Broke'n'English

Lost in translation

(the following is a Facebook post in December 2022 from something called Thattayagekolama Blogspot, translated from the original Sinhala, in which I suspect it was perfectly intelligible. Comment is superfluous.)

Teepee The Campsite – Hakbellawaka, Yatiyanthota

There are some questions that many of us ask. First of all what are you going to do? This is how it’s not a camp with adventure activities. So every activity is outside the camp. For an example if you are going to hike Hawariyangala, you should come to this camp and leave there. Kayaking is the same. Our boatyard is in Teepee One. Need to go there. But we carry all these places in our 4WD truck. They can all be done with us!

Then what can we do in the camp grounds if our camps are not there?

Yes you can listen to the sound of a beautiful float that will be remembered for a lifetime from the time you entered the campground until you come back. And that’s the possibility of soaking your body with cool clean water all day. The three four hundred metres border of our camp is surrounded by the beautiful water pond. And another little waterbaby surrounded by a really small doe on the other side. Most of the smaller fires around it are used extremely personally. That’s why privacy is at its highest.

And on an ordinary day this dola flows very innocently. That’s why even the youngest child can live alone! This is full of native fish. The campground is completely covered in a wild wheel. Though it is so watery we have provided clean tube water for sanitation work. That’s why we are all set up so that our sisters who come to our camp have no inconvenience. (Our ladies can’t do it when the camping is said! We’ve experienced every reason!)

The birds sound when you hear that attack all day. At night the wires are overtaking the sound of birds. So if it’s a drink tonight or a hot cup of coffee enjoying a BBQ and mixing with Miasia all the space is there! In the top necklace of our attic setting up our tents for sleep! In addition, the elevator to climb into that attic is designed to be able to scrap up. Al of this we are trying to get a comfortable sleep in a strange environment because we need to double mind the fact called “safety”. Isn’t that the truth?

So if you want to enjoy some extremely beautiful Hindustani Ragadhari music our Visharada Ananda Rajapaksha brother will also join us. But it will have to be postponed.

However those two days will be a beautiful one, here’s our heartfelt belief!

So it’s only Rs3,500/= to spend two days and one night with food in the morning, lunch and dinner. Really until the end of this December!

When you come to Yatiyanthota-Huckbella we will accept you from there. If you come in a vehicle you can put it on Teepee One. (It’s located near Hatton Colombo main road). Since then we have to go through a pretty tough and beautiful atmosphere! Our campsit will be found only after 3 kilometres like that.

So if you want to know anything else call [2 mobile numbers].

I was wrong and I apologise

To my amazement the Sri Lanka Police arrested (or as they say cutely in these parts ‘nabbed’) the miscreants who stole our goods from Mulberry Cottage as related in the previous post, and retrieved everything. Being Sri Lanka, the process from then on was anything but straightforward but I must start with heartfelt thanks to our local police and a public apology for doubting them.

Martin came in one morning, a few days after the last post here: “Good news, sir. Police catch the people who steal.” He went on to narrate, with evident delight, the story he’d been told of a police raid on the village where sound beatings were administered to the four guys arrested. These, he explained gleefully, were exemplary beatings reserved for people who steal from foreigners. One of the other two houses they robbed belonged to an elderly Swiss lady we have met, though it’s her second home and she doesn’t visit often. Martin’s devout Christianity doesn’t extend to questioning police brutality; I just about managed to resist the temptation to ask “What would Jesus have said, Martin?”

Later that day three police officers including the Laughing Policeman turned up at the house to claim bragging rights and see if we had any goodies to offer them. We didn’t, but were suitably grateful and offered a free lunch to them if they let Rani know a day in advance. Then Martin and I had to make another visit to Talatuoya Police Station to identify the retrieved goods, show them proofs of purchase and make and sign another interminable statement. I’m not usually good at keeping receipts for stuff I buy, but running a business one has to do that for the auditors so, other than the TV which was an old model we shipped from England in 2015, I had the relevant documents. I even had the manual for the TV. All of which impressed the police, as well as the Swiss lady whose losses appeared to be mainly crockery. We were taken to inspect the fridge/freezer, the TV, the gas hob, and the kettle and I pronounced myself very satisfied with the police work, though our language difficulties meant that I could only convey that through grins, body language and saying “Sri Lanka Police One, England Police Nil” which caused loud laughter. Martin explained to them that I had told him that in the UK one would be lucky to get a crime number, let alone four arrests and your goods back.

