Sri Lanka - Jan 2007
Mon 15th January 07 – Arrived in Colombo in the afternoon, picked up at airport, checked into hotel and went walkabout. Visited a sacred lake, some temples, got accosted by a man trying to sell me Ayurvedic massage services from his back-street alley business (me being naïve and trusting went to the “parlour”, thinking I’d check it out for me and Lizzie, and found an abundance of ladies all sitting in a room for me to pick from – sharp exit – not really my scene!). Also found a great department store (ODEL), which had everything a boy could ask for. Was like Frasers or Selfridges (maybe less selection), but all the brands etc. and at a fraction of the price. So obviously purchased quite a few items, had sushi, then got a trishaw /tuk-tuk back to the hotel. So much for not spending money.

Tues 16 – Fri 19 – Days have consisted of getting up early (6.30pm) after much sleepless / broken sleep nights, running thro town along to the Galle Face for my morning run, which everyone must do, and working from the office in Colombo. Nights were spent eating at the Palmyrah restaurant in the hotel, one of Colombo’s finest Sri Lankan eateries, apparently. Meals cost less than US$5 / £2.50. And that’s for the best! Sri Lanka really is cheap cheap cheap. Much cheapness! More so than India, if I recall correctly! And also less crowded and cleaner in the city.

Sat 20-Sun 21 – Almost a week and no alcohol!!!! Hired a private air-con vehicle with driver for the weekend and headed to the old World Heritage Site of Sigiriya. Fable has it (and some historians say) that this rocky mountain outcrop was once a royal and military residence. According to the theory, King Kassapa sought out a new kingdom and built a garden and a palace on the summit or this extinct volcano after overthrowing and murdering his own father. Other more recent evidence suggests that’s all myth and this was always a holy place / monastery. It’s amazing how they built this palace / monastery on top of this rock mountain all those years ago, with sheer cliff faces on every side. An architectural mystery and archaeological legacy! Beautifully lawned gardens and cleverly irrigated pools or tanks (apparently “bathing pools” for the king and his concubines) were created leading up to it on either side, the remains of which are there today. Steep steps were carved into the rock, making it a bit of an effort, and not for those of us suffering from vertigo. Anyway the views and ruins on the top are amazing and a “must see” for those visiting Sri Lanka.

Mon 22nd – Colombo. My boss arrived and we worked all day, having a long lunch to talk about my future career in the organisation. Needless to say I’m sure I was too frank and honest and probably overstepped the mark a few times, but I hate to disappoint! Went out in the evening and got absolutely wrecked with my boss. Rather fun at first… but you know how it goes (well with me and my “challenging” or “questioning” demeanour)… soon wondered if I’d spent the night throwing spanners (in the works, that is)….! We’ll see the repercussions when I get back to London.

Tues 23rd – Got up at the crack of Dawn, pushed her out the way, and got dressed. Car picked me up at 630am for the 10-hour drive across Sri Lanka to the East Coast to Batticaloa and the Tsunami coast. Now’s probably a good time for the history bit! You know what to do folks….
History Bit / Background – After periods of Portugese, Dutch and then British “colonisation”, Sri Lanka gained independence from the British (on the back of Indian independence) in 1948. The country is made up of (originally) settlers from what’s now India, but 2 main ethnic groups reside here, the Singhalese (Buddhist majority) and the Tamils (Hindu minority). Relative peace ensued in the post-colonial / independence era, until one of the political parties who came to power decided to make Buddhism the priority religion in SL, and Singhalese the national language instead of English, and also limited the number of University places given to Tamils (they received a disproportionately high number of places through merit). This cause a backlash which ignited what is now effectively a civil war in the country, with the government fighting against the LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam – who call for a federal based system of government or self rule in the north and east – to create a Tamil state called Eelam). The LTTE control a number of areas in the north and east and my little journey to the Tsunami Coast took me right past some of them (the government UNCLEARED areas). Now INGOs are not allowed in by the government, which means that children and people are suffering. The ironic thing is, that when the LTTE take control of a place, the Tamil people move, as it becomes unsafe due to government shelling and air strikes and artillery attacks. So they move to the cleared areas (where we operate), become IDPs (refugees) and then we and the government set up IDP camps, where they live with no real homes, no real access to services (health, education, protection), no livelihoods (income generation opportunities) etc. That’s where we come in!

