I've been in Sri Lanka for three days now, but it seems like much longer. I've already gotten used to the troupe of monkeys that regularly passes through this way playing on our metal roof and making a huge ruckus. I've also already managed to get used to constant 100% humidity and 30C weather. I've almost overcome my jetlag from what basically amounts to almost a week of travel. I'll start at the beginning.
I left Whitman just over a week ago and drove straight to Golden, CO in 16 hours flat, stopping 3 times for gas and coffee. I met up with some good friends in the Denver area, packed for a few days, spent some time with my mom and sister (who is now climbing much better than I am) and then jumped on an airplane to San Francisco where I spent a day and a half with Jake, and met up with two good high school friends (James and Evan) and had dinner with Meghan Hughes, Burshteyn, and Thad. Good to see all of those folks again, it had been too long. Straight from dinner to the airport where I was greeted by almost certainly the best airline service I have ever had (fly cathay pacific). My flight took off at 1:20am, and I didn't sleep the whole way to Hong Kong. I watched three movies, read about 700 pages of a fantastic book called anathem, and got to see some of the world's biggest cities from the sky at night. Not a bad flight. When I arrived at the Hong Kong airport I had to walk so far from the gate to the central area that I was sure I was lost. I walked around for a couple of hours, then asked an info desk about whether I should leave the airport and where to get something to eat. The airport people correctly assessed that I shouldn't leave the airport, and directed me to a security gate which lead to an even larger portion of the airport. During my 12 hour layover I spent $25 on awful airport food, bought a plug converter so that I could plug in my computer, called a bunch of people on skypeout, read some more, and didn't sleep for fear of missing my flight. The last hour before boarding was so difficult to stay awake that I had to just walk around, if I sat down I immediately felt myself dozing off. I think I set a new PR of 46 hours of being awake.
I slept the whole way from Hong Kong to Colombo, except for where they kicked us off the plane in Thailand, made us walk through security, and then wait an hour to board again. I arrived in Colombo at 1am Colombo time, found my bags, and jumped in a car with a driver that my aunt had arranged for me. When I arrived at the house I was greeted by two dogs, a cat, and my aunt who was also jet lagged and couldn't sleep. I crashed immediately. The next morning I woke up and went straight into about an hour of yoga with my Aunt Karen, who used to be a yoga instructor. After that, I went to IWMI (the International Water Management Institute) where I'll be working for the next three months. It sounds like I will have a project working on a water governance index, similar to FP's failed states index or the Economist's Index of Democracy. The office serves lunch in a common area, and a full plate of 4 different curries costs me 80 Rp, or about 75 cents.
The last few days I've been running errands with my aunt, trying to get a bicycle fixed up, finding a present for her host in China where she will be staying for a week (starting yesterday actually), and eating some delicious meals at all of her favorite places in Colombo. The best was eating at a small shack on the beach where I had searfish (my aunt assured me that the searfish fishery is ding fine) and watching the waves roll in as the sun set.
Driving in Sri Lanka is very interesting--traffic laws don't apply here. Lanes are merely a suggestion, and rules are mostly determined by how big your car is, and whether you would be ok getting it dented and scratched. The majority of cars on the road are trishaws, or tuk tuks which are 3-wheeled taxis with two stroke engines which cost 30Rp per kilometer. It is common to see 4 or 5 trishaws across a 2-lane road, and cars veering all the way across the road to pass them. I'm glad that I'm not driving here yet.
The house that I'm living at is much different from any other house that I have ever lived in. It isn't sealed from the outside world--walls extend up for several feet and then become bars to prevent people from breaking in. The result is that air flows freely through the house, creating a wonderful atmosphere. Most of my meals consist of fresh fruit and vegetables of which there is an incredible variety here. I am eating papaya, mango, wood apple, passion fruit, breadfruit and several others on a regular basis. I have also discovered that if you just dump a bunch of fruit into the blender and add some water it makes absolutely delicious fruit juice which I am consuming very quickly.
There are two people who work at the house--Piasili is the maid who cooks and generally takes care of household issues, and who speaks great english and has helped raise olivia (my cousin) since she was 8 years old, and Abraham, who is the gardener. Abraham speaks no english other than "Madam" which is what he calls my aunt. Since my aunt has left, he and I have had some extensive conversations in our respective languages where I can figure out about every 50th word by pantomime. Yesterday I think he was trying to tell me that I should let him feed the dogs, and then switched to telling me that I needed to buy a pump for my new bike, but it looked to me like he was telling me that a dog ate the bike pump.
The house has two dogs and two cats--a great dane that weighs about 140 lbs and a smaller mutt, and two orange cats that look exactly the same and are called "little kitty" and "big kitty". This morning both cats and the great dane jumped in bed with me and wouldn't get out of my bed until I got up and fed them. Little Kitty also attacks my feet sometimes while I'm asleep.
Now I'm off to take a 15km trishaw ride to meet Wade, an ex-pat who runs a kayaking and rafting business in Sri Lanka and Nepal. Google Maps is completely useless here, it seems that though google knows the locations of the streets, it doesn't give them names and refuses to give you directions from one place to another.
I'd love to hear from any of you who have time to update me on your lives, or give me a call on skype. You can find me by looking up "Luke Sanford"
Luke
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