Home Sweet Home?

It's funny, I thought coming home after being out of the country for 15 months would make me look at Britain with new unblinkered eyes. Instead I seemed to regard Blighty with the myopic indulgence reserved for eccentric members of one's family. Blood is thicker than water etc. I was just glad to see her....

I also thought the collision in my mind of the two cultures and realities of my life, would jar somewhat. I found intead that UK was a familiar and very comfortable old coat that I slipped into with ease. Rather disconcerting really.

Actually I think I ws just very tired, and very relieved to have some of what they call across the pond 'down time', not having to contemplate crazy drivers, infuriating bureaucracy, the stress of poverty stricken people, inefficiency and humidity, on a daily basis.

I hardly dare admit it, but I have revelled in this cold, damp summer, drizzly days, snuggling under a duvert cover, feeling cold, eating scotch pancakes, and soft summer fruits. The break from the heat, in particular, has been a welcome release. No sweat. When one is abroad one's home country takes on a rose tinted perspective, and I know that people from Britain, wax nostalgic about what William Dalrymple maintains is a non-existent England, a rural England of pubs, village greens, holidays by the sea and such like that is an elusive reality.

I am not helped though, by the fact in this regard, that my parents live in a house in a quiet picturesque village with gorgeous views over rolling countryside; you can walk down to a brook at the end of their unmade up road, where children really and truly fish for tiddlers with jam jars, and play pooh sticks on the bridge; where in a nearby village, you can sit looking across the vilalge green sipping warm ale. Then there's my in-laws who live on the Isle of Wight (a time warp place if ever there was one.) 5 minutes from the beach where the lifeboat station is, where the children fish in rock pools, collect shells and stones, and on other days are given rides by a local farmer friend, on the combine harvester, and watch the cows being milked. Their grandparents' respective retirement locations really are idyllic. When in Sri Lanka I know what the grandchildren are missing.

But I am glad to say that I have rather missed the anarchy and chaos that is life in Sri Lanka; its unexpectedness, and the surprising events that characterise everyday life there. I have also been jolted back into the reality of the other Britain, that nanny state where your every move is watched and legislated. The collective sigh of her residents feels almost palpable, in response to this lack of trust in our ability to run our own lives, and make our own decisions.

My son now needs a booster seat until he is twelve yrs old to travel in a car in this country. In a shop I was buying a pair of kitchen scissors. The cashier was looking for something to wrap the scissors in. I said just put them in the bag. She explained, patiently, that she couldn't do that because of health and safety regulations, she had to bubble wrap them. For my protection.

I have also had the curious sensation of experiencing more extreme weather here than in Sri Lanka during the monsoon. I arrived to the floods and loss of life up in the north. Of course the reporting and concern were different. It's quite normal in Sri Lanka. Colombo floods every year. Lives are lost. Both are just reported matter of factly. Today in the UK it rained constantly and torrentially and the roads flooded. I came through 4 floods which were causing people to turn back. If I hadn't been in a borrowed 4WD I wouldn't have made it. Deeper than anything I had riven through in Colombo. Suddenly life here felt a bit more unpredictable. No wonder I felt so at home.......

Flicks and Fluff

We went for a family haircut yesterday. A local place which is very good and cost s the children R100 each (50p) and me R400 (£2) I like it because, as with all sri lankans, they love children, and let my two play with the rollers, stick clips in each other's hair, spray the mister at one another and sweep the cuttings off the floor, and generally treat the place like the "Imaginative Play" corner of a nursery. The only thing missing was a plastic cash register......

I don't like the condensed milk nescafe they serve up as 'coffee' (but this is 'normal' coffee in Sri Lanka) and I'm not entirely sure about the way they dry my hair. But this, it seems, is normal for me.

I have now been to three different hairdressers. The 1st asked if I would like my hair dried "straight or 'flicky'" Uncertain of what 'flicky' might entail and knowing how in the UK hairdressers always insisted on drying my hair straight , I second guessed and said 'straight'. she replied (quite assertively, in this very non-confrontational culture) "I think I'll dry it 'flicky'." So away we went.

