Bo Tree at Bellanwila Temple
Sri Lanka hits you like a tropical
blanket – the air is a wash of water and car horns and bird song. It is both lush and green and dirty and
concrete; bursting with color from the people and buildings and
plants. I have stumbled into this chaotic paradise courtesy of
Fulbright, for whom I will serve as an English teacher at the
University of Colombo for 8 months. I have this next month to work
through Sinhala lessons while I luxuriate in the delicious dizziness
of culture shock – not quite knowing where I am or what to do at
any moment. This stage is one of my favorite things about traveling –
for a few weeks you are a child again. You are unsure of how to get
from place to place, what to eat, how to speak. That feeling, and the
slow satisfaction as you learn to cross the street without looking
like a fool, order food, find the right bus. Now I am living with
four other English teachers in a house so large we feel like pinballs
bouncing through it – a house surrounded by brilliant green and
awash in the calls of birds. One night I was kept awake by the
scampering of monkeys on the roof, and the next day I encountered
them in the garden – we were each as startled and curious as the
other.
The monkey encounter.
In my first day or two I think this cow was more adept at crossing the street than I.
Some context for my new home.
Sri Lanka is a country of transitions
right now. I count myself incredibly fortunate to be here for a
fraction of their history as they move forward. Sri Lanka is recently
out of war. The Fulbright director described it as “post war but
not post conflict” - the fighting is done but for the Sinhalese
majority and the Tamil minority conflict is still fresh in memory and
continued discrimination and misunderstanding. We stand at this
moment on the brink of possibility – a new president miraculously
swept out the tyrannical reign of the former president Rajapaksa
whose ruthlessness ended the war, but at terrible cost of life and
human dignity. All the Sri Lankans who have spoken to us hail
President Sirisena as the beginning of a new chapter for their
country, but there is much work to be done and many decades of pain
to be healed. Conflict between the Hindu minority in the North and
the Buddhist majority of the south reached a head in 1983 when
government enflamed tension erupted into riots through Colombo, and
death to any Tamil who the riots found. The Northern response to this
was to create one of the most effective guerrilla resistance groups
the world has seen, the infamous Tamil Tigers. The two sides traded
atrocities until 2009, when the Sri Lankan government bombed the
North to ashes. When they were done, there was no one left to fight.
Peace comes slowly, and perhaps has its first real chance under the
new government who has changed inflammatory rhetoric about the war
and sought to minimize the disparity between resources in the North
and South. Whether this will be enough, whether stated intentions
will fully materialize, remains to be seen.
Sri Lanka is an island about the size of West Vriginia off the Southern tip of India. I am living in Colombo, while the war and most of the damage remaining from it occurred in the North around Jaffna.
Sri Lanka is in the midst of economic transition as well. My past two homes – Cambodia and Rwanda were squarely in the “third world” while Sri Lanka seems well on its journey on the imaginary line towards “developed country” . I find myself in shock at simple things like bus tickets, cross walks, functioning (and obeyed!) traffic lights, western style grocery stores – things I rarely would have encountered in my past travels. We went to a fancy hotel for a final dinner after orientation – an ostentatious kind of place with butlers in uniform to open the door for you, sparkling marble floors, and chandeliers complete with bland modern art. I normally hate going to this kind of place because i someplace like Cambodia or Rwanda the patrons would have been solely white, but here the majority of the patrons sipping coffee or cocktails in overstuffed chairs were Sri Lankan. It will take me some time to learn that this is Sri Lanka too – not just the open air markets and clogged streets full of Tuktuks. It is a well educated country with a growing middle class, and an upper class with connections all over the world. Colonial heritage lingers in the excellent English of the upper class which seeps into every part of the country – even the menu at the little takeaway restaurant near our home advertises its curries and rotis in English. But here, more than a reminder of Colonialism, English serves as a bridge between the languages Tamil and Sinhala which have divided the country for so long. I hope my time here will be a tiny fraction of that bridge.
(If you are interested in learning more
about the history of my new home I suggest reading “The Cage” by
Gordon Weiss who gives a riveting account of the end of the civil
war. But please keep in mind that Sri Lanka is more than its
tragedies.)
Photos of the incredible beauty and diversity of this country: Ballanwila Temple, the Red Mosque, and Pettah shopping street.