I’d been told that I would need to appear in court. What I hadn’t been told was that the four stolen items would also have to appear in court. Visions of m’learned friends trying to cross-examine a fridge/freezer came unbidden into my mind. This process is apparently called ‘Production’, making it sound like one of the stages of alchemy. So early on the morning of the court proceedings Martin hired the lorry from the chicken farm next door, with driver, and we set off to Talatuoya by an even shorter shortcut only passable by serious 4x4s and trucks. Once we reached the proper roads down the mountain we even had time for some sightseeing, the driver pointing out a rather lovely waterfall I hadn’t seen before, and his rice paddy, banana and coconut grove.

After another long wait at the police station, during which I was offered breakfast which I politely declined, the goods were loaded onto our little truck along with the things belonging to the other two properties and a police motorcycle with a broken headlamp. The Laughing Policeman had to accompany us to the court in case we did a runner with our own belongings, it seemed, and needed the bike to get himself back again. He and I rode in the cab with the driver; Martin rode on the back of the truck with all the strapped-down goods.

The courts complex is almost in Peradeniya, some ten km from Talatuoya via the centre of Kandy. When we arrived, the goods were loaded onto a display stand with the fridge/freezer proudly standing guard at one end. A procession of suits tramped past on their way into court but paid no attention. All the signage was in Sinhala save for one notice on the door opposite which read ‘Happy New Year 2012’. Martin said “Wait here, sir” and as is his wont disappeared. I waited. And waited, until the Laughing Policeman rushed up: “We are late! Come! Come!” Up three flights of stairs I puffed and into the capacious courtroom, entering just before the judge – to enter after the judge is, quite possibly, a capital offence. The judge was seated on a dais, as judges tend to be. In front of him was the person I presume was the Clerk of the Court, a young woman in a fetching lilac sari. In front of her a table full of black-suited legal types, almost half of whom, I was pleased to note, were women. Off to one side about twenty policemen were gathered around another table, all busily shuffling immense ledgers and reams of paper. At the back were the public, who seemed to include both criminals and victims and perhaps just curious onlookers. I originally joined the throng but, being white, was soon motioned to a vacated chair. Bad form to refuse. Opposite was the dock, and at the back of the courtroom a barred and locked cell door.

Proceedings were rapid. The Clerk called out a name or names and usually someone appeared. Sometimes they went into the dock, sometimes not. The clerk spoke briefly (the judge seemed to be largely superfluous) and some of them then simply left. Others left with a piece of paper, others were taken into the cell. One group was led out by the fire escape door and not seen again – perhaps to a yard reserved for especially naughty prisoners who needed a second beating. Everything was in Sinhala but eventually I caught the word ‘Talatuoya’ and knew we were getting close. Then I heard ‘Jungle Tide’ and my name was called. “In English?” asked the judge, in one of his rare interventions. “Yes please”. The Gang of Four was now occupying the dock. The judge asked if I had identified my possessions. Affirmative. And did I realise I could take them home but would not be allowed to sell them? Now I cannot for the life of me see why I am not allowed to sell stuff I own, but it’s best not to argue with judges so I said “Understood”. The Gang of Four were led into the cells and I assumed I was free to go and so, following the procedure I’d been observing, I bowed to the judge and walked backwards into a cast-iron pillar. Then was motioned by the Laughing Policeman to return. Then someone else said “Go”. So I went.