And flicky it certainly was. I came out looking like one of Charlie's Angels, with a flick Farrah Fawcett Majors, or even Lady Di, would have been proud of.

Unfortunately I was meeting the family at the zoo, so I had to 'go public' with the 'do'. Needless to say I provided my family with a welcome diversion from watching unfortunate elephants head swaying and caged tigers pacing. I guess going to a zoo in a devloping country is asking for trouble. And this one isn't bad, compared to say Eastern europe, but still... I was pleased my hair provided some light relief.

On another occasion, and at another hairdressers, the lady dried my hair and just kept going, creating more and more fluffiness, until I looked like rather unappetising blonde candy floss. She finally finished and stood back beaming at me in the mirror admiring her work, and said "There, just like Barbie."

Who was I to point out that Barbie may be an aspirational icon of pale Western beauty, and perfection in Asia, in the West she is a pariah of female oppression and male fantasy....... Amongst us women born in the 60s and 70s anyway.

I just smiled sweetly, in what I hoped was a suitably Barbie-ish way, wobbled my head and said "hari, hari" ('ok, fine'.)

Fortunately I wasn't due at the zoo that day, or even the monkeys would have been laughing...

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.....

Coriander, Curry and Confidence

As we are about to leave for a trip to the UK, I decided it was high time I invited some people for a meal. That was the start of my problems. Being a control freak and also enjoying cooking meant I wanted to plan what I would cook. However, this is dependent on stuff keeping if you buy it too far ahead (everythign has to be kept in the fridge. Even flour, sugar etc) or more likely having to keep changing what you will cook according to what is, or is not, in the shops the day before. So I did what I vowed I would never do, that is call someone on a mobile from a supermarket about choices of food. You know what I mean, you see someone by the cheese counter on the phone saying "shall I buy wensleydale or gorgonzola?" Doesn't happen in Sri Lanka because there aren't any choices really.

Actually I wasn't exactly doing that, I was calling a friend to ask her keep her eye out for coriander when she was at the market and to buy it and come armed with the herb the following evening. either that or change again what I was going to cook. It's probably good for me not to be able to plan, and make me more flexible........ but doubly irritable.

My daughter also, unwittingly, does not exactly help my culinary confidence, a confidence I had in my former life, but which has been severely knocked since moving to this land of strange vegetables, and elusive ingredients. Having accused me a few wks ago of serving up roast 'froggie', on Sunday I felt in need of a good old victoria sponge complete with jam and (....well, butter icing), cream not always being readily available here, and dusted the top with icing sugar. My daughter took one look at it and said "Mummy why have you put talc on our cake?" However she didn't refuse to eat it. But then she is partial to the odd lick of ant killer.... (see below) It makes me wonder what she will come out with as a teenager. She's pretty good already at pulling the rug from under me and making me feel incompetent........

I have also discovered that she has been tucking into our house help's rice and curry most days, despite her constant excuse as to why she doesn't like something I present her with, as being because it's "too spicy" This includes medicine, cereal, fruit, cake, potatoes......

Maheswary told me this week that my daughter goes up to her every day and says "have you eaten your lunch yet?" and then asks Maheswary to tell her when she is going to eat it. She then goes and gets her small chair, plonks herself in front of Maheswary and is fed rice and curry by hand (as all food is eaten here) Of course, our househelp is only too pleased to oblige, as she thinks my daughter is 'very thin' and I am not feeding her properly. No wonder she doesn't eat her supper if she's been tucking into curry every afternoon......

She is, when not eating rice and curry, up to her usual toddler stuff. As well as cutting a huge wodge from her hair a while ago, (and from her brother's) so she now has a tufty bit sticking up in the middle of her head, , .......... I also caught her trying to cut thru M's speaker cable, and cut a hole in the mattress, all with her v blunt (fortunately) children's scissors (now under lock and key, I keep forgetting she can climb...) Other tricks include felt-penning on the walls, emptying her wardrobe of all its contents (regularly), licking the nozzle of the ant killer liquid, trying to remove a door lock with a screw driver, and pushing small beads up her nose.