The whole of the east coast (so half of Sri Lanka) was devastated by the Tsunami, over 2 years ago now. Having visited affected regions one year on (Indonesia and even Somalia), and now two years on (Sri Lanka), things are finally getting better, but still lots to do to get people back on their feet. I visited some fishermen to talk about how they are using the boats we purchase them, and the fishing nets etc. and found an array of problems they were still facing. Not helped by the conflict and the fact that the manufacturers of their defective boats (who are Singhalese), understandably wont come to fix them. I also visited a community centre we built and children’s clubs and village committee’s we created with the Tsunami funds and saw a lot of good work being done. As I’ve probably said before, our approach is to mobilise children and communities to work for themselves, so we leave a sustainable impact in the areas we work. So we build places for them to meet, give them training on child rights and child protection, train teachers and give them technical support, and in Sri Lanka (being a conflict country), we do peer mediation and conflict resolution training / camps, where we try to get children from the two communities to integrate, understand each other, and find alternative solutions to resolve the long-running disputes. Because children are the key to the future (I feel a Whitney hit coming on)!
I’ve attached some pics of the children in the schools (which Save the Children built) in the IDP camps. Bless. They have nothing, having had to leave their homes and everything behind, by the thousands, just to be safe. I know how they feel!!!! I took part in a distribution of school bags / materials / uniforms to some kids in one of the schools we support.

There I am on my first night in Batti, sitting down to my evening meal in the house that we rent there, when all of a sudden I hear *BOOM*. I literally dropped my plate, jumped up and cowered on my bed, not knowing what the hell that was. It sounded like it was coming from downstairs. Then again, *BOOM* then a short whizz, overhead. I thought we were being attacked. I ran out and asked Emanuel, my colleague what the hell that was, and he said (with big frightened eyes)… “That’s just the army firing into the rebel held territories (from NEXT TO MY BLOODY ROOM)… they do it every night to let them know they’re there”. “Erm…. Well won’t they fire back?”, I asked, “And what about the civilians… wont they get hit”? ………. “Who knows”, is all I got. Erm…. (again).. not good enough for me…. In Israel, they have advanced weapons technology that detects where the missile came from and immediately launches a counter-missile-attack. Anyway, booming and whizzing sporadically throughout the night, each time wondering if the whiz was going to land in my room or, worse, near…. Me lying, dying in agony having being hit by shrapnel. OK, a b it dramatic, but it was as vivid as real in my head. I mean, I’ve slept (uneasily) through gunfire and shelling before, but NOT from next door! Needless to say next day (after I tried to go for an early morning run, only to be stopped by the military and chased back as they were doing their daily morning scour for land mines planted during the night), I worked like a trooper, firing through the visits, to get finished and out of there to relative safety for the weekend. I’m thinking of cutting back on the field visits. They said this would happen at the 2-year mark. I’m obviously just more advanced than my predecessors… Lol.

