Sri Lanka! Culture shock?

I have wanted to start writing in this diary again for a while now, but I just didn’t find the time. Today I realise I can’t put it off any longer. The world may end soon and it is time we immortalize our thoughts before the full reality of the Trump presidency hits and leaves us permanently awestruck and speechless.

It were 13 super busy days between returning from Rome and leaving for Sri Lanka. I managed to cram in visiting 6 different cities, buying all my traveling equipment, giving a presentation on the internship in Rome, getting my visa, packing (and re-packing) and most importantly, celebrating my dad’s 80th birthday! But if those days felt like they were flying by, I don’t know what words to use to describe how the past 3 weeks (three weeks!?!) have raced by me.

Right from the start, waiting for my flight to Colombo in London, I got a taste of what was coming. Even though Heathrow is surely a lovely, spaciously built airport, somehow me and my newfound flight friend Merel found ourselves stuffed in a 100m2 waiting area between four walls, without windows, a

bathroom or nearly enough seats to fit us and about 500 Sri Lankans heading for their home country. The shameless staring and children pointing at the weird white people had begun. But when I tried to break the tension with a friendly (and cautious) grin, the Sri Lankans responded with the dazzling smiles they are apparently famous for. The flight was no less of and experience. We were soon fed extremely spicy virgin (deeply disappointing our flight attendant) Bloody Mary’s and witnessing his struggle with the elderly British man in front of us who definitely was not disappointing and actually managed to get full-fledged drunk on white wine by ordering it from all the other flight attendants after ours had politely, but firmly cut him off.
Ten hours later: Colombo! Luckily, I immediately got screwed over by a taxi driver that charged me probably 5 times the normal price for the ride to my apartment. Wildly taking advantage of the obvious traveller noobishness I was emitting, the visible lack of sleep and the slight panic I felt after 3 different ATM’s on the way had rejected both my cards. Get fooled well enough and you learn, now I argue with tuk drivers over a 100 rupees (€0,60) when I think they have taken an unnecessary detour.

The apartment wasn’t the best. All in all the room was fine, but I immediately had flashbacks to my first apartment in Rome which I had also shared with the owner, a kind but intrusively mothering 40-year old single woman. I am not made for that. Had a sort of lonely (Friends-filled) first night, interrupted only by a thumb-sized cockroach crossing my room at 1am. Decided to trap it under a glass, regularly checking it wasn’t strong enough to flip it over, and thus having an extremely refreshing long night of sleep.. Definitely not planning on staying in the apartment much longer and in dire need of heroic roommates.

However from the first real day in Colombo things were looking up. Met with some other medical interns for lunch (thanks to whatsapp friend Nienke), received a long list with ‘Sri Lanka must-do’s’ and got invited for a trip to seaside Kalpitiya leaving that night with 17 other expats. So I took a tuktuk to the restaurant where we were meeting that evening and noticed after a while that my driver had a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry Gin in his cup holder. Must say, a little worried, I looked around and saw Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker (black and red label), Bacardi Rum and several types of vodka speeding by. Finally my tukdriver told me it was only ‘watura’ (water) and I was able to sit back and relax while swaying and bouncing towards the restaurant on the heavily trafficked Colombo roads.

Kalpitiya really was soo much fun :) On the way over there we stopped a million times to visit some of the most disgusting toilets I have ever seen and paradoxically to eat some of the best late night snack I have ever had: Kottu or Kotthu or Koththu. Chopped up roti (breadlike) with a combination of Happy Cow cheese, vegetables, chicken and an impossible amount of green chilli peppers. Undeniably a thorough wake/sober up. In Kalpitiya we slept in tents and bungalows in a Hawaiian like resort with straw roofs, hammocks and beanbags all around. Homemade meals (read: a wide array of rice and curries) was served three times a day and preferably eaten as true Sri Lankans do, without cutlery. I was only recently taught the rules and techniques of this essential skill: You are supposed to use only one hand, break up the carbs and mix all the different vegetables, meats and sauces in with it. The food is not supposed to ever touch the palm of your hand or exceed the second joint of your fingers on the outside of your hand. Then you make a little portion that fits into your mouth in one go and you push it off your hand with the back of your thumb. Wash your hands before and after you eat and never lick your fingers.

