mini-vacation

The lack of recent updates has been due to my recent travels in Lanka and India. Mom and Dad came last week and we embarked on Sri Lankan taster trip. The trip was very short and one needs much more time to see Sri Lanka but we had fun.

When they arrived at 6am from Bombay I was waiting at the airport with the car and driver, Mr. Sarat. We then proceeded to drive to Kandy on the Colombo-Kandy road where we stopped to see the elephants at the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. There had just been lots of babies and it was very adorable to see them get fed and try to swim. The elephants were out in an open field and we could walk right up to them. It was quite different from the DC zoo where the elephants are far away and separated by cement walls and a moat.

We napped in the car as Sarat drove us to Villa Rosa, our hotel in Kandy where we relaxed a bit and had tea. The villa had an amazing view of the Mahavehli River, and its remote location was worth the breathtaking view which reminded me of the Amazon. We then got back in the car and went to explore the city. In Kandy we drove to various lookout points to better see the “Switzerland of the East” as the city is sometimes called. Mom kept referring to the place as a “quaint town” which is funny considering it’s the second largest city in Sri Lanka.

We then proceeded to watch a Kandyan Dance performance, saw the famous temple of the tooth, and enjoyed a candlelight dinner at the villa. The next morning my parents woke me up freakishly early as always and we headed off on the long, long drive to Bentota. We left Kandy at 10am and made a quick stop at the national botanical gardens along the way. We then drove straight to Bentota and the trip ended up being around 6 hours.

We were so tired once we got to Bentota we had energy only for a quick walk on the beach before dinner. We then left the Taj and went to a little hotel café where we tasted the best prawns curry I have ever had. The next morning we got up early again and went to Galle for the morning. We walked around the fort and marveled at the clearness of the ocean. We then went back to Bentota with a quick stop at a sea turtle sanctuary where we got to touch baby sea turtles. Two different kinds of baby animals in one trip! The weather was unpleasant so we went out for lobster dinner, saw another dance performance and went to bed.

The next day we got lucky and the sun came out so we stayed in the Taj longer and swam in the ocean until 2. We then headed to Colombo for a little shopping in Odel and had my awesome birthday dinner at gallery cafe. My parents stayed in my guesthouse, forgoing the luxury of the past three days for a night in my humble, mosquito-ridden home.

The next day went in hectic Colombo errands. We went to the madhouse that is House of Fashions, a giant clearinghouse for surplus Western garments. Name brand shirts at HoF cost something like $2 usd per shirt. Pants for $3. The crowds were ridiculous as it is close to Christmas but we emerged triumphant with bagfuls of clothing. We then stopped at the mall, the supermarket, my office, and the Paradise Road store before staggering home. Finally we moved my stuff from the mildew room I was living in, into a much smaller, less mildew ridden room in the same guesthouse. The rest of my birthday was spent sharing some wine with dad and getting on the flight to Bombay!

the gunya

I have been out the last five days with the infamous chikungunya disease. Most of you probably haven’t heard of it but its currently an epidemic in South India and Sri Lanka. Like Malaria, it all starts with a simple mosquito bite. In a few hours you start to feel muscle pains, usually in your back. Then comes a pounding headache, a sense of fatigue, and dizziness. So, you innocently go to sleep thinking that everything will be fine in the morning and then BAM, you have a 102 degree fever, you can’t walk and all of your muscles are frozen in crippling pain. The good news is that it isn’t fatal and that it usually runs its course in 5-7 days. I got lucky and it only took 3 days of suffering and two days of feeling so-so. Last night was my first c-gunya-free night and it was fantastic.

While afflicted one of my aunties (family friends) took pity on me and had me stay at her place for a night so I could recover. I felt bad because all I really had the strength to do was sleep and eat. I went to sleep in her spare room under the auspices of some sleeping pills and was happily passed out when I heard a noise in the room. Who do I see but the faces of two Sri Lankan army officers peering down on me. This just goes to show what a bad state this country is in. Because of the terrorists and the stupid war, the cops can actually come into your house, into your bedroom, and make sure you are doing what you are supposed to be doing. If the Fairfax county police ever came into my bedroom and were watching me sleep I think that would make some kind of national news. Anyways, these police just took pity on a poor feverish girl and left without demanding ID.

