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Back to life, back to reality

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

“I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave something up and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good.”
-Ernest Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises

So. I have been a naughty little blogger. I apologize. I’ll do what I can to bring you up to speed.

Sri Lanka is not my favorite country, and let’s just euphemistically leave it at that. The last six weeks have taught me a lot about myself…namely, that perhaps teaching abroad is not for me. Granted, I have been told by people who have taught elsewhere that my experience/itinerary was not the norm as far as “teaching abroad” goes, but nonetheless, I’m afraid it has managed to sour the idea for me a bit. But these things are important to figure out; better I know after 6 weeks than to get locked into a year long contract and really dislike it. And of course, the last 6 weeks has been filled with ups and downs. Melissa Mike, and most recently MC’s Bro. Augustine kept me laughing and as close to sane as possible, our living arrangements were outstanding, and we did manage to make a few excursions out of the pollution and noise that is Colombo.

Our first and most memorable trip was to one of the suburbs to visit the house of the sister to one of the St. Ben’s Brothers, Bro. Augustine. Follow that? We had a really wonderful and relaxed time; good food, great company, and the famed Sri Lankan Arrack, a liqueur made from the naturally alcoholic juice of a king coconut–distilled again, just for good measure. Mike, Melissa, Brother Augustine and I sat in chair’s in the front lawn telling stories and learning to sing songs in Sinhala.

One weekend we went down south to an area called Galle, staying for the night on a beach called Hik-kaduwa (there’s almost a hiccup sound there in the middle). We went out on a glass bottom boat, but sadly most of the coral is dead due to the high occurrence of glass bottom boats.

The next weekend we organized our own trip to Udawalawe National Park. The night preceding our safari was spent at a rather questionable hotel with a total of 2 rooms (we all slept in one), but we had a good time there, despite our fears. Perhaps because of them. The next day, we woke up bright and early for a morning safari. The park has quite an assortment of wildlife- elephants, jackels, peacocks, leopards (though we didn’t see any), deer, alligators and a plethora of bird species. The biggest attraction there are the wild elephants. We were taken our in an uncovered jeep with a driver and a guide, just us five. We came first upon a small elephant family of 3. They walked right up to the jeep, which was nice, until papa elephant started making growling noises. Eventually they lost interest or decided we weren’t worth a brawl, and moved along. Next we came to a large herd. The guide explained that elephants are not dangerous in a herd because they do not feel threatened, so we were able to get very close. The morning was long and hot under the Sri Lankan sun, so I sat down as we moved across the plains. Then the jeep slowed, and Mike said, “Blair!” so I stood up quickly wondering what I’d missed. In hindsight, it would have been better to ease out of my seat, on the off chance that my attention was being called to what it was-a lone male elephant, giving us the eye. The jeep stopped, and our guide explained that these elephants are the most dangerous because they don’t have the rest of the herd around to protect them, and because of territorial issues. It starts when I bound up up out of my seat, and takes a few, fast, threatening steps towards us. Our guide waves his hat frantically and yells something in Sinhala. I have one leg out of the back of the jeep, ready to make my move. (What move? you ask. How should I know? I panicked. It was a big angry elephant, OK?) The elephant stops coming at us, but it stands there and beats it’s foot on the ground. It bellows.
“That means he’s angry,” our guide says, “very dangerous.” Yet he is smiling. The two ton, non-reasonable, upset animal is very close. It does the little mini-charge again, and again the guide yells and shakes his baseball cap at it. It stops again, staring us down. We tell our guide we’re ready to go. The jeep pulls forward, and happily Frankendumbo does not follow. The bus ride home from Udawalawe actually gave this experience a run for its money for which was more hellish to endure. We stood on a crowded, hot, musty, ancient public bus for 3 1/2 hours. I don’t know that I can really put into words how terrible this was, so I’m going to ask you to take my word for it.

The next weekend, we were asked to face elephants again. This time, they were much more hospitable because they were not wild, but at an elephant orphanage. No jeeps here, you could just walk up and pet them. I never thought I’d want to be near an elephant again, but these were pretty friendly.

