ABDF

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Hi everybody!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s been quit an adventure. I’ve had the experience(s) of a lifetime, and done and seen things very few Westerners ever have. I’ve experienced unparalleled hospitality, seen incredible beauty side-by-side with the most astonishing poverty, watched a social movement in action, and experienced Sri Lanka from the rarified viewpoint of a high (and I mean really high) government official.

Oh yeah, and I’m gonna give you an update on our projects and how they’re progressing.

Sound intriguing? It’s going to take at least three dispatches just to catch you up, and I’ll try to get them to you a soon as I can. So consider this to be Part One.

It all started two weeks ago. You may recall that Siva, the guy who built the house on the lagoon, had brought two Irish friends, Ciaron (pronounced Kieran) and Pauline with him to Batti. You’ll remember, I hope, my description of Tamil New Year, going to Passakudah beach to get sunburned, and so forth. You will also remember that we were going to the central city of Kandy to inaugurate a preschool. That was to take place on Tuesday the 22nd. And that’s where my tale begins. Are we all caught up? If not, please review…

This preschool was built in the small town of Panvilla, which is populated mostly by Upcountry Tamils. OK, so what’s an Upcountry Tamil? Glad you asked; I will tell you. So sit back for a history lesson and all will become clear. Those of you who are sick of my histories can skip down a couple of pages.

A Brief History of the Upcountry Tamils:

This community is also known as Hill Tamils, Hill Country Tamils, Estate Tamils, etc. As you know, Sri Lanka’s biggest and most famous export is the famed Ceylon Tea, considered the finest in the world. Back in the early 1830s, Sri Lanka had been taken over by the British, and was known for its coffee. But blight came, and destroyed the coffee crops. So the British imported some tea plantings from India and discovered that not only did it flourish in Sri Lanka, but the yield was excellent and bountiful. Within a few years tea had replaced coffee all over the central highlands.

ea grows on steep lush hillsides, which basically describes the geography of central Sri Lanka. The mountains are incredibly steep, often at a 45 degree angle or more. It is a small bush, about waist high, and only the newest top leaves and buds are used. The plucked tea is then separated by quality, the tiny barely budded baby leaves being the best of the best. These enormous plantations, called Estates, cover the mountain sides in neat rows of bushes.

The one problem, still unsolved, is that tea cultivation can only be done by hand, and is very labor intensive. This proved to be a big problem for the British, as the Singhalese locals were unenthusiastic about working the plantations. So the British had to look elsewhere for cheap labor.

hey found it among the impoverished low-caste Tamil farmers of southern India. These farmers and their families were imported into central Sri Lanka and settled in Estate housing on the mountainsides. There they worked for generations, living in near total isolation from the rest of Sri Lanka. Entirely dependent on the plantations and the British owners, they lived on Estate land, shopped in Estate shops, and seldom came down the mountains.

As a result, Upcountry Tamils are very different from any other community in Sri Lanka, even the Sri Lankan Tamils. It’s hard to quantify the differences between Sri Lankan and Upcountry Tamils, because they do share common cultural roots and language. As an analogy, try and describe the difference between a Californian and a Texan. Intuitively the differences are obvious, but if you actually try to describe the difference in words, you can only come up with a couple superficial examples. I find I have the same difficulty in this case. I can say, however, that Sri Lankan Tamils have been on the island for more than 2,000 years, whereas the Upcountry Tamils have been here for 200 years at most. So you can imagine that this different history has caused the two cultures to evolve differently. I can also tell you that Upcountry Tamils are far more traditional, more pious (they’re Hindu) on a daily level, more, well, more Indian, than Sri Lankan Tamils. It’s hard to describe, so you’ll just have to trust me. Or come for a visit and see for yourself.

Anyway, the British treated the Upcountry Tamils little better than slaves, maintaining them in impoverished isolation. They were housed in what are called “Line Houses,” which are long low single story buildings with tiny single rooms for each family. Think of a sort of row house, with a dozen or more families living under one roof. As the Upcountry Tamils were not allowed to own property, they were stuck living in these Estate-owned buildings.

