ABDF

Monday March 10, 2008

Hi everybody!

Well, election day is here. All is quiet so far. Very quiet. I decided to take a walk into town and see what things are like. My house is only 1 km from what we would call the downtown section of Batti (which I refer to as “Batti proper”). There are a ton of police and military standing on the streets, and a couple of those big huge armed personal carriers. But very little civilian traffic. In fact, there is so little street traffic you can cross the main road without looking either way, and still cross safely. Most people are very nervous; I’d say at least 85% of shops are closed, as are the schools (balloting is being held in them) and of the people you do see on the streets, there are no Muslims about. They are staying home, in Kattankudy down the road.

As it was lunch time, I was in town, and I found my breakfast of toast and tea hadn’t really filled me up, I decided to go to the Suberage Inn, which is located in Batti proper. They have a really excellent egg curry, so I thought it’d be a good excuse to go and see some action. The Suberage, because it is centrally located one block off the main street, is where all the NGO (Non-Government Organizations, i.e.: the Red Cross, etc) and press bigwigs usually stay. It is, incidentally, the other good restaurant in the area, the other being the previously mentioned Riviera where I like to break my fast.

I wasn’t disappointed when I got there. The outdoor eating patio, which is really rather pleasant, was filled with press. Most were from Sri Lankan outlets, but at one table sat a group of Westerners. I introduced myself, and learned that they were from Al Jazeera’s English service, based in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. I commented that they sure had come a long way for our little local election. I chatted with them a while, and we exchanged contact information and a little gossip about the election. The senior cameraman, Justin, and I talked quite a bit; he said that this was the team’s second visit to Batti in less than eight months, and they probably would be back in the months ahead. So that would be nice, to have some foreign folks I know dropping by every now and again.

Needless to say, my egg curry was excellent, and I sat there some while, drinking my 1.5 liter bottle of water. I forgot to mention that. The other day when I was having breakfast at the Riviera, I actually looked at my bottle of water. Its 1.5 liters, not 1. Think ¾ of a big bottle of Coke. No wonder that last third can be a challenge to get down!

So I sat there and watched everyone running about being important. At one point there was a bang! and rattle rattle rattle. There was a lull in conversation as everyone looked at each other. Gunfire? We then realized that a guy repairing a tile roof next door had pushed some broken tile off the roof on to a pile of corrugated metal, making the noise. The conversation picked again.

So now I’m back at the house, sitting on the veranda looking at the lagoon and typing this.

One thing has occurred to me, and I hope it’s not just an election gimmick. Last year, we had blackouts every day, even if only for a few seconds. It caused a great deal of grumbling. So far this week there hasn’t been one. I don’t know why this is so, but I hope it stays this way.

Yesterday, Sunday, I spent a relaxing afternoon with my best friend here, Suja. He and his mother run a tiny shop in Kalladay. Many of you have seen the pictures and heard the story of how we met after the tsunami. Hanging out at the shop is something I like to do whenever I can. I just sit there, behind the counter, and Suja and I chat. Often we are interrupted by customers off the street, and so I watch the interactions. As you know, I’m an avid people watcher, so I just sit and observe. Actually I’m probably good for business. Word usually spreads that the foreign guy is at the shop again (I’m pretty well recognized in the immediate neighborhood) and people come in to look, ask questions, and buy a little something. I should charge Suja for being the shop mascot.

Anyway, on Sundays Suja works the shop from about noon to four. He is usually alone, relieving his mom, who works there constantly through the week. So it’s a good time for us to talk, and talk we do. He’s a great source of information about the area and the people we both know in it. He also confides in me about stuff he wouldn’t normally tell others, Kallady being a very tight place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Yesterday he told me that he has a girlfriend, his first. His mother doesn’t know about the girl, who is a student up in Trincomalee (Trinco, for short) the next major city north of here. Suja works in Trinco during the week, hence his mom working all week long in the shop, and it seems that he met this girl about a month ago. They have only had one alone date together (solo dates are rare in Sri Lanka) and on that date they kissed once. Suja isn’t used to talking about such things, so he got embarrassed in that proud sort of way when I teased him, calling him Romeo. He says he doesn’t think he loves her, at least not yet. He just likes her a lot. Smart boy; it’s easy to get carried away with your first relationship (how many of us have made THAT mistake) and promise the sun and moon. But Suja is too level headed to get swept away, I think.

