from Burkina Faso to get there 6 hours early. On the morning of the trip, you arrive at the station early and get a ticket, as you do you observe a sign that says there will be no extra charge for putting your luggage underneath the bus so you go and spend what money you have left on food and drinks for the day (by day I mean +24 hours) long trip.

An hour after the bus was supposed to leave you go and get your bags weighed and the weight is written down on the back of the ticket which you take to an obese lady behind another ticket counter. She will print you up a bill for you luggage which you must pay before boarding. A guy I'd been sitting with had already confirmed the sign at the first ticket counter saying luggage was free of charge and so I was pretty much out of money at this point. To make an already long and painful story short, she was a real bitch about the whole thing. Telling me several times that I would have to get a later bus because I needed the equivalent of 25 cents more, then telling me that I should have the guy who weighed the luggage change the ticket, then he was out to lunch, then she started yelling at me because I didn't have enough money (all white people always have money) and then I yelled back at which point she played the race card and a Burkinabi guy stepped in and gave me the money.

At two points both ladies behind the counter were yelling at me and I was yelling back, "WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE THIS!?!?!?" I think that's when the race card got pulled. And yes, I am racist. I hate African people who yell for no reason. Their deep voices make it so much worse than when anyone else does it. When the baggage was being loaded two or three guys screamed at each other for a solid ten mins, I think because one guy had a huge package that weighed next to nothing and the driver was upset about it taking to much room? Or maybe the driver tried to put it in the bus the wrong way? Or possibly the man had tried to put it in himself? Later, while unloading the bus to cross the boarder, a passenger opened one of the undercarriage doors himself and got a good verbal thrashing. Around midnight, a guy got on and was promptly abused for about ten minutes for incorrectly answering a question about his ticket.

The same guy turned out to be pretty interesting. He was a Burkinabi who worked for the private arm of the World Bank, running an energy development program in a country to the south east and I'm fairly certain he could have owned the bus he just got yelled at for boarding. Later he bought me lunch at the boarder crossing and explained that while the Ghanaian's were bad with the yelling, they were nothing compared to the Nigerians, who even the Ghanaian's thought were crazy. He couldn't give a reason for why the Burkinabi's didn't enjoy a good shouting match but I suspect it is because they speak French. I don't think it lends itself as readily verbal abusing. And unlike Ghana, which officially uses English but in reality doesn't in day-to-day life (and when the do the words spoken never make grammatical sense), the people of Burkina Faso speak French all the time. I have no idea why this is, but they also eat lots of French food - couscous, baguettes and omelets at every roadside eatery.

The actual trip to Ouagadougou was hellish. In addition to the coach bus lacking a bathroom, the driver turned out to be a bully, yelling at passengers, stopping every hour or two so he could get out and do whatever it was the he needed to, and driving slow. Slow driving in a developing country is the only thing more dangerous than driving too fast. Partly because people risk their lives to pass you and partly because it makes the passengers want to beat you into a bloody pulp and leave you on a roadside to be devoured by whatever death carrying bugs, worms and mammals happen to be in the area. At one point where the road disappeared and we were forced to maneuver through an obstacle course of potholes, we did a Ghanaian-style reenactment of the opening to the movie Office Space, in which an old lady with a walker is moving faster then the rush hour traffic. In this case it was two teens jogging (slowly) along the deserted road while we bumped our way towards pavement.

The Ghanaian Way: Totally backwards and completely at ease with it

Disclaimer: The spelling is horrific as I can't spell well, the word processing program I use doesn't really do spell check, the google blog site wants to do it in spanish cause I'm in madrid and I hate profreading. Hopefully nothing gets lost in translation.

The topic of conversation on the morning talk radio was what would you do if you found out your mom was a lesbian? About a third of the callers said they would have no problem with it (I recall that nearly all in this category were the female callers), another third would give the women in question a good beating and then disown her and the rest were split between outrage that such a situation could even exist and expressing a desire to murder their own mother. The consensus in the office was that a good beating followed by disownment would suffice, while murder was a little over the top. My office is entirely staffed with Pentecostal Christians who go to church nearly everyday and abstaine from every form of vice save the occausional coke-a-cola.

Later that day, I traveled with a younger co-worker, Clement to his father's home in the mountains outside of Accra for the yearly tribal festival. In typical developing world the fashion, the trip which could not have been more than a few dozen kilometers took several hours and involved three vans and a taxi and a trek across urban Accra. While walking through Accra at night my attention was caught by a man standing in a large circle of light, ringed with people, and shouting in as scary a voice as he could muster. The light was cast by a large construction style spotlight on the top of a poll with a speaker besides it blaring his creppy voice. I asked Clement what it was all about and he replied that it sounded to him like a voodoo magician performing for the people. As we neared, he did indeed have several small dolls on a table underneath the spotlight and Clement proceeded to tell me about one time when a voodoo guy came to his village.

The man had come and done his usual street performer routine, gotten the crowd all riled up and was about to pack up and go when he made one last claim - if any man had a gun he should bring, shoot him and he would heal himself, or something along those lines. He probably never thought that in these parts, a place where people still hunt with slingshots, anyone could possibly have a gun. It's equally possible that in the midst of the frenzy he had created he actually believed he had the power to repel a bullet. But, either way, a man from the crowd stepped forward and said that he had one at home as his father had been a government executioner. He persauded by the man to go and fetch it and so he did. Then the voodoo magician, against the man's many protests convinced him to point the gun at his chest and pull the trigger. He insisted that he could heal himself and everything would be fine. The executioner's son did so and the crowd watched, enthralled as the man writhered on the ground, apparently performing ancient voodoo magic. After a few minuets he stopped and was pronounced dead.

GHANA (There's more from India but the computer isn't working)

This time around, Ghana seems to resemble a post-apocalyptic Eden. Lush and green, with magnificent skies over head and structures sprouting up from below. The half completed highway over pass that has stood though two presidents, the dust roads which spill like river deltas onto the paved highway and the frequent power outages give it the feeling of a civilization that is just beginning to materialize.

On the main streets, at night the only light comes from open flame gas lamps. Built out of old tin cans, their light flickers and dodges unevenly across the road where dozens walk with large loads on their heads. Off the main roads the only light is from cars, headlights cutting through the thick dust and casting absurdly long shadows over the pot holes. After a long rainy spell the pot holes become pot holes no longer. They connect in a fairly uniform pattern and the road dons the appearance of a brown, mougled mountain side that only a five year-old ski prodigy could find joy in. After sometime, the government sends out what is basically a snow plow to scrape the road back into shape.

Water for everything but drinking comes from the sky. Funneled into to streams, it gushes off the tin roof horizontally to waiting buckets below, several to either and each one placed in a line extending out from the house, ready to catch all the water as it comes down in different strengths. Most drinking water comes in the form of water packets (a sturdy, square plastic water balloon that one opens by ripping a corner off with your teeth, all the while imagining the look on your dentist's face when you tell him about it.) There are signs around for "Silver Spring Tonic Water" which claims to be scientifically proven as a disinfect, and a treatment for HIV/AIDS, sexual weakness, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, infected sores, sleeplessness, eye problems, depression, and lack of faith in the lord. The other main type of water is called Voltic. As far as I can tell a simple bottled water, but it seems to be a delicacy amongst those indulging the local ganja. Several have talked almost mythically about how amazing it tastes after smoking. They are probably on to something, a lot of the water packets have a very unappetizing aftertaste of chemicals and plastic or else whatever the person who handed it to you last ate.