You would think that upon independence that thinks would have improved. Not so. All the colonial era laws preventing any advancement for the community were kept on the books. In fact new, crueler ones were instituted. For example, a law was passed that specifically denied them citizenship even though they’d been in the country for 200 years. At one point, the government even forcefully repatriated some Estate communities back to India, a place where they hadn’t lived for generations. All the while the government grew fat off the profits of the tea plantations. The people of Sri Lanka, sadly including the Tamils, considered them to be foreign interlopers who really ought to go back to where they from.

Hmmm. Sound familiar, my fellow Californians?

For these reasons, the Upcountry Tamils never united politically with the Sri Lankan Tamils and their struggles, especially the ethnic wars. That doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer: in 1983, when the worst ethnic riots broke out, Upcountry Tamils were targeted as well. But instead of joining the LTTE, they retreated back into the hills.

They did, however, organize around a group of unions. And having secured a stranglehold on the labor for Sri Lanka’s biggest money maker, the unions began to agitate, both for rights and political position. At the height of the civil war, Upcountry Tamils were granted citizenship and the right to vote by the government, which was desperate to get political allies and prevent the Upcountry Tamils from joining the LTTE. Unfortunately, since then there has been very little progress.

To summarize, Upcountry Tamils are generally considered to be one of the most oppressed, impoverished, disenfranchised, and mal-treated communities in all of South Asia. Locally, the unions are powerful, but still weak on the national level, despite their importance to the tea trade. Although there is now a tiny middle and upper class, the vast majority are still dirt poor, uneducated, and ignored. And these are the people for whom the preschool was built.

So when you see those pictures of happy, smiling tea-picking women in the magazines and guide books and on TV, keep in mind that behind the bucolic scene is severe exploitation and poverty.

OK: it’s safe for the rest of you to rejoin.

The school had been built by the newly formed Kandy branch of the Sri Lankan Friendship Society, and paid for with Irish funds, which was the official reason for Siva, Ciaron, and Pauline’s visit. I was asked to go along for the ride, and as I hadn’t been to the Hill Country before, I jumped at the chance.

So on Monday the 21st I piled into a rented van with 16 others, and we made the very long drive to Kandy. I won’t go into the drive itself, which was long, grueling, and gave me a sore butt. We arrived in the evening to a beautiful resort in the hills outside Kandy, and were greeted by the president of SFS-Kandy, V. Shanthakumar, AKA: Shantha (pronounced Shantha).

Shantha is very important to the story, so I’d better give you some background. He’s my age, looks a little like a young Gandhi and was originally an English teacher. He’s an Upcountry Tamil from the Hatton area. His English is fantastic. Now he’s the personal secretary to the Honorable Deputy Minister of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure, Mr. Muthu Sivalingam. Mr. Sivalingam is one of the few Upcountry Tamils to attain political office, mainly because he’s a high official of the Ceylon Worker’s Congress, one of the bigger tea unions. His ministry was created specifically to improve the lot of the Upcountry Tamils. So he, Mr. Sivalingam, was to be the guest of honor at the preschool opening. This is how I got to meet him.

The night before the opening we all had dinner at the resort, and I was asked to eat with the Minister. At first it was awkward, as Pauline, Ciaron and I ate with the Minster, unsure what to say. So then I decided to go for it. I mean, how many times in one’s life does one have unfettered access to such a high official? So I asked him “What do you like best about your job, and what about it do you just hate?” He paused, thinking, and said he liked being able to pick up the phone and solve a problem right then and there. He really hated having to attend Parliament and deal with all the BS. (He is not only a Cabinet Minster, but an MP as well.) From there we proceeded to have a long talk, with me asking questions, and he educating me. It was a fascinating perspective and I had a great time.

I guess Mr. Sivalingam liked me as well, because I was later told that he mentioned to Shantha that he wanted me to spend some time as his guest in the Hill Country. He also asked me to attend the big May Day rally in Hatton, which is the seat of power for the Ceylon Worker’s Congress. So it was thus agreed that once I took care of business in Colombo, I’d come to Hatton with Shantha and see the rally.

Little did I know where this would all lead.

