Cinco de Lanka

Ampara is a different world. The work, the people, the experience, it's completely something else, and nothing like Matara was. The 11 hour drive from Colombo was strange and lovely. I had been up the entire night before, designing tags for the MonkBags, sending out emails, paying bills, and just doing as much as I could while I had broadband access. So when I crawled into the I.O.M. pickup, donned in with a huge I.O.M. flag and stickers I found comfort in the AC and coziness of the plush grey seats. As the ride went on I'd wonder why people stared at us so much as we drove by. Then I would remember how imposing the vehicle looked, how flashy. It's probably helpful, the flag and the logos on the vehicle, when you're in Iraq or Kosovo, but it was a little much for here.

The way is long and treacherous from the east coast to the southwest. 11 hours of winding roads through high mountains, through forests and cliffs, much of it seemed so remote. Families would be walking on the side of the road, and we'd swerve to avoid them , but all I could think was, where on earth could they be going? What places are they in between, to be walking here? After some hours, some ravines, some waterfalls, some monkeys, some elephants, some giant stone buddhas, and some bamboo forests, we found ourselves in Kandy, a whole city with a huge lake in the middle of it. We stopped for lunch, and i met a Nepalese engineer who was designing shelters. Also met a Danish acrobat who was traveling around Sri Lanka performing for kids in camps. With him, a young Sri Lankan American, young, wearing Korn tshirt, who taught me the Sri Lankan hand gestures for "Fuck off" and "You're a pussy". I explained to him that when I go swimming (in a full t-shirt and three quarter leg shorts) and guys follow me around in the water, they don't seem to get it when I give them the finger, they just smile and think "oh, she must want me". I also recorded the sinhala words for "Go away" and other useful phrases on my phone. After Kandy, coming around the hundredth blind u-turn bend, we had to brake fast. On the skinny road were some monks tending to a cow lying in the middle. We all cringed at the idea of a lone cow getting slammed by some psycho truck driver. But there was no truck, and no blood. As they dragged it off to the side and we watched their gestures pointing upwards, we realized that poor cow had slipped from the tall, steep cliff above.

We are living in the town of Akkairapatu. It's very rural. A small dusty town. Paddy fields as far as you can see to the horizon in moth directions. The camps are much more remote, in fact everything is, and I spend many hours in a van or a truck, just getting places. Yesterday, we passed a lotus pond the size of 3 football fields. The roads are terrible, if even existent, you bob up and down or get thrown around the vehicle for hours on end, and my boobs ache at the end of every day, even on the ones when my Champion sports bra is clean. Our office is a big green army tent, and I've grown accustomed to bugs of all shapes and sized crawling all over my keyboard and down my shirt as I work. Bugs all over the shower. Bugs weighing down the mosquito net. The sound of piles of bugs falling off the ceiling onto the floor at night. There are 2 places to go and eat, in Ampara town, 1 hour away, both not great. Regardless, it's like "going into town" and we buy our juice and canned goods there.

The Tamils are quite different from the Sinhalese, they are taller, darker, and have a very different work ethic. I've suprisingly had alot more luck with the staff here. Mostly I am annoyed that all the Sinhala I have picked up is useless to me now, and have to start learning all over again. Often, many Tamils and Sinhalese cannot understand each other, so I have to put 3 people in a line to translate fwhat I want to say to someone- English to Tamil, Tamil to Sinhala, and Sinhala back to Tamil, then Tamil to English. So all my work, already taking quite long, now sometimes takes 2 to 3 times longer.

Living in a predominanatly Muslim culture in such a small place is another thing as well. When I lived in Brunei, at least it was a bigger place, and though the women were covered they carried Gucci bags. I have to say I enjoy the mix of women here, and I smile inside when I am talking to women in the camps, and I have a fully covered muslim woman from head to wrists beside a hindu mom in a sari with her red bhindi and here white painted forehead, anklets and toerings. That being said, the intense male energy here is intense. There are absolutely no women out after 7 PM. And I have found myself sometimes feeling quite unsafe in certain fishing villages, as the groups little by little crowd in on me.

Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus, and Catholics, I've come across all of them in this town, and it's great to see them all living together. This, though, makes every third day a holiday of one or the other, again, not so good for getting business taken care of.

The other thing different about it here is that it is even more beautiful, and even more destroyed. Entire villages were just plain levelled, so there is alot less rubble and standing walls, just truck cabs half buried in the sand and telephone poled poking out of the water. Driving through many of the coastal areas the sea is to your left and a huge lagoon to your right. With one of the field officers the other day, he pointed to the sea, then to the lagoon, "This village- empty. All people, come the big wave there, cannot run no where, drown them in lagoon, there." Casket carriers still sit in many places on the beach. Yesterday, I saw a skull on a spear in the ground. The pain seems deeper here then it was in Matara. There, everyone and their father talked about it, while here, everyone is quiet abut the past and angry about what they don't see in their present and future, which is homes, jobs, and help from their government. The men are definitely drunker here. The camps are much more spread out, and in the middle of nowhere, often fenced in barbed wire to ward off wild elephants. Wide open space, with a lovely tree here and there, and temporary shelters. Sometimes, we have to drive the truck through deep water, and when I come to the villages of corrugated tin roofing, chicken wire windows and cement floors, and find a woman squatting under a random tree in a dusty field, I feel like I'm in National geographic. I'm realizing more and more the gift (and responsibility) i've been given to see this time and place.

2 hours south is Aragam bay. I've fallen in love with this place. Though also still terribly destroyed, you can still see what it once was, a sleepy little surfer town with hotels like "Sun and surf" covered in Bob Marley flags, hot brother owners, bright cabanas and a good kitchen, or "Hideaway" with driftwood hanging from the ceilings and shells in the cement footbaths, Other favorites are "The Aloha", "The Hillton" and "The Holoday In". The water is beautiful, and I felt quite safe in it, the first time in a long time. A group of us went down for the night last weekend, and we had a lobster dinner on the beach under metal kettles hanging from tree branches, with gas and wicks from their snouts to make fire. I find myself volunteering to go to Ullae camp just so I can make it down to Aragam bay- even for lunch. What it revealed to me was that it is still possible to do this kind of work, which is outright down and dirty, but still treat yourself like a human being. That it's important to balance it all out. I always forget.

As we're so far out here, and officially living in a warzone,security is more of an issue. There are less internationals out here, so the ones that are stick together, and are much more friendly. I've found myself at dinners with people from all walks of life, and riding in UN vehicles has become pretty regular. People are really helpful to me, and I haven't paid for anything or had to deal with transporting myself in 2 weeks. I ask for things, and people give them to me. I forget the stature sometimes of who I'm working with (IOM), and realize I feel right here, doing this, while every other profession I've been in, I walk in fear that everyone will find out that I'm a big fake. For the first time, I feel like I deserve it.

At the same time, I'm homesick as hell, and am looking forward to July in Boston. That's right- back to school. Another way of working the system, another long boring visa story. Depending on when my new visa goes through, I will be passing thru LA on the way to 6 weeks in my old college town, and back to LA for 2 weeks or so. May need to go back to Manila to apply for another visa after that. Or Sri Lanka. Who the hell knows. Though it's the friends that I miss the most, i guess it's time to accept that my home is wherever I lay my head. But I must admit, I still long for burritos and cervezas, and I pouted in the army tent, rain outside, bugs in my shirt, thinking of this Cinco de Mayo whithout sombreros and margeritas and Olveras street and amigos and amigas...