Stray Dogs and Drunken Geckoes
I blinked into the blazing sunlight and surveyed the lush tropical greenery from the bedroom window. We had arrived. Time to explore. John wanted a day of rest, but I was having none of it. “We have come half way around the world”, I scolded “and over the next few weeks you will lock yourself away to work on your software. Fine. I’m going to find the whales. But at least let’s go for a quick walk!” So, reluctantly, he trudged along.
We jumped onto a crowded bus to Negombo town. The blaring of car horns, the smells, the bright colours were exhilarating. We passed a bustling market where hordes of people pushed around stalls offering toys, plastic sandals, sunglasses, all sorts of household goods, newspapers and magazines. Among the bustle, peddlars were auctioning bright squares of cloth, surrounded by clamouring crowds. Across the road from them, vegetables and fruit were piled high in orderly pyramids. Aubergines, chillies and gourds; mountains of oranges, apples, pineapples and coconuts; fat bunches of bananas and grapes. All kinds of streetfood were on offer from nuts to rotis, vades (deep-fried pastries) to Sri Lanka’s national snack: hoppers: bowl-shaped crispy rice pancakes with a fried egg in the middle.
Soon, we pulled into the bus station. The 15 minute ride had cost 4 rupees, the equivalent of 2.5 p.
We decided to walk towards the sea. Negombo is a resort town and I expected pristine beaches not far from the centre. We set off at our customary pace and soon overtook a leathery ox pulling a cart. The old man on the cart promptly began to slap the animal with a stick to coax it on to greater speed, but he did not manage to overtake us.
We reached the lagoon where brightly painted outrigger boats were pulled up on shore. Men in sarongs unloaded baskets of glittering fish. In the distance, past the mouth of the lagoon, we could see the red sails of traditional oruva boats which the fishermen sail out to sea up to a distance of 50 km on journeys lasting several days. I dreamed about going out on one of these boats to look for whales which occasionally enter the waters around Negombo. If I had been a man, perhaps a crew would have taken me. As a woman, it was wiser not to ask.
We crossed a bridge over the Dutch-Portugese Canal which connects the Kelani Ganga at Colombo in the south to the Puttalam lagoon in the north, a distance of over 100 km. The canal was built by the Portugese in the 15th century and extended by the Dutch in the 17th century as a means to move gems and spices from the interior and provide a shipping link during the southwest monsoon which can render the coastal waters treacherous. We walked past one of the ubiquitous cricket fields and came to the municipal jail, built on the site of a former fort by the British and still in use today. At long last, we reached the sea and a busy fish market.
Parched, I stopped by a stall selling golden King coconuts. Before I could open my mouth, a man had appeared by our side. He was an elderly, slightly stooped fellow with a graying beard. His threadbare suit marked him out as a city dweller, a clerk possibly, but cetainly somebody who had seen better times.
“Where are you from?” this was to be a question I knew we would be asked countless times. I am still being asked that back in Britain and I have lived there for 15 years.
“Scotland.”
The man seemed pleased and told us about the time he had worked in the UK. I frowned slightly, worried that we were being set upon by a tout, but I kept quiet. He might just be a bored old man practising his English. He asked about our jobs and I explained that John was a lecturer and I was a Zoologist. I did not mention that neither of us was employed at the present time. He seemed genuinly taken aback.
“In our country”, he said “an academic would never talk to a plain man such as myself!” We assured him that must be nonsense, but he was adamant. “That is the difference between our countries” he said with finality, “here it is all a question of caste”. For the first time, I was made aware of Sri Lanka’s caste system. The man was among the better dressed people on the market. Everybody else, it seemed, belonged to the labouring classes, dressed plainly, mainly in shirts and sarongs. Nobody wore rags but nobody was well off.
The man proceeded to lecture us about the coconuts. I was irritated by this tutorial; the stallholder overcharged us as a result and I had not been in any position to haggle. I really did not want a guide to follow us around, so we said our good-byes. The man looked a bit desolate, as if we had concluded that he wasn’t good enough to talk to after all. We left him behind and walked on.
We threaded our way past rows of tables displaying the bounty of the lagoon and the sea: prawns, marlin steaks, sprats, swimming crabs and the juveniles of large pelagic fish including tuna no longer than my arm. I worried about overfishing. Everywhere, small fish were spread out on blankets to dry in the sun. As we came towards the end of the market, the tables were replaced by women squatting in front of small pieces of plastic matting on which just a few handfuls of sprats were displayed. We were now walking past tiny huts of corrugated metal which lined the beach. There was poverty here.
We turned back towards the main road to circle the fishing village and reach the beaches further up the coastline. It was almost noon and the heat was getting to us. We had to slow our pace. It couldn’t be far now.
A good half hour later, we passed St. Mary’s Church, a legacy of the Portugese. During colonial rule, many of the local karava caste of fishermen converted to catholicism to improve their social standing. Negombo is a stronghold of Roman catholicism in Sri Lanka to this day.
I checked my guidebook. St. Mary’s Church was near the bottom on the map of Negombo beach. I turned back a page. The main beach area, it turned out, was 4km north from the town centre. We could have taken bus no. 905 to get there. That will teach me to read the guide before setting out.
