ABDF

Wednesday, June 26, 2008

Hi everybody!

Well first let me say that today is the halfway point in this year’s season in Sri Lanka.  I arrived on February 26, and I leave October 26.

I have had time to reflect on my stay here, and how things are going so far.

Thus far, Sri Lanka has not driven me crazy.  Part of this, of course, is that I’m in a familiar place with familiar people.  Culture shock is much, much worse if you are in a foreign country for the first time.  Also my past experience here has given me a set of expectations about this place that are fairly reasonable and realistic.  This too has helped lessen the culture shock. 

I have to admit, there are times when I’m tired.  I don’t mean physically tired, which does happen, but mentally and spiritually tired (I mean spiritual in sense of “how’re your spirits doing,” not religiously.) There are times when I’m just plain tired of the heat and humidity, tired of the stress involved in trying to get to sleep, as I discussed in a previous dispatch, tired of hard plastic chairs to sit in, tired of not having anyone (or rather, almost no one) around with a similar cultural perspective that I can really let my hair down with, tired of constantly doing my laundry in a bucket, and tired of how very, very, VERY slowly everything happens here.  It’s never been enough for me to want to chuck it all and go home, but at times I feel spiritually exhausted.  But even when I feel frustrated, that little voice in my head reminds me how incredibly fortunate I am to be here, doing what I do.  How many others get to actually make their dream a reality?  So I remind myself that I am one of the most fortunate people in the world, and this makes all the frustrations worthwhile.  I’ve always said that the biggest difficulties in living here are more attitude and psychology than anything else, and that if you can get past such things, the physical difficulties loose their importance and this becomes an amazing place. In a weird way, this is both the most difficult and the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

However, as I said, I haven’t been driven crazy by these things, and despite the occasional downs, I’m still immensely happy to be here.

The past four months have also really hit home how difficult it is to get things done in this place.  Projects that should, to my mind, take a few weeks are dragging out into months.  Part of this is beyond anyone’s control; the recent Muslim/Tamil disturbances for example, which made Muslim areas (and our projects in them) largely inaccessible to me for three weeks or so and brought those projects to a screeching halt. However, part of this is also due to the people I work with. 

And this has been the other big common sense reminder: other people’s priorities are not mine.  For example, two of our tube well projects are in former LTTE areas.  For me to get through the checkpoints, let alone find my way to the project sites, requires my project partner, Prabha to go with me.  Prabha is not only a full-time teacher, but he runs a shop in town, has a family, and is now finally able to rebuild his tsunami destroyed house.  So naturally in his free time, such as it, he is concentrating on his family and new house right now.  Can’t say I blame him, although it puts our tube wells on hold. My concern is for the people in the two villages that could use the water, but right now there isn’t much I can do about it.  So I have to be patient.

If I wasn’t very patient in the past, living here is a great way to practice.  The smallest thing requires patience.  If I call my friend Nallaratne to come pick me up in his tuk-tuk, and he says he’ll be at the house at 10, there is a good chance he will be late.  His intention is to be on time, but more often than not things happen; his previous fare takes longer than expected, his tuk-tuk stalls out and needs petrol (there are no fuel gages in tuk-tuks), or he gets a flat and needs to change tires, or the security forces might be searching all vehicles in and out of a certain neighborhood, or there could be a stall on the Kallady bridge which stops traffic for twenty minutes; the list goes on and on. If I got stressed out every time something like this happened, I’d be a complete wreck.  As it is I just smile and wait, knowing that what I need to do will get done, eventually.

Not to say that I’ve shed my Western desire to get things finished quickly, not by a long shot.  I still feel impatient at the rate our projects are going, and sometimes frustrated with the communication problems.  In my own mind, all the projects we’re currently working on should have been completed (except for the coconut seedlings; you can’t rush them) and I ought to be working on brand new ones.  I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the ABDF and it’s supporters to show results.  I worry that I can’t adequately explain/express how difficult it is to get things done in Sri Lanka and that they might think I’ve been slacking and withdraw their support.  I suppose this is my greatest fear.  Or maybe this is all just “First Year” jitters and as I and the ABDF become more experienced at this, it will become easier.

Of course, I have to remind myself that I’m only halfway through this, and results will start to come in with greater frequency.  Patience, patience!