Honestly why is it always the same things? Makes you wonder if there's a manual for toddlers on "Making Mischief". Chapter headings including; Wreaking Havoc, Cutting Hair and Other Banned Materials, Drawing on Things, Consuming Poisons, Ruining Mum's Make Up, Sticking Small Objects up the Nose etc etc. I just hope there isn't a Volume Two........

Faking it?

Last week I was driving my son home from school when I noticed a small van at the side of the road selling orchids. I screeched to a halt, knowing that orchids grow in the tropics, so I thought these might be quite affordable.

They were quite stunning. They were in little log containers and I could see their roots. However, they looked almost plasticky, but then orchids are sort of, waxy. Then I thought, they are plastic! But what about those roots? Then the guy came over with a spray can and misted them with water. I was confused. In the end I had to ask.

The following conversation ensued.
Me: Are they plastic?
Man (looking surprised) Of course they're plastic!
Me: Oh, I thought they were real?
Man: Real?????
Me. Yes, I was looking for a real orchid (feeling more foolish by the minute)
Man: Why do you want a real orchid, these last 10, 15, 100 yrs. Real ones last only a week. (actually that's not true, they last a lot longer, but this was his sales pitch)
Me: (apologising now, almost) I'm sorry, but I really wanted a real one.

I beat a hasty retreat back to the car and drove off. When I explained to my 7 yr old he said, rather redundantly, "Wow, they looked just as real as real ones" But then this is Asia, continent of the master 'fake'. Yes, but the trouble is they're NOT REAL, and I would know. Besides they don't smell,and well, they're just, NOT REAL. Maybe that's the argument people who wear fur use..........

The guy reminded me of the different attitudes to things (some of) my parents' generation have. e.g. the wonderful innovation of plastic, wall-to-wall carpets after lino and bare boards etc. Never mind aesthetics, this is advancement! I guess to this man, plastic flowers are an amazing, cost effective, technological advance to replace the waste and ephemerality of real flowers.

Pop Goes the Weasel, Monkey, Gecko......

Life continues much as ever in the wildlife departemnt. The monkeys are back, complete with babies clinging onto underbellies for dear life as their mums steal our rambutan from the tree. That reminds me, I must buy firecrackers to scare them off.

Yesterday I was making toast and the fuse box tripped. I flicked it back on, put the toast in again, and it happened again. It did this three times. On the third occasion as I returned to the toaster, a rather dazed looking gecko popped its head over the top of the toaster and crawled out from inside it. It then stayed motionless on the side of the toaster, despite me tapping near it to try to get it to move. It had obviously had an electric shock. Or three in fact. Maybe being such rubbery cretaures it was partially insulated. It stayed there, despite me then toasting the bread, with its feet getting very warm, clinging as they were to the side of the toaster. Eventually it seemed to recover and moved, slowly, off. I hope that has taught it to move home.....

On another day, having left home in a hurry, and not returning till 3.30pm, I drew the curtains, which hadn't been done earlier before we left. As I did so something rodenty shot out from beneath the curtain, past my (bare) feet and started frantically trying to climb up the French window. After my initial coronary arrest, I noticed a bushy tail and realised with relief it was a cane squirrel, not a rat. They are quite rat like though. How they keep getting in, we have no idea. It's the element of surprise which always gets me though.

Speaking of which, the following morning I drew the curtains downstairs (again) and felt that, now familiar, spongy plop, as something rubbery landed on the back of my hand. A gecko. They always seem to lose their grip when I'm about...