John started to grumble, with good reason. To entice him to come along, I had told him we would “just go for a quick coffee by the beach.”
“We must have almost walked that far already” I mollified him “Let’s get past the church and check there.” There was no beach, just more huts. Children splashed in a water tank behind the church yard, throwing glittering drops high into the air. People cycled and walked past and every one of them smiled and waved at us. Some of the smaller children ran towards us and followed us some of the way. This must be what it feels like to be a celebrity. We smiled and waved until our face muscles ached. I felt like Princess Di. After half an hour of this, I became so demented that I smiled and waved at a stray dog which was crossing the road.
I was surprised at how quickly and comprehensively we had veered off the beaten track. Negombo is the closest resort town to the airport and a major thoroughfare for virtually everybody holidaying in Sri Lanka. It should be crawling with tourists. Yet, the people acted as if they had never seen a foreigner before.
A long loop took us back to the main street not far from where we had left it. Walking in my flip-flops was getting painful. John had comfortable leather sandals, mine had cost a quid in the sale and the cheap material was rubbing between my toes. My thighs were chafing and to top it all I was beginning to feel dizzy. The relentless sun was getting to me. The saying about “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” sprang to mind. I checked with John who appeared to be fine. “I think I am getting a sun stroke” I sighed, “I need a break.”
He agreed. The cheap restaurants and bars recommended in the guidebook were only a few hundred yards further up the road, but it felt as if I was walking on glass. When we, at long last, reached one of the establishments, I nearly wept with exhaustion. It was amazing how quickly the tropical heat could make itself felt: I was pouring with sweat and my hands were shaking. I realized that I had come very close to a full-blown sun-stroke. John was unaffected, his tall slender frame was more suited to the heat and his thick head of hair evidently provided sufficient insulation from the sun. While I sipped a soda, he hungrily put away an enormous lunch of devilled pork, rice and salad followed by two cups of coffee. At last his caffeine craving had been satisfied.
We had finally arrived at the tourist ghetto, but I had no desire to check out the beach any more. However, a little further up the road, a supermarket was indicated on the map. I decided to press on; we needed to buy a number of things — there was nothing in the house, not even a kitchen knife or salt.
It didn’t look to be far. I summoned my strength, imagining the supermarket to be on the scale of Sainsbury’s back home where we could pick up everything we needed in air-conditioned comfort and then take a bus back. And so we walked on. Down the road, we passed one of the little general stores which bore a hand-painted ‘Tesco’ sign. We smiled. Doubtlessly the sign was an attempt to cash in on the proximity of the real thing. We stopped smiling when we had reached the last road marked on the map. The guide’s authors apparently thought the little shop we had walked past really was a Tesco’s.
It was a 20 minute wait for the bus back to town. Every single seat was taken. We were rammed into the aisle by the pressure of more and more people pushing on. At one point I think I had six children standing on my feet. When at long last a seat next to John became vacant, I practically pushed him into it. “I don’t care if little old ladies have to stand” I hissed, edging my way towards him “I need to sit down for a minute or I am going to throw up!”
Self-consciously I took the seat. After a few minutes, I felt better and made room for one of the old women. The locals, including the woman herself, looked aghast. I later learnt that people do not surrender their seats on buses even in the face of bad Karma or eternal hellfire, although an exception is made for the clergy.
In the high street, the bus began to empty and finally we could both sit down and relax. A refreshing breeze blew through the open window and things took on a whole new perspective. I enjoyed the picturesque market scene content in the knowledge that we were now seasoned travellers exploring exotic lands at our leisure. At least until, two minutes later, the bus pulled into the station and we had to join the heaving throng in the dust and heat outside. Things improved on our final leg. The bus started in the station, so we were able to secure a seat with ease and, for the first time that day, travelled in comfort. On the way, we passed three supermarkets. But we did not need to go back for them. It turned out that the little shops down our road sold everything we would need.
*****
I was too worn out to cook, so we went out for BBQ chicken. We rounded off the evening with a nightcap of arrack, the local spirit distilled from palm toddy, and ginger beer.
The geckoes, which we had spotted earlier high up on the walls, were getting cockier. A pair of them had scuttled from the table when we got back and now, to my surprise, I found that one had been hiding in the plastic flower pot that served as the centrepiece. It stuck out its tiny head, looked around, flicked its tongue and slowly made its way down the side of the pot. There it froze, but it kept flicking its tongue.
“You know,” I whispered to John “I’ve got the feeling it can smell the ginger beer”.
He nodded.
It was irresistible. I dipped my finger into the glass and brought it slowly towards the gecko. If the animal looked alarmed, this was soon overridden by a more frequent flicking of the tongue.
Eventually, incredibly, I was within reach and the gecko licked the liquid off my fingertip with a tiny rasping sensation. With a start I realized that the drink was mixed with arrack. Guiltily, I withdrew my finger and gently shoo-ed the gecko towards its more natural hunting ground on the wall. It was very reluctant to leave the flowerpot. I hoped it was not too drunk.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
Denni