The following day was the opening of the preschool. It was all done very traditionally, with firecrackers, drummers, traditional songs, flower garlands, and the usual smudging of colored pastes on the forehead. Naturally clumsy me ran smack into a dangling coconut after getting my crimson paste smudge. Nearly knocked myself out. Once the ribbon cutting was accomplished, and all the official types had their pictures taken with Mr. Sivalingum, we settled down to a performance of traditional Karnatic dance by some of the kids. For me the traditional dance and music was the best part. Certainly all the long speeches in Tamil can almost drive one mad!

As a thank you gift, we were each presented with a bag of tea of the highest grade. What got me, though, was being told that the very tea I had in my hand had been grown, picked, and dried by the parents of the kids who will be attending the school. So it was more than a packet of tea; they were giving us a little bit of themselves and their lives. When I realized this, I was really touched and got glassy-eyed. Of all the gifts I’ve received in Sri Lanka so far, this was the best.

As the rest of the SFS contingent was to return to Batticaloa, I said goodbye, and hoped on an “express” bus to Colombo. I arrived in Colombo late, feeling tired, thirsty and just wanting to go to bed. I went my friend Jeewan’s house, where I normally stay.

Now I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that he and I have had a couple ongoing issues, including a sum of money he “borrowed” from me last year without my permission and has made promise after promise to repay. And this time when I arrived at his house (he knew I was coming) he wasn’t there and wasn’t answering his cell phone. I stood in front of his house for two hours, tired and thirsty, hoping he’d show. Finally at 10 at night I decided was that I was being given the Sri Lankan version of “bugger off” so I went in search of a hotel room. I ended up staying at the Hotel Juliana which had the luxuries of air conditioning (boy, did I crank that up!), hot showers, and a big comfy bed. But they charge Rs4,000 (about $40) a night, far more than I can afford, given I planned on staying in Colombo a week.

I did end up moving to a cheaper hotel the next day, and although the room was tiny, bare, hot as heck, with a tiny uncomfortable bed and barely function bathroom, it cost only Rs800 (about $8). So not only has Jeewan stolen money from me, his behavior ended up also costing me a chunk of money I hadn’t budgeted for. Oh, and he never bother to call me to find out what my situation was. Whatever. Live and learn. And this was the only bad thing to happen to me so far.

The following Monday, Shantha returned to Colombo, and when he found out what happened, he immediately moved me into his digs at the Ministry of Nation Building. Thus Shantha came to my rescue the first, but not last time. From this moment onwards until my return to Batti, and excepting project-related expenses, I didn’t pay for anything, except those few things I managed to convince Shantha to let me pay for. Meals, lodging, transportation, everything, I was Shantha’s guest. Or at times the guest of the Government, as you will see later. I never would have been able to do what I did through the next week or so, if it weren’t for Shantha and Minister Shivalingam. And not just in terms of money, but access as well. But back to Colombo.

Here’s where again Shantha came to my rescue. The donated books for our St. Cecelia’s Girl’s School project had arrived, and I had to go down to Customs to pick them up, and then find a way to ship them to Batti. Customs, from what I understand, is a day-long nightmare of forms, fees, inspections, and bureaucratic morass. Not with Shatha. He spent the whole day with me, and with his clout as Minister Sivalingam’s secretary, Customs only took two hours to get through. Then he found me a bus to haul the boxes to Batti very inexpensively. All the while driving through Colombo in the Minister’s official car, which had a Magic Plaque on the front window that caused traffic to part when we drove along the streets. The whole job was finished by lunchtime, which in Sri Lanka is around 1:30 – 2:00. I’m sure that eventually I could have done it on my own, but it would have taken a day and a half at least. And for this I could barely convince Shanthan to let me take him out for dinner.

I spent a couple days in Colombo doing other ABDF-related work as well. For example, one of my mandates is to help local Sri Lankan organizations write their own grant proposals. I spent one whole day with Shantha pumping out a big grant proposal for a computer and English center to be built by the SFS-Kandy in that city. True, Kandy isn’t in Batti District, but I figured I was there in Colombo with Shantha and I had the time. Plus SFS-Kandy is sister organization to SFS-Batti. So I was happy to help Shantha and SFS-Kandy. I’m also currently writing the final report for the preschool in Panvilla that we opened.