And as for the cockroach, well I had suspected this for a time, but last night confirmed that indeed our toothbrushes probably are the only source of food in our bathroom, with a nice minty aroma on them. A cockroach was crawling over all 4 of our brushes (brush end) So yet another sealed plastic container needed to keep them in. I wish someone hadn't told me cockroaches like to spend time in the sewers.........

And then there's the weather. It' s not just the English who discuss the weather ad nauseam. This is a favourite topic as it gets hotter, and hotter.........and more and more humid. One's tone becomes more desperate and disbelieving. Surely it can't get any hotter?? Frayed tempers are getting ever more ragged round the edges. Mine in particular. Someone said it's also the barometric pressure, which makes one aggressive (now there;'s a good excuse....). I don't know about that, but maybe that's why my head hurts sometimes.......

M comes home and says "Boy, it's hot in this house" He usually lasts about half an hour while he has his supper, then disappears off to the bedroom to read with the A/C on. And he doesn't get home till 9 p.m! I can never resist pointing out, in martyr-ish fashion, that indeed it IS hot in our house, and I am in it all day EVERY day!! Unlike his office, where the air con is set so low that one (English) guy brings a sweater with him. Even M wears long sleeves. I dream of that kind of cold...

I am more acclimatised. I still sweat with the best of them, and find it very humid, but am certainly more used to it, whereas M doesn't get a chance to get used to it because he is in air conditioning all day. Poor thing.........

Crazy Lanka

I have had a Crazy Lanka week this week. It started with a pig causing me to swerve as it ambled down the middle of one of the main routes into town. A man was half heartedly following it carrying a coconut. I am not sure if he was the owner or a curious onlooker. Even in Sri Lanka pigs in the street in Colombo is not normal. Nor do I know if pigs are 'lured' by coconuts. Not sure how they would eat them.

I regularly meet a herd of 15 or so water buffalo taking up the whole road, on the way home from collecting my son from school. Cows are, of course, frequent road users here, as are stray dogs, but I have never encountered a pig before.

This was followed on Mon by someone knocking off my wing mirror yet again, and two tuktuks overtaking me by driving up the pavement as I sat in stationary traffic.

On Tuesday a car was driving towards me on my inside because he couldn't get across the road. (And clearly didn't want to waste time waiting) I was also simultaneously over- and undertaken by vehicles using me much like a slalom post it seemed. I am not a dawdler, I hasten to add, I was on a two way street in a built up area in traffic. This fact, however, did not deter the slalom racers.

I also had to swerve off the rd twice this week to avoid oncoming buses way over on my side of the road (not even overtaking. Just playing their "I'm big and you're little" game.) Again this is quite normal. In fact on 'dual carriage ways' ALL buses, most tuktuks and a few cars always drive with their wheels straddling the white line just so they can choose whichever lane at a moment's notice, and also making it very hard for you to get past. However it's when they do it on single track roads coming towards you, that the adrenalin really kicks in.

I sometimes think the anarchy and ensuing chaos of the driving here, reflects the madness of the currrent government, which similarly seems to have no thought of the consequences of its actions, no long term perspective, scant regard for human life, and flagrant disregard for rules or laws. And a collective death wish, because let's face it, no one's going to last long with those kind of practices. As on the roads, so in the rulers...

Six people a day are killed on the roads in Sri Lanka. Goodness knows what the death toll is from the war in the north and east. It is thousands though since the peace talks broke down.

Then on Thursday 300 Tamils were forcibly evicted from their lodges in Colombo breaking; the Sri Lankan constitution, which allows citizens freedom of choice of where to reside and freedom of movement, as well as article 147 of the Geneva convention. Thank goodness there's enough of a democratic process here for the Supreme court to rule it was an illegal move, prompting the President to blame the chief of police for undertaking this without consultation or consent. Hmm. I don't think so.

On Friday I got a flat tyre. The one good thing about it being it only cost me R80 to get it fixed (40p) Considering the number of crater sized potholes I have careered through, including ones under flood water, that's not bad going in a year.