At the same time as civilization is rising out of the landscape, a feverishly passionate religious movement has swept over the country. Pentecostalism, as crazy as I think Christianity can get while still claiming to believe in an interpretation of the Bible, has taken over the lives of many. Some, not all, go to church every single day and all abstain from alcohol and smoking. Their services consist of a preacher bellowing literal interpretations of scriptures at an enthralled audience who will soon break into a frenzy of song and dance accompanied by drums. Late on Friday nights and into the early hours of Saturday, they beat out over the single story buildings as the only sign of life. One night, when they got an especially late start due to the rain, I slipped out of the house and went walking towards the next town over. I came out of the darkness into a dimly lit road that branched off in several directions. A loud bass could be heard coming from down one street and I walked towards it. This area is middle class by developing world standards and I thought maybe there would a be a decent bar, maybe even some sort of club or hangout spot. As I got within a few blocks though, I was able to see it clearly. Half a dozen men slumped deadly in a barely lit entrance to a garage with a bar inside. I retreated, figuring they would be the same guys I'd see slumped over outside the liquor store on Sunday morning as the rest of the community thumped their chests and Bibles, heeding the words of the local radio stations that it was very important to attend mass everyday - especially on Sundays.

better late than ever: more from india

From Chennai, I traveled to the ancient ruins of a capitol city in Hampei via a twenty hour stay on the Indian railway system, the world's largest employer and possibly the largest source of delays in the world. At one point we were stopped for so long that a good number of people got off three hours in to a standing room only trip, walked to a hole in the chain link fence ringing the track and hailed a bus to take them the rest of the way. The Indian railroad company also injects an ample amount of excitement and confusion into an otherwise sedated mode of transportation. There were seldom signs posted to show which train would be arriving at which track and it was not printed on the tickets either, people just seem to know where to go. Fine for them but this caused me to move to three different tracks in an hour while waiting at one stop and the first train I got on I had to hop off as it pulled away from the station. I don't know where it was going but I knew it was the wrong way. Later I would get on the right train but only after consulting five different people and being told by three that it was going to Hospet (my destination), one that it was not and by the last that it was going to Mysore. I figured three out of five was pretty good and if I ended up in Mysore I would be just in time for the birthday of a friend who was staying there. The lack of signage is made worse by an incredibly loud automated announcement system which is under the impression that every train is on time. The 5 o'clock express to Bangalore could be running three hours late but at 5 the loud speakers will proclaim in blaring fashion that the train is ready to depart from track 1 - even though an entirely different train is sitting on those tracks probably about to take off in the opposite direction.

The saving grace of the Indian Railroad are the people on it. Those sitting in unreserved 2nd class will madly dash to any door as an incoming train slows, bumping and pushing anyone in their way and then turn around smiling to off you part of their snack once you get aboard. There was a family of girls on a train that were very friendly and kept asking me questions for the twenty mins I sat with them before having to jump off as the train began to move in the wrong direction. Probably a good thing since the mother seemed determined that I should marry at least one of them, a thirteen year age gap not being her biggest concern. On another train, a small boy of twelve or thirteen and myself wordlessly exchanged funny faces for several hours while the track caused the train to rattle and shake with deafening noise. On my first overnight train I slept a few feet away from a mother and daughter with a skin disease that caused it to flake off revealing a pink layer beneath their light brown skin. Waking up next to a bench with dusting of skin like big snow flakes and then being offered to share their breakfast was certainly one of the less appetizing moments of the trip.

Going from Goa to Mumbai I shared a berth with a young engineering couple who spoke prefect English and seemed to be doing very well for themselves judging by the plethora of gold they wore. I later learned that most of it had been given by their families at their marriage a few years earlier. Even though they married for love, her father had still given a dowry as a sign of social status that included much of the gold he wore and either a car or a house, I can't recall which. I also learned that before they began seeing each other, her family had considered an arranged marriage and set up a number of interviews. These interviews were not with the prospective husband, but with his friends. Up to a dozen of them would sit across from her while she kept her head down and never made eye contact with a single one. They would ask her questions, vetting her for their friend and then leave. They two of them seemed very happy to be married to one another.

After speaking for awhile, they told me that they very much wished to travel to Europe, specifically Switzerland and Venice. I never found out exactly why those two places but they were set on going as part of a big tour group. When I advised that they might find it more enjoyable to go on their own he responded by saying, "But we are scared."
"Why? Most westerners would be more scared to travel through India, I think."
"No you see, Indians are born scared."
"What do you mean?"
"Ever since we are young we are told not to go to this part of the city or that part of the city because it is not safe. Maybe you will be mugged or kidnapped. So we are scared."

Escaping Vipassana

Vipassana meditation was the cloest thing to prison that I ever hope to experience. The idea is that you go to this little meditation center in the countryside with about sixty others, (half male, half female but the sexes never mix) who you will make absolutely no contact with for ten days but you will spend ten hours or more each day sitting several feet away from each other. At the start, you sign your life away saying that you will promise to stay for the duration of the course and follow it's rules. No sex, intoxicants, killing, lying, media entertainment, communication with the outside world and no communication at all except to the staff and teacher. The whole deal sounded rather crazy to me when I first heard about it but I was told that while it was very challending it would also be very rewarding. Attracted mostly by the craziness of it, I signed up.

The practice itself is in the footsteps of what the Buddah did to become Buddha all those centuries ago. It has been passed down in an unbroken line of teachers ever since. For awhile it was lost to India but kept alive in a neighboring country until a guy brought it over to India during the middle of the last century and it has garnered a solid following. The basis of it is this meditation technique in which you focus all of your intention on the flow of respiration through your nostrails. Not trying to control it, simply keeping your attenion focus solely on that and drawing your mind back whenever it wanders. If that sounds cool to you try it. It's hard for a few hours but after a day or it gets fairly easy. My own mind wanders a lot but as long as you stay focused its easy to pull it back and hold it for longer and longer and longer. And longer. And longer still, until the novelty has worn off and the boredom sets in.

The boredom was too much for me to take. Try to imagine not thinking for an entire day, not having one single completed thought for hours at a time. You probably can't. It's maddening and I couldn't stand it. The idea is that by learning to focus your mind so completely and finely you can later probe deep into your own being. I'm sure it works, and the whole 'probing of your true self' does have some attraction but to me, spending whole days forcing my mind not to think just to expereince the universal truth that the entire cosmos and everything in it is interconnected and made up of gazzilions of particles that jump in and out of existence in an instant, just like our own lives - ehh, not my cup of tea.

Apart from the boredom there was also the environment in which it took place. The grounds were very beautiful, but also very small and with only one 'walking path' that was about one hundred yards long and ten wide. There was no where else to go to stretch ones legs apart from up and down that long dirt strip overhung with trees. And you really needed a place to stretch your legs. For hours upon hours, starting at 4:30am until 9:30pm you are expected to sit cross legged on the floor in very serious concentration. There are breaks evenly spaced out and meals, a meager vegetarian affair but otherwise you sit on a pillow in total silence in a stuffy hall and meditate. The directions for the meditation come from a voice on a CD, because appearently the only person in the world qualified to teach this technique is the guy who brought it back to India. There are perfectly qualified teachers present who can answer any questions you might have, but only one man is capable of telling you to, "Focus on the area the edge and inside your nostrails. Follow the respiration in and out, in and out. Notice how sometimes it comes in the left nostrail... sometimes the right... sometimes both nostrials...." He says this several times at the start of each session and in three languages Tamil, Hindi and English (the whole course, except for the breif chanting to begin and end each session is in three languages).