I was exceedingly ready to leave Sri Lanka, and I do feel somewhat guilty, because there are people there who have come to mean a lot to me, but I was really looking forward to getting back to Thailand. Will I miss it? Parts of it. Brother Rajan, our host, was just brilliant and hilarious and completely selfless when it came to anything we needed, anything at all. Several of the other Brothers there kept me smiling too, and for that I can’t thank them enough. Time and meals with Melissa, Mike and the US Bro. Augustine were the best parts of the day. It’s very fortunate I did not have to do this alone.

Last night, I left for my plane to Bangkok. I didn’t sleep much, the flight was only about 4 hours; so when I got here, I walked into the first guesthouse that would take me a slept for a while. Eventually, I took myself out of bed, because I had several errands to run. Firstly, I was out of clothes. I went to the weekend market at Chatachuk, one of the largest outdoor markets in the world; the beating and bleeding heart of consumerism, torn from the body and plopped on the sweltering hot pavement of central Bangkok every weekend, pumping hoards of tourists and locals through endless alleys of shops selling anything the mind can conjure up at a negotiable price. I do not generally like to shop, but this place turning me into a buying machine. But 5 bucks for a skirt, I mean REALLY. I dropped off some laundry today as well, and applied for a visa to Cambodia. It should be ready on the 2nd, so I’ve booked a bus to Angkor Wat on the 3rd. Three days in Bangkok. I don’t know what I’ll do with them, and I don’t care. I love it here.

A little background info

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

“One of the stories I tell myself when I am trying to fall asleep is that I have tried.  I’ve tagged along after myself in the pages of my own modern Western, and every few years is another chapter in the story.  The myth of the cowboy.  I chased a dream and it kicked me in the teeth.  Yet I find myself falling for it again and again.  I am guilty of adding to the romance, of overlooking the tiny deaths that make the life so hard.”
-Tom Groneberg, “The Secret Life of Cowboys” 

We’re balanced right on the edge of the rainy season here in Sri Lanka. Showers come and go for short intervals unannounced and largely unheeded by the people who live here. My room is situated on the side of the house opposite the water, facing the considerably less attractive evidence of human inhabitation. Stray dogs pick through the trash that lines the street. The dilapidated walls of houses are made to look even less hospitable thanks to layers of grime and pollution. I’ve never seen anyone inside the building across from me. It looks uninhabitable by most standards, though, like many of the housing complexes around here, I imagine it is not regarded as such by would-be tenants. But it beats sleeping in the rain, I reckon.  There is one, lone chair on the roof of that building.  Day and night, rain or shine.  I wonder how it got there and why it remains; who sat in it or who intends to.  What they wish about when they stare into the sky, all alone in that chair, so temporarily removed from the garbage and barking and smog.  Maybe they don’t look at the sky at all…maybe they just sit there-out of the mess, but smart enough not to become trapped by the lure of an impossible dream.  Then again, like I said, nobody ever seems to sit there.

When I woke up this morning, I knew it had rained last night, because there was water in the hallway, seeping under the doors on the opposite side.  Rain only comes in through the window on the ocean side.  So maybe my view isn’t that bad after all.  Every morning is a carbon copy of the morning before:  my alarm goes off at 6am, and me being the only one to have an alarm, I stumble half asleep out of my room and knock heavily on Melissa’s door (I don’t like wasting time doing several, polite ‘wakey, wakey’ taps), then further down the hall to mike’s door, waiting each time for some verbal confirmation of life within.  Then it’s back to my room for a has-yet-to-be-refreshing cold shower.  After breakfast, we’re driven to school.

