Anxieties and Airports.

I was at a meeting at school a few weeks ago, and a few of us mums ended up having an interesting conversation. Several were talking about how protected our kids are here. Strangely, I've never seen it like this.... But they were saying how, ironically, (as in a lot of developing countries, which may not be that 'safe' ) they are driven everywhere, you always know where they are, who they are with, they have people to clean, cook for them, drive them places even. Peer pressure is much less, because they are used to being so many different cultures all in one class, that there is much less of a norm of behaviour, dress, language, what's cool etc. 43 nationalities in our school of 400 kids.

Two of the mums, from Brazil and Costa Rica, were saying how they wished their kids (young teenagers) were more street wise and less naive. The Brazilian said she was going to rent a place in Copacabana when she returns to Brazil with her 3 boys for the summer. A much rougher area, so they will have to pass prostitutes, drug dealers etc on the streets to get to their apartment. Not exactly sure how this will help them........ She also complained that her boys go to the beach in Brazil, having lived in Asia all their lives, and are shocked, saying "mum, these people are practically naked!"

I did point out to this mum that the silicone enhanced, thong wearing beach population of Brazil is hardly the 'reality' of the rest of the world, (certainly not on the average British beach...) and their reaction was not necessarily just because they'd been living in Asia....

Still there are things to appreciate I suppose. My children are exposed to poverty, military checkpoints, soldiers everywhere, tropical diseases, pollution, dangerous traffic etc but in other (less physical) ways are protected. e.g. peer pressure, consumerism, materialism, the endless carousel of after school activities, keeping up with the Joneses etc, I guess they don't have. Not sure which is better really..... I do just wish we could go for walks and bike rides though.

I wonder how we will find England on this visit? We haven't been there for a year. In fact it was a year ago yesterday that our daughter had her heart surgery at Great Ormond Street. What a difference a year makes! She is thriving. Going back for a check up and bronchoscopy but that is a routine matter. It's so nice to be able to look forward to our visit with unqualified emotions. Last year we were only returning for her surgery. We had only been in Sri Lanka 4 months.

I expect we will find the UK very clean, blissfully cold, (our night time a/c is set to 27' because anything else feels freezing and we wake up). Even grey days and drizzle would be quite refreshing. And I am sure I will enjoy driving there, something I never used to, until I discovered what traffic and bad driving are really like.

My only worries are about whether I will fit back in, whether anyone will be interested in hearing about Sri Lanka (Probably not. I'm told commonly, people never want to hear), whether friends' daily lives and routines, which were once so familiar to me, will have changed. People always tell you that when you go home things have changed, people's lives have changed, people have moved on etc. I want everything to be cosily familiar and how I remember it, of course. Though equally I guess if people were still doing exactly the same things, that would be a bit depressing too!

Then there are the passing trivial concerns like, will I even be in fashion anymore? What are people wearing? Then I remember I was never exactly cutting edge when it came to fashion anyway. So I can shelve that concern...

More pressing concerns are the LTTE and the fact that our international airport is shared by a military airbase......... A month or so ago the LTTE stunned everyone by carrying out a little bombing raid in Colombo, on this military airbase, which is part of the International airport. Flying in, AND OUT, having dropped their bombs, with no Gov't military aircraft being scrambled after them..........

We met the (British) head of security that week at the British High Commission, and he said the SL army's defence systems are fairly inadequate, even though it's been known for quite a while that the LTTE probably had air capability. Well, tiny Heath Robinson AIRFIX kits (planes which had been smuggled into the country, in parts, and then re-assembled) The security guy said they probably had an airstrip in the jungle up in Jaffna somewhere, and would have taken the planes apart again and buried the evidence. I find it slightly disconcerting though because civilian aircraft have been caught up in it before. In fact CathayPacific and one or two other airlines have stopped flying in and out of Colombo because they feel that cannot 'guarantee passenger safety'.

Oh great. Still it is unlikely. Internationals don't get targetted here. So far. And now of course the government have decided to bankrupt themselves even further and buy 5 Mig 29s for billions of Rupees to counteract the threat from the LTTE's 2 airfix planes.....