Over all, it was very impersonal and on second thought, prison probably would be better - atleast you can enteract with your fellow inmates. After about 48 hours there I decided that I'd had enough of Visspannu and of Buddhism overall, but that's a seperate issue, and so I decided to get out. First, I had to plant the seeds the night before I wanted to go. I did this by saying how I was very bored and didn't really believe in or like the technique and then asked a few very pointed questions about Buddhism in general. This led to a very lengthy disscusion on the subject, which only furthered my belife that I want absolutely nothing to do with it ever again. That however, is a whole other topic. Then I informed him as soon as I could the next day that I wanted to leave. This was very tricky since you're only supposed to talk to him during certain times and so I wasn't able to tell him until noon. Another lengthy talk followed on the subject of why I should stay and how it was perfectly normal to absolutlely hate the technique before you had mastered it. I told him that I had no doubt that he was right, but all the same my mind was made up and I leaving. " Thats ok", he said, just try it until after the afternoon session at five and then give me your final answer and you can go.

I was content at that point. Freedom was within reach and I'd be back to civilization by night fall. Then the rain started. It was torrential, thunderous and flooded grounds of the center, which stood up a slight hill from the main road. It began at 1:30 and by 2:30 I knew that no car would be able to make it to the center. By 3:00, walking the half kilometer down a country road comprised of mud, cow shit was starting to look in doubt. Half an hour later, I informed the teacher that I was leaving, he implored me to stay another night and leave in the morning due to the rain. I however, was already fantasizing about Tandoori chicken, a beer and a good movie. So, I told him not to worry - where I was born it rains all the time and a little water wasn't gonna stop me. Quickly I set off on the road, bags in hand, pants rolled up to my knees, coat tied around my neck then thrown over my backpack and mosoon in full force.

However, during the final meditation session, while the rain was making the possibilty of leaving less and less likely, I did have one really cool exerience wth the meditation. The irnoy is that you aren't suppose to have experiences like this and if you do you're suppose to snap out of it and drag your mind back to, "...sometimes it comes in the left nostrail... sometimes the right... sometimes both nostrials...." About half an hour into the session I saw in my mind a wavy, fuzzy, somewhat spikey shape, which upon relfection looks something like a roll of film. Still following the breathing technique, I found myself focused upon it and then in a sense I was drawn in. All of a sudden I was completely immeresed in memories from my grade school days. Hundreds of them, one after the other and all quite random events that I had not thought of in many years. In each memory it was like I was there, reliving it in prefect detail. All the sights, sounds, smells, feelings (both physical and emotional) were incredibly vivid and spanned my entire grade school experience in Seattle. After what seemed a long time I became aware that I was barely breathing at all and my hands, which were clasped in front of me, fingers interlocking felt as if they were holding something that was slightly squeezable. I was able to go back into the memories and stayed there for what I thought was a very long time. When I opened my eyes, the whole thing could not have lasted for more than ten minuets.

Anyways, that didn't stop me from leaving...

Shortly after departing, I made it to the nearest 'hotel', which in these parts means a restaurant with a conveience store and tea stand out front, not the kind with rooms. I'd written down a few names of cab companies and after unsucessfully trying the pay phone about a dozen times and each time getting the, "The user you are trying to reach is unavailable," I was handed a cell phone by the lady at the store, got a hold of a taxi only to discover that she didn't speak any English. The guy at the store came over and I handed him the phone. I have no idea what they talked about for the next 15 minuets, my guess is that he spoke Tamil and she Hindi but either way, things looked in doubt until a construction crew showed up. There was a young engineer with them named Sandeep who spoke good English and was able to tell the guy with the phone what I was saying, who was then able to tell the dispatcher and an hour after I arrived, I had a ride set for later that evening. Sandeep bought me a cup of tea, so full of sugar and milk that one could mistake it for cheap hot chocolate and I set my dung/mud caked flip-flops a few yards away, sat down and watched a cloud of flies numbering in the hundreds swarm about them while I waited for the taxi.

INDIA!!!!

India is awesome. There's an electricity here that's contagious. I'm only in the transportation hub of Chennai but it's vibrant, bustling, amazingly dirty, embedded with history and perfectly friendly. It only took me about an hour to fall in love the place. In Sri Lanka the dogs out number the people on the streets after nine o'clock, here it's as alive as ever. People everywhere going about their business, and great food can be found in harshly light restaurants which are open to the street and often have "Hotel" somewhere in their name. In Sri Lanka, the good food is almost always home cooked, here I've eaten in places that I wouldn't walk into in the U.S. for a free meal, and they've been awesome. One was advertised as a xerox shop in the old British fort, but out front a guy prepared coffee and the smell coming from inside was unmissable. Coffee is prepared by filling one small cup or glass with bubbling milk/cream and then pouring hot water through what amounts to a giant tea bag filled with coffee, into another small cup and then mixing the two by pouring them back and fourth. This pour starts out close together and then is extended until one cup is at waste level and the other above the head. Tea is made in the same manner and hopefully I'll get a picture or video of it one day but I must confess, it seems quite unnatural to pull out the camera and take photographs here, I simply forgot to do so while walking around at dark in search of dinner the past two nights.

A great dish here is Masala Dosa, a thin and very large, crispy pancake that is sometimes filled with potato and onion (or even more, each place does it differently - today one had several other ingredients including what I can only call between a pea and pinto bean) and served with several sambars (dahl-like curries) on a metal plate covered by a banana leaf and eaten strictly with your right hand. The left was, before the invention modern conveniences, used for sanitary purposes. It is also quite improper to lick your fingers, there is always a wash basin in the back.

More to come...

Leaving Lanka

Leaving Sri Lanka:
6 weeks was more than enough time. Before coming an old boss, who was originally from India he told me that, "No, I've never been to Sri Lanka, why would I want to go there?" Or something to that effect, and on some levels he was correct. Sri Lanka is very beautiful but in the sense that the show girl at a boxing match is good looking. Physically all there, but not exactly someone you're dying to talk to. There just isn't a lot for me to say about the culture. Buddhism abounds but it was hard to see any effect on daily life apart from the monthly full moon festival. In various places at various times it can be a huge deal. Complete with parades of elephants and dancers and entire streets turned in markets. Markets which sell cheap plastic nick nacks, clothes that have made their way here from various events in the united states such as some College Football bowl game of years ago and as many forms of sugar as one can imagine.

Usually though, it's a laid back place, living perpetually by 'Island Time', the highway to Galle was supposed to be finished years ago but no signs of construction exist. Island time is a great way to vacation but after weeks of chilling at the beach or killing time over pots of tea at the old dutch fort, listening to stories of the owner it starts to get old. Cricket is huge here and the one match I went to was a lot of fun due to it's historic nature, but to paraphrase the Lonely Planet Guidebook, 'It's like listening to someone countdown from 1000 to 1 and getting really excited around 10.' That really just leaves the beach and it's various vices for entertainment.