Outside the courtroom I met the third victim, a Colombo travel agent who also had a Hanthana holiday home near to us and had been meaning to visit Jungle Tide. Potentially useful contact, then. Back to the display stands where I naively assumed we could load our stuff back on the lorry and head home. No, said Martin: “Wait, sir” and, as is his wont, disappeared for another hour, returning with printouts of photos he’d taken on his phone of the stolen and retrieved goods. All of which had to be lodged and recorded on long forms with the jobsworths who inhabit the back end of the courts complex where it’s still New Year 2012. I managed to get into trouble twice. First, for laughing at the travel agent’s comment: “England rules. Sri Lanka people. Bad mix.” I was quickly shushed (I admit I do have an embarrassingly loud laugh, but we were several corridors and three flights of stairs away from where any legal proceedings were taking place). Second, for wandering off into the adjacent yard to gaze at their collection of ruined vehicles. I was called back. “You cannot go, sir. This is courtyard”. Yes, I could see it was a courtyard, then it dawned on me that they meant a Court Yard – a yard that only people employed in the court could enter. The Swiss lady and her Singhalese husband invited me to join them in the ‘cafeteria’ which served only chai tea. No coffee, no cold drinks of any kind. No food save for stale sweets. So I came back out.

We were eventually allowed to load the lorry, unload the motorbike and go home. When we got back to Jungle Tide Martin’s final observation on the matter was: “One minute working, five minutes talking. One person working, five people watching. This Sri Lanka.” Exactly.

Helping the Police with their enquiries

While we were on a short holiday with our son and his family earlier this month we had a break-in at Mulberry Cottage, the budget accommodation in our gardens. Mulberry Cottage is outside what the dogs regard as the area they are paid to monitor at night. They demanded extra treats for the danger. We said no. The impasse continues. Anyhow, it wasn’t quite a break-in as someone seems to have left a window open after cleaning and the thieves got in through that. They took the fridge, two-burner gas stove, TV and digibox, and the kettle, and let themselves out via the back door which only needs unbolting once you’re inside (yes, we’re going to rectify that, though a closer approximation to closing the stable door after the horse has (un)bolted would be hard to find). As ironic luck would have it, the current shortage of gas meant that there was no priceless gas bottle left in Mulberry Cottage. With help from our friend Kenny, who helps look after Jungle Tide while we’re away, housekeeper Martin handled the reporting of the theft and the police turned up promptly, with sniffer dogs. By all accounts the police dogs gave a good account of themselves, unlike our lazy pair. A dropped length of TV cable and a piece of tissue were all they needed to get the scent, and thereby trace the exit route, which was straight up the bank and onto the approach lane, avoiding the locked gate. Martin had to attend the Talatuoya Police Station to give a witness statement but once I was back from holiday I also had to go, as the owner, to make a statement. Talatuoya is where our local council, police and the Electricity Board operate from. It’s a short distance down the mountain but the road trip goes via Kandy before doubling back on itself and takes over an hour each way. But we’re not covered by the services in Kandy city as we’re too far way! We took Kenny’s car but Martin said he knew a shortcut avoiding Kandy so Kenny let him drive. The spine-crunching, tyre-shredding shortcut maybe took ten minutes off the total journey time to Talatuoya.

In the Crime Investigation Department we were invited to sit down at the desk of the Laughing Policeman himself – a sergeant who maintained a manic grin throughout the hour and a half I sat there. He spoke no English but having Kenny around sorted that out. He kept asking me, via Kenny, whether we had brought any presents with us from our holiday? Or maybe from England? Impossible to tell whether he was joking but no bribes were offered on this occasion. The Randy Newman song Jolly Coppers on Parade was churning around in my head. Otherwise, he ignored us all for about forty minutes while he chatted away with his colleagues. It wasn’t a bit like Vera. Not even like Death in Paradise. No charts with names and photos of suspects and victims connected with coloured strings, like the proper police do on TV. The CID occupied a grimy lean-to (I’ve seen many superior and some larger garden sheds). There was only one computer screen, to which nobody was paying any attention. But masses of paper across every surface. The only Death in Paradise moment occurred early on when the Police Chief stuck his head around the door. Instantly everyone leapt to attention and saluted, and I found myself also rising from my chair until I was motioned to sit down. The Chief then vanished without apparently having done or said anything and normal chatter was resumed.