The sky is getting dark with clouds. I think it’s gonna rain soon.

So, about dating and marriage. It used to be, way back when, that marriages were arranged. Except among very conservative, traditional upper class families, or deep in rural areas, this custom has largely faded away. Well, sort of. Young people are free to meet and have boy/girlfriends, but if the parents disapprove of the object of affection, it usually comes to a halt. Dates as such are usually at one family’s house or the other, and are more like coming over for a family dinner than a date as we think of them. Thus the boy/girlfriend gets to know the family very well, and vice-versa. Of course most relationships are local, so everyone already knows the potential love and his /her good aspects and faults. Rarely is the boy/girlfriend a stranger to the family. So in a sense this sort of dating is a trial run: how does this person fit into the family? And it is thus that the pressure can be applied to end an unpopular relationship. Dating as we know it almost never happens.

Sex doesn’t either. I’ve talked with a couple Sri Lankan men about sex, and what they know and don’t. Izzadeen, my other best friend here, is very westernized and thus knowledgeable about sex and all that can be done in its variations. But some of my less widely exposed friends have little or no understanding of sex. Oh they all know the biological aspect of it, but it’s that complex emotional and psychological part of it that they don’t get. Society here is very conservative by our standards; the media is heavily censored, and public displays of affection frowned upon and entirely unseen. With the advent of the internet, there is some exposure to porn, but as 99% of people have to use public internet cafes, any such porn usually consists of the odd picture downloaded and hurriedly put in the computer Trash Can after a quick gaze. (In the past, one amusing pastime for us volunteers was to look in the Trash Can to see what people had looked at. Usually there’s a dirty picture or two.)

I once had a fascinating conversation with Sushila Rajah, a friend of mine here who, like me, runs several independent projects. Hers tend to revolve around psychological services, such as training trauma councilors and such. Anyway, she told me that the level of sexual knowledge here is very, very low, and that it isn’t uncommon that, on their wedding night, neither person knows what to do. The art of making love is something hinted at in the media (soap operas, movies and the like) but is never explicit, leaving people with no idea of sex as a pleasurable thing. And the few who have managed to see or read pornography, the only way to get any sort of information here, tend to have unrealistic views about sex, thinking that the images they see or read about are normal. There is no one to tell them “These things are fantasy, they aren’t real.” The result can be low self image and unrealistic expectations. And ultimately, disappointment.

So different from us in the West where, even if you try, you can’t avoid sex and sexual imagery.

As an aside, in part due to this sexual prudery, sexually transmitted disease is relatively uncommon here, including HIV. At least this is true here in Batti. In Colombo it is different, where there’s an active sex trade. Most of the country’s STDs and HIV cases are in Colombo. I hope it stays there. But outside Colombo, sex outside marriage is exceedingly rare.

So if the person is acceptable to the family, and the youth decides s/he actually loves that person, marriage is often the result. This isn’t hurried into and the relationship stays as it is until the time and money are right. Typically, the bride-to-be’s family will build her a house, and the newlyweds will move into that. It remains, however, the property of the bride. The groom and his family will provide all the items that make up a household, and pay for the wedding as well. All this can get to be very expensive, which is why kids here take their time to get married. Divorce, while not unheard of, is extremely rare. Perhaps this partly because everyone, including the two extended families, get to know each other very well before the marriage; any incompatibilities are either worked out or the relationship doesn’t last.

If you can find a mate that you actually like, and he or she you, you are counted as fortunate.

Those who still marry a person of whom the family does not approve had better be damned sure of their decision. Such marriages, sometimes referred to as “love marriages,” can have severe repercussions. Frequently the couple is ostracized by one or both families, often without reconciliation, at least until there are children. Only the hardest of hearts would refuse to see the grandkids. But this ostracism cuts the newlyweds from the support network of the extended family, which is of vital importance in Sri Lanka. And if the marriage should cross religion! Both churches will cast out the offending member, and it can be impossible to regain social acceptance.