On Sunday I was feeling a bit better so I decided that the perfect thing to do after I had been sick for a while was to go to a carnival. Sri Lankan carnivals are just as weird and awesome as carnivals everywhere. The blasting Hindi music, the cheap ice cream, what could be better? To top it off there was a haunted house called “Terror House” which was one of those very weird structures where many rooms of a building are turned into various scary rooms staffed by people in monster masks. These people wait for people like me to walk by and then they jump out and wave their hands in front of them and say “ooga booga” or something to that extent. Then, people like me, because we are generally afraid of all moving things (and some stationary ones too) run around screaming. Good times.

expats

I am starting to see many Bombay-Colombo parallels. I've only been here a month but I already run into people when I go out. It seems that like Bombay, there are a handful of people who frequent the same restaurants and nightclubs. Just as before I could be confident that a trip to Indigo Deli would mean running into someone I know, here I am certain that any Friday night out, the same few hundred people are going to be a club and that the same crowd will be at Cricket Club or Inn on the Green for drinks beforehand. Its like a tiny amount of Bombay drama, right here in Sri Lanka.

I also don't quite know how to handle the Sri Lankan friendliness. Or, because I don't speak the language, I can't tell the friendliness from pick-up lines. In Bombay I don't think I would ever say hello to a random guy on the street unless he was under the age of 10 or over the age of 70. For that matter, I try to avoid talking to men in DC as well. Sri Lanka is weird though because I think people are actually friendly and the natural formation of a face is a smile. I'm also not so ignorant as to not know pick-up lines, in what ever language. So sometimes I can tell but the majority of the time I have to err on the side of being the rude girl who is just going to ignore someone to their face. I wouldn't want to let the Sri Lankans make me into a friendly person.

The expat community here is very different. Sri Lanka seems to attract married white people in their late 30s, sometimes with kids. India attracts backpackers. I kind of miss going to the beach in Goa and seeing stoned Israelis wandering about and playing frisbee. There is nothing like travelling through Rajasthan and meeting the yogis, druggies, and adventure seekers that the West deposits on India. India is tough. The people who come to India know that India is tough and they embrace it. You embrace that fact every time you do something like shove your body into a packed suburban train car or drink a sugarcane juice off the road. You throw caution to the wind and you know that if you were back home that what you are doing now would be so unthinkable and that thought alone pumps your body with enough adrenaline to go through with it. Bombay especially makes people a little rough around the edges. When people mess with me now, I almost want them to argue with me. Once you have lived in Bombay long enough you get that crazy kind of look in your eye that makes it so you ignore trash filled streets but the min someone tries to cheat you out of even one rupee, you jump all over them.

Sri Lanka is soft. It lacks the grittiness of India so rather than the culturally curious, spirit-seeking partiers that India draws, Sri Lanka gets those people twenty years later. Once they are married, have kids and have grown soft, that's when people come to Sri Lanka. I agree; its a nice place to live. Its almost a third-world version of Alexandria, VA. The standard of living is higher, people tend to be more inward and less confrontational, and its hardly ever crowded. People from here tell me that they can't ever imagine living in India and I believe them. It would be total craziness.

checkpoints

One of the most annoying things about this ongoing war in Sri Lanka is the innumerable checkpoints all over the city. Everywhere you go there are checkpoints where cars are randomly searched for weapons, or, more commonly, people are searched for ID. As a non-Sri Lankan, things are very frustrating as I constantly have to carry around my passport and show it to guards who then ask me tons of questions about who I am and where I came from. These checkpoints also make traveling anywhere very inconvenient and going for a simple drive can mean being stopped 3 times and asked the same things. I wonder if there isn’t a better system of doing this than simply checking every single car driving by. I hate that we live in a world where terrorism has become so commonplace.

The terrorists already won the war against moisture because thanks to them people can’t carry chapstick or moisturizer on planes. Now they have to go and win the war on Alisha eating ice cream at night. Wherever they are, I hope they are happy in making everyone’s lives extremely inconvenient.

settling in

I have finally fallen into a routine here. I have a few reliable friends who I can call up whenever I get too lonely or if I want to explore the city, and I have figured out a few places I like going to for food, coffee, and atmosphere. My job is working out well although the system of negotiating for a rickshaw still annoys me and I try to take the bus whenever I can.

I’m actually surprised at how interesting ICT is. There is great potential in modernizing a group of people or a country using ICT. However, it’s also somewhat of a neutral force. Unless it’s explicitly used to empower people, technology is only going to reinforce the status quo. A good example of this is internet kiosks. When internet kiosks were initially being introduced they were privatized so that local entrepreneurs were helped somewhat by the government but ultimately owned their kiosk. This put the internet into the hands of many. Unfortunately, this excluded women. Women lacked the start up capital to become kiosk owners and the ICT knowledge to be internet users. For real societal change to take place women need to be taken along and the same strategies can’t be applied across economic groups or genders.