Eventually the sergeant opened his foolscap book, took out two pens and began to write out my witness statement. For reasons that escape me it seemed necessary to write a paragraph in blue biro followed by one in red. He read it all out in Sinhala as he wrote so I trusted Kenny to alert me to anything being written which I might not be happy with, or able to defend in court should it come to that. After a page or two of what looked like copperplate Sinhala script, which I assume was his own biography, he began taking personal details, first from Martin, then from Kenny and finally from me. It was apparently necessary to record not only my address and passport details but my age, my UK address and my employment in the UK before I retired more than a decade ago. I tried “local government” and received uncomprehending looks. “Policy Officer” I replied, more in hope than anticipation of any understanding. “Ah! You are Police Officer!” he managed in perhaps the only English he knew. I tried to explain the difference via Kenny but feel pretty sure that if a case ever comes to court I will be described as “retired police officer”, and if that happens I shall keep schtum. I had to state my religion. “No religion”, I replied. But as I’ve come to realise that is not a possible answer in Sri Lanka. I could – and perhaps should – have come up with some imaginary deity but I didn’t think quickly enough. “Christian” interjected Christian Kenny and Christian Martin. “Roman Catholic?” “No. Can you put ‘England Church’ please?” I asked via Kenny. It was also necessary to record when we bought the land, when we built Jungle Tide and when we built Mulberry Cottage. Finally, I was asked two questions. The first was: “Do you have any doubts?” This seemed a little on the philosophical side, but Kenny explained that it simply meant “Do you suspect anyone of having carried out the burglary?” I didn’t. Then: “What do you expect from the Police?” – was this some kind of trick question, maybe to smoke out my politics? I replied as diplomatically as I could that in England the police rarely solve minor acquisitive crimes so if he and his colleagues solved this one, I would decide that the Sri Lanka Police were better than the England Police. This produced a wider than usual grin so was probably OK.

After several pages had been inked in, I was eventually invited to sign and could leave. The jolly copper rose from his seat and we tried out a hilarious routine of saying our farewells: first we saluted each other, then a brief handshake, finally a fist bump and everyone present dissolved into nervous giggles.

I have a modest proposal. Since the police dogs are utterly brilliant and the police officers utterly dumb, why not put the dogs in charge of the police force? Would save a lot of money in these hard economic times.

Totally dental

Our friend Kenny, a Sri Lankan whose first language is English and who therefore totally gets this blog, occasionally sends us snippets which have made their way into his phone. One example: a photo of a clothing rail in a store containing women’s dresses, with a placard against it proclaiming FROGS 250/-. The other day he sent us a piece from Newswire reporting on yet another ministerial visit to Kandy (there are so many ministers they have to be found something to do, though Kandy remains a cultural and environmental desert for all that ministerial attention). “While in Kandy, the Minister went to pay his respects at the Temple of the Toothpaste” the article noted. A clear case of virtue SIGNALling, in my opinion. As a minister he would have entered and left not by the public entrance but by the entrance reserved for VIPs, known as the Colgate (Oh do shut up! – Ed.). I will now cease to call Kandy’s holiest place the ‘Temple of the Tooth Fairy’ as ‘Temple of the Toothpaste’ is so much better.

My own teeth, meanwhile, could not by any stretch of the imagination be said to be a temple, unless of the ruined kind to be found in Sri Lanka’s ancient cities, Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. The occasional remaining tooth still stands, Ozymandias-like, in mocking remembrance of past glories. I’ve worn dentures for several years. While trapped in the UK in 2020 by the pandemic travel restrictions a couple more of my standing stones toppled and I had new dentures made. I brought back to Sri Lanka a large quantity of fixative since the only stuff you can get here is an almost useless powder. Why this should be so I don’t know. You can buy Marmite, Colman’s mustard, Lea and Perrins and a whole range of Heinz products easily. Powerful sedatives are supplied over the pharmacist’s counter, no questions asked. But nowhere can you get Fixodent – well, nowhere in Kandy. Even so, I recently ran out of my supplies of the tubed stuff and had to resort to the dreaded powder. And, in an example of irony only surpassed by catching Covid at the vaccination centre (see Jablog), I was fitting my dentures in one morning when the powder caused me to cough and said dentures flew across the room and cannoned into the unforgiving tiled floor, snapping in two.