First thing every morning, the children are assembled on the grounds to hear announcements and sing the national anthem.  Their voices drift up through the trees, beyond themselves, past the three-walled classroom where they reach my ears as I sit in the empty space cluttered with too many old, wooden desks; planning the day’s lesson, waiting for them.  From that point on, the day goes either surprisingly well, or I am broken completely and contemplating desertion.  I teach five sections of 10th grade english–each class with their own charms and/or Children of the Corn.  Between classes, I sit in an open foyer facing the main lawn.  I used to like sitting on the lawn itself, but I have apparently managed to violently displease the crows here, which attack me and me alone when I enter their territory.  They let everyone else be: Melissa, Mike, the elderly, the children who seek to destroy their nests–but for whatever reason, they go absolutely Hitchcock when I’m around, swooping down and pecking me on the head.  There is one crow in particular who I believe is actually insane, and I wait patiently for that one opportune moment when no students are watching, when we may proceed to throw down.  I’m no advocate of cruelty to animals, but I will destroy this bird.  Its day is neigh.  After school, we stay for another two hours, tutoring students who need extra help.  Then it’s back to the Provincial House. 

The house itself begs for a more in depth description.  I’ve just walked out of the little computer room in search of someone who can tell me more about it–I wanted to hear the actual history, that it might bring to life all the shadows and creaks; some corroboration with the general sense I get that this place has a story all it’s own.  As soon as I walk into the hall, I see Brother Ignatius tutoring one of the girls who comes up to the house every day from the beach.  The kids who live in the villages down there are marginalized by public schools, Br. Ignatius tells me, and their families are too poor to send them to private schools, so the Brothers started a program here where they can come for free and get a good education.  And by ‘good education’, I actually mean, ‘qualify for Mensa’.  There is a small group of girls who are here working quietly when we leave in the morning, and are still hunched over their notebooks, scribbling away when we go upstairs to bed.  They are relentless.  Brother tells me that not so long ago, “ladies would not have even been invited here, but of course, things have changed.”  The house was built over 80 years ago, on land bought from a Dutch company, previously owned by a Portuguese planter.  The only vestiges remaining from that time now are a low, arched parapet running along the edge of the hill overlooking the ocean and a small stone elephant guarding one of the five entrances to the covered veranda.  There, in the main house, are a few small rooms used as classrooms, libraries, a kitchen, and one temporary computer lab.  Further down, the main house connects via sheltered garden area to the Brothers’ quarters. 

 When you first enter the gate, you are confronted with a well looked after lawn serving as a sort of landscaping drum roll announcing the chapel on the other side.  Sitting on a site which was once a Portuguese dance hall, the church sits patiently waiting to fill its occupant capacity, though it’s been a good 50 years since it’s had the chance.  Br. Ignatius estimates that at least 130 Brothers lived here then, alongside a number of young men who boarded here while they trained to become Brothers themselves.  These days, there are less than 30 Brothers who live here, plus the three of us.  “Lots of space”, I quip optimistically.

Although some might see this period of scant occupation of the house as a dark time, I certainly enjoy it in my own selfish, incurable romanticism for all things potentially haunted.  I love walking around at night, hearing the harmonized hum of an outdoor insect orchestra, my mind filling with thoughts and moments, just as the halls are saturated with the ghosts of Sunday Masses past.  Solemn, quiet but for the occasional thud of the as yet unidentified creature(s) in the attic, the house stands as much a supernatural mystery as it is a testament to stability, protection, and above all, the ability of the things we create to outlast their architects.

We spend most of our time after school here.  There are benches along a break in the parapet which easily lend themselves to extended moments of introspection at any time of day.  There’s a sizable shipwrecked boat that the people living in the village have brought closer to the shore and stripped for any valuable materials or sheet metal they could use to bolster their vulnerable seaside homes.  During the day there’s a cool breeze, the rustle of palm.  The sunlight warms your face and carries the peaceful feeling from where you are sitting out over the ocean; brings it back to the sun, connects something in your soul with the rhythm of the day, slowing as the sun sets over the water.  For a brief moment as it retreats from orange into blue, everything is frozen in place, distance becomes nothing, smoke and mirrors, it isn’t real.

Of course we’ve seen more than this in our time here, but I truly was not expecting to spend so much time talking about the atmosphere in which our little stories take place.  And now it’s getting pretty late.  Wednesday’s over, and that’s fortunate, but there’s still two more days to go before our impending 3 day weekend, so I’m going to head upstairs for some shut eye.  I’ll do another blog soon about the particulars of our experience.  Until then, cheers.