We partied, drank, slept, relaxed and (I attempted) to wade-board. On Sunday a few of us rented scooters and went to see a Dutch Fort built in 1667 a couple of kilometres away. We discovered it was actually still an active military base and got a tour from a uniformed Sri Lankan soldier. Afterwards we drove around a little and found a nice lagoon beach which we shared with several burka wearing ladies and a group of stray dogs. The latter of which you find literally everywhere in Sri Lanka. I actually met two really angry ones on the walk back home that evening. It was pitch dark and I used the flashlight of my phone to see the dirt road leading to my house. As I rounded the corner, two light brown dogs came charging at me, barking viciously with their tails straight up in the air. Good thing I got my rabies vaccinations after all in Rome. Anyhow I preferred not to get bitten so I did the one thing I thought would scare them the most. While standing tall (atap) and shining my flashlight in their eyes, I yelled at them in Dutch. I used my best vocabulary and at the end of it they actually laid their heads on the floor and started howling softly. I had been denying it in Italy, but I guess Dutch really does sound horrible..

The next week I started at the hospital. The next chapter I’ll dedicate completely to the hospital life and I’ll provide some pictures. I think I’ll need the visual aid to draw a representative picture of how it is. The one thing that will not be visinle though is how I am the only Caucasion person in the whole clinical part of the hospital. Both an advantage and a disadvantage. Most patients want me to examine them, asking me in Sinhala or just tapping on whatever bodypart they want to have checked. The children are mesmerised by the different color of my eyes and skin and it is a great distraction for them while I listen to their lungs or feel their bellies.

In the weekend you really have to get out of Colombo though. Life here is exciting, but very chaotic and never quiet. The air is thick with smog and smells from the streets and the spicy, deep fried food on every corner. The days are hot and humid. Therefor, the second weekend I went to Udawalawe with some of the new friends I made on the first weekend and some I just asked along. That’s how it goes, you get to know people on facebook or whatsapp and travel with them in real life, the more the merrier! We took a public bus that drove us there together with 70 other people that continuosly jumped on and off the bus, which rarely actually stopped driving at a busstop. The ride lasted for 5 hours, the happy, upbeat (might read: hysterical) Sri Lankan music that blasted out of the exceptionally modern soundsystem and incredible 80's/jamaican style/white blazers music videos, that played on the equally modern tv screen in the front of the bus, also lasted for 5 hours. It never stops. It drove me insane, until I couldn’t help but start laughing at the hilarity of it all. While half of the bus manages to sleep in these conditions, the other half has to stand for hours, forget the idea of personal space and hold on for their lives to remain upright as the bus flies over the bumpy roads. There is something you need to know about the Sri Lankan way of driving to completely understand the difficulty of this task. There are no speed limits, no lanes and no rules. When you approach another vehicle, you honk. When you overtake a vehicle, you honk. When you are about to crash into a vehicle coming towards you, you honk. When you see anyone you know, anyone who might want to take your bus, or anyone at all that makes you feel like honking the horn, you honk. Most importantly, the only reason ever to use the

breaks, is to prevent hitting a vehicle that is bigger than yours. The busdriver speeds up until almost banging into another bus and only then rams the breaks, after having surpassed this bus he starts speeding again. Then there is the cash guy. This is a man that is able to remember (on a bus packed to the rim with people hanging from the doors) who is going where, who has or hasn’t paid and that somehow manages to manoeuvre himself across the exploding bus with an enormous wad of cash to reach every passenger for payment.