Off to the dentist’s, then, for an emergency temporary repair and getting new ones made, again. Sri Lankan dentists, in my experience, are technically every bit as good as their British counterparts but haven’t learnt how to smarm their patients – an essential attribute of British dental practice which probably accounts for around half the curriculum at dental school. The Sri Lankan dentists I have come across have all been matter of fact to the point of brusqueness. But they get the job done. And at a tiny fraction of the price in the UK. When I had the dentures made in Kent the process took two months and cost me a bit north of £1,500. The new ones I’ve just had made here in Kandy took three weeks (same number of appointments, they just get on with the job more quickly) and cost me a little under Rs20,000/- – around £70. Yes, that’s correct. £70. How they achieve this is beyond me, but now we’ve decided to rent in England from next year and come out to Jungle Tide annually to escape the worst of the English winters I shall get all non-emergency work done while I’m here. In fact I’ve calculated that a solo traveller wanting some dental work done would actually save themselves money by paying the return air fare to Sri Lanka and getting it done here. Not good for the planet, I admit, but something has to be wrong when British dentistry can come out at more than twenty times the cost of the same work in Sri Lanka, don’t you agree?

So I shall continue living between two worlds for the foreseeable future, if only for dental reasons. Oh, and Sally, resourceful as ever, found me a tube of Fixodent available from Colombo by mail order. Cost almost as much as a major dental procedure and as usual it took the courier three days to find us, but it will keep me going until I get back to England next month.

A weekend of culture and sport

Kandy is pretty much a cultural desert, beyond the traditional Buddhist cultural stuff aimed largely at the foreign tourist trade, of which currently there is very little. There is no regular English language cinema or theatre, no music venue, no proper art gallery and the bookshops are heavily biased towards educational texts rather than literature. One small beacon of light in the darkness is the Atelier Hotel, located well out of town up a side street opposite the Arpico supermarket. Rukshan, who runs it, maintains a programme of both permanent and temporary visual arts and sculpture and an occasional series of events from film nights to poetry readings. I’ve been several times – indeed, pre-pandemic we’ve run a quiz night and a Christmas singalong there, just to lower the tone a bit.

We were there again last Saturday night for a book reading. At least two of the four writers were introduced, or introduced themselves, by saying proudly they were born in Kandy. Ths is something I’ve got used to over the years at similar events. Educated, cultured people come from Kandy, but sooner or later – usually sooner – they all gravitate to Colombo which is where the action is. Fully half the island’s population lives in the Colombo travel to work area and nothing much of cultural significance happens anywhere else except in the oasis of Galle Fort down the coast. It would be wonderful indeed to have a few of the island’s greatest bards, thespians or musicians actually living in Kandy rather than just being proud to be from here. One can but dream.

Kandy is better served for sports than it is for the arts, however, and the rest of the weekend had more of a sporting theme. Having had almost no paying guests for ages, we were hosting a New Zealand family and a Sri Lankan one. The Sri Lankans were a very athletic young man and his parents. Dad was no slouch, either, and accompanied his son on a strenuous climb to the top of the mountains, a route which is more famous among the hiking community than we had realised. The young man participates in several sports including, bafflingly, downhill skiing. The first, and no doubt the last, Sri Lankan skier I shall ever encounter.

The Kiwi family had stayed with us at the beginning of the month. Brett, the Dad, is the physio for the Sri Lankan cricket team (these chaps are hired guns, they don’t need to be Sri Lankans). Mum and the two very adorable kids had come back for a further stay while Dad was with the team, in a Covid bubble, for the ODI against Zimbabwe at the Pallekelle international stadium near Kandy. I’ve meant to go to a match there ever since we’ve been living here but never got round to it, and suddenly one was dropped into my lap, a sitter even I couldn’t miss. Brett had organised tickets in the box reserved for players’ families for his own family plus Sally and me (posing, if needs be, as long-lost aunt and uncle).