Upon arrival I was told great tales of the parties at the beach on the weekends, and with enough cheap coconut liquor even I can get into disco rave kinda thing but there is one huge catch: complete lack of girls. The breakdown of attendance is pretty much 80 local guys, 10 foreign girls and 10 foreign guys. Great odds for the ten girls. Local girls are never seen out. Ever. To make the situation even more interesting many of the local guys at the beach parties have wives or girlfriends at home. I don't what they think the men are doing on weekends, but it ain't very pious. I get the impression that even in a society where arranged marriages are no longer officially common, the promiscuity and it's acceptance that came from that system still lingers. And divorce is a process that takes years, requires connections and in the end is very rare. The beach scene also illustrates another interesting aspect of Sri Lankan life: mistrust.

The guys from the Lucky Tuna don't like the guys from the Happy Banana and somehow the guys from the Kingfisher don't like someone, I never bothered to figure it all out. And the guys from the beach aren't welcome in the city on the grounds that they are dumb beach bums and they get all the foreign girls. On the surface it's all laughs and smiles for the Westerners but underneath it all no one likes each other. Even the adults don't trust each other. In Kandy, Ian the guy I stayed with was able to get his spacious house in the best neighborhood in the city because he was an expat and the owners would only rent to foreigners. Renting to locals in the past had proved troublesome as payments were usually late or nonexistent and the house left in very bad condition.

The family I stayed with thought that the Tuk-Tuk driver, Priyantha who lived next door and drove all of the volunteers was trying to overcharge and so they conspired to put him essentially out of business. He was in fact just playing favorites, giving the volunteers whom he liked (yours truly and friends included) rates that were cheaper than local prices (there are two prices for everything in Sri Lanka - local and foreign and it's really damn annoying) and a lot of times free rides if convenient. The family bought the boy friend of the younger daughter a tuk-tuk, which was probably part of the dowery for the wedding next year, supposedly so that he could drive it to work and then one of his friends would drive it as a tuk-tuk for hire during the day. He has a motorbike and has never driven the tuk-tuk to work, while Priyantha is basically screwed.

More evidence of this distrust comes from their attitude towards the night. Many people won't go out late at night and there was a curfew at the home where I stayed. We were told that it was for our safety and so if you're not back by lock up time between ten and eleven you gotta find somewhere else to sleep. Locking up the house consists of a front gate, two deadbolts and a key lock (which even from the inside can only be opened the key kept by the owner) on the front door as well as the same deal with the second floor balcony door. There's also a large dog in a cage out front, but he only barks at people he knows - seriously.

...That's where I had to get on the plane to go to India and now that I am here I can't be bothered to finish this post. First impressions of India soon to come.

Please excuse the numerous typos, I'm sending this from a dirt stained computer in an 'internet cafe' in Chennai that costs 25 cents an hour.

The Trip to Ella Part II: The best meal I've had in years.

A truly unforgettable meal is a very rare event over the course of life as I have experienced. Rarer still, is the unforgettable meal that relies simply of food to leave it's mark. We all have found memories of that one Thanksgiving when the power went out but the meal went on, or the magnificent Graduation dinners when all sides of a family come together in celebration, these are events more than meals and the food takes a back seat to the attendees and circumstances. Less common are the meals in which food is more an art than sustenance. I think immediately of my 21st birthday dinner at a world renown, 5 star restaurant. Flavors that are vivid and precise, altered through ingenious techniques that defy explanation and perfectly overwhelm the senses. It's the thin film like glaze of an ingredient laid carefully over a flavor infused piece of meat or the frozen ball of sorbet filled with the bursting taste of basil, surrounded by half a dozen different ways to prepare a tomato - each one impossible in the average kitchen of even the most dedicated gourmet. That is the type of meal that leaves you dazzled and amazed by every sensation on your tongue but lacks a the hearty satisfaction of fullness that we expect from food. Perhaps the most unforgettable of all meals is the one that delights you with flavors in the same way as was just described, but at the same time does not distract you from them through fancy preparations or artsy displays. It is one prepared with quality ingredients and perfect recipes, in an almost careless fashion but nonetheless will shock the eater with flavors that seem to come out of nowhere.

The meal in Ella was such a meal. A heap of soft rice surrounded by no less than nine curries - pumpkin, beet, dahl, caramelized eggplant, green beans, some sort of leafy greens, one that can best be described as having the look and texture of moist stuffing the day after Thanksgiving - but with an incredible flavor which I can't even begin to describe, date fruit (Not a date as we know it but more like a potato. I know, it makes no sense to me either.) and garlic. The pumpkin is phenominal, big chunks of pumpkin and enough chili to leave a sweet and fiery burn in your moulth. The beet curry is thick and sweet, the dahl - a light dish of lentils, the date fruit could fool you for a potato, the green beens - spicy and crunchy and the leafy greens are pure fire. The carmalized eggplant, known by some strange name to the Brits are at once mushy and chewy, a strange texture made overwhelmingly sweet by the sugar. To properly describe them would take more time than my attention span will allow and no matter what, come up short. They were all unique, all fantastic, all memorable, and all nothing compared to the garlic curry. Full cloves of garlic that had been cooked in a coconut milk based curry sauce until they were so soft that they melted in your moulth like butter. The cooking process also maed it possible to eat cloves of garlic by the moulth full, most of the pungent flavor had been cooked into the suace and the cloves themselves still had tons of flavor but were in no way over powering.

The Trip to Ella (The post I couldn't be bothered to write for some time) Part I: Tea Time

The end of last week was supposedly exam time for the teenage monks of Galle. Supposedly because they said that they weren't going to have our English class from Tuesday through Friday so that they could study, but when I came to help out with the younger class on Tuesday morning and there was a cute American girl helping out, they suddenly had no studying to do. Can't say I was surprised, what they have in holiness they severely lack in work ethic. Laziness seems to be the main tenant of their lives, which they display by not showing up to class, refusing to do work and at times just being a bunch of little shit heads.

As I had nothing to do for the rest of the week I decided to make a trip up north to meet up with a traveler I had met a few weeks prior, named Kiron. An interesting English fellow, he had quit school half a dozen years ago, been more or less traveling ever since and was going back to college in September. The idea had been to meet in Ella, the tea country and trek around there for a few days before he headed off to India and I to the city of Kandy. From Kandy I would go a visit some famous cultural site before heading up north to the city of Jaffna. Jaffna had recently been opened to public traffic after being closed off for many years due to the civil war which had just ended last winter. The story I was told by the locals, and which makes some sense given what I have read, is that the general of the Tamils, the group trying to break away had tried to surrender but the Army killed him on the spot and ever since there has been peace. Don't quote me on that, it's just the story I've heard. Anyways that last part fell through because foreigners still need permission from the Ministry of Defense and I don't have the connections to make that happen.

So on Wednesday morning I found myself on another all day train ride from Galle to Colombo to Ella. Again the scenery was breathtaking. Flat jungle and rice paddies leading up to steep hills and mountains where the train clung to the side, the land falling away nearly vertically, giving brief glimpses of villages and farms a thousand meters below. As we climbed into the hill country the air cooled and several of us stood at the doors enjoying every second of the first cold air felt in some time. The landscape also changed, the leafy palms and massive palm-like shrubs gave way to tall stands of pine trees not unlike those found in Northern California. Though they seemed to much taller and narrower and beneath them was thick cover of tall grass several feet high, swaying in the wind. Later we came upon stands of tall birch trees and also a plethora of streams that gushed downwards over flat rocks, forming waterfalls by the dozens. After twisting along the mountain sides and plunging through black tunnels that filled with the engine's smoke, we came upon an endless valley filled with small hills wrapped in neat hedge like rows of tea bushes.