In Udawalawe we stayed at a guesthouse, in a room for four people, with two gigantics beds, a mosquito net each and paid only €11 altogether. The owner provided us with dinner and organized a jeepsafari for the following day. He has a son of about 10 years old who came to speak with us. He had learned English from all the foreigners visiting the house and built his own toys. A chance to make a snapchat on our phones made him jump with excitment as he was otherwise always ‘so boring’ all the time. We got up at 5am the next day and were on our way before sunrise. As this was my first ever experience with wild animals in their actual natural habitat, I think I was quite easily pleased with whatever we would see. We were in luck though. The others told me they had only slept on their last safari, as there had been no animals but a few birds towards the end. This time there were lots of elephants (including grandma and

babies!), a million peacocks, storks and buffalo’s, numerous crocodiles and finally a group of monkeys, not to mention all the colourful birds flying around that were way to fast to photograph. Breakfast awaited us when we got back and after a quick shower we rented a private bus and driver to take us back to Colombo. On the way we stopped in Rathnapura and that was really the best thing we could have done (thanks Josephine!)

Rathnapura is the Sri Lankan city of gems and our driver had a cousin who owned a gem store. They showed is how they receive the rocks and how they cut and polish them into jewellery-ready stones. After that we expressed our curiousity for the actual gem mines and of course, the cousin of our driver had a friend who’s uncle owned one. So off we went. The gem mine turned out to be a one by one meter wide, 11 meter deep hole in the ground. There was

a pump to refresh the poisonous air down below and another to drain it from ground water. The owner said his workers were down there for 8 hours a day, only stopping to have their sugar with milk and tea. Looking down the square hole, I saw it was constructed using wooden logs, one on every side. Every half a meter to a meter below one ledge, came the other and on one side there vertical pole that ran all the way down and connected each ring to the next. Evidently, that was the way to climb up and down the mine. And so we did! Barefoot and with my pants hoisted up as high as possible, I was one of the 4 brave (and later dirty, wet and sweaty) people who had a go at the life of a miner. The way down was easy at first, but soon the spaces between the ledges became bigger, the air hotter and the wood muddy and slippery. Halfway down, the vertical pole was attached to a second one which made it twice as thick and I wasn’t sure my small hands would be able to hold on to it. Finally, with encouragements from the others we all made it down and saw the tiny, gloomy, impossibly hot space in which the miners dig for gems day after day. I soon wanted to go back up to breath again.

On the way I discovered a have enough upper body strength to pull myself up when the ledges were to far away to put my feet on. This has actually been one of the most satisfying parts of the entire journey. In our developed countries, with public transport, elevators and escalators and mobile phones, we never have to walk long distances, climb or jump to get to our destinations. We never have to trust our bodies to do anything risky and thus never experience (if you don’t really try by doing some dangerous sport) that our bodies can do way more than we think, and our fears of getting hurt are based on a lack of opportunity rather than inability. (So far my mindfulness advertisment, thank you come again). We all made it out relatively unscathed and really happy to return to our own lives.

After this dirtying activity it was time for a no less adventurous, but much more refreshing one. Rathnapura has many waterfalls and our driver and his cousin took us to the one they always used to go to after school (!). We waded through the crystal clear water, in which many Sri Lankans were bathing and playing, jumped and hopped over the stones and fallen trees and climbed the rocks to halfway up the waterfall. Here the water clattered down on a large slab of rock

and covered us in a wonderfully cool vapour that cleaned our faces and the air around us. The nature was so beautiful, I completely understand coming there every day after school (see pictures). After an hour or so we resumed our way to Colombo. Once there, we decided to go for sushi. The one Japanese girl in our group officially approved the food as being authentically Japanese and then gave us a group urigami lesson (thanks Yuuka :D).

Okay that’s enough for today.. will start writing more regularly (and shorter) from now on (hopefully).

Next time: Tropical medicine and the 3rd plus 4th weekend. Ayubowan!