Sri Lanka

A Muslim Overdose 18/10/06 to 29/10/06

I’ve pretty much had my fill of the Muslim culture this week. First of all Tuesday was the festival of EID Mubarak, which marks the end of Ramadan their month of daylight fasting. There was confusion as to whether the festival was going to be on Monday or Tuesday, it all hinged on when the new moon was. I was sure this kind of thing of predetermined but not in Sri Lanka.It was cloudy on Sunday night so they couldn’t see the moon so the festival fell on Tuesday instead. I’m not kidding.The day is spent stuffing their faces with an alarming array of sickly sweet cakes and sweets. They have an extraordinary ability to take pure sugar and present it in a variety of shapes and colours. Unlike some of the expats who spent their day going to various houses belonging to national staff, I only had one to attend. It is a true feeding frenzy in that as soon as you finish one thing a new sugary object is pressed upon you with mortal offence being taken if you refuse. All this of course takes place in the presence of the men only, the woman are kept in other rooms behind curtains churning out cups of tea and the aforementioned sweet array.

Then on Friday the Jummah Grand Mosque of Sainthamaruthu  had a “felicitation ceremony” for GOAL. We had funded the construction of  walls around 3 tsunami cemeteries and they wanted to take the opportunity while having an opening ceremony to thanks GOAL for all the work we have done in Sainthamaruthu, Gone are the days where when attending this kind of thing I can lurk in the background avoiding taking part in the proceedings by claiming to be the official photographer, the team leader is front and centre for the whole thing. First of all we visited each of the cemetery walls and cut the ribbons before adjourning to the Mosque for a meeting/tea party. Or rather a marquee beside the Mosque, as non believers we aren’t allowed inside the mosque. We had been told that our customary attire of GOAL tshirts were not appropriate for the occasion so we were all looking our best despite being burdened with the Sri Lankan equivalent of bling, a gaudy necklace. They had a few spare ones so I ended up with 3 in total and was looking very stylish as you can see. Those on the podium and in the audience were a who’s who of Sainthamaruthu , between Mosque leaders, local MP’s and government officials. All men of course, no women allowed. They had put together a booklet listing all that we had done since the first week after the tsunami hit when we arrived in the area. It was pretty moving and would make you very proud of all that has been done. And then , like all these ceremonies they go and ruin it. “Since you have done all this good work we most humbly ask that you do the following….there is a fourth cemetery that has no wall…the tiles on the floor of the Mosque are chipped from when all the tsunami refugees  stayed there…we need a new photocopier…"the list was just endless. I wouldn’t mind but they had sent me a letter a few weeks ago asking for most of this stuff and they got a response telling them in no uncertain terms that there was no more money left…I avoided saying that even if there was I wouldn’t be spending it on tiles for the Mosque floor. Finally after nearly an hour of speeches I was presented with a little memento, a surprising tasteful glass engraved object in the shape of Sri Lanka.Most of time you are given something that is truly awful that you end up discretely disposing off. Then the master of ceremonies announced that we had reached the highlight of the afternoon, the speech by the GOAL team leader. I humbly accepted their thanks on behalf of all the expats who had worked here since January 2005, all the national staff, who are the ones that do the real work and the people of Ireland who gave the money in the first place. It seemed to go down pretty well even when I told them that we couldn’t give any more money to them but assured them that I would pass on their request to my colleagues in the INGO community. I battled my way through the crowd, shaking hands all around as I went and avoiding the guy who wanted the photocopier who seemed determined to make his case heard. I’ve a funny feeling I’ll have a few more of these over the next two months.

Customer recognition and a week off...28/09/06 to 17/10/06

It is nice to be remembered…..In September last year I walked into Butlers just of Grafton street in Dublin for a coffee, something which I did every morning when I worked for Eircom. Despite it being 15 months since I had been there last, the guy behind counter looked up, smiled and said “Americano, isn’t it ? “. Contrast this with my daily experience in the shop across the road from our office in Sainthamaruthu. I have gone there practically every day since early January, sometimes twice a day. I only ever buy one thing, a chilled bottle of water. Despite this, the routine I go through with the shop keeper is exactly the same. I approach, he smiles and bobs his head and then we engage in a staring standoff (his being decidedly vacant) until I eventually give up and say “bottle of water, please”. There follows a beaming smile of recognition as he heads off to the fridge (oh that’s right, this is the 6ft red haired white guy in a GOAL tshirt who buys water as opposed to……..). There are days I try to screw with him and hold out for as long as possible to see will he reach for the fridge door without me asking but he is way better at the staring game than I can ever hope to be. One of these days…………..