I arrived sometime in the night and after getting a quote from the Tuk-Tuk drivers for 100 rupees to take me into to town I guessed that it couldn't be more than a kilometer and so I set off with a map that I had copied down from the Lonely Planet guide. The first place on my list was full and right as I was about to head to the second, a group of five French backpackers came in by Tuk-Tuk, looking for a place to stay. The owner ran up to me and gave me directions to another possible place to stay and from there the race was on. Luckily, I had the upper hand because the Tuk-Tuks carrying the Frenchmen were forced to circle around the base of a hill and back up to the next guest house, while I simply cut through a side yard to the backdoor. I arrived and was told that there was no room, but dinner was about to be served and there was room next door, at her sister's place. On this one hill in Ella there were three guest houses owned by a trio of sisters and I ended up in the smallest - a house with just two rooms for let but with a patch of tea plants in the side yard. The owner would harvest and then bring the leaves to the factory every year and the tea was simply phenomenal. I do not know how to properly describe what a great tea tastes like but let's just say that if you took the flavors found in your average cup of black tea from the states and then multiplied it by ten - you would have something close to this tea. Now if you could get a pot of it for 30 Sri Lankan Rupees (25 cents) that would be even better.

On the afternoon of my first day, when I was reading and the owner brought over a pot of her tea and we got to talking about all of the tea plantations in the area and how tea was made, etc. About fifteen minuets after we finished talking, she came back and brought with her the gardener/handyman/housekeeper and announced that I should go with him up to see the plantation where his family worked and lived. He spoke about as much English as I do Sinhalese, that is to say we could mutter hello, goodbye and about a dozen words in between. Experience has taught me that when the language barrier comes into play it can either be very frustrating or lead to a nice little adventure. Since no money was involved here, I was guessing for some sort of the later. My guide, whose name I can only remember started with an S, was the proud owner of the longest ear hair I have ever seen. The shock of hair atop his head was garish-white and his pencil thin mustache was dotted with grays, but out of his ears shot only black hair like a thick, stiff row of wheat. I've seen some interesting ears in the past month - the head monk is perfectly bald but for handful of curly cues coming from his - but doesn't stand up to the ears of my guide for the afternoon. I swear he must have combed them every morning, that's how perfectly they stood at attention.

We climbed upwards on a well paved road (the only place I've great roads in Sri Lanka has been in the tea country) past the turnoff for a scenic hike I'd done earlier in the day and into the forested hills where the way was lined with a single row of evenly spaced and massive birch trees. We followed the road for a handful of kilometers until coming upon a sign for the 'Finlays Newburgh Estate' and arrows pointing straight ahead for the 'Office,' 'Tea Factory,' and 'Bungalows.' First came the Factory. All we got to see was guard house which stood in front of a winding road to a tree encased factory with a green barbed wire fence running the length of the property. A Sri Lankan guard met us at the entrance wearing a khaki uniform complete with shoulder stripes, a walkie-talkie and a blue hat with stripes and a red 'LA' Dodger's logo. When I began asking him questions, mostly along the lines of, "Can I visit the factory?" He simply pointed at a sign which read, "VISITORS WITHOUT PERMISSION WILL NOT BE ENTERTAINED" I was not entertained.

The man with the ear hair led me further upwards into the hills to the Office. Here I was not entertained either. Despite the fact that his son worked there, as did his family and they lived the Finlays 'Bungalows,' No permission was given. For USD$20 I could go and visit a black tea factory a few hours a way, but I was not to be allowed into the green tea factory. When the question of why came up I was told that there are, "Many reasons." None of which I was given the privilege of knowing. In the heat of the moment, I forgot to take a picture of the Estate's Mission Statement which was posted in several places, but I distinctly remember that 'fair wages and working conditions for employees' was fourth on the list. Among the things that came before included protecting the environment and the usual corporate jargon. I was told by my hairy friend that the workers made 300 rupees a day (roughly 110 rupees to USD$1), another later said 500. Either way enjoy, that cup of tea.

Next we journeyed across the hill to the 'bungalows' which in Finlays terms translates to a long bunker divided into 'bungalows' by concrete walls. The living spaces are three rooms - a front room, living room/bedroom and kitchen. The living room is pitch black in the absence of artificial light and the others aren't exactly airy. The doorways and shutters are the same forest green as the Finlay's sign and the residences are distinguishable only through the jagged lines marking the end of one family's paint job done to their front wall and the start of the next. Even for Sri Lanka, these accommodations were sub par and were made to seem even more so by the quality of roads in the area and the sophistication of the layout of the tea fields - perfectly neat rows, red brick retaining walls and cobblestone paths. In a dirt field near the village a dozen kids play a game of cricket. Taking turns pitching and hitting, occasionally momentarily suspending play by belting the ball into some far off bush, it reminds me of countless pick up baseball games back home. No real differences, just kids playing after school.

Cricket, Wickets, Cannons and Expats

Looking back, it feels exactly like the start to an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (Mom and Dad, this is a subtle reminder that I would love to have it on DVR when I get back.) Camera opens on two guys with beers, a handful of empties lying around and something stupid going on. In this case an American guy wearing red and black plaid sunglasses with a yellow shirt and a Scottish guy with a big wide brimmed hat and black sunglasses, both grinning stupidly and cheering loudly while the Sri Lankans go crazy, dancing and waving hundreds of flags. Then the first black screen pops up with “11:45 am” written across it. The second reads “On a Thursday.” And then the show starts.

It was at that point, 11:45 on a Thursday morning, when the fourth round of beers rolled around that I knew I could like cricket despite it being in the words of one Englishman, “Dreadfully boring." The game makes baseball stand out in my memory as an action packed fast paced sporting event that should hold the viewer on the edge of their seat. Here’s cricket through the eyes of an American in 200 words or less: There are two batsmen (batters) that stand in opposing boxes, facing each other and there are two bowlers (pitchers) that throw to the opposing batsmen. Instead of home plate, the batsmen stand next to the wickets, three poles stuck into the ground with a crossbeam. If the bowler hits the wicket with the ball, the batsmen is out, if the batsmen hits the ball four things can happen. If he hits it over the outfield line without bouncing, he gets six points. If he hits it over with a bounce it’s four. If the opposing team catches it, he’s out. If he hits it inside the park he can choose whether or not to run. Running entails the batsmen running to other’s box before the fielders can throw the ball in and hit the wicket. Because the batsmen can choose to run or not to run it means the game is really boring. Like baseball except you swing at every pitch and then choose when to run. That’s pretty much it, the rest matters in the same way foul ball rules matter or the way the inning system works, important but not necessary to know what’s happening on the field.

That was exactly 200 words in case you weren’t counting or got so bored and took so long to read it that you figured I lied and had gone way over.

Back to the match, which held enormous significance to the Sri Lankan people and followers of Cricket in general. It was Murali’s last match. Murali was one of the best bowlers ever and he needed just 8 wickets (outs) to reach 800, a feat which had never before been accomplished. When the match continued on Thursday (it started on Sunday), there were only 2 wickets left in the game, and one was gotten within the opening minuets by Sri Lanka’s other bowler. So you can imagine the tension in the crowd that morning. Bands on opposite sides of the field alternated depending on who was bowling and every time that Murali was up the crowd went wild. This went on from approximately 10:33 when the other pitcher got the wicket (out) until nearly four o’clock that afternoon. This craziness was broken up 2 breaks. The first was for lunch and the second for tea. Literally play stops at 12:00 and the scoreboard reads, “Lunch Day 5” and then again around 3 in the afternoon play stops and it reads, “Tea Day 5.” My best guess is that Cricket came from England.

