ABDF

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Well, by the end of my last dispatch I had returned to Batticaloa after almost a month-long absence. As you read, my travels were both useful and fascinating, but I was glad to get back home. You know how it is; at home everything is arranged how you like it, you have your own bed, you can do things when you want (like take a bath or do laundry), and it gets tiring living out of a suitcase. Plus, although last April was very productive in terms of getting projects done, I have a couple currently unfinished projects, and I was eager to get back and see how they were doing.

The biggest project still underway is our water tank in Mangikkadu. If you haven’t heard of this one yet, go to the website www.abdf.org and look on the Projects page. We are very fortunate in that Jerry, my friend from the UK (remember him?) offered to fund the tank, leaving our funds free for other projects. I drove by the site last Sunday on the way to a kovil (Hindu temple) in a nearby village. The basic structure is complete and all that remains is the concrete coating and the instillation of the spigots. Prabha, my local partner on this project, tells me it should be finished by early next week.

Of our current projects, the other interesting one is our providing transportation to and from school for the students at Puhalidam. This is the school for mentally and physically handicapped kids that I wrote about earlier. Again, go to the website for a complete description. While so far we can only afford to provide transportation for six months, I hope to raise enough money to cover six more. So please, read the description, and if you can, give a bit to help these kids.

Lastly, I’m going to fork over the funds for the monthly stipend for Thivyan, our medical student. We’ve also paid for his reference texts, which he will use for the rest of his career. I’d like to take a moment to thank Mareeni for funding Thivyan. It’s a great long-term investment, not only for Thivyan and his family, but especially for the District, where there is a shortage of doctors. Mareeni, yer a gawdess!

Of course this is not the end of our work here; there are a couple of ongoing long-term projects chugging along and a few new things too, including a couple of education-related programs and hopefully one more water tank in another interior village. It’s the nature of things that there will always be far more projects than funds. We do what we can though, and that’s the best we can do.

I wanted to tell you about an event I went to last week. It’s rather strange by Western standards, so I thought I’d share it with you. I’ve mentioned Vatshala several times in my writings; she is one of my students at Synergy. She has two kids, a girl named Luxsi (look-SHE) and a boy, Suji. Well Luxsi just had her first period. And in Tamil culture that’s cause for a big public celebration.

In the West we consider a girls’ first period a good thing, but private. But here it marks a girls’ transition to womanhood and is celebrated accordingly. EVERYONE knows. And after attending kovil, the family normally throws a big party. I was invited to Luxsis’ party along with my other students, Sivashanthan, Pushpakaran, Janetdarsheeni. The four of us pooled our money for the gifts, hopped on a couple motorcycles, and drove to Arriampathy, Vatshala’s town. The party lasted some four hours, and I’d say a hundred or so people came and went, including friends, family, and neighbors. A big lunch was served, of course.

In a way I felt sorry for Luxsi. Not because everyone knew about her period; that’s part of her culture and there’s no embarrassment involved. But the poor girl had to dress in a very fancy sari, wear jewelry and make-up and take pictures with everyone. OK, she looked gorgeous (she’s a beautiful girl anyway), but it went on for hours and Luxsi was starving, tired, and sweating like a pig. Many of you have been married; remember how tiring and irritating all the constant picture taking was, and recall how with each picture you had to look fresh and happy? So you can feel for Luxsi. And like the fancy wedding gowns we have in the West, high-end saris are swelteringly hot. Everyday saris are made of cotton or cotton blend. They breathe. But the fancy-schmancy ones are usually made of polyester. They are covered in heavy embroidery or beading, and are very stiff with itchy creases. Top this with the fact that the photographer had his lights on her, and there aren’t any ceiling fans in Vatshala’s house, and you can see why Luxsi was miserable. By the end of the party she was visibly drooping. Of course I teased her about it; I told her it was her fault, after all. All she could do was smile and roll her eyes.

I enjoyed the party, and it was cool to meet Vatshala’s extended family. These are my favorite sort of events; you get to meet people in a jovial atmosphere, and see what folks are like with their hair down.

Now on to the Nature segment of this show.

OK, I know that I’m a nerd in many ways, but the next thing excited me. There is a lighthouse at the entrance of the lagoon that leads to Batti. It’s a pleasant place to go; the Municipal Council has put in a promenade, benches, and picnic tables. Saturday evening I went there with Sivashanthen and Pushpakaran. The tide was out, and so the mud flats were visible. I looked closely at the small fish darting about the shallow water, when suddenly some of them came out of the water and began half-walking, half-squirming along the mudflats. I realized that I was seeing lungfish!

