Sri Lanka

Road Rage...Sri Lankan style 16/09/06 to 27/09/06

Only in Sri Lanka would a road rage incident involve some pissed off elephants. This photos show what happened to one of our hiluxes after an encounter with some elephants last Sunday morning. Our transport manager and a driver were on the way back from Kandy when they rounded a bend and found 3 elephants blocking their path. One of them seemed particularly narky and as he approached the vehicle it stalled when the driver tried to reverse away. So he got out and legged it, followed closely by the transport manager (who is a similar size to myself and admits that he has never moved so fast in his life). They hid in some bushes and when they came out the elephants had gone but so had the hilux. They eventually found it about 40 feet down a gully where the elephant had pushed it over the side. The decision to run turned out to be a good one, if they had stayed in the vehicle they could have been seriously injured or killed. A motorcyclist in the same area was killed the previous day when , assumingly the same, elephant stood on his chest. He also picked up the motorbike and turfed that over the side.

So much for the Jungle Book and it's gentle giant image of elephants then. Various theories abound as to why the elephant is behaving as he is. Some say he is injured and others say he is merely protecting the baby. Another theory, as evidenced by the amount of elephant dung in the area is that it is the favourite early morning "dumping ground" and that he was miffed that the hilux was in the way. Don't get in the way of an elephant if he needs to go in other words. Regardless it made for a sobering scene when I passed by a few hours after the incident. It is the talk of Ampara amongst the locals and the expats. Most people think it is a joke when I say "did you hear about the elephant attacking our hilux and throwing it off a cliff ?" In fairness, it is a fairly mad story. I tell you one thing...I won't be going to any other elephant parades in the near future

Frustrations and Parades.....27/08/06 to 15/09/06

The work permit issue has pretty much consumed all our lives here in Ampara the past few weeks. In addition to residents visas the government decided that we would have to apply through the Ministry of Defence for a work permit. It’s part of a strategy on their part to closely monitor the activities of INGO’s , we are perceived in the media as being a law unto ourselves with even accusations of support for and collusion with the LTTE. We all applied in plenty of time and waited for our permits to be issued. As the deadline approached a few were issued to people working on the South Coast and in Colombo but none for North and East. Wild rumours started to circulate that expats found without a work permit would be arrested and deported. There was general mass confusion, local forces were stopping us asking for evidence of our organisations registration with the MoD, something which did not actually exist but information is slow to trickle from Colombo to the “outpost” of Ampara. (The fact that around this time the Norwegian peace monitors came out and formally accused the government as being the ones who executed the 17 ACF staff didn’t help the reputations of Westerners in Sri Lanka) .Anyway a lot of the NGO’s left Ampara for Colombo while all this was cleared up. We stayed and on the first morning past the deadline headed off in convoy towards the checkpoints on the road to the coast , half expecting to be stopped and turned back. It all turned out to be a damp squib, we sailed through the checkpoints with ease as usual and had a normal working day. Two weeks later most of the people are back from Colombo and GOAL have been told that our permits will be issued next week. We’ll wait and see.

