Money money money

When mum arrived in Sri Lanka, as well as the dogs replacing her plastic owl in her affection, she acquired a pig.  She arrived in Sri Lanka at the beginning of December and on Xmas day, after much persuasion on my part, she agreed to come to Xmas dinner at a friend’s house in Unawatuna.  There were about 15 people invited and instead of everyone buying everyone a present each, we agreed to do a pot luck: everyone brought one present and they were put into a pot and we all had to choose one.  When it came to my mum’s turn, she pulled out this huge brightly coloured present.  After fighting valiantly with the wrapping,  a rather large, brilliantly gold, pig was revealed. This made my mum’s day. I have no idea what she was expecting –she hadn’t quite grasped that it was Xmas! She was over the moon with the big gold pig. It was quite a sight and must have been the most in your face present in the pot. It was of course a piggy bank. And so after Xmas day it took pride of place on her bedroom shelves in the house in Unawatuna. I added some coins to it periodically.

She became quite fascinated by the fact that the pig had money in it and I eventually had to teach her how to open the bottom of it and get the money.  It did not actually have that much in it: about 150 rupees at any one time (under one pound sterling). I would find her at all hours sitting on her bed counting and recounting the money and putting it into a small purse I had also given her. The purse she kept inside a toilet bag which would then come everywhere with us. She was so attached to it that I had to ensure that it came everywhere because, if she was without it and realized it, then either doom and gloom would set in or someone in the vicinity would be accused of stealing it.

It is not only money that she counts. Lots of things she counts out loud. To give a few examples.  A logical one is cards. When dealing out cards for a game of rummy, she counts the cards. This is quite useful. While driving, she counts the tuk tuks sitting at the side of the street waiting for passengers.  She counts the sets of steps on the highway. She has just recently taken to counting the bridges on the highway; however since there is quite a lot of space between them, this has not been very successful, as by the time we get to another one she has forgotten that she is counting them.

Last Friday on our drive down south we were both counting buses. We were driving south. The buses were driving north to Colombo. Normally the only buses on the highway are the special highway buses which are ultra -modern buses for Sri Lanka. However we weren’t counting them. There were 60 (we counted them) traditional Colombo Transport Board buses travelling north to Colombo. I have no idea why. It was pretty easy to count them as they were clearly numbered on their front windscreen. Of course they had somehow gotten mixed up and instead of passing us in order, 1,2,3,4,5 etc they were passing us all jumbled up, 3,5,7,4,33,34,23 and so on. I would love to know where they were going and why there were so many of them.

To get back to money. She is continually bamboozled and shocked by the prices of things in Sri Lanka. Currently the rate is 208 Sri Lankan Rupees to the pound.  We go shopping to Arpico in Colombo every week. This is a big supermarket and department store. She pushes the trolley and follows me round. She continually remarks on the cost of things exclaiming “220 pounds for a tin of beans….. that’s expensive, 1,500 pounds for a pot, we cant afford that….., 150 pounds for milk…” and so on. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that this is not pounds but rupees, she never remembers.   

This is the woman who brought up three teenagers on her own, managed her teacher’s salary to get us all through secondary school then into full time education and then into fairly decent jobs. She always said she would never borrow money as she never wanted to be in debt. Ironically it was when we discovered that she had gotten herself into massive amounts of debt that we realized that there was something wrong with her although even then we did not do much about it. Looking back, how idiotic her children were.  She got conned by spam mail promising her prizes of lots of money if she would just send 10 pounds, or 15.25 or some other small sum to the sender. This would put her into the running for the big prize.  She got about twenty of these letters every day  for years and must have replied to all of them. She bankrupted herself and ran up a huge bill on her credit card. She managed to hide it from her three children for years. It was only when on two occasions myself and my brother arrived and found no food in the house and the telephone cut off that we realized that there was something badly wrong.  We sorted her out and got her mail redirected to my brother. I am eternally thankful to the Post Office who, after I proved that I had Power of Attorney over her finances and health, bent their rules over the length of redirection and to this day continue to do so.

But back to the pig. The pig is now in Colombo. She decided to pack it (she loves packing her toilet bag – unfortunately the pig would not fit and therefore it had to sit in the back of the car) when we left Unawatuna one weekend and bring it with her. Its money has gone – it’s in her purse. The pig sits in pride of place on her chest of drawers in her bedroom there. I haven’t found anything to replace it on her shelves down south as of yet. However I am confident that something will turn up.