travel is about people as well as places

The second part of my month in Sri Lanka turned out to be very different from the first, being based much more on the people I met than on any sights.  Yes I wandered around Colombo, seeing monuments, museums, mosques, temples, churches, lighthouses and old architecture, and I visited the fort and a couple of temples in Jaffna, but it was all about the people.

This started when I checked into my hostel in Jaffna, after a night on the train.  One of my room-mates was a Sri Lankan lady who’d spent most of her life living in London, but who was currently visiting ‘home’ to help get over a few relationship problems.  She offered to guide me around the city for the day, but clearly did this so that we could continue the conversation we’d started in the dorm.  She went into considerable detail about her woes, and asked me some quite direct relevant questions – for example she wanted to know when I last had sex, as she hadn’t wanted to be celibate after her relationships ended, but then one of the sexual partners she met online was stalking her after what should have been a one-off encounter.  It was a fascinating conversation!

Then, after a hairy ride back to Colombo (the bus going so fast that we not only overtook every vehicle we encountered on the road, but only slowed down rather than stopping at the bus stops along the way, so that disembarking passengers had to jump off, and those waiting for the bus had to run from the stop and jump on – with the result that what should have been a ten-hour journey took only nine hours), I had an almost sleepless night back in my Colombo hostel, being eaten by fleas.  I asked the manager if I could switch to another bed, and then another occupant of my dorm, a Chinese lady, started jumping about frantically, trying to photograph the fleas and our bitten bodies … and she left early in the morning, apparently demanding a refund of the money she’d paid for that and the next night.

I was offered a bed in the dorm the two staff members slept in, whilst they took steps that day to deep clean the infested room, and finding the staff dorm cooler and more restful (the two staff members being older and thus not prone to making loud phone calls or to playing video games into the night), I offered to stay there rather than to relocate back to the other dorm.  I was there for six days, and found it interesting to see the stress the manager went through behind the scenes (well-hidden from the other guests).  I gave her a few sympathetic looks, and at one point offered her a hug.  Gradually these two women took me into their embrace, and even started trying to share their meals with me (I’d be in the middle of measuring out my oatmeal, when I’d suddenly be handed a plate of rice and vegetables!!).  When it came to leave, I got a very big hug, and the manager with tears in her eyes asked me to please come back and visit them again.  They did feel kind of like family by the end, although the conversation could not go deeply into any of the things I’d have liked to discuss given their limited English.

Finally, on my flight back, I found myself sitting next to a Sri Lankan Muslim couple with very good English, and when they refused the meal due to Ramadan I asked why they were fasting, given that you are exempt from the requirement when travelling.  It started a conversation that went on for a few hours, talking mostly about the stage of development of Sri Lanka today – which included the wife saying that she wished they were still under the British!  This being due to the very high levels of government corruption ever since their independence.