I’ve spent a lot of the past few weeks dealing with local government authorities and it has been an enormously frustrating experience. The meetings are excruciatingly farcical and at times resemble a Sri Lankan version of a Monty Python sketch. The meeting of the disaster management council of Sainthamaruthu is a case in point. Two weeks ago I received a letter advising me that I had been appointed to the Disaster Management Council of Sainthamaruthu. That was all the letter said , it failed to mention what this entailed or indeed what I had done to merit my appointment so I put it aside and didn’t think any more of it. Then last week I got a letter late one evening advising me that there was a meeting of the DMCoS the following morning and that I was requested to attend without fail. (there was no agenda of course, that would be all too organised)  Off I went the next morning and stickler for time keeping that I am arrived at the venue at 9.28 for the 9.30 meeting. The venue was a corrugated shed on the roof of the building and I sat there for 25 minutes by myself. Every so often someone would pass through and give a reassuring smile to the profusely sweating and increasingly agitated foreigner. Finally people started to trickle in, the main government official arrived 40 minutes late and the meeting kicked off finally at 10.20. The first order of business was to poke fun at the foreigner who was silly enough to turn up at the appointed time , didn’t he know he was in Sri Lankan. The local mosque leader even took the trouble to tell a parable about a king requesting his subjects to fill a huge urn with milk and how one guy got the idea to just contribute water as no one would know the difference but when the king collected the urn it was full of water as everyone had the same idea. So if other words people show up late thinking that they will be the only one…. Everyone seemed really pleased with this little tale and all smiled sympathetically at me , the only gobshite who put milk in the urn. Anyway the objective of the meeting was to make plans to deal with any disaster that may befall Sainthamaruthu , from monsoon flooding to another tsunami. It lasted 2.5 hours and covered a wide range of topics only some of which was to do with disaster management. It was all in Tamil , every so often the mosque leader (who was still on thin ice with me over his poxy little parable) would translate snippets for me but I knew there was a lot of talk and bitching about NGO’s that wasn’t for my ears. One topic covered was the rubbish problem, by and large the streets here are filthy. The relevance on this to disaster management was lost on me but anyway the point being made was that engaging in sporadic mass clean up programmes wasn’t achieving anything. They asked my opinion and I said that to solve the problem long term you had to change people’s mindset and instil in them a sense of pride in the cleanliness of the area. Simple enough but they were all hugely impressed and a twenty minute discussion ensued on how an awareness programme was the way forward. Having resolved the Sainthamaruthu rubbish problem we moved onto the next issue. The fact that absolutely no decisions had been made on the nature of the programme or who was going to be responsible didn’t seem to matter. We had a great idea and that was enough for one day. I was on the verge of exploding with frustration by the time it was all finished.

  Last night was the 2^nd night of the 3 night perahara or festival consisting of massive parades of guys with whips, guys spinning wheels of fire, lots of dancers and the occasional gaudily decorated elephant. The parade was due to start at 9 so myself and my fellow milk urn filling expats were downtown by 8.45. The locals started to appear in force at 9.30 and the first elephant showed his face at 10.10. The parade was pretty impressive although tales of elephants going ballistic were foremost on my mind. One person was killed just outside our house one night a few months back by a wild elephant and there have been plenty of other such incidents even on Ampara’s main street to deter you from going wandering at night.

On a knife edge me arse !!!! 16/08/06 to 26/08/06

If you were to believe the article in the Southside People we are all cowering in fear here in Ampara. I was pretty mad when I saw the article and how a telephone conversation centring around me saying that we were safe and away from the trouble could get translated into  story of Irish aid workers on a knife edge and implying that I was growing increasingly afraid for my safety. I would be very reluctant to agree to that kind of thing again. (And as for me implying that I was disillusioned with Ireland…..that was pure invention on their part) The truth is that all is quiet again here in the East. This week was the first week in a month that we got into the office all 5 days. Hartals have been playing havoc with our progress.

   How much fun can you have with a long piece of material, 8 wooden horses and 8 dice ? Quite a lot as it turned out. We put on a race night in the GOAL house to mark the departure of yet another of our colleagues. I was bookie for the night, projecting the race cards and odds onto our big screen and by keeping 20% of the bets we managed to collect $25 for a local charity. It was a really good laugh, everyone really got into it taking charge of individual races and inventing quirks in each races rules to make it interesting. It is safe to say that the security guards and drivers on duty that night are now firmly convinced that we are all completely barmy with the variety of ways we come up to keep ourselves amused.

The turnover of people continues. Of the 8 GOALies that were here when I came out in January only 2 remain. Our team of 9 has been reduced to 6, a sign that the programme here is starting to wind down. I recently reluctantly took over as team leader here in Ampara. So for my final 4 months here I will be kept pretty busy. I don’t find the work particularly hard but you are constantly reacting to situations that are unfamiliar to you and I come home drained every day. So much for escaping the pressures of the rat race. The number of ceremonies to attend is on the up again as projects are finished. We recently attended the opening of 3 bridges that we had repaired. Check out the colour ! A grand patriotic green. In actual fact green has significance for Muslims but I still reckon a bit of white and orange paint would have finished it off nicely.

Media Relations 01/08/06 to 15/08/2006

The media are just all over me these days. I'm not kidding. First of all we had Mary Kennedy from Irish television here for two days filming for a GOAL DVD. Then last week I was interviewed over the phone by a reporter from Southside People a local freebee paper in Dublin on my reaction to the ACF killings. Fame at last!

