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.