By the time lunch was over, Murali was still bowling and I had long lost count of which round of beer we were on. As mentioned earlier, I was hanging out for the day with a Scottish fellow – his girlfriend wasn’t feeling well and he needed someone to drink and watch Cricket with and well I was pretty damn tired of lying on a beach all week and need someone to explain Cricket to me. Needless to say the combination of the mutual interests of drinking and sport went well together. I’d met him the night before while waiting to meet two friends at the very luxurious Sun House hotel. It is a small boutique hotel that reeks of the good ol’ British Empire from the moment you step through a nearly invisible door, in a solid concrete wall and into a cobble stone courtyard. Inside the bar, which was decked out in memorabilia from the glory days and pictures of authors who had come to the Galle Literary Festival (ran by the owner), a Beatles album played and half a dozen British ex-patriots sat around making small talk. There were three guys who ran a small hotel north of Galle, a profession which obviously made them far more informed and cultured than the rest of us. They asked very few questions but had answers to everything from the spiciness of certain curries to the likelihood of a Sri Lankan national highway system.

Then there was a lady dressed in a double breasted khaki suit/skirt who claimed to be in fashion when first approached. The suit seriously looked like she was due for a safari with Hemingway in the morning. I’ve never seen anything like what she was wearing except in the movies and I know little about fashion but I can tell you that she had not seen the lower side of a catwalk in sometime, if ever. Over the course of the evening it came out that by fashion she meant sweatshops - a modern day slave master who spent her time examining the factories across the country, and dinning with other keepers of the downfallen Empire, complaining about the lack of civility and the rising of prices by a few pence.

Finally there was the couple from Saudi Arabia. He Scottish, she South African and both equally happy to be out of Saudi. Who ever thought that sticking a proud Scotchmen in a dry, practically celibate country and then 'force' him to go on vacation every three months on the company's dime was walking the fine line between genius and insanity. Genius because there would otherwise be mass suicides of Scotsmen in the Middle East and insane because it promotes the endless buying of rounds of gin and tonics. It was at the fourth round at the Sun House that he proclaimed, in perfect sobriety, that it was his national duty to make sure everyone had plenty to drink and it was at that point that I lost track of the rounds. Later it came out that he worked for a large international company and was a buyer of stuff that “make things go fast and go boom.” I am about 95% sure that the quote is accurate. Anyways, we decided to meet up in the morning to see the match.

Again, back to the match. Murali's final wicket came after many false alarms and reviews from upstairs - there was no way that they would let him off with anything less than a fair wicket. When he finally got it the stands erupted in a mass of cheering and dancing and soon after the cannons began their salute to the champion. The cannons are a spectacle all their own. Several days before I had watched with three other volunteers from the ramparts of a fort across the street as the workers did their best to fire them and keep their lives in the process. We were several stories up on this fort and most of them exploded not much higher than our heads; a few actually made it high into the sky and just as many barely made it six feet. These would come bouncing down and prompt a frantic scramble for cover from the people in the area. One even landed on the field and one poor soul was prompted to kick it away from the people before it exploded which it did, thirty seconds after his last boot. On this day, such was their fury that the entire field was engulfed in smoke and fuming remnants smoldered on the field. Murali was carried around the pitch on the shoulders of his teammates and everyone went crazy, scuffles broke out later in day at tea time and the by that point the kegs had been tapped and crowd formed waiting for new ones.

The game was not over just yet though as Sri Lanka still needed to bat again to regain the lead and make the victory official. I know this is kind of confusing and as much as I hate to revert again to referencing my least favorite of America's pastimes I will. Murali got his 800 wicket as what we would call the last out in the top of the ninth, but because this is cricket the bottom of the ninth lasts for hours and all you need is 2 runs in basically a 6-5 ballgame. The only reason that this is worth mentioning is because our drunken minds firmly believe that we came seriously close to being injured when the winning run, a 6 pointer sailed through the tent above us and slammed into the ground several yards away, leaving a sizable hole in both the canopy above and ground below. We stuck around just long enough to watch the crowning of Murali, their new national hero by the President and other Cricket dignitaries, then hoofed it back to the tranquil and prestigious Galle Fort Hotel where we unceremoniously jumped into the pool and ordered a round of gin and tonics while a few elder Brits watched with unwavering calmness.

Another Emailed Update For A Friend

Life is good here, but I'm getting a little bored of just sitting on the beach and teaching the lazy monks. So I'm probably gonna cancel my plane flight and start making my way over to Africa soon, heading through India and the who knows where after that. Hopefully I can do it by boat and train.

Still it's been really fun here and I've met a lot of cool people. Spent the end of last week drinking and watching Cricket all day with a guy from scotland and it was real crazy, the parties here on the weekends are also awesome. Like insane discos and when you get hot you just run and jump into the ocean and then go back partying. And the locals we know are really cool too, one volunteer got in a small fight the other night and my friend Sachi 'escorted' us home with his shirt tied around his head and a log he found in one hand to protect us.

The food here is pretty much all curry. I think I had curry maybe five times in my whole life before I came here, seriously five times and well it's gotten old fast. To make up for it though they have amazing teas and the fruit here is awesome, you can walk down the street and get a coconut, cut up open with a straw for about 20 cents and they have this awesome thing called a rambutan which is a giant spikey lychee and it tastes awesome.

The Trip to Trinco

At 4:30 on a Tuesday morning Nicholi (from Denmark), Isabel (from Spain) and I set off from the Galle bus station for a three hour ride up Colombo and the train station there. It would be the first leg of a trip to the opposite end of the island to the town of Trincomale for some snorkeling and then for a night in the cultural capitol of Kandy.

The train station at Columbo is a long low building with several sets of booths that have four ticket windows on each side, one man assigned to each side and half a dozen others sitting in the larger space in between. When we arrived they were having a very animated conversation, one which the tellers would join and leave at their discretion. As we walked up to the window a pedestrian walked up and asked us where we wanted to go, Trincomale we replied and he pointed us towards the right side of the closest booth. We ventured over to inquire about tickets and the next fifteen minuets went something like the following.

"We would like to go to Trincomale."
Quizical look is given by man behind window.
"Trincomale?"
"Ahh." Man leaves and a new guy comes.
"Trincomale?"
"Yes, yes, you go tonight?
"No, Can we go to Trincomale today?"
Thirty seconds of silence, during which three people push up to the window and buy tickets. More silence, followed by yelling to men in the middle and then the answer to the Trincomale question:
"Ahh, Galoya Junction you go to Galoya Junction."
"No, Trincomale?"
"Yes, yes you go to Galoya and then Trinco. Go to other side."
We go to other side, fail miserably at pronouncing Galoya and walk back to the first window and get the guy to write down 'Galoya Junction' on a scrap piece of paper that we would carry for the next twelve hours as only way of communicating our destination.
Back to the second window. Piece of paper is shown. We are pointed back to the first window.
Back to the first window. We are pointed to a ticket reservation office twenty yards away.
Inside the office there is a counter with a large piece of opaque glass and three small windows with a place name written above each. None of them are Galoya or Trincomale or any place we recognize. Opposite the counter was a large board with destinations, times and prices. Trincomale and Galoya are absent from there as well so we went to the first window, showed the paper and we sent to the third. Show paper. Show passport. Give Money. Get tickets, good to go.