Lungfish are a very unusual and singular species of fish. They are 100% fish, but have evolved primitive lungs and their fins are short and stumpy, allowing them to drag themselves on land for short periods of time. They are the very same species which, millions and millions and millions of years ago, where the first animals to leave the seas and go onto land. This allowed them to escape predators and lay their eggs in a secure environment. They are, quite literally, our extremely remote ancestors. I remember seeing them on science programs on TV such as National Geographic as a kid, and there they were, right in front of me! Sivashanthen, who comes from a fishing family, told me that they are common in the surrounding mangrove swamps, but don’t make good eating. That’s lucky for them, as they actually are quite rare and found only in a few places in South and Southeast Asia.

OK, so maybe you might think this is unexciting, but I got a thrill; and I’m the one writing this.

On the subject of nature, there is this really cool bird that hangs out in the tree in front of my veranda. If there are any ornithologists or bird-watchers reading this, I’d be interested to know what kind of bird it is. It’s about a foot tall, and all black. It has a long thin neck; longer than a crow, but not like a stork or anything. Clearly it hunts for small fish in the lagoon; the neck and slightly curved, pointed beak seem to indicate this. Several times a day it flies to one particular branch of the tree, preens a bit, and, back hunched to the sun, opens its wings half way. I assume he’s cleaning and drying off after having a meal, although he could also be displaying for the ladies. Amid all the birdcalls going on, I haven’t been able to figure out which one is his. Or maybe he doesn’t have one. I’ve seen a couple of crows harassing him as he preens, but he mostly ignores them. Anyone have any ideas?

Today was a good day. Especially because one of those good-things-from-bad happened. For the past three days I’ve been semi-hosting two foreign visitors. Maria contacted me through the website a couple of months ago. She’s a graduate student, and is thinking about doing her research in Batti. As I always advise, I told her that before committing to an extended period of time here, she ought to come for a visit to see what she would be getting herself into. Given that she’s been studying in India, the idea was reasonable. Turns out that she was planning on visiting Sri Lanka to see an ex-boyfriend of hers, so it all worked out. They arrived three days ago.

His name is Brennan. He’s from Portland (yay Portland!) and has a lot of experience, including Peace Corps and a two-year stint in southern Sudan. He’s a really great guy.

So the two of them arrived in Batti and for the past two days Pushpakaran and I have been showing them around, especially to our project sites. Today we went to the two water tank, with which they were duly impressed. Then we went to Pushpakarans’ village and walked around a bit. On our way home we were passing through a crossroads hamlet when Pushpakaran noticed his rear tire was flat. Keep in mind we were across the lagoon from Batti, in the middle of nowhere. Even in the tiniest of hamlets there is someone who can repair motorcycles and bicycles. We quickly found the guy, and he soon had the tire apart. The problem was that the inner tube needed a new nozzle, and the fellow had none. Which meant that Pushpakaran had to take my bike into Batti, buy the part, and then drive back. It was hot, we were feeling very sticky, and it would be sundown in two hours. Ugh.

I’m not sure how these things happen, but they inevitably do. Pushpakaran somehow discovered that some local men were rehearsing an ancient form of folk drama in preparation for an upcoming kovil festival. They were in a grove of trees just a hundred feet away. So Maria, Brennen, and I got to sit and watch the rehearsal.

It was fabulous. Since this was only a rehearsal, there were no costumes, but they had their props; one man had a sort of conch shell, and the other six longbows and an oversized arrow each. There was a drummer, and another man with small cymbals, and a third led the chanting. The dance was a sort of marching dance, with the men in a large circle, stamping the ground and turning about while chanting. I was told that the dance is part of a part of one story from the Mahabarata, the enormous and vastly ancient Hindu epic. I had read a very abridged translation, which was still over 1,000 pages long, back at Stanford for a class. So I’m familiar with the story and the main characters and such. In the story there are several different wars between and among kings and gods, so I figure that this particular dance was about Ram, the demi-god hero, marching off to war. I think it was Ram because I seem to recall that the conch is one of his symbols. I could be wrong.

But whatever, it was very cool to watch. I know that one result of the destruction and disintegration of Tamil society in Sri Lanka is the disappearance of traditional folk culture. Theater traditions such as what we saw are entirely village based, and when war came and displaced the villagers, it severely disrupted the communication of culture between generations. This particular area had been displaced and resettled 8 times in the last twenty-odd years; we were told that this was the first time since the early 1980s that the villagers were performing the dance. While the performers seemed to range in age from, say, 25 to 40, the three guys teaching them were all gray haired and grizzled. So it seems that for this particular dance in this particular village, peace has come just in the nick of time. It makes you wonder how much indigenous culture hasn’t made it; how many amazing little cultural treasures perished during the long nightmare.

So as you can see, even though the flat tire was definitely a major pain, the result was that we three foreigners got to see something that no foreigners have seen before; this traditional performance as done in this specific village. Pretty friggin’ cool, huh?

It made the flat tire totally worth it.