 I have to say that when i was told that Mary Kennedy was coming to do a film shoot my response was "who?". Right enough though when she did show up I recognised her. It proved to be a very enjoyable couple of days, she is very friendly and unassuming and had all her meals in our house, stayed around for our movie night (we show a DVD on our big screen every Monday night ) and came to a party with us the following night. I took her and the cameraman to see some of the beneficiaries of our Livelihoods program. She interviewed a young girl that we had provided with a sewing machine and who was the only earner in a family of 7. They also interviewed a shop owner who has taken the temporary shelter we built for him , converted half of it into a shop and using equipment and a grant we gave him, set up a little grocery store. It was fascinating seeing the filming process, how they would walk into a scene blind. asses the situation and have it all set up and planned in a matter of minutes. All very professional. The only controversy surrounded Mary's clothes. Showing the knees is a big no no and her skirt was a little too short for acceptability in the Muslim coastal area of Ampara. The shop owner in particular was getting an eyeful during his interview. On the second morning I was amazed to see that she was in the same outfit, I was sure TV personalities could afford a different outfit every day but it was eventually explained to me that for continuity of the shoot she had to wear the same outfit. Who knew?

I have yet to see the famous stilt fishermen of Sri Lanka as they only operate on the South Coast. Here it the East a boat lays the nets close to the shore and then it's all hands on deck as it is slowly hauled to shore by hand by anyone who happens to be around at the time. As well as being an indiscriminate form of fishing it very time consuming for little reward. This catch was deemed to be a poor one, at only 40 cents a fish, it's difficult to make a living.

Security - 13/08/2006

The brutal execution of 17 Tamil workers of the French NGO ACF last week in Muttur has made for a sombre week here in Ampara. The presumption that as NGO workers we had a certain immunity from the violence has been shattered and has us all concerned. We seem to be the only ones who are, the rest of the world is clearly focused on Lebanon while to normal Sri Lankans it is just the latest in a cycle of violence that has seen 800 people killed since I arrived here in January. The event has not been widely covered in the local press and when we held a meeting with our local senior staff to discuss the effect on staff morale and their security we were greeted with a universal shrug of the shoulders. Par for the course in Sri Lanka. As if to prove the point 5 days after the ACF killings 50 civilians were killed by government bombardments in the same area. The fact that the latest upsurge in violence was sparked by the closure of a sluice gate in an irrigation canal further hammers home the insanity of it all.

I’ve read a lot about Sri Lanka in the past 7 months in an attempt to get my head around what is going on here. The ferocity of the killings by both sides in the 80’s and 90’s which has left over 60,000 dead shocked me and I can’t say I’m any closer to understanding it so I won’t even attempt to try and explain the political situation. For anyone who is interested the BBC website,South Asia section, is as good a place as any to brush up on the facts. In 2002 a ceasefire was brokered between the Sinhalese Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE or Tamil Tigers). It has left the island divided along the battle lines as of that date with the LTTE controlling a large section of the north and east of the island. GOAL does not operate in any of the LTTE controlled areas. Batticoloa is a town 35kms north of our office in Sainthamaruthu and is the nearest real flashpoint to us. Unlike most of our fellow NGO workers in Ampara who have offices there and travel there regularly, we are banned from going there. So while we are close to the frontline, it feels like a world away. It’s like living in Dublin in the 80’s and being concerned about what is going on in South Armagh.

I detest guns and am always very uncomfortable in their presence. When I came here first I couldn’t get used to the amount of guns I see on a day to day basis. Every day we pass through several heavily fortified checkpoints and pass several foot patrols as we commute from Ampara, which is Sinhalese, to the coast which is Muslim/Tamil. We are kept informed as to what is happening via text messages which are passed through a network of all the NGO’s. So on a daily basis we get notified of the shooting, bombings and other incidents happening in this part of the country. Again I found this unsettling at first but you learn that it is better to know than not to know and your safety is increased by you being well informed. For instance our route to Kandy was changed two months ago. The old route had a section with numerous army/police camps which were subject to several night time attacks in a short space of time. So we now take another route. Likewise when going to Arugam Bay, the beach resort 2 hours from here , we take an inland route rather than the more dangerous coastal one. At times we ere some much on the side of caution it’s infuriating but I guess that’s why in 29 years GOAL has only lost one expat , and she was killed in a plane crash.

