A Poya Weekend

Mum is sitting on the porch talking to Dusty. The conversation goes from an encouraging “That’s it. On you go up the stairs!” (I don’t have stairs). To a threatening, “ Oh shut up! That’s an awful noise.  Nobody will want you. I’ll put you in the water.” Referring to the pond next to her.  Dusty is tied up and not happy. Understandably – she hasn’t exactly had that great a weekend either.

It should have been a good long weekend. Friday was poya and a British Council holiday. I had planned to pick up the puppy, renamed from Destiny (cos I couldn’t see me running around shouting Destiny) to Dusty because with the mix of white and black she looked like a Dusty, on Thursday afternoon about 3 leaving enough time to drive down south before dark. I had forgotten what travelling with an untrained puppy was like in a car. She was everywhere, trying to get into the front of the car, between the seats, under the seats (I felt my accelerator foot being licked) and between the seats again. Eventually she settled down and slept. But it took a while.

Going through Panadura, a seaside town on the outskirts of Colombo, I squeezed the car through a space at the roundabout. Unfortunately the tuk tuk next to me had its rain covers down and didn’t see me, therefore set off and hit my side mirror. Right in the middle of a busy roundabout. Police were off to the side and we stopped with the tuk tuk driver and family inside looking very serious. There was no real damage and had the police not been there I doubt either of us would have stopped. It was one of those situations where the driver looked to make a quick buck by pointing out all the damage – scrapes, torn rain cover, none of which were in the right place to have actually been hit by my side mirror. The policeman didn’t even ask us for our paperwork. Obviously he had been primed. However with a mother with Alzheimers aged 90 in the front seat, a puppy in the back seat, the obvious solution seemed to be to offer to pay for the ‘serious’ damage and  get back on the road. This having been done, we all left on our way quite happily.

The Dusty on arrival at the house eyed up Crazy, my other dog, as did she. They did this most of the night, eventually settling down to a ‘I guess we have to live with each other’ attitude. Crazy whose chilled out life of sleeping and eating had been completely destroyed by the puppy’s youthful exuberance retreated to a cool spot under the fan in the living room and stayed there with the odd bark to deter the puppy from approaching too closely.

The next morning I wanted to take Dusty to the vet because I had noticed what looked like a rash and under the more careful scrutiny of my reading glasses some very small animals. So we headed off to Habaraduwa to see the ‘dog doctor’. Chaminda was driving. I had gotten a text message about there being queues at petrol sheds in Colombo the night before and that morning I had gotten another about there being a run on petrol. Something to do with contaminated petrol from India and a break in the supply chain. Therefore we ended up in a bit of a squashed, but slowly meandering queue for petrol in Habaraduwa. After that the vet confirmed what I suspected – the dog had ‘animals’: lice. This immediately made me feel itchy and I still do. She was given two injections (which she really didn’t like) and some pills and we were instructed to get some ayurvedic oil and coat her and Crazy in it for a day, then give them a sea bath and finally a proper wash with special dog shampoo. Joy! The tasks for the weekend.

Then we went to Galle to do my usual Saturday shopping, once more stopping off at a petrol shed this time in an even longer and more squashed queue to get the tuk tuk filled up.  Part of the shopping consisted of lots of insect spray and washing powder.  Had to fumigate the house and spray all the covers and everything she had been on and then wash everything. This was not the way I had wanted to spend the weekend. On Sunday morning after having kept Dusty tied to the bars on the window to limit her access to anything, she was methodically covered in the oil with a toothbrush. We hadn’t bought enough ayurvedic oil so Chaminda had to go back to Galle to get some more to do Crazy. Crazy didn’t look like she had lice but who knew and better to play safe. Finally the dogs were set free to lick their way through the oil.  At least the noise disappeared. Then it was a case of keeping away from the dogs because they were covered in oil. This was easier said than done and I spent most of Sunday washing the oil off me. I can still smell it. My house was shut up (which it never is) and so was Chaminda’s.  Crazy looked for safety under mum’s seat and Dusty sprawled out on the porch. Everywhere the dogs had been there was oil left behind. Hopefully tomorrow when the dogs are given their sea baths then properly washed, I will come back to the house on Friday to exceptionally clean and animal free dogs and a much cleaner house. 

Could do with another poya weekend next weekend to recover really!