Then on my way to see my daughter's end of term nursery presentation, also on Friday, I went to drop our rubbish bag off at the place on the main rd. This was where we used to dump it, as instructed by our landlord, before house to house garbage collections were made. They now collect from houses, but because we had had another poya day (bank holiday) we hadn't had a collection for 11 days. So we have been taking the rubbish to the place at the edge of the rd where everyone dumps their rubbish. And it used to be collected from there. You have these spots all over Colombo. Looks a dreadful mess, but that was the system.....

Anyway this time a policeman came up and started shouting about not dumping rubbish there. There is a sign evidently... I was now late for my duaghter's nursery performance. He was keen to drag it out and make it as humiliating as possible. Anyway as with the garage incident (see 'Driving Me Crazy' post) a rent-a-mob of about 15 men suddenly appeared who did as before shaking heads tutting at me, glaring at this unwitting, heinous crime. This in a country where there are no puiblic bins, everyone drops litter, throws it out of car windows etc. Hypocrites! I was putting it where I had been told it was ok to put it. And I can't read Singhalese. In the end I just got so exasperated I jumped in the car with my bin bag and drove off. I knew he was angling for a bribe, and I wasn't interested. It hadn't escaped my attention that this policenman wasn't actually armed. Unusually. Not that he would have shot me, for a 'tip and run' but always reassuring nevertheless as you zoom off. It's the crowds that gather and join in, that really wind me up.

I asked my next door neighbour, who seems to run the neighbourhood, what I was supposed to do. He said "Wait till dark, then go and put it on the dump"....... However now I know the sign says no dumping, I don't know what to do.... I won't put my rubbish there. I have noticed that all the rubbish dumps by the sides of roads have this same sign above them. I wonder which came 1st. The sign or the dump....

I hope the rubbish lorry comes on Monday.

At the w/e whilst queueing at a red light, a beggar with a withered leg hobbled up to the car in front asking for money. I could see they had wound the window down and were trying to find their wallet. Then the light turned green and the car just pulled off (In true Sri Lankan fashion. You get beeped if you haven't moved when the light is still on red & amber) The beggar did a half hopping lollop to try and catch up with the car to get his money.

I couldn't believe the attitude of someone who could be about to give some money to a beggar , and then just becasue the light had chanegd, they couldn't wait and just pulled off, abandoning the intention. Does Buddha then reward the thought and intention, never mind the action??
I am pleased to say I held up the entire queue of cars behind me for all of about 30 seconds in order to give this guy some money. And you know what, Chicken Licken was wrong, the sky didn't fall down, and I even got through the green light. Not that I would have cared if I didn't.

The culmination of this week of colliding realities was the 50th anniversary ball of our son's school. A lavish charitable affair raising money for an extremely worthy cause of a rehabilitation centre for communciation impaired children. However the sums of money flying around during the live auction for hot air balloon rides, trips to the Maldives, art work, jewellery, phones, make overs etc, made me wonder if this was what one of those celebrity fund raising dinners was like. Only rather than bidding for a dinner party with Sharon Stone, it was a murder mystery with the secondary principal (went for US$450)

My son had seen the list of wonderful donated 'prizes' but decided one outstripped the rest:
"Be Primary Principal for the day in your school"
"Please bid on that mum" he pleaded. The primary principal had confidently told me no one would want that and that I'd probably get it for R500. I just about got in my bid of US$50 (the start price) whereupon it raced up into the stratosphere and went for US$500, in the space of about 4 minutes. Needless to say, that wasn't me....

But for only the second time in my life I won a prize, no actually TWO prizes in the raffle. A w/e for 2 in a lovely beach hotel. And a HUGE vase, which my husband nearly dropped on collection in true Mt Bean fashion.. So all's well that ends well?

It's very weird being in so many different 'worlds', the NGO world, the Ex-pat and International School world amongst corporate and embassy parents, the restricted and repressed world of my Tamil house help, and the daily encounters and experiences 'on the street' going about my business.

It makes my brain ache trying to process it all..........