One of the difficulties is that it hard to get a straight answer here. The media here is quite appalling, the quality of journalism is very low and is little more than propaganda by both sides. The Colombo based newspapers report the government side while Tamilnet puts forward the LTTE viewpoint. This weeks events are a good example, both sides blames the other for the ACF killings, both sides claim that it they who reopened the sluice gate and while the LTTE say they pulled out of Muttur , the government say they drove them out. Who to believe ? We have to read the BBC website in order to try and get the real story. Not putting forward the government view is frowned upon and the BBC has been heavily criticised in Colombo for it’s reporting as it tries to be impartial. Likewise the NGO community is criticised in the Colombo media as we don’t discriminate and just help those who need it. One of the reasons the East was so badly affected by the tsunami is that it had endured years of neglect of investment and government assistance. So an impoverished section of society then got walloped by a natural disaster. The fact that we are here helping to rebuild the lives of Tamils and Muslims means that in their eyes we support the LTTE which is of course a nonsense.

The violence affects our work in several ways. Our contractors find it difficult to get labourers to come to this area so all our sites are understaffed and progress is slow. Then there is the hartals, or strikes. Whenever there an “incident” a general strike is called and all businesses in a town or area shut down. So when over 60 Sinhalese civilians were killed in a landmine attack on a public bus (we are banned from using public transport) a few months ago, there was a hartal in Ampara. Last week to protest the killing of Muslims in Muttur , Sainthamaruthu and other coastal Muslim areas had a hartal. In that situation we sit tight in the house until we know what is going on. Our head of security uses his police and local contacts to evaluate the situation and decide if it is safe to travel or not. So you get up at your normal time, hang around the house for up to 2 hours before you finally get word. Invariably you end up housebound for the day. Again we ere on the side of caution, if all other businesses close down , it is in your best interest to close down too. We have lost a lot of working days this way.

Back to the ACF killings. There was plans to hold a silent walk by the NGO community in Ampara last Friday . It prompted a lot of debate as to the appropriateness of it amongst us but that proved to be a mute point as the police in the end said that only international staff could walk, which given that it was local staff that were killed would have made a nonsense of it all. We instead had a memorial service in the UN office in Ampara hosted by the staff of the local ACF office. An altar was set up with framed A4 sized photo’s of the 17 victims. It was chilling sitting there thinking of those people wearing ACF tshirts in an ACF compound being made to lie face down in a line and executed. There is no doubt that they were deliberately targeted but as to why and by whom we may never know. The strongest suspicion at the moment seem to point at the government side but it’s hard to know.

Thanks to all for you mails of concern during the week. It’s been a difficult week but be assured we are well informed and looked after and kept away from danger as much as is feasibly possible.

Work Stuff and health issues 12/07/206 to 31/07/2006

I got an email a few weeks ago from one of our employees, a married Muslim guy, requesting a vehicle for him and another guy to …and I quote…”go to Kandy to pick up some chicks”. Hardly the best use of GOAL’s money I thought but as it turned out the chicks in questions are as per the photo. In a few weeks time 10 of these females and 2 males will be given to each of the participants in our Livelihoods programme that selected egg production as their trade. These birds fare better than the ones bred for meat who have a life of only 42 days before they are sent for the chop.

Concrete pours are cool! I’ve heard more talk about them in the past seven months that I ever wanted to but despite this I have been plaguing one of the engineers to take me out to one. This one pictured is for the second floor of one of the 3 schools that we are building from scratch and it was really good fun to see. A big cement truck churning out cement into another truck that shoots it up through a pipe that is controlled by a guy with a pack of hydraulic levers strapped to him. I didn’t have the courage to ask for a go, it was all far too serious for such childish goings on. It was a hive of activity as the concrete was spewed out and the workmen scurried everywhere to make sure it spread out evenly and that the next segment was ready to receive it’s lot. 