I cannot think of a better way to see a country than by train. As the train to Galoya Junction rattled out of Columbo and towards the country side we were witnesses to thousands of snapshots of Sri Lankan life. Uniformed school boys playing cricket with a seat less chair for the posts, women wrapped in sarongs bathing in a river, gorgeous three story houses next to those made of cold gray concrete with tin roofs, a monk watching the train go by and countless more that combined to give a far more vibrant and dynamic view than any other way of getting around. Once in the countryside, everything was varying shades of green, with thick forests suddenly opening to reveal vast expanses of squared of rice paddies and cows lazily munching grass close to the tracks. This went on for hours as we worked our way north, moving out of the southern monsoon area and into more arid land in need of a little more greenery.

The train came to a lurching stop at a small dusty outpost junction with no more than a small station, a few low lying shops and a shrine to the Buddha. I have already forgotten the name, but it was at this stop that after sitting on the tracks for a few minuets, two men got of the engine, unhooked it from our car and set off down the tracks, disappearing from view as the line bent it's way back into the forest. Minute after minute passed, the car grew hotter and hotter and the three of us began to question the idea of taking the train in the first place. Oh, and I forgot to mention that a guide book was one item that we forgot to bring along with us. It would prove detrimental several times down the stretch but really made those hours of waiting awesome as we had no idea where we were. The signs certainly didn't say Galoya, nor did they say Trincomale and well, no one in this town seemed to be going anywhere. The only movement around were the few people walking up and down the sides of the train selling nuts and fruits and yogurts. Isabel had made friends with a small boy and his mother sitting behind us and they passed forward a local desert made of grain, honey and nuts cooked into a golf ball sized blob which helped pass the time until with a series of lurches the train started in the opposite direction. We were on our way again this time with view from the large window at the end of our car of the tracks disappearing behind us.

We made it to Galoya Junction at 4:30, which cold have been 30 minuets late or a 1:30 minuets early depending on who you asked. We said Trincomale a few times at the ticket window and were taken to an aging train which took off soon after. The train to Trincomale rambled through the country side at a lazy 30 kilometers an hour, taking long stops and winding its way through small towns and farmland. Images of flocks of peacocks stalking through unsown rice paddies and monkeys jumping around on town walls flashed past along with dozens of kids staring and waving. A late afternoon shower gave everything that great summer rain smell and we stood in the open side doors of the train as the light dimmed, enjoying the country side and on one occasion lazily brushing a cockroach out the door, it's legs flailing furiously before falling out of view.

Once arriving in Trincomale and accidentally being taken to a USD$180 a night hotel we settled in to somewhere a bit more to our budget, slept and awoke to an ocean that could not be more different from Galle. Instead of a short, steep strip of sand that disappeared into fast breaking waves and choppy water caused by the monsoons, the beach in the north wide and genteelly sloped into perfectly calm, teal blue water. In a few months these descriptions would flip-flop when the monsoons left the south and moved north but for now the ocean was perfect. We hired a guide in the morning and set off for an island some distance off shore, which had a lagoon on one side with a great abundance of fish and on the other side a shallow reef area with sharks. The lagoon was very good for snorkeling albeit there were probably a dozen others swimming around but it was still great. Our guy then took us to the other, deserted side of the island, donned his gear and led us in search of sharks of which we saw several. After snorkeling we returned to shore and set off for Kandy

The buses in these parts can be very memorable. They have their own redeeming qualities such as making you appreciate the limits we put in the west on the number of people that can be crammed into a box of metal and making you realize that no, you're not in Kansas anymore. The first bus we boarded in Trinco to get to Kandy got off to a fine start. It wasn't very crowded and we all got seats next to open windows, making the heat very manageable. Then the music started. When the bus slowed and the roar from the wind and road died down, you could actually hear something akin to a melody with lyrics but otherwise the sounds blaring out of the speakers would give any heavy metal band a run for their money in terms of sheer eardrum busting noise. The 'music' has more in common with a chorus of nail guns blasting into a two-by-four then any musical instrument I know of and bites easily through any attempt by headphones to drown it out. It is earsplitting and constant and never seems to lose it's furious pace as you stretch your head out the window, begging the rushing wind to carry it away.

After the hours of musical molestation I was all to happy for the brief reprieve of being dumped on the side of the road in the town of Dambula, at the start of the afternoon's monsoon rains and without a another bus insight. Luckily before we got to wet another bus pulled up and several locals pointed and repeated, "Kandy" many times so we hurried over to climb aboard. The first thing I noticed about the bus to Kandy was that there was no music - awesome. The second is that there was no room and a crowd already waiting at the door. My second observation turned out to be completely false -there is always room on the bus. We struggled with our bags, bumping and jostling with a dozen others up the back steps and into the center isle where we dropped our bags on the floor and ungracefully kicked them underneath the seats. The bus is set up such that there are two seats the left, three on the right and a struggling, hot mass of humanity on the middle. Arms protrude at odd angles to grasp at the bar running overhead or the seats on either side and it takes a life of it's own as people come and go and the conductor occasionally hops out at a stop and runs to the front in order to make his rounds again to the back, a thick wad of bills in one hand a ticket machine in the other. Each movement of a passenger requires a general shift in the mass of humanity as it adjusts to the new arrangement, spitting out and swallowing people at every stop. It's futile to remain stationary and after a few stops I found myself standing over Isabel's bag, which apparently hadn't made it under a seat while she stood wedged in somewhere up the isle.

It's easy go on about the hassles and difficulties of traveling in a less than perfectly developed country, but there is an element of harmony to people in a less than perfect situation making the best of it and never once uttering a complaint. Toes are stepped on, elbows briefly jabbed into backs and bodies momentarily squashed dis-comfortingly against seats, poles and other bodies all without an ounce of disagreement. A "Sorry" or "Excuse me" need not to be uttered because it is understood that one does not mean to cause you anymore discomfort than necessary and we're all in this together until the next stop, when hopefully a few more people get out than get in and we can all breath a little easier. At one such stop I was able to sit and at the next stop a family got on, the man next to me gave up his seat and down sat a mother and small child. It was rather late by this point and the child had reached her limit, fussing and crying as soon as the mother had settled, trying in vain to fall asleep on the rumbling bus in the middle of the rain storm. The mother held the child across her lap, her thin arm supporting the child’s neck with her head bumping against my arm from time to time until the crying stopped and a small head rested on the crook of my elbow. It weighed heavily at an odd angle, but I dared not move to disrupt the quiet that had come over the back of the bus as we traveled down through the rain soaked land to Kandy.

Week One In Review

I originally wrote this as an email for a friend of mine, but I think it's a good recap of the day to day stuff that's being going on out here:

Sri Lanka is not at all what I expected but probably better than I could have hoped for. It turns out that the home-stay is actually more like a guest house for volunteers and it’s been awesome, I’ve been meeting so many cool people from all over the world – Denmark, Australia(they’re crazy), Madrid, England, Jersey(the country not the shore) and Ireland for now but people are always coming and going which is fun.