Sunday 28th January was a pretty random and interesting day. Arrived in Anuradhapura, where Sri Lanka’s ancient kings ruled from many centuries ago, the day before, after leaving the missile base!!! Got up and went for a run (my way of keeping fit and exploring at the same time). Thought I could run round the “tank” or reservoir, which is so huge it looks more like Lake Malawi or the sea or something. Anyway, found out I couldn’t when the “path” got thinner, the trees more dense, and suddenly I stopped dead, surrounded by jungle and with a HUGE evil-looking spider dangling in front of me, waiting, and blocking my way. Thank god I noticed it *Shudder*. Anyway, bumped into a nice man, wrapped in nothing but a cloth, and he informed me that it was nothing but jungle that there way, so I headed back and ran down a quaint, quiet, palm tree fringed dirt track / road with the odd hut / house on either end. Managed to get chased by dogs along the way (I can never seem to shake the buggers, doesn’t matter what country I’m in), and ran slap bang into a cow as I took a corner too fast. Great start to the day!
Hired a bike from the hotel and set about exploring the ancient “sacred city” of Anuradhapura – quite rightly listed as a World Heritage Site. Although it looked manageable on foot, looking at the map, I soon found out I had made a wise investment in my mountain bike with no suspension and a solid saddle that gave your arse a feeling that it was well spanked as soon as you sat on it (only 250 Rupees / £1.20). Cycled through the “new town” (it’s all relative) to the massive sprawling complex of ancient ruins, temples and pagodas / stupas, down deserted lush country lanes and dirt tracks, with palm trees on either side, rice paddies, thatched roof huts and homes, the sun beating down, local people cycling by, greeting me whilst going about their daily business… you get the picture… it was lovely. The ruins were pretty impressive (largest stone stupa in the world, oldest charted boddhi / Buddha tree, most sacred Buddha statue in SL), but by now I’m all ruined out, and after seeing places like Ankgor Wat, all other ruins just look pretty much the same by now… well, they did, when I was dehydrated, lost and knackered.
More exciting were my encounters. One with monkeys, hundreds of them, throwing things at me from the trees, and one cheeky wee bugger tried to sh*t on me. The other was with a local guy called Indika, who I had a very strange and spiritual encounter with. He was a local guy, who’s finished university and was making a living as a guide. Tho he didn’t ask me to buy his services. We engaged in a discussion as he was showing me directions, and got chatting for an hour. Immediately, he asked my age (guessed it correctly), then said: “can I ask you 2 questions”? I said sure, and HONESTLY, the 2 questions were rather personal / philosophical, and were things I’d been thinking about right there and then beforehand. Things that nobody would have guessed or thought to ask! Very, very strange! He also explained what kind of job he wanted, which was basically what I did. He also explained that he’d done Acc and Fin at uni, and had a degree… like me… and…. the personal things I’ll leave out. We then entered into a discussion about religion / spirituality and the pursuit of happiness. I left and got on my way, feeling rather pensive for the rest of the day and a bit dumbstruck by the whole encounter.
Mon 29-Wed 31st – Spend working in Anuradhapura, with a day in the middle to visit Vavuniya – where I did a partner visit and visited a school, or “empowerment campus” to see a special school set up for “special needs” children. The government wont accept most of these kids into school so this campus Save and our partner have set up accommodates children from all walks… basically if you’re ANY different, you wont really be provided for in government schools, so this school contains everyone from those with learning difficulties to the hearing impaired. If we weren’t funding this, these poor children wouldn’t get an education. It was really surprising, as I had always heard that Sri Lanka had quite a good and progressive education system. I think where I got confused was that Sri Lankans value education, and they do everything to ensure their children succeed (against all the odds at times, it seems). Also met 2 VSO volunteers (Lucy , English, and Jorieke, a really cool Dutch girl whom I was to hook up with for a drink in Colombo that Fri) and took my hat off to them. I couldn’t live there for 2 years. And to think I was going to do VSO as well….. Thank God this job came up. I love the field, but only in small doses these days. I’m definitely made for the city in the main. Now, anyway! The long drive back to Colombo was just that. Long. Was supposed to take 5 hours and took longer as we got caught in a traffic jam 45k outside, and moved at 10km/h all the way into Colombo. To top it off, the aircon in the vehicle went from giving me brain freeze to packing in and ceasing to function. So the last 3 hours were a sweating, suffocating, polluted misery. Though I did love it when the sun started going down and driving thro Asia with all the smells in the air brought back so many good memories.
Sunday 4th Feb – Spent the last few days in Colombo (nice), exercising, working, lying by the pool and having the closure meeting with the Director group here which went great. The Director of Operations’ house is AMAZING! Nice gated compound. Very colonial style in elegance etc. Just arrived today at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo’s oldest, most traditional colonial style hotel.

We have the Thai Royal Suite, which is a bit dated, but it’s supposed to be like transferring back in time, and it’s huge with great views of the patio and the sea. Now the holiday begins…. Well, when Lizzie arrives with the champagne…