Many of you will recall Mary, the woman with the kids that Jordan and we volunteers did much to help after the tsunami. She was the suicidal woman with the boy Dino, who has Down’s syndrome. She came from such a love marriage; she is Christian, and her husband Hindu. Both were, and are, rejected by their families, and their churches had shunned them. In addition to the husbands’ death two years previously, this is why the family had such a hard time after the tsunami, and Mary fell into such a deep depression. Most survivors had some sort of safety network, however meager. But Mary and her family had nobody whomsoever to turn to. So I’m so thankful that she turned to us volunteers, and that we were able to help, especially Jordan. (I haven’t visited her yet; been to busy. But I will next week.)

Ah, love Sri Lankan style.

It’s raining now, very hard.

Climate change has become a topic of conversation here in Sri Lanka. The weather we are having, all this rain, is typical of December weather, during the height of the monsoon. This is, people are insisting, due to global warming, and is part of a pattern over the past few years where the rainy season lasts longer than usual. Also, local flooding has gotten worse, again due to climate change. I don’t know if this is true or not. I’m sure that the flooding is due in part to habitat destruction, especially over the past few years of relative peace as people have been channeling streams and building dykes for their fields. Also local mangrove forests are being cut down, with the result that storm surges are not absorbed as in the past. There was a similar situation during Hurricane Katrina, when the Mississippi Delta, which has been disappearing, failed to absorb the hurricane surge. But as far as the rain is concerned, it’s hard to tell what is a short-term change versus a long term one. But everyone here has heard of climate change, although many don’t understand exactly what it is, or what they can do about it. Environmental awareness has never taken hold here as it has in the West.

The advantage for me is that right now it’s cooler than normal. My handy-dandy temperature gage tells me that right now it’s 83 degrees and 77% humidity. And there are fewer mosquitoes. In my mind this more than makes up for the frequent rains throughout the day. On the other hand, when it rains at night there is the most horrific noise from the lagoon. I don’t know if it’s frogs or some sort of cricket/insect or what. But imagine a cricket noise, but instead of that eeee-ee rhythm we know, imagine it as continuing eeee, making a loud, screeching drone. Top that with a deeper chirping that for all the world sounds like castanets. Now imagine all this constant and LOUD. Thank goodness my room is in the back of the building, where it is much quieter! When I retired to my room last night, my hearing was muffled, as if I had been to a concert or dance club.

Later in the evening.

I’ve just had a good meeting with some members of the Sri Lanka Friendship Society (SFS). We discussed several upcoming projects that they are asking my help on, both as Program Director of my group the ABDF, as well as on some of their own projects with their own funds.

I’ve known the SFS folks since after the tsunami. Founded days after the waves, the SFS was created by two men, Siva and Sasi. Siva is a Sri Lankan who, during the civil war, had to flee the country and became a refugee in Ireland. Eventually gaining Irish citizenship, he works with troubled youth to keep them out of the penal system. He built the house in which I currently live for his family. Sasi is a professor at the English Department of Eastern University, the District’s university. Together with a group of friends both here and in Ireland, they hustled over money and supplies, greatly helping local communities in the aftermath. From this developed the Sri Lankan Friendship Society.

I like this group a lot. Mostly English teachers, members come from around the district, meaning that they have a lot of connections everywhere. They are also one of the more efficient local organizations and actually produce results. Also, members are both men and women, Tamil and Muslim, and their projects reflect this diversity as they don’t discriminate between communities as many here do. In fact, they emphasize projects that promote inter-community relations, trying to bring back together groups torn apart by civil war. Lastly, I find them to be fiscally responsible and transparent. So the SFS is a major partner in our efforts here; in fact many of this years’ projects have come to my attention through members of the SFS. Until now the SFS has been reactive, meaning they’ve pulled together to confront immediate crisis; first the tsunami, then the military offensive last summer. Now they have matured to the point where, under the guidance of Siva, they are planning for the future, which doesn’t happen much in Sri Lanka.