One aspect of our irrigation project is a pilot scheme for organically growing rice. Manufactured fertilisers and pesticides are replaced with natural alternatives the most bizarre of which is walking a male goat through the paddy once a week, the smell of which drives away a few different variety of harmful insects. By all accounts it’s very effective if a little unflattering to the ego of the goat. I went along one of the days to see a tour by some of the farmers who are involved in the pilot scheme , showing some who are not the benefits to be derived. The guy holding up the rice stalks was very enthused at the results he had received and most of the farmers seemed interested in trying out organic farming in the next planting season. Not all were impressed as you can see, this grandchild of one of the farmers clearly wasn’t happy with what was going on, or maybe it was just me that was freaking him out.   

The past week has seen me have an extensive brush with the Sri Lankan health care system and I’m not that impressed. I had a rash that was spreading all over my upper body along with a fever so rather than risk the wilds of Ampara hospital I went to Colombo and its best hospital, the Apollo. The first thing I was asked in the Emergency department was had I been bitten by an insect recently. Living in Ampara you are feasted on , on a nightly basis so that was a really dumb question. The big fear is dengue, which you can get from mosquito bites and leaves you with a fever, a rash and in considerable pain for the duration of the infection. I’ll spare you the details of what I went through but in essence 6 visits and 3 sets of blood tests in 5 days confirmed that I didn’t have dengue, something which they rang me to tell me 2 hours after my first visit and then continued to tell me with the occasional oh maybe you do have dengue thrown in. As to what I did have…I was assured that it wasn’t serious, probably a viral infection that will run it’s course or an allergic reaction to “something”. They gave me some pills in case it was the latter and sent me on my way. I won’t be rushing back there.

A posh hotel, a big rock and a speech 01/07/2006 to 11/07/2006

The Kandalama hotel is one of the most famous hotels in Sri Lanka and ranks amongst the finest works of the world renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. No, I had never heard of him either but to admit to such out here exposes you as a total Philistine and prompts you to cover your ignorance by saying “Oh GEOFFREY Bawa. Oh yeah , of course I’ve heard of him”.  Anyway the hotel is pretty extraordinary, seven stories tall and over a kilometre long and built into a cliff face partially camouflaged with creepers and various plants. One of it’s most famous aspects is the infinity pool which gives the impression that it goes on for ever, hence the name. It’s really cool lolling around at the edge as the water laps over the side as you look down the few hundred feet sheer drop to the jungle below. It does however seem to make a total mockery of Archimedes Principle as I was very conscious of displacing a hell of a lot of water over the side as I swam along but then again exercise opportunities in Ampara are few and far between so maybe Archi’s theory is intact after all. The hotel also has some pretty funky showers/bath with glass windows looking out at the jungle. Given my lack of exhibitionist tendencies, it takes a bit of getting used to but once you realise that it’s only the odd monkey looking in, you shower away unbothered by it all. The open nature of the corridors means that bats zip along them at night which is one feature I could have done without. I haven’t really felt the same about bats since I had a very close encounter with one in a cave in Vietnam and if I am paying $70 for a hotel I do expect them to be bat free. Despite this, the stay in the Kandalama was fantastic and is unquestionably the poshest place I have ever stayed and with the lakeside setting, great facilities and amazing buffets meant that it was money well spent.

From the Kandalama you can see Sigiriya (Lion Rock) , possibly the most famous of the tourist attractions in Sri Lanka and certainly the most photogenic. Rising 200 metres above the jungle below it looks as if it has been transplanted from a John Ford Western set in Monument Valley. It was in actual fact a short lived capital of Sri Lanka with a palace, gardens and pools at the summit and with the final cliff face before the summit transformed into a huge lion with the addition of bricks to create the head and paws to augment an existing lion like shape. These days it is relatively easy to climb with stairs and metal walkways attached to the side but in its day 1,600 years ago it was an impregnable fortress. Unless of course you got cocky , came down off your big rock, rode out to meet the enemy, your elephant bolted and you got separated from your army and you committed suicide so your brother who was leading the opposing army didn’t capture you. Which is exactly what happened to King Kassapa the one and only king to reign at Sigiryia. Damn bad luck. From the distance it looks like a daunting prospect to climb but it actually takes just under an hour although it is advisable to do the climb before the midday heat kicks in. Some of the sections are dodging enough particularly since I wouldn’t have the greatest of confidence in Sri Lankan engineering but we made it up safely. The views from the top are stunning, and in its day with the palace on top it must have been an extraordinary place. The moats and gardens at the bottom even to this day are impressive as are the various bathing pools built to accommodate King Kasspa’s 500 concubines.