Interestingly enough when the kiosks were un-privatized, many of them were placed in or near religious places of worship like temples. This caused additional problems as people who go to places of worship are predominately men. Young women rarely go alone. The kiosks are sometimes placed in areas such as the monks’ quarters where women are outright prohibited from going.

It’s interesting for me to work in ICT because of these kinds of issues. Working for women’s organizations is a bit easier because everything the organization does is devoted to feminism. Here these problems are not primary but are still very important to the goals of the organization and the project.

Books I’ve read in the past two weeks: “The Human Stain” by Philip Roth, “Zorro” by Isabel Allende, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers, “Lucy” by Jamaica Kinkaid, and “Colpetty People” by Ashok Ferrey

I experienced my first Sri Lankan bomb blast on Friday when a suicide bomber targeted the Defense Secretary (I think). Some of his guards were wounded by nobody else. It happened close to my house but so far nobody seems to be alarmed. I suppose this is a common experience here. I am somewhat used to bomb blasts after September 11th and Mumbai, its going to take a lot more to freak me out.

happy thanksgiving!

My work situation has changed dramatically. For the past week I had been working on a proposal to research the nenasalas; telecenters set up in rural areas by the government of Sri Lanka. Now it seems that I will be researching the e-villages. There is already one e-village in Sri Lanka, in a place called Mahavillachchiya. This village is pretty remarkable because while they lack basic infrastructure like good roads and telephones, they do have a wireless mesh network and lots of computers. The village has been wired for around 8 years and it’s made a big impact in the lives of local youth who don’t have to travel to cities to use the internet.

The president of Sri Lanka has recently allocated 100 million rupees to replicate the e-village at different sites across the country and my job will be to write a case study of Mahavillachchyia and look at what works and what doesn’t. I will also be looking at ways to make the e-village sustainable as it is currently supported through donors. If all goes well I might get ICTA to give me a small budget to make a short documentary on this initiative. It might be fun to also incorporate the talents of the kids in the village in the filmmaking process.

Of course this will mean living in the village for a couple of weeks, something which I am definitely looking forward to. I somewhat regret not being able to see very many Indian villages while I was in Bombay.

I was at an offsite brainstorming session on Wednesday and got to learn lots about ICTA and what it does. It was interesting to hear the discussions on all the various problems that this government agency faces. I found there are lots of parallels between lab procedure and management techniques. After projects like the co-op I found that setting up things like a system of checks and balances with vendors was old hat. I also learned that conferences are festivals of eating. Curd and treacle is a popular dessert here and its soon becoming my favorite. The brainstorming sessions were split up by meals and tea breaks culminating in a cocktail hour where people from work sang songs in Sinhala.

I am also now taking an aerobics class in a church hall. It wasn’t my first choice but I want to exercise and it’s the closest thing to my house. The music they play is the native Sri Lankan Baila music which makes things more exciting and the lady who teaches the class ruffles my hair at the end which is a little weird for me.

I hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving. I miss everyone at home lots. I went out to a nice Italian place with a friend and indulged in pricey pasta. It was nice but not the same as mom’s cooking.

beach holiday

It’s another day at the office. Hours of staring at a computer screen with short breaks for lunch and sickeningly sweet tea. Sri Lankans seem to have a huge sweet tooth and I really hope they don’t go the way of India with the diabetes explosion and obesity in cities. Bakeries are very prevalent and so are western-style desserts. Every meal is followed by a tasty, but super sweet, dessert like chocolate mousse or cheesecake. I know that I am sliding down a slippery slope but it’s so hard to resist all of the various forms of pastries they have in this country. I can eat a fish pastry for lunch followed by a jam pastry for dessert. Yum!

This weekend was also a weekend of deliciousness for me. I went with a few friends and many acquaintances to a place called Unawatuna. It’s a beach town 2 hours South of Colombo close to the Southern tip of Sri Lanka. It was a pretty interesting drive down as the people I went with decided that to beat the traffic we should leave at 6 am. Of course rather than have to suffer the inconvenience of waking up early it was better that we stay out all night and then leave.