Still, what amazes me the most is how little it costs, in our American terms, to greatly improve the lives of people here.  For under $150 we were able to bring electricity to a whole school! Think about what that means to the students and teachers: working toilets, plenty of water to drink and wash in, a kitchen that now has a working tap, studying with light, keeping (relatively) cool.  All for $150!

Or a family that now doesn’t have to go begging for drinkable water, one of the fundamental rights we all should have, for less than $100.

Or food and income for 1,000 families all for only $1,000.

Or the gift of working computers to students in a very rural village who had only heard about them before or seen them on TV.  Again, a thousand bucks. 

Or a YEAR of school expenses for a medical student, for under $250.

It’s amazing when you think about it, isn’t it?  Thus I know my time here isn’t wasted.

On a more mundane level, being here teaches you to live more simply and to let a lot go.  I know I can survive with what we in the West consider to be only the very basics.  I don’t really miss television, for example.  Or the dishwasher or washing machine.  Or my comfy Lazy-Boy recliner. Well, sometimes I do miss them, but I find I can, in reality, get along OK without them.  Not having them is not the end of the world.  I certainly don’t miss the more crass aspects of our Western, especially American, experience.  For example, the constant bombardment we suffer to go out and buy lots of unnecessary material goods.  I would never say that if you get pleasure from collecting, say, china dolls, or art, or my case, cookbooks, that you should not do these things.  Its just that in the West we are taught to constantly want more and more of EVERYTHING, whether we need it or not, whether we really want it or not.  For example, until I saw a commercial for Scott brand toilet paper some years ago, I never thought that toilet paper lint on my bottom was such a huge issue.  In fact, I wasn’t even aware of the problem at all.  Now I realize it’s something we should all be concerned about. You see what I mean?

Of course there are some things which, according to my habits and personality, I find it very difficult to do without.  Reasonable internet, for example.  Back home I’m used to reading the BBC and other news outlets of various kinds every single day; I admit I’m a news junkie.  I’m interested in what’s going on in Zimbabwe or Thailand or even in Spokane.  So I feel very cut off here, and it bothers me.  I also LOVE to cook all sorts of things.  I love going to the supermarket, or even better to an ethnic grocery, and seeing all the foods from all over.  And to be able to get them and try them out!  Paradise! Can’t do that here, and I miss it a lot. However this is part of the price you pay when you choose to live in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. And I chose this, knowing this.

(But I still long for a really good enchilada!)

On the other hand, there are some things here which you can’t get in the States, and which I truly miss when there. Ginger Beer leaps to mind.  Our Ginger Ale doesn’t hold a candle to it, and the imported Ginger Beer you find at BevMo is from the Caribbean and not nearly as “fresh” tasting.  Short Eats, those tasty morsels of fried heaven, I find I often crave in the US; you have to taste them to understand. And there’s nothing quite like being on the back of someone’s motorcycle, an hour before dark, whizzing down the road, caressed by the cool breeze, with the big lagoon on one side and groves of coconut palms on the other. Or the stars reflected in the still waters of my little lagoon across the street. These are some of the things I miss while in the States. 

Lastly, before this dispatch gets way too long, I find that being here makes me appreciate America all the more.  I’m not blind to our own shortcomings, believe you me.  But we have it so much better/easier than the folks here.  We aren’t living in what is essentially a police state.  We don’t get searched, harassed by security forces on a daily basis.  By and large we don’t feel fear when there is a cop nearby. We feel that, in most cases, if there is an injustice, personal or social, we have legal redress and thus can do something about it.  We don’t live among warlords, with cadres of (oft times drunk) un-uniformed thugs who could, with impunity, steal, rape, or kill us.  Most of us don’t fear leaving our houses after dark. Most of us know that if we are smart and hardworking, we can make something of ourselves; here no matter how smart and how hardworking you may be, you can’t.

Of course, these conditions do exist in America, in certain areas and among certain sections of society; the ghettos in LA and New York come to mind.  But for the vast majority of Americans, these conditions are wholly alien. And in my stays here I’ve come to a greater appreciation of this.

No, we are not perfect in America.  But we have the chance to be, which is more than can be said for the people of Sri Lanka; Tamil, Muslim, and Singhala alike.  Well, some day, maybe some day.

So these have been my thoughts at my half-way point for the year.  I hope they have given you something to ponder.  Or, at very least, I hope I didn’t bore you.

xoxoxoxo

B.