We've only just begun
It's Monday 2:30 pm in Galle and you're all asleep. Just finished my first bit of shopping in the Fort area and it went better than I expected. Jesper and I are a lightning fast pair of shoppers!
Let's see, Saturday morning around 3 am the power went off which means no ceiling fan. You can feel the difference in a hurry. Power outages are quite common but usually come back within the hour. This one was different. I woke up and went out onto the deck to cool off and found the silhouette of another person already sitting there. I thought it might be a local Sinhalese so I didn't say anything as I was half asleep. The shadow said, "Hot, isn't it?" I answered yes and then after a moment thinking that was pretty good English I asked curiously, "Jesper?" He laughed at me and I asked when did you get out here? He said just a minute before me. That's how out of it you are at 3 am dripping in sweat looking for a breeze. I told him I was relieved I didn't have to have a broken English convo just then. It was pretty funny. Hmmm, well maybe not that funny on screen but we laughed about it then. Come to think of it, we laugh at just about everything.
On Saturday, after grabbing a few more hours of sleep, we took a complete zero day and hit the beach at Unawatuna. Met a few ladies from Holland and Germany, grabbed some lunch in the Beach Club at our gangs usual table, played frisbee and swam for a few hours until grabbing a tuktuk for Galle at only 100Rs! We must be getting good at this. Later that night Manoche prepared steak and fries for us and it was great. Then he came out and asked if we wanted more. Uh, let me think....YES! It was a great dinner and Manoche is a really great guy. He is definitely in the right business as he is always making sure you have everything you need and will go to any length to do so.
However, a "big music man" was staying at the hotel that night and since this was Poya-day, a full moon Buddhist holiday which occurs oddly enough once a month, they figured we may all want to watch Sri Lankan karaoke videos he had produced. I will only say they weren't what we would call "good." After about 2 hours of this one of his posse approached me and asked if I liked it. Lying, I said "yes, very good." He then gives me Volume 2 Sri Lanka Ultimate Karaoke on VCD and says "I give to you!" I now have proof of our night and can't wait to strap my friends down and play the video over and over again. You can run but you can't hide!
The music must have done some good though because on the following Sunday morning Jesper was thinking hard about what more could be done in Sri Lanka. We had all talked about the inefficient use of labor and lack of any machinery but knowing it and talking about it doesn't accomplish anything. I too, wanted to do more but knew what kind of effort it would take and honestly I wasn't ready to tackle that kind of project on my own but, you know how it goes when bouncing an idea back and forth between a few motivated people. So, without releasing any details just yet, we are working on a fairly big plan to come back around the New Year with all the required equipment and do this thing right. It would be about a 2 month project. These are simple houses and with some planning and 1 or 2 pro equipment operators we could literally move mountains. We are meeting with Paul and Michael tonight to get local contact points for us to work with while away, but we are excited about this plan and feel better now that we have a plan of action to go after instead of just more thoughts. More on this later. Stay tuned, we'll all need your help!!!
Later on Sunday we met Ian at the Galleria and gave him the first installment of 25,000Rs for the Ahangama family to get started on their well and foundation work. He said we could come out in the next day or two to see the work being done and we hope to have that opportunity before leaving. After returning to the Tuc Tuc last night and a great dinner of baked chicken and jumbo prawns I asked for a ride to a phone so I could use my phone card. Manoche had one of his guys grab the motorcycle and at 9:30 pm I was off on my 3rd ride thru the night on the back of a Bajaj motorcycle. Things shut down pretty early at night here and we had some trouble finding a phone. After 2 or 3 stops, my patient driver drove up to a house and we went to the front door. I quickly gathered this was one of his friends houses where I sat in the living room for 30 minutes while his friend and his mother and grandmother tried to figure out my card and their phone. The phone system here is, well, unexplainable. At least from me.
Anyway, after a lot of talking and number pressing I was hurried over to the phone and told it was ringing. I listened and heard nothing but after a minute I was able to hear my mothers voice mail on her mobile phone who is in Florida at the moment. I left her a hurried Happy Birthday greeting and wished I could have talked longer but since my card never worked my late night hosts were letting me use their own card. They said, "You tsunami worker, right?" I said yes, and the 25 year old man of the house smiled and said, "Now we help you. No problem." I thanked them, they thanked me? and asked me to return anytime. I left my 500Rs phone card on their table and said, "It's yours now, I obviously can't use it." Back on the Bajaj for another ride beneath the night sky and upon return Manoche told me no charge for the ride. I guess you can't go wrong wishing your mom a happy birthday from Sri Lanka!
I have made some great friends on this trip and as some of those relationships continue to grow so does my need to help this country and their people. I cannot help but think I am exactly where I was intended to be. Between my past month here and our future plans for returning my path is set and it feels, for the first time in a long time, clear.