So, on Friday night I went out for expat happy hour, followed by a visit to a club called R&B where there was a live band, followed by Onyx, the club at the Taj, Colombo’s equivalent of Insomnia. Onyx was great and interestingly enough there was actually enough room to dance around. Sri Lankans have really good taste in music so it was lots of fun. I, being a dork, got sleepy at 4 and had to work hard at hanging on until 6 when I promptly fell asleep in the car all the way to Unawatuna.

The few times that my eyes opened I was surprised to see that many of the homes along the coast were totally trashed. This was all tsunami damage. It was really shocking to see the extent of the damage and this is years later. The damage was so extensive that the government hasn’t had the time or money to clean everything up yet so things are just left as is and people have built new buildings elsewhere.

The beach was lovely though and it had a bit of a Goa vibe with small hotels and guesthouses on the beach. It was nice to see a lack of giant resort hotels. We stayed at a smallish resort with nice rooms and meals provided. Access to a buffet was exactly what I have been needing so I got to try all the Sri Lankan food like hoppers and dal curry that I was wondering about. So spicy, yet so good.

All in all it was a good trip. I didn’t do much but it’s the first time since arriving in Sri Lanka that I have been able to relax. I didn’t have to worry about work or where I am living or what I am eating and I could just enjoy the satisfaction in existence that comes in doing nothing and floating in the sea.

moving on

I have finally escaped from the YWCA. In retrospect it wasn't that bad and you sure can't beat the price, but the prospect of sharing a toilet and taking cold showers for the next three months hastened my departure. Additionally, I don't want to live in any place where I am under the watchful eyes of someone known as "the warden". It may seem that I am exaggerating, but that's really what these women are called. There is even a sign above their room that reads "warden". I have to get permission to stay out late and if I do something bad, I am subject to scolding from the warden. So, while it was good for a few days, it was time for a move.

I finally found a place, its a bit on the pricey side, but I don't mind paying a little extra for such luxuries as hot water, air conditioning, my own key, a furnished kitchen, my own TV and so on. I basically live in a mini suite within a guesthouse. This means that there are always people around and that my room is intended to be a hotel room so its clean and will be maintained while I live there. To get to my house you walk through a little garden which is very pretty but I am nervous as it seems to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

I think my life in DC and Bombay has jaded me towards nature. It used to be that I would see a picture of a lush tropical garden with water dripping off of leaves and think about how beautiful it looked. Now all I can think is "damn, there has got to be a lot of mosquitoes living there". I've been spoiled by the lovely waters of Lake Barcroft that freeze over every winter, killing insect life, and the sweet sweet waters of Mahim through which toxic waste flows and kills most animal species. Not that there aren't cockroaches in India, I just haven't seen ones that fly and somehow I never got bit by mosquitoes in Bombay. Anyways, I will do my best to avoid the mosquito threat and the room overall is lovely.

However I was cautioned by the owner that its "a family place" and that I wasn't to bring strange people back to the room. I assured her that not only am I also "a family person" but since the number of people I know in Sri Lanka is currently 2. It is unlikely that I will be having wild parties in my little garden.

I have yet to organize my daily rickshaw, find a gym, and start eating something other than bananas and luna bars but I suppose I will figure out these things in time.

One of the nicest things about living in a South Asian country is that people are very nice and helpful. I can't dream of going somewhere in the West and having a friend of a friend let me stay at their place and showing me around. Or having a friend's mom have me over for lunch. People are a lot more distant and there are more formalities. Here it seems that even though I am vaguely connected to someone (my friend met them at a dinner and exchanged business cards) they are super helpful and willing to meet me an answer all my questions. I encountered this in Bombay and now again in Colombo but I doubt that I would in an American city. South Asians are very open hearted and eager to help you whenever they can. This can also be seen in the way that relatives are kept very close. My mom's cousin is as close to me as my uncle, my dad's cousins children's, children are eager to help me out if I need something. It makes going to a new place a lot less scary.

wildlife

So far I have encountered three very scary wild animals. As I was walking home from work yesterday a large bat with a wingspan of at least two feet flew down from a tree and grazed the top of my head as it flew by. Ok, I thought, at least it flew away from me, and not towards. Outside of Sabrina's house I encountered a large rat which wasn't like a fat Bombay rat or aggressive like a New York rat but more like a wild rat that was somewhat inquisitive. But by far the most terrifying of these was a cockroach that flew. I was innocently walking up the steps of the Y when I saw this 3 inch roach running up the side of the wall. I was not so scared by this because after falling asleep on an Indian train and waking up to a cockroach walking across my lips, it wasn't like a simple roach was going to faze me. This roach however had some kind of special powers and flew from the stairs to a plant near the reception. I am hereby completely terrified.