We spent the last week doing tourist stuff like going on a safari (surprisingly cool), seeing a Buddhist/Hindu temple and all that kinda stuff. The area is really neat because in the winter it is somewhat of a tourist spot but there aren’t really any here now but still it’s not like I’m out in the middle of nowhere. There’s a really cool old Dutch fort with a town inside of it that was spared from the tsunami that wiped everything out in 2004 and still mostly looks like it did hundreds of years ago but with really cool places to eat and drink and just walk around.



I started teaching English yesterday and it was really really really hard cause they don’t give us any materials or guidance on what to do but today was better as I think I might kinda be getting the hang of it, or maybe not cause I hardly have any idea what I’m doing. We have monks in the morning and then go teach local young kids in the evening. I’m pretty sure the evening class was a complete waste of time cause they are really shy and don’t seem to understand any English but hopefully it gets easier this evening.


What’s been super cool is that we have five hours off in between classes and I’ve been hanging out on this idyllic beach about five mins away with the girl from Madrid and guy from Denmark. Hopefully I can get some pictures up cause I think it’s one of the most perfect looking beaches I’ve ever seen! Tonight the three of us are hiring a bus and going snorkeling up north tomorrow morning, staying at a night or two up there and then taking another overnight ride later in the week to hike up some famous place that is supposed to have amazing views of the sunrise.

Yea it's cool.

Touristy Things

7/3/2010

We spent several days last week doing a handful of touristy things around the area, not exactly what I signed up for but pretty fun all the same. Myself and the other new volunteers went with our host, Michael and his still yet to be named driver down the coast and made our first stop off at a sea turtle hatchery where they explained how sea turtles live, mate and generally lead awesome lives swimming around the ocean for about a hundred years. They let us hold the smaller one that had just hatched a day before and as you might be able to see from the picture I hope to one day up, they are some mean looking little things and would be great inspiration for alter egos to the Ninja Turtles.

After that we hit up a secluded beach and intended to grab drinks at the beach front bar, supposedly a popular tourist spot during the touristy season. Bu this not being that, the bar was closed while half a dozen guys a few years older than myself stood around and told people it was closed. Judging by their lack of conversation or motivation to take our money and the number of Bob Marley/Marijuana posters hanging around, I’d say they were stoned, possibly quite a daring feat in a country that loudly advertises at the border in bold letters that possession of illegal drugs is punishable by death. My guess is that very few people have met their end because of a joint but it’s probably a great tool for the police to get a couple thousand rupees out of some dumb young punk. Not that I am about to test that.

One thing that every guide book pictures as being classic Sri Lanka are men fishing from stilts stuck into the surf a short way from shore and so of course we had to see that. On this particular day however, the waves were too rough for them to go out and so we went straight from the first beach to a second more mainstream location and grabbed drinks by the surf. When I say that the waves were too rough I don’t mean that they were huge, rather they were numerous and unorganized. Kicked up by storms marking the end of the monsoon season, they broke far off shore on the coral reefs and then had another very short break just a few yards from shore causing a melee of peaks and troughs that made swimming difficult for all but the hardiest of German travelers. Several jumped in to take a quick dip while we watched, beverages in hand, but none of them lasted long and would come tumbling out of a mistimed body surfing attempt trying to look unfazed yet more then likely slightly shaken.

Upon leaving the bar though, we did see a handful of guys on the stilts in a different cove and pulled over to take a look. We walked down a dirt path between four or five houses homes to a rocky outcropping from which we could see the fishermen. On these rocks were about ten locals also watching and a few young dogs who came up and greeted us (significant because older dogs in these parts just ignore you). When we climbed up besides the locals and took a few pictures, they asked us for money in exchange the picture taking. This was some first class bullshit but luckily I didn’t have any with me and showed them my empty pockets so they left me alone. The rest were not so lucky and they kept asking the girls for money and began getting a little too adamant that we give them something for the privilege of taking the fisherman’s picture while they themselves were either too lazy or scared to go out in the heavy surf. There were plenty of empty stilts in the water and certainly no lack of fish as evident from the well stocked fishmongers in every town we stopped at. They persisted to ask us for money as we climbed down the rocks, their case not being helped by two young dogs who had taken to entertaining themselves by nipping at several of the girl’s sandal straps. They continued to follow and glare at us all the way back to bus, demanding their supposed fair share for the right to photograph the workers but as Michael assured everyone later, we were perfectly safe because no matter what, the police would always take the side of the tourist in an altercation with a local.

Day One

6/22/2010
After thirty plus hours in the culturally acceptable hell formerly known as commercial air travel, complete with in an in-flight curry and fish dish and an immovable gray box where my feet should have been for twelve hours, I landed in Colombo, Sri Lanka on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 22nd. I met a man at the airport who was to send me on my way down to the town of Galle, where I was staying. It turned out that there was another volunteer coming in on a flight about an hour after mine and so I attempted to kill time by reading in the waiting area of the airport. A sharp headache quickly ended that and I resigned to watching a game of cricket on a big TV in the middle of the room. Maybe it was the pain in my head or maybe the cultural divide but I could not for the life of me understand how it works. My best guess is an ancient form of country club baseball in which no one ever really strikes out, but every once in a great while hits a ball in any number of directions around the circular field and then may or may not choose to run from one set of funny looking sticks to the other. This run only takes only a very short time and never seems to be celebrated in an enthusiastic manner. By comparison, the coverage would occasionally zoom in on the pitcher’s face and show him screaming to the heavens in joy over some glorious pitch he had just thrown. I am not sure if the game ever ends.

The other volunteer arrived and we set off to the curb with the man who met us, hoped into a good sized van and were off to Galle, traveling through what would seem the entire length of Colombo. It was an endless stretch of the shops selling everything imaginable – breads and sweets, car parts (transmissions here, tires over there, engines down the block), rice and curry for one hundred rupees (less than a dollar), furniture, fish and occasionally a pharmacy. About a quarter of the shops at first glance appear to be selling mobile phone service but really they just get their name on a sign whose backdrop is for the major national mobile company, a nifty form of advertising not unlike what beer companies do at second rate bars in the states. At an intersection in the middle of Colombo, the man from the airport hoped out leaving us with an unnamed driver and the promise that he would take us to our destination. Fiona, my fellow volunteer from Ireland who while well traveled, was on her first solo trip exchanged a look of hesitation with me, but before we could think much of it we were again gunning down the lawless streets.

Driving here follows several very basic rules. First of all, that un-solid line dividing lanes of traffic is really more like a guideline or reminder that someone once thought it would be a good idea to have two lanes of traffic going in the same direction. The reality is that if you see any amount of space between cars ahead of you, you are obliged to thrust your vehicle forwards and fill that space, basically the automotive version of the old saying, “If we all push and shove we will get there a lot faster.” Second, the tuktuks - three wheeled taxis where the driver sits in front and up to three can jam into the back bench are second class citizens. They are slower than you and thus you must cut them off and pass them at every chance you get. The third rule for city driving is that you shall ignore motorcycles. They are smaller and more nimble than you and as such will move if in your way. I have yet to see one not move. When you finally pass level one and exit the city you enter the daredevil world of two lane driving. The same rules as before apply with one addition – if you think you have room to pass the next guy ahead, you do. Doing so may involve coming dangerously close to running a tuktuk off the road or being pulverized by a larger vehicle but just remember, you are in the hands of a trained professional earning more than ten dollars an hour.