Several new projects were suggested during this meeting, some of which might fit within the ABDF’s mission. For example, an SFS-run orphanage in the hamlet of Sittandy with which I am familiar is having problems making its food bill. This 24% inflation has really reduced the orphanage’s buying power. So I think the SFS is going to ask for a few hundred dollars for 2008 to bridge the gap in their food bill. No official request yet, but I think that’s coming down the pipeline.

In addition I’ve been asked to help design and write the organizations’ literature, with an eye towards using the materials in future fund raising efforts, including grants. These folks are fine with spoken English, but don’t quite write as a native speaker would. And since writing is my thing (as you’ve probably noticed), I can really help them out.

About 18 km (maybe 12 miles) north of Batti, the SFS is building their center. I visited it last year and by now it’s almost finished. It will be a beautiful two-story building with a unique architectural design, including a landscaped inner courtyard, a feature in Sri Lanka you never see. In it the SFS will have its offices, as well as lots of space for all sorts of program activities. One major program will be its Peace and Reconciliation Program. While I don’t have all the details yet, this program will include a series of sub-projects, including conflict resolution training, something in desperate need here in Sri Lanka. I think that the SFS is going to ask me to manage this program. Yikes! Big responsibility. But it is a topic close to my heart. I am heartbroken when I see the people here divided by religion and ethnicity; especially when you realize they all long for the same things in life and ought to be natural allies. The building should be useable next month, and the SFS is eager to start their programs. I’m excited because, in addition to our own projects, this is the sort of work the ABDF is sending me here to do.

So as you can see, things are slowly starting to gel. Now I just want to start working. However, things move slowly here, which Westerners like myself find frustrating. I’m surprised that things have gone so well so fast.

Since I’m on the topic of projects, a word on a couple of our own. By next week I will have more information about our two water projects. Prabha, my lead partner on them, will have contacted two local companies that dig tube wells, and arrange for them to go out and determine water table level. I don’t know how much this part will cost. They can then present me with a report detailing water depth, etc., and the estimated cost of digging and equipment. The well at Irunoorvil, the village way in interior, will probably be expensive, as the water table is much lower and you want to drill deep enough so that there is water during the dry season.

For me personally, the next challenge is to get approval for free passage beyond the military checkpoints into the recently “liberated” interior, where our water projects are located. That too is a task for next week, as everyone important is preoccupied with the election and its aftermath.

Well, it is dark out now and the lights are dim. Here in Sri Lanka, electricity is expensive and limited in quantity. As a result, from about 6 to 9 each night, during peak residential usage, the strength of the current goes down. I’m not sure if that’s an accurate description of what actually happens – does current get weak? I thought a certain voltage or wattage or whatever remains constant and is either on or off. I don’t know. Anyway the result is that the lights are a little dimmer and there isn’t the strength to run computers, my laptop apparently being the exception. In Sri Lanka all computers are desktop, which must use more energy or something. Also, the power to the mobile transmission towers must be less, because it’s virtually impossible to talk on your cell phone, and only occasionally can text messages get through. It’s one of the minor frustrations of life here, if you can work around it.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 (the next day)

Well, the government pulled it off. It was a peaceful election. No bombs, no round-ups, no killings.

As expected, the TMVP won majorities in all municipalities, even in the Muslim ones. Well, Muslim towns here are politically united with larger Hindu ones, and so their vote is diluted away. A quick glance at the figures shows that the TMVP won as much as 80% of the vote in some places, but in one place they got 50%. All in all, it’s what people expected.

So now we see what the TMVP will actually do with their power. Up till now they have a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. Will they try to benefit the community? Can they put aside their gun mentality and work with their newly elected counterparts from the other parties? Or is this just the beginning of a larger power play? Stay tuned, folks.

xoxoxoxo

B.

PS Quick note since I wrote the above. Sure enough, the power has gone out four times today! The Electrical Authority didn’t wait very long, before going back to their slack ways, did they? It’s only the day after the election!