I know I have to leave the YWCA but its harder than it seems. For one there is pouring rain every night which makes apartment hunting tough. Secondly, there really isn't much by way of accommodation. My choices range from a room in someones house to an isolated unfurnished 2 bedroom apartment. I have emergency places to stay but I thought I would be able to find something better for three months. Anyways, the search continues, I am off to see two more places tonight.

What is also frustrating is the lack of good cheap food. Food is much more expensive than India and even a basic meal is 150 rs. I thought at least fruits like bananas would be expensive but even they are like 10rs per fruit. The cost of living is quite high and even though people seem well off, they are spending most of their money on food. Rickshaws and transportation is stupidly expensive and I find myself missing the BEST bus and the Bombay local. What I wouldn't give to travel from Mumbai Central to Churchgate on 4 rs again. Luckily I brought a box of luna bars which currently provide my main sustenance. My vanity is also preventing me from diving into giant rice based meals as I fear what the carb overload will do to my stomach. Plus food is spicy. I got friend rice for dinner last night and the fried rice had bits of chili. The extreme spiciness of the rice combined with the depressing fact that I was eating my dinner alone in a mall food court made me just want to crawl back under my mosquito net, eat my Luna bar, read my Philip Roth and wish I were in Newark. Things will look up soon I hope.

mosquito bite tally: 25 (quarter sized)

Oh, I almost forgot to write about work. I still don't know what my research project will be. While the bosses are deciding I get to organize the office bookshelf on ICT for development resources. Its boring I know, but I get to read all about the massive size of the ICT industry, something that I know next to nothing about.

Arrival in Colombo

Its been 24 hours since I landed in Sri Lanka and I feel as if I have entered a parallel universe. In so many ways I feel like I am still in India and then something happens to jolt me into realizing that I am no longer there. True, the people are brown-skinned and the climate hot but there are many small cultural differences that I have picked up since arriving here.

1) Lack of "the stare". Indians are curious people. If you look different in any way or even if you look the same, people like to stare at you. Maybe you are young, maybe you are really old, maybe you are female, defomed ect. Regardless, people like to just flat out stare. Not so in Sri Lanka. Either people have seen it all before or, more likely, they can't be bothered to stare at you. This is amazing. I roam the streets in shorts and a t-shirt and nobody cares.

2) Niceness. Now I am not saying that Indians are mean, but life in Bombay is harrowing enough to make even a nice old lady like my grandmother a scary force to be reckoned with. Local vendors better hope that they don't misquote the price of fish or eggs or there will be hell to pay. The caste system insures that you can ignore a large portion of the population and saying "hey you, get me that tea fast or else" is the norm. Not so here. You gotta be nice to everyone from the rickshaw driver to the tea man. In turn, everyone is nice to you.

3) I don't know what any of the food is! I thought there would be similar fruits and things as India but when I went for lunch today I got to choose between colored rices and unidentifyable sauces. I have no clue what I am eating and the fruits and veggies are not the same. The tea is the same sickeningly sweet milky chai that they have in India so at least I have that.

4) Cleanliness. People don't throw trash on the street. I actually can walk around in heels with gay abandon. There is no poop on the road.

5) Laziness. Perhaps this characteristic is true of all islands. Maybe when you live in paradise you feel less motivated to wear yourself to a nub with work. Or maybe the sun just makes people tired. Whatever the reason, people are way lazier. I should paint this more positively and say people are less stressed rather than lazier. However you look at it, there are more national holidays here than any other country as people get a day off every full moon. There are long lunches, people come to work late and things move at a much slower place. This morning it took the girl in the cafeteria 30 min to make my tea and toast. I was about to hop the counter and help her out and then I realized that I wasn't in a hurry for any particular reason other than I like being in a hurry. The lack of stress is stressing me out.

6) Its not fun to stay at the YWCA. Lured by the promise of the YMCA I chose the YWCA but sadly it doesn't live up to the reputation. I have to share a common bathroom with a bunch of people, there is no hot water, and on the floor of the room was a ball of someone elses hair. There is another bed in the room so another person could have theoretically moved in while I am typing this and be trying on my clothes right now. I hope they put everything back in its place. The positive side is that while there are lots of mosquitos there are no roaches.

7) People here eat a lot of rice. I mean an immense amount of rice. All food is either rice or a rice derivative. This makes me sleepy. Maybe it makes other people sleepy too and is one of the causes of "lack of stress".