“Just go to Gate 5, the tickets will be waiting for you at the gate” was the instruction. Our van entered the car park where security ordered the driver to drop us off and he duly left. Two separate signs for Gate 5 pointed in two different directions. We asked a security guard where we should go and were directed to the back of the queue for body and bag checking. At the front of the queue we were asked for our tickets. “They’re waiting for us at gate 5” we explained. “Sorry, you cannot pass through here without a ticket”. After a while we managed to speak to someone prepared to take a decision, who told us to walk about half a kilometre around the ground to the opposite side where we would find a VIP gate that would let us through. By the time we got there we’d missed the first couple of overs and, in typically Sri Lankan fashion, we were told to wait, but not told whether anyone was doing anything. Then we were told to walk on to another gate “not far away”. We headed off but could find no other gate and by now were in a wilderness some way from the ground, so we returned, hot and pretty angry. Long story short, we were eventually admitted. We never did see Gate 5 or our tickets, and neither our bodies nor our bags were searched. Security, Sri Lanka style. But it was bliss to reach the air conditioned comfort of the players’ families box, with free snacks and coffee and a great view of the ground. Treated as scum and as VIPs in the same afternoon, that’s Sri Lanka for you. We couldn’t stay to the end, it was a day/night game, but saw most of the first (Zimbabwe) innings.

Sri Lanka won by five wickets.

A religious experience

Sally’s grandfather and great grandfather are buried in different parts of the Hill Country. Every so often we do a trip to check they’re still in place and have not been resurrected by the yakkas (see the ‘Superstition’ post for more on these). We’ve just done such a trip. Both are lodged in C of E churchyards. Both died young. Grandfather was heading to Colombo when he became ill. His driver urged him to seek attention at Kandy hospital but he stubbornly insisted on continuing to Colombo where the medical facilities were better. He died en route of a burst appendix. He was in his early fifties and had survived two world wars. Great grandfather died even younger, at thirty seven, being thrown from his horse and trap. There are two rival accounts. The one Sally prefers says that he was engaged on charitable visits to the local poor. The one I prefer says he was drunk.

Grandfather lies in the neat churchyard of St Mark’s in the large town of Badulla. His grave, like all the others, is well maintained and even had flowers growing on it, though ’twas not ever thus. When we first discovered it in 1998 we and various blokes associated with the church had to hack our way through vegetation and collapsed headstones to find it.

Respects paid, we headed after an overnight stop to Maskeliya, one of our favourite places on the island and scarcely touched by tourism. Delayed by a puncture we arrived too late to visit the grave that day, and sadly too late to see and photograph a spectacular sunset over Maskeliya lake with Sri Pada mountain in the background (we could see it from the car but it was pitch dark when we arrived via slow mountain roads). The little place we’d booked into (Butterfly Mountain Lake Side – highly recommended) was converted from the original colonial era post office. Odd to think we were sleeping in the building where great grandfather posted his letters.

The next day dawned rainy. We also realised it was Sunday, perhaps not the best day to go and impose ourselves unexpectedly at a church. All Saints, on the Queensland Estate near Maskeliya, looks from a distance as if it could be in a Devon coombe. Here’s how it looked when it was first built:

People were milling around outside and inside the church but as we neared the building the strains of ‘Happy birthday to you’ could be heard. Quickly checking that it was not yet Christmas we concluded that we weren’t interrupting a service. Invited in by the pastor we found ourselves amid a collection of party balloons festooning the altar, font, pulpit and all the walls. Even worse, we’d stumbled into some child’s birthday party. Consumed with guilt, we started making our excuses but the pastor explained that the party had ended and that it was not a birthday but a girl’s coming of age party. Oddly enough the Sri Lankans, a people who are deeply modest about sex, clothing and suchlike, make a big public deal of it when a girl has her first period. I suppose it’s a bit like the tradition of churching women after giving birth. We attended a similar, Buddhist, ceremony a few years back for Noni’s daughter. Funny time to have a party, early on a Sunday morning, but there you go.

Off outside to brave the rain and leeches and find great grandfather’s grave. Unlike St Mark’s, the churchyard at All Saints is overrun with vegetation and the grave took a bit of finding even though we knew roughly where to look from previous visits. But the vegetation was not all weeds. Many of the graves were sprouting crops of beans, cabbages and other vegetables. Being used, in short, as raised beds. Sacrilegious? Enterprising? Take your pick but I prefer the latter. Kenny, our driver, commented that he was glad his wife hadn’t come; if she’d seen this, he told me, she would never eat vegetables again.