So now I have a tawdry, if amusing, tale to tell you. Those with delicate sensibilities might want to skip the next page or so.

One of the staff at the Ministry is a fellow named John. He’s a Tamil man from Jaffna. Ladies, you would flip out for him; 30 years old, extremely movie-star handsome, probably 6 foot 4, very well built, etc. And he’s something of a bad boy, if you know what I mean, and dresses the part. Really good English, if a bit heavily accented.

They day before Shantha and I were to go to the May Day Rally in Hatton (more later), John and I were talking. At one point he leans over and quietly asks me “Do you like to have a drink?” I said yes, of course. So he said “After work, I’d like to take you for dinner and drinks.” Great!

Around 6 or so he and I walked down the street (Duplication Road, for those who know Colombo) to a Thai restaurant, were for the next few hours we leisurely ate a meal and drank a ¾-sized bottle of arrack. The conversation wandered here and there, but being 30, unmarried, and living solo in a big city, John inevitably turned the conversation to sex. And I learned all sorts of things about Colombo and what one can do there.

For example, I learned that the big nightclubs, of which there are about a half-dozen, and the casinos (gambling is legal in Sri Lanka) have upstairs floors where trade of a different sort is plied. And according to John, there is a whole hierarchy of the women who work there. Local Sri Lankans are at the bottom of the heap as “they want it over as quick as possible.” Whereas the Russian women are the best, and correspondingly the most expensive, because “they do everything, and act like they love you.” You know me; I’ve gotta know everything. So I asked about pricing. Apparently, local ladies can go for as little as Rs2,000 (about $20) while the top end “girlfriend-acting” Russian ladies top out at more than Rs15,000, which is about $150. This is extremely expensive for all but the very wealthiest Sri Lankans and of course the tourists. I asked John, given his preference for the ladies of a higher quality, how he could afford such indulgences on a low-level government salary. He admitted that he can only afford such things once in a great while. Usually he goes for the cheap thrill of a karaoke girl. I’ll explain in a minute.

So after good food and arrack, John said he wanted to take me to a club he knows. OK. We hop into a tuk-tuk and head down to the district of Dehiwala and wind up at a Karaoke Bar.

Unlike in the West and Far East, a Sri Lankan karaoke bar is NOT where you go to sing pop songs with your friends. Essentially these are dark, seedy nightclubs, with small dance floors and overpriced drinks. The attraction, for John at least, is the girls. They are employees of the bar, wear tight western clothing, and act as hostesses, urging the 100% male clientele to buy drinks and food. At the end of the night the girls get a cut of the food and bar receipts. They are not prostitutes; at least not while working the clubs. You can, however, exchange phone numbers and make arrangements for a later time. What you can do is snuggle, kiss, grope a little, and have a semi-attractive young woman press her heaving bossoms against your chest while she jokingly calls you her boyfriend or husband. All the while she’s asking for drinks and plates of food.

OK, I’m 41 years old and have seen and done a lot in my life. I’ve also been in skankier places than this club. So to be honest I found it all rather funny. Especially the gal who latched on to me, making eyes and declaring that I’m the handsomest, sexiest man in the club. Yeah right, with John in the room, I’m the sexiest? Gotta give the girl credit for doing her job so enthusiastically. So I decided to relax, have a laugh, dance a little bit and just observe. I mean the whole situation was ludicrous, yes? And since John was hosting me, I let him deal with the food and drinks. And he was having a good old time, trying to get as much of a feel from his girl as he could, as often as he could. She’d just giggle and teasingly worm her way out of his embraces, and ask for a drink. Those gals knew exactly how to work it.

We stayed at the club for a couple hours, and I had to eventually extract John’s companion from his embraces and remind him that I had to get back to the Ministry and get some sleep, as Shantha and I were leaving for the May Day rally at 5 AM. So we ended up getting back at around 1:30, and after a quick shower I immediately went to bed.

I was up at 4, and Shantha and I were driving out of Colombo at 5. But my adventures in the Hill Country are for my next dispatch.

Expect Part 2 in a day or so!

xoxoxoxoxo

B.