I was guest of honour at the closing ceremony of a 10 day training course we ran for some local fisherman. OK, so I was only guest of honour because some other guy couldn’t make it AND my name wasn’t even on the banner but still it was fun to be asked. The training course was very practical and included things like outboard motor maintenance and even included the fishermen’s’ wives for sections involving smoking and other methods of fish preservation. It had been suggested to me that the speech I made at the beginning of a training course the day before was way too short (Sri Lankans are masters at long boring speeches and my short and sweet effort was not to their liking) so the pressure was on me to deliver something that they liked. So I waffled on about GOAL and the similarities between Sri Lanka and Ireland (small islands historically dependant on agriculture and fishing, violent pasts, colonialism etc) and how we were once very poor and despite a great improvement for us we never forgot those less fortunate than ourselves and this is why the general public reacted to the tsunami as they did. Talk about putty in my hand. They particularly liked the bit about how if the fishermen of Ireland could see how their money was being spent on the fishermen of Sri Lanka that they would be very pleased. It wasn’t quite “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” but it went down a treat. Then one of the fishermen’s’ wives got up and spoke very emotionally about how much GOAL had done for her and her family since the tsunami. They are living in a temporary ( 18 months on) shelter that GOAL built , her husband attended the training course  on fisheries and we had set her in business as an ice cream seller from which she is clearing $2 a day profit. I’ve just past my six month anniversary here in Sri Lanka…there was days when I didn’t think I would last this long. Despite Sri Lanka being a relatively good posting in comparison to most I have struggled on various fronts to cope. I wasn’t prepared for how mentally tough you have to be for this line of work and how claustrophobic the lifestyle can be. But days like these can do wonders for your spirits when you realise that you are making a difference where it needed. So I may just see the year out after all………     

More Footie, magic teeth and scabby legs 15/06/06 to 30/06/06

The World Cup watching frenzy continues unabated here in Ampara. In fact it’s becoming difficult to accommodate such things as meals and work into our busy schedule. Dinner time fluctuates depending on the timing of the early matches. I’ve taken to napping after the first game, getting up at 12.15am to watch the late game before returning to bed at 2.20am for 4 hours sleep before work. It’s gets tricky if the late game goes to extra time and penos , it makes for a long day the next day. We are still getting good crowds, total strangers just walk in the door wish you a good evening , stick some beer in the fridge and plop themselves down in an available seat. We even have the night duty drivers joining in. One of the first nights we found two of them outside one of the windows with chairs set up to peer in watching the game. They have a thing about coming into the house and it took 5 minutes of persuasion to get them into the house. They sat down meekly like two bold schoolkids who were doing something they clearly shouldn’t be doing. Even still one of them got called out and when he came back he resumed his seat outside the window until I went out and told him I would fire him if he didn’t go back inside. They’ve overcome all such fears now and arrive in on cue every night 5 minutes before the game . They are mad into as well, refuting the myth that Sri Lankans are only into cricket. The latter did nearly cause an international incident in the pub in Kandy last Saturday night when the 3^rd One Day International was turned off in favour of the Germany v Sweden game. It took the unprecedented uniting of the Irish, the English and the Germans together in one cause for the football to be shown.

While the football has been great , the commentary is weak and the in studio analysis and pre game show is just dreadful. Hosted by the smiliest Indian in the world who doesn’t know a thing about football but is giddily incredulous that he has somehow landed the job of hosting the World Cup on ESPN South Asia. His panel of experts include Gerry “ I scored an important World Cup goal you know” Armstrong, Steve “ I have the personality of a plank of wood and know as much about football tactics as the smiley Indian” McMahon , and some Indian football legend that we are supposed to know. The undoubted highlight is when Steve goes off to the side with what best can be described as a subbuteo table and 22 draughts pieces as he proceeds to describe how the game will pan out. It’s unspeakably tacky and the game invariably unfolds in a manner bearing no relation to how Steve describes it. Despite this he returns manfully the next evening to give it another go.