Let's see, Saturday morning around 3 am the power went off which means no ceiling fan. You can feel the difference in a hurry. Power outages are quite common but usually come back within the hour. This one was different. I woke up and went out onto the deck to cool off and found the silhouette of another person already sitting there. I thought it might be a local Sinhalese so I didn't say anything as I was half asleep. The shadow said, "Hot, isn't it?" I answered yes and then after a moment thinking that was pretty good English I asked curiously, "Jesper?" He laughed at me and I asked when did you get out here? He said just a minute before me. That's how out of it you are at 3 am dripping in sweat looking for a breeze. I told him I was relieved I didn't have to have a broken English convo just then. It was pretty funny. Hmmm, well maybe not that funny on screen but we laughed about it then. Come to think of it, we laugh at just about everything.
On Saturday, after grabbing a few more hours of sleep, we took a complete zero day and hit the beach at Unawatuna. Met a few ladies from Holland and Germany, grabbed some lunch in the Beach Club at our gangs usual table, played frisbee and swam for a few hours until grabbing a tuktuk for Galle at only 100Rs! We must be getting good at this. Later that night Manoche prepared steak and fries for us and it was great. Then he came out and asked if we wanted more. Uh, let me think....YES! It was a great dinner and Manoche is a really great guy. He is definitely in the right business as he is always making sure you have everything you need and will go to any length to do so.
However, a "big music man" was staying at the hotel that night and since this was Poya-day, a full moon Buddhist holiday which occurs oddly enough once a month, they figured we may all want to watch Sri Lankan karaoke videos he had produced. I will only say they weren't what we would call "good." After about 2 hours of this one of his posse approached me and asked if I liked it. Lying, I said "yes, very good." He then gives me Volume 2 Sri Lanka Ultimate Karaoke on VCD and says "I give to you!" I now have proof of our night and can't wait to strap my friends down and play the video over and over again. You can run but you can't hide!
The music must have done some good though because on the following Sunday morning Jesper was thinking hard about what more could be done in Sri Lanka. We had all talked about the inefficient use of labor and lack of any machinery but knowing it and talking about it doesn't accomplish anything. I too, wanted to do more but knew what kind of effort it would take and honestly I wasn't ready to tackle that kind of project on my own but, you know how it goes when bouncing an idea back and forth between a few motivated people. So, without releasing any details just yet, we are working on a fairly big plan to come back around the New Year with all the required equipment and do this thing right. It would be about a 2 month project. These are simple houses and with some planning and 1 or 2 pro equipment operators we could literally move mountains. We are meeting with Paul and Michael tonight to get local contact points for us to work with while away, but we are excited about this plan and feel better now that we have a plan of action to go after instead of just more thoughts. More on this later. Stay tuned, we'll all need your help!!!
Later on Sunday we met Ian at the Galleria and gave him the first installment of 25,000Rs for the Ahangama family to get started on their well and foundation work. He said we could come out in the next day or two to see the work being done and we hope to have that opportunity before leaving. After returning to the Tuc Tuc last night and a great dinner of baked chicken and jumbo prawns I asked for a ride to a phone so I could use my phone card. Manoche had one of his guys grab the motorcycle and at 9:30 pm I was off on my 3rd ride thru the night on the back of a Bajaj motorcycle. Things shut down pretty early at night here and we had some trouble finding a phone. After 2 or 3 stops, my patient driver drove up to a house and we went to the front door. I quickly gathered this was one of his friends houses where I sat in the living room for 30 minutes while his friend and his mother and grandmother tried to figure out my card and their phone. The phone system here is, well, unexplainable. At least from me.
Anyway, after a lot of talking and number pressing I was hurried over to the phone and told it was ringing. I listened and heard nothing but after a minute I was able to hear my mothers voice mail on her mobile phone who is in Florida at the moment. I left her a hurried Happy Birthday greeting and wished I could have talked longer but since my card never worked my late night hosts were letting me use their own card. They said, "You tsunami worker, right?" I said yes, and the 25 year old man of the house smiled and said, "Now we help you. No problem." I thanked them, they thanked me? and asked me to return anytime. I left my 500Rs phone card on their table and said, "It's yours now, I obviously can't use it." Back on the Bajaj for another ride beneath the night sky and upon return Manoche told me no charge for the ride. I guess you can't go wrong wishing your mom a happy birthday from Sri Lanka!
I have made some great friends on this trip and as some of those relationships continue to grow so does my need to help this country and their people. I cannot help but think I am exactly where I was intended to be. Between my past month here and our future plans for returning my path is set and it feels, for the first time in a long time, clear.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home