Anuradhapura was the greatest monastic city of the ancient world and at it’s height was home to over ten thousand monks. It was also the capital of Sri Lanka from the 2^nd BC to the 11^th century AD in a time deemed to be the golden age of Sinhalese culture. To this day it is a place of great significance for Buddhism and Sinhalese culture but nowadays it resembles more of a military installation than an archaeological site. In 1985 the LTTE gunned down over 150 pilgrims here which coupled with the truck bomb at Kandy’s Temple of the Tooth in 1998 means that both sites are heavily guarded given the significance both have to Buddhism and therefore Sinhalese nationalism. Anyway I don’t think I have bossed around more in a single day in my life between having to show respect to Buddha by not wearing a hat or shoes at any of the sites and being bossed around by obnoxious soldiers as to where I could and couldn’t go. I was involved in two "incidents" that day. The first I inadvertently sailed into a temple grounds via a back entrance on my (extremely effeminate) rented bicycle. Cycling in temples is a big no no apparently to say nothing of the fact that I was wearing my hat and had my flip flops on as well. Cue lots of people scolding me and barking orders at me. Speaking of the hat and flip flops, respect to Buddha is all very well and good but I have very fair skin and need my hat to protect my head and the stones are just too damn hot to walk on in my bare feet. You had to keep on the move all the time and even stopping to take a photo is pure torture; in the end I resorted to standing on my hat while taking photo’s, I’m pretty sure there is a rule against that too but no one caught me. The second incident was just farcical. I had just passed through a security checkpoint having had my bag thoroughly searched and been felt up by a Sri Lankan soldier for the umpteenth time that day when I realised that my water bottle was leaking inside my backpack. So I stopped, opened my bag on the ground and proceeded to rescue my camera, guide book, wallet, mobile phone etc. I was suddenly surrounded by some stern looking AK-47 carrying soldiers asking me what I was doing. C’mon lads, you’ve just searched me and my bag, what are the odds I assembling a WMD here. I snarled something about a leaking water bottle and they slinked away.  

Despite all of these frustrations Anuradhapura is an impressive site and well worth the visit. Easily the best sites are the enormous dagobas, as stupas are known here in Sri Lanka. At the time of it’s construction the Jetavana dagoba was the 3^rd largest structure in the world, after two of the pyramids at Giza. It is 120metres tall and contains 90 million bricks….you get the picture…it’s damn big. I was less impressed with the Sri Maha Bodhi or Sacred Bo Tree which is the principle reason for all the security on the site. It’s a sapling from the original Bo tree that Buddha attained enlightenment under and given that the original tree has since been destroyed the sapling is revered by Buddhists. It is also claimed to be the oldest tree in the world at 2,300 years old. Despite all this it just looks like any other tree.

I based myself in Anuradhapura for the majority of my week off catching up on rest in between seeing the sites in the surrounding countryside, which invariably involve something related to Buddhism. You get tired of the temples fairly quickly, admittingly some of them are in great locations but the temples themselves are fairly plain with only a standing/sitting/reclining Buddha inside. (By contrast the Hindu temples are a blaze of colour and contain a vast array of mad looking gods). The upsurge in violence has hit the tourist industry hard, this is one of the top tourist sites in Sri Lanka but is practically deserted at the moment and my guesthouse with 20 rooms had only 3 occupied every night. Still it was nice and quiet and good to get away from work for a few days.

Peace talks are scheduled for the end of the month in Geneva but there isn’t much hope here that anything constructive will come out of it. The government have of late been making forays into LTTE controlled areas with both sides suffering heavy casualties. Then the LTTE exploded a massive bomb yesterday killing over 100 people, mainly navy personnel. Peace still seems a distant hope here, but our work is ongoing relatively undisturbed and we continue to take all the necessary precautions that keep us safe.

On a positive note we finally got our work permits after month of frustrating waiting.