Christina Swan

Let me tell you about the highlight of the first part of my Sri Lanka trip, when I was travelling alone with Britt Celine. The highlight was definitely visiting a village in the eastern part of Sri Lanka. After having been driven for 8 hours on a bumpy traficky road by a Sri Lankan driver (25 years old, so we got along quite well), we came to a very green and remote village with a few houses scattered among the trees. Britt Celine hadn't told the people we very visiting that we were coming, because they don't have a phone in the village, so we hoped they'd be in. What joy on their faces when they recognised her white face and understood that she'd come to visit them in their remote village, all the way from Norway! I nodded and smiled and looked around the room as they spoke in Singalese. I tried to make the nine-year old girl in the house, Reno, my friend by making her my Singalese teacher while pointing to things, and by scraping coconut with her for the evening's dinner.

The house had no running water, so we had to get water from a nearby well. The toilet was a fancy long drop in a small  building outside the house. The food - rice and curry and poppodum, milked rice for breakfast, and lots of coconut in different varieties - was eaten with our hands. We visited the many houses in the village the next day, played with the children, sang with the children, chased after the children, learned Singalese from the children, and drank tea. Lots of tea. Whenever we entered a new house on our mission of visiting the people BC once knew, we were offered a cup of tea. I had four cups of tea with lots of sugar that day - an achievement!!

Seeing as the house we stayed in had no running water, we bathed in the nearby brown lake to wash ourselves. This was the same lake that women wash their clothes in. We wore only a long skirt pulled up under our arms to bathe, and felt the many fish in the lake bite our calves in the water. What an experience! The day we were in that village was great, and the way home was equally entertaining.

Our Sri Lankan driver allowed us to drive the minibus ourselves - so I drove first, on the bumpy Sri Lankan road, past police crossings (the police just looked surprised, at me - a white female driver - and laughed!). Apparently we could get into trouble if the police caught us without a Sri lankan driving licence, but that was no problem said our driver, as he would be the one who was in trouble. After a while of being a jelly-legged and nervous driver, with a proper Sri Lankan driver sitting next to me, his hand on the handbreak just in case, we realised that we would get back to Colombo much quicker if we only let the driver drive. Darkness fell, and we made a wrong turn on a road on our way to the capital. After having driven over a new bridge, the driver realised we were on the wrong way, and was going to turn back on an old bridge just beside the new one. As we were driving towards the old bridge, the other way, the driver stopped the car as his mobile phone rang. Britt Celine and I sat in the back seat when we noticed a car - another minibus - creeping up beside us in the dark, the car's lights switched off, and stopping right next to our car. Lots of policemen stormed out of the car and went towards the driver's side of our car. Driver winds down the window, police asks him what it is we're doing, driver explains we took the wrong turn to Colombo and are turning back, and the police looks at him with suspicion. "Yeah right". It was dark, our young Sri Lankan driver had stopped the car in an area where no cars usually drive - the old bridge (why drive on an old bridge when you can drive on a new one?), and there were two blonde young women in the back. It certainly didn't help that a sign in the bushes next to us said "WOMEN AGAINST RAPE" in big letters. The police didn't believe the truth of our driver's statement, so they turned to us and said "no problem?" We gave the driver's version to them again, they looked skeptical and said "your passports, please". Yikes, heart pounding in chest, it's bad to be Norwegian on Sri Lanka, and we're here in the dark, but we can trust the police can't we, if they're the right Sri Lankan ethnicity - okay, we show them our passports, they shine their torches into the back of the car to see if we're smuggling weapons or drugs or anything else bad... they let us drive on. Phew!

After that curious incident, our driver became extra courteous of us, bought us buns with sugar on and the local chocolate malt drink MILO when we became hungry, and stoppe the car by the road, "cleared it" of suspicious men in the bushes, and let us squat next to the car in the dark when our bladders desperately needed relieving :-) We got back to Colombo late evening, where the house we were going to stay in (with people Britt Celine knew) was full of people and drink and food and loud singing. A Sri Lanka party for the whole neighbourhood, cool!

Living with locals was cool. See part two (above) for more information on our trip!

Christina

Greetings from Sri Lanka!

We have arrived safely and are enjoying the many palms, the sun, and the friendly Sri Lankan hospitality. So far, we have visited an Adventist school/orphanage in Kandy (middle of the island), and today we treated ourselves to a little Western luxury - we paid to use the swimming pool and a private beach in a nice hotel. This is a hotel we're staying at when the rest of the tour group from Stromme foundation come, and we are looking forward to it! Sooo fancy! But it was lovely to swim in the pool, and catch the waves on the beach. Can't remember the last time I swam in the sea and lay on a beach, it must be a few years ago. 

Tonight we are staying in Colombo with some people that Britt Celine knows, and then we're off to the village in Monaragala (close to the dangerous bits in the east) tomorrow. We are staying with locals the time that we're alone on the island, and then staying in hotels when the rest of the group comes from Norway.

So far, my impressions of Sri Lanka are:

Yippee! On Wednesday I am off to Sri Lanka for one and a half weeks! I am the lucky winner of a free trip to the island with Strømmestiftelsen - the organisation I went to Bolivia with. The more donors or "friends at heart" you manage to get to support the organisation, the greater your chance in winning. I had a one in four chance of winning (for every 20 donors they choose a winner, and I got 5 donors to support Strømmestiftelsen), and I WON!!!

So I am escaping from: cold weather, practice placements, work, bills to pay, petrol to buy, etc etc, to travel around Sri Lanka for one and a half weeks. Luxury!! The whole program lasts a week - we will be a group of around 17 people visiting different projects that the Strømme foundation runs on the island - microfinance projects and tsunami affected families. I am, however, travelling down four days before the rest of the group comes, together with a girl who did an exchange programme on Sri Lanka a few years ago (the same programme, Act Now, that I did in Bolivia). Britt Celine and I will be travelling to places and people she knows - to the "jungle", to an orphanage, and various other places. She has done lots of planning so that we will travel safe. We have to be extra careful seeing as we're going to a wartorn part of the world where it can be dangerous to be Norwegian. Norway has negotiated a peace agreement between the Tamil tigers and the Singalese on the island, and the Tamil tigers don't want any peace - they want independence and their own state, so they have been known to burn Norwegian flags, put bombs on public transport, etc etc. I find comfort in the fact that it's more dangerous to go to London than to Sri Lanka... and if the Sri Lankans can live on the island, so can I, for one and a half weeks!!

I am struck by a mixture of looking forward to it and thinking that I've only just come to Norway again - why am I going off to travel again? This time it's not my own "fault" though, as I won this trip - but what a privilege to get an all-expenses trip paid for, to Sri Lanka!!!

I will update you in two weeks' time how the trip was!! :-) Wish me luck and a trip free from diarrhoea and malaria ;-)!

Christina