  I have had several failed attempts to make it to the Temple of the Tooth where poor directions and inappropriate clothing have prevented me from getting in. It is the most popular site in Kandy and is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka. The tooth in question is supposed to belong to the Buddha himself having been rescued from the funeral pyre. It has had quite the checkered history and wars have been fought over it. Apparently the Portuguese captured it, ground it to dust , burnt it and scattered the ashes in the sea (they weren’t taking any chances) only for the Tooth to magically reassemble itself and fly back to Sri Lanka. A pretty neat trick for a tooth. This coupled with the fact that the few Westerners in recent times who have seen it say that it is 2 to 3 inches long and resembles that of a crocodile or water buffalo means that it origins are suspect to say the least. You daren’t mention this though as the whole place has an enforced solemnity about it that I haven’t seen since visiting Mao in Hanoi. There certainly is no giggling allowed which of course means that that is exactly what you want to do. Anyway it’s a pretty nice temple, very ornate with plenty of pious Sri Lankans paying their respects to the tooth which is well locked up and only comes out once or twice a decade. So another Sri Lankan must see has been crossed off the list.

There is little else of consequence to tell. I could go into the details of the infection I got from insect bites and subsequent scratching which has left me with enough oozing scabs on my legs for me to be mistaken for a leper but I suspect some of ye may consider that too much information. Suffice to say that despite the heat I’ve been wearing long trousers for weeks now, I was freaking the locals out too much . And they there’s the heat rash on my arms…..the Irish just are not designed to live in Sri Lanka.

World Cup and Logistics 01/06/06 to 14/06/06

Sri Lanka has a way of putting paid to even the best laid plans. We have spent the last few weeks planning our World Cup viewing. We got a new satellite system installed with some good movie channels and the required sports channels. We got a 12ft by 8 ft wooden screen built which together with a projector and sound system turned our downstairs living area in a mini cinema. We are dining upstairs for the duration of the World Cup. There has been a pretty substantial turnover of the expat population recently so after months of going to parties and seeing the same the same 25 faces suddenly I know hardly anyone and I’m one of the Ampara veterans. So I duly told everyone about our plans for the World Cup and assured them that they were all welcome. On the Wednesday before the World Cup I sent out a mail inviting them over for the first game and all seemed set for a very sociable month. That night I turned on the TV to discover there was no signal and when I rang the helpline it was cut off as if the number has been disconnected. I still wasn’t overly concerned until the next morning when the front page of the newspapers had the story of the offices of CNBSat in Colombo being raided and all their equipment confiscated. Something to with rebroadcast rights. What are the odds ? Happily we still had our old crappy satellite system with hundreds of stations showing Bollywood movies and the one sports channel that we needed. So the frequent power cuts aside it is all working out well. Sadly enough I’ve seen 17 of the 23 games so far, some of the games stating at 12.30 local time just aren’t enticing enough to justify going into work on 4 hours sleep. We are getting good crowds most nights which peaked for the France v Switzerland game when we had about 35 people crammed in. The only bit of controversy surrounded the perception by the English fans that way too many people were cheering for Paraguay against England resulting in them going off to watch the game v Trinidad and Tobago by themselves where they didn’t have to endure such bias. Poor babies. I felt we were doing enough by allowing a St Georges cross to hang in the GOAL house, even if I did feel it necessary to counteract it with the huge tricolour I had made for Paddy’s day. Some people just have no sense of humour.

You learn a lot of weird and wonderful things when you are in charge of logistics. I’ve learnt that your average Sri Lankan goat costs about $20, the amount we had to pay when a goat played chicken with one of our vans and lost rather badly. I’ve learnt that when a van traveling at 30 miles an hour hits a cow that the cow fares a lot better than the van does. Ok we sent it flying and by all accounts it was badly shaken by the experience but it still walked away unharmed leaving a fair of dent in the van. And I’ve learned that when a rental car owner starts messing you around only after he has collected his cheque and you subsequently put a stop payment of that cheque that he gets seriously miffed and sends the police after you. I was sitting having dinner one night when the security guard stuck his head in the door to say that Mr. Ciaran was needed at the gate. Out I went to discover the owner , a translator and a stern looking policeman waiting on me. If the guy expected me to be intimidated by the presence of the police he was mistaken as I lambasted the owner over his multiple breaches of contract and saying that I was more than justified in withholding payment. I was on a bit of a rant and the translator was struggling to keep up with me. The policeman seemed stunned by it all and was only too glad when we agreed that the owner would come to the office the next day to resolve our differences. He had seen more than enough of the red haired lunatic at that stage.