The Mess

My mum is quiet now as we pass the house on the corner of the hill up to my house down south.  When she first came she used to proclaim in an exasperated tone as we passed the house, “What a mess! They need to clean that garden.” Recently this statement had been truncated to, “Mess,” with still an element of disgust.  Now though she is quiet.  Both she and the garden have changed; she very gradually, the garden rather dramatically. The garden which covers a fair amount of ground, was overgrown for years and seemed to be the dumping ground for all sorts of garbage. Every so often someone would cut back the bushes and trees that began to block the lane but that was as much as I had ever known anyone to do. As well as being on the corner of my lane, the house has the additional personal significance of being the one that my car ended up in the back of during the tsunami. When we got round to looking inside it we discovered the petrol had been stolen and all the documents in it had disappeared.

On the way home from dinner last weekend Whisky Galore flashed into my mind. Whisky Galore is a film I remember from years ago. Classic Scottish true story of a ship that goes aground off the coast of a small Scottish island. The locals quickly learn of its whisky cargo, but since it is a Sunday and therefore not a working day, they must wait till midnight before they can set to sea and secure the goods without exposing themselves to the increasingly suspicious local customs officer. They eventually get the goods and hide bottles and whisky everywhere round the island while the customs officer does his best to track it down.

What made me think of Whisky Galore coming home from dinner the other night? Well, Sri Lankans seem to share a particularly Scottish characteristic of never looking a gift horse in the mouth and exploiting situations to their own advantage. An example of this from tsunami days took place in a tsunami camp, lots of which had sprung up everywhere inland from the coast. The tsunami attracted thousands of very young foreign volunteers on ‘gap’ years. Some genuinely wanted to ‘do good’; others just loved the beaches and the night life. One group of young ladies in their late teens got some voluntary work building tents in the camps. They would turn up every morning at one camp and get to work in their short shorts and multi coloured vests and build the tents. Along the wall watching them sat numerous local lads. The ladies were amazed that every morning the tents would be flat on the ground again. And so they would build again.  How the lads loved the show! I don’t know how long it took the ladies to realize the tents were being taken down every morning by the lads before they arrived because the show was just too good.

Anyway to get back to the house on the corner.  This particular weekend I had watched as every time I drove past the house on the corner, the garden was becoming more and more under control, constant fires were lit of rubbish, and the ground appeared from a place where I had never seen it before. Maybe someone had bought the property. Maybe someone was thinking of selling the property. Maybe the uncle who owned the house and was working in Dubai was coming back. There was so much activity. Clearly, something was up.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the series Good Karma Hospital, a British TV series shown on ITV recently. Despite the series claiming to be set in south India, it was actually filmed mostly in Unawatuna.  It uses the local teacher training college as the venue for the hospital exterior scenes.  The local college got a beautiful coat of white paint in return. They are about to start the filming of series two. Recently friends of mine who have a guest house down the road agreed to rent the whole house to people working on the series for a few months. Their guest house doesn’t have parking so a deal was struck that the house on the corner would clear their land and provide parking for the inhabitants of the guest house, no doubt at a small cost.

Water Water Everywhere....

 “Water…. Water…. Water…. Water….”my mum continually exclaimed relatively excitedly (for her), as we proceeded south in our tiny Maruti Suzuki along the expressway on Friday afternoon heading to Unawatuna for the weekend. The highway, usually surrounded by lush paddy fields and trees of all kinds, had turned into a causeway. My mum’s language is now rather limited and very often inaccurate but that day she was 100% correct! And as the water continued and we continued along the causeway, I started to think about foundations. The previous week in Wellawatta in Colombo an apartment building in the late stages of construction had collapsed injuring quite a few. I started to wonder about whether the road construction workers had put a lot of effort into getting the right mix for the foundations. I tried to forget about the stories at the time of the road construction of people stealing the materials for the highway in the night and replacing them with cheaper ones or not replacing them at all. But that’s me. I worry. In the end we made it safely to Unawatuna. No storms, no flooding. All fine.

