Day 2

At 6 am I heard voices from the other room calling my name in order to wake me up. I rolled out of bed, washed my face in the basin outside and got ready for another day in MV. Breakfast was freshly made hoppers eaten with bananas and washed down with tea. As it was a poya (full moon) day, and therefore a Sri Lankan holiday, many of the students were going to the Horizon center to watch movies and hang out. I came along as well on a bicycle. In MV nobody seems to own a car. Very few people have motorcycles and most people ride bicycles everywhere. It’s not uncommon for two or three people to ride on one bicycle.

We made our way to the Horizon center, past lakes filled with lotus flowers and lush green paddy fields. We passed people bathing in the canals near the road and cows grazing in grassy patches. We also passed a number of military stations. MV is close to the LTTE controlled area so the military has a stronger presence here. There are soldiers at every intersection and it can be a bit unnerving at times to see men riding past on bicycles with machine guns slung over their shoulders.

While I did my work in the center, the kids watched Harry Potter, one of their favorite movies. They love Harry Potter and mimic many of the lines from the movie. Around 2pm Radhika’s father brought us out lunch and we ate together outside. I finished up my work and we all headed home again, two per bicycle.

After we got home we read and chilled for a bit and then got ready to go to the temple. We had our baths in the canal and then came home to pick flowers from the garden for offerings. We then took off around sunset for the village temple. The full moon was bright and shining and we didn’t even need to use the flashlights we had brought with us for light. The temple was illuminated too with hundreds of small oil lamps. We made out offerings and Radhika’s mom spread a small blanket for us to sit on and say our prayers. Many people from the village were there and used the time as an opportunity to gather and socialize before dinner.

Dinner was delicious as always and the night was only briefly interrupted by the arrival of a snake outside. Fire was waved at it and loud noises made and it soon left. Radhika’s family went back to the Indian soap operas and I went back to my computer before turning in. What is striking to me here is the ease in which people can simply sit around doing nothing. The rice is planted, it is growing, the family works hard but it’s not like the backbreaking exhausting work that one stereotypically associates with farmers. There is time to rest, to eat ice cream, to chat with friends. Furthermore the dad helps out a lot both with R’s school and with tasks in the kitchen. Perhaps at harvest time things get a lot busier, but for now, things are fairly calm and relaxed. Downtime is calmer because there is literally nothing to do. People come to visit and occasionally break the monotony but there are no phones, no mail to open, no errands to run, just nothing. They also lack that guilt that I was taught to have about just sitting around doing nothing. I am trying to make the most of it though and get as much done as possible although working on a village schedule is very challenging.