Changing of the Guard 15/05/06 to 31/05/06

In many ways the friendships you make and acquaintances you form in this line of work are similar to those you experience whilst backpacking, You are thrown together by circumstance rather than common interest, you experience intense highs and lows together and you get to know each other well in a short space of time by virtue of the amount of time you spend together. There are differences though. If you find yourself travelling with someone who grates on your nerves , you can find some way to give them the slip. I’m not proud to say that I dumped a few fellow travellers in my time. There was one particularly annoying Swiss guy that it took me half the length of Argentina to get rid of. He just wouldn’t take a hint and in the end I wasn’t subtle. I reckon I’ve been dumped myself a few times though so I guess it all balances out. The point is that there is no get out clause in this line of work, you work ,eat, live and socialise with a handful of people whether you like them or not. It’s a really intense experience and turns into a fairly serious study in human behaviour. We all have our moods and you get to know the signs when you need to give each other space. Having said all that I have been extremely fortunate with those I have been thrown together with here in Ampara. Of the five people I originally moved in with , 3 have now left and each departure has been a personal loss for me. From a house two weeks ago with 4 guys and 2 girls we will be a house of 7 guys from next week on. Perfect timing with the World Cup coming up soon, it will cut down on rows over the remote but it will be interesting to see what “Lord of the Flies” type effect the all male environment will have. The times they are a changin’.

So as you may have guessed there hasn’t been a lot going on recently. Hence the length of time since I have updated the site and the paragraph of “deep” musings above.  My job has changed slightly as I am now responsible for Finance , HR and Logistics. In other words all the supports functions that people pay no attention to when things go well but bitch about something fierce when they do go wrong. If a vendor isn’t paid on time, an incorrect deduction taken on payroll or if someone doesn’t have transport at the precise moment they need it you hear all about it. It keeps me really busy though and the days are flying by. I’m just back from a few days in Colombo. Again it felt like stepping into a different world. On the Friday night we went into a pub where the Colombo based NGO expats gather. It was weird standing in a pub full of white people with beer on draught and a dartboard on the wall. To top is all it was absolutely bucketing rain so everyone was arriving in looking liked drowned rats. Felt just like home. Later we hit a club frequented by seriously well to do Sri Lankans. As with my shopping experience the last time I was in Colombo I found the opulence a bit stomach churning and the contrast between the Sinhala West and the Tamil/Muslim East  very unsettling. As I travelled on my week off last most people were stunned to hear that I lived in Ampara. Most people who live west of Kandy have never been to Ampara and would have difficulty finding it on a map.

 After all the foundation ceremonies it was nice to go to an opening ceremony for a change. It was kind of cool too as I had been there for the foundation ceremony of the meeting hall and machinery building we built for one of the local farming organisations so I’d seen it from start to finish. I did my usual lurking on the outskirts of the crowd taking photos routine but unfortunately I had actually done some work on this project so they knew my name and called me into action to perform one of the tape cutting ceremonies. After the tsunami hit the sudden influx of aid resulted in the bottom falling out of the local rice market. So many farmers in addition to losing their homes lost their sources of income. My job was to audit the organisation to determine whether they were suitable partners to work with or not. There wasn’t much to audit (no premises, all records destroyed in the tsunami and no money in the bank) but good sense prevailed and we went ahead with the work. In addition to providing the materials for the buildings we hired the farmers as labourers so we were able to put some money in their pockets as well. I got a mention a couple of times in the speeches too, “Mr. Ciaran, the most important person as he is the one who signs the cheques”. Cue much hilarity from the audience and a big scarlet face on Mr. Ciaran.

In the middle of writing this I went to the loo and as I washed my hands a two-inch long bright yellow frog flew by my nose. Scared the hell out of me and I squealed like a little girl. Normally in the bathrooms here you learn keep a close eye on the floor for the vast array of freaky insects that Ampara has. But the presence of low flying bright yellow frogs is a new one on me. You have to be on your toes around here.