Saturday I tried to get to Matara to visit a friend for dinner. Got to the turning onto the road for the highway and read the signage, “ Rahula junction closed because of flooding.” Was pleased with the correct English (not always the case in these signs). Not pleased with the message. You could get to Matara on the highway but you couldn’t get from the exit to Matara town because the road was flooded. So that put a stop to that. The next day tried to get back to Colombo on the highway. Got as far as Aluthgama – halfway – then all vehicles had to exit. I asked the toll guy if the road between the exit and Aluthgama town was ok. He must have been asked this in various languages all morning by everyone coming off the highway. But he had kept his sense of humour. ‘Yes yes’ he said emphatically and ‘you can swim, no?’ I thought but didn’t say, “Well I possibly can but I don’t think my 89 year old mother with dementia has a hope in hell of swimming anywhere never mind in a flood.” Despite my dad’s best efforts to teach her over the years she never really got beyond a breadth of the local baths. Not a water lover my mother at the best of times. We eventually got back to Colombo – it just took a bit longer.

Over 500,000 affected by the flooding. Over 200 dead and 100 still missing. Sri Lanka doesn’t have much luck with water. 

Thoughts from the Jambu Tree

Thoughts from the Jambu Tree (or how to maintain sanity in 2017)

There’s not often you get a distinctly bad year. In recent history some stand out. 1845 saw the start of the Irish potato famine. 1914 and 1939 brought years of war.  1918 was the flu pandemic, 1859 the Chinese famine, 1981 the African drought, 1995 the North Korean famine and floods, 2004 the South Asian tsunami.  2016 was a particularly bad year. I think most people would agree. Perhaps not in the scale of the above so far, but certainly the signs are there. In politics we had Brexit and Donald Trump. Celebrities died in droves  – David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Jean Alexander, Ronnie Corbett, Carrie Fisher and her mum and George Michael to name a few.  Terrorists were getting more impactful in the West – the Nice attack, the Istanbul airport attack, the Brussels attack. Natural disasters were making the news – Hurricane Matthew, the Zika virus. The refugee crisis was getting worse every month.  2016 is never going to go down in history as a cheery year. Too many omens point to it continuing.

By December 2016 I had had a number of reactions to this (1) go into hiding – a caravan in the wilds of Scotland with a small dog, an electric heater, lots of good fiction, quality DVDs and a supply of cider  – still a very strong pull; (2) buy a gun or lots of drugs, lock the door, curl into a small ball and end it all – another statistic for 2017; (3) go with the flow, believe Brexit will bring prosperity (especially for Scotland), nod when Sean Spicer, Trump’s White House press secretary, states Hitler did not use chemical weapons, cheer when the US boasts about firing missiles at Syria and dropping the biggest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan – that would require a complete brain transplant; (4) embrace the day when the Orwellian 1984 is complete, the Ministry of Truth and Love take over and Newspeak is the new norm – not that far off ; or (5) search for, identify, note down and focus on the things that still make life worth living – even if it may not be for very long. 

For those of you who know me, I am not a renowned optimist. I am, being Scottish, a realist. A cynic and pessimist by default.  Before I resign myself to the caravan in the wilds with the small dog, I have to have a go at number 5. Is it possible to change from a negative pessimist to a positive optimist? Or at least move the dial more from one to the other.  The question often is, “Are you cup half full or cup half empty?’ Being a realist and interested in the concept of and capacity for change (be it personal, institutional, national or global), I claim to be neither. I would rather see myself as the person with the jug of water next to the cup.

When I was about 19 I used to say ‘amazing’ all the time. Everything was ‘amazing’. The park was ‘amazing’, the food was ‘amazing’, the outfit was ‘amazing’, the joke was ‘amazing’. Everything was just ‘amazing’. And I meant it. I was constantly amazed by everything and this was when I was pickling gherkins in a factory in Lubeck in Germany wearing huge blue mechanic style overalls and ginormous green wellies and at one point had the worst ever toothache so there was nothing inherently amazing about my average day! I just had a positive outlook.

Where did that go? How did I become a person who, despite living in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, can only see the black side to everything? What happened? From an external point of view, I have not suffered great hardships, I have my health. I am working, I have a lovely apartment and house. There is no logical reason for me not to be upbeat and if not see everything as amazing, at least see some potential in it. Now you can blame the outside world, you can blame people around you, or you can just accept that you do, as an individual, actually have some power and responsibility to change.

I started this blog in 2012 when I first brought my mum, who has Alzheimer’s, out to Sri Lanka to live with me. It helped me to come to terms with the changes in her and in our relationship and helped me to cope. She is still with me, oblivious to the challenges and complexities in today’s world. She has enough of her own. Her comments though are often hilarious, sound and perceptive, although unconsciously so.  She is still with me and will be drawn on for commentary relevant or not in future blogs. I would like this blog now to help me do (5) and explore  being the person who can fill the cup.