We went back inside to sign the visitors’ book and to make a donation to church funds, which we were assured would be used for weeding. The woman who’d been playing ‘Happy Birthday’ on the keyboard asked Sally if we played. Sally foolishly admitted that I did, so I was dragged to the altar, as it were, and sat on a footstool in front of the keyboard and told to ‘play something, Sir’. I bashed out ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ at breakneck speed with many bum notes, desperate to get it over with. They all applauded and, as we left the church the organist launched into a rendition of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.

I wish I were.

Jablog

I think I may have had Covid. And passed it on to Sally. But this is Sri Lanka and you can’t just grab a free Rapid Antigen Test. Anyway, I’m not especially bothered either way – it was mild (though Sally is worse). The irony is that whatever I caught, I got it at the vaccination centre a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been under curfew for a month, with at least another fortnight of misery to endure, and I haven’t been anywhere else in that time.

This country is obsessed with pandemic peripherals – wearing masks outdoors, repetitive hand-washing whenever one enters any kind of building, banning the sale of alcohol – but completely ignores the one thing that makes a difference to how viruses spread, which is social distancing. The vaccinatiion centre was mobbed. The army was hanging around in numbers, doing absolutely zilch. We oldies are all supposed to get jabbed at home but I was by no means the oldest person there, and certainly not the most frail-looking. Some folk looked like they wouldn’t make it home afterwards. But Sally and I were thankful for small mercies. Getting vaccinated at all had proved to be quite a saga.

I managed a first shot of Astra-Zeneca back in England in early February before returning to Sri Lanka at the end of that month. And as luck would have it AZ was what we got here in the end. Second dose due mid-October. Developing coutries grab whatever supplies they can lay their hands on and we know people who’ve had Sputnik, Sinopharm and Pfizer (which everyone here calls ‘fizzer’) so we were duly chuffed. A couple of English GP friends had both told me I should just start again with whatever was on offer anyway.

Sri Lanka had promised to vaccinate all residents including us expats. Unfortunately the message hasn’t always percolated down to the local officials – called Grama Sevakas – responsible for getting the people to the needles. Many of them believe that vaccinations are reserved only for Sri Lankan citizens. So while our staff all got their jabs, no call-up papers arrived for us and we waited to see what would happen. And in due course our staff reported that if we signed some forms in Sinhala for our Grama Sevaka he would arrange for us to be vaccinated at Peradeniya University Hospital. Armed with the forms we hired an expensive car (one can only travel with registered companies and lots of paperwork in lockdown, and they don’t come cheap) and presented ourselves for jabbing. After being directed from one hospital building to another a few times, we discovered that this hospital was only engaged in vaccinating health staff, not the general public, and besides, no-one was being vaccinated that day as the relevant staff were on strike. Back home to await further devekopments.

A friend advised us to contact the British Honorary Consul in Kandy for help. We hadn’t previously been aware of the existence of such a person who is actually a Sri Lankan by birth, travelling on an Australian passport – a fact which apparently has put a few British expat noses out of joint. Personally I cared not if he came from Mars provided he did the job.

Amal, the Honorary Consul, fixed it through his local Grama Sevaka down in Kandy whose palm we had to cross with money and whose forms we had to fill in with a fake address in Kandy – in fact Amal’s address. Then off to find the vaccination centre which we’d been told was in a college “backside Tooth Temple” – which in Singlish means “behind the Temple of the Tooth” and, sadly, does not refer to the worship of a beast with gnashers in its bum. Another expensive hire car trip but the driver said he knew where we were going. As we approached Kandy Lake we fell in behind a vehicle with the words ‘Army Mobile Vaccination Unit’ prominently displayed on the side. “Follow that truck” I thought, but our driver had other ideas and took us way up into the hills, asking every passer-by where we should be going until he finally found someone who knew. We turned around, headed back down to the lake and sure enough there was the army mobile unit parked just where we were supposed to be.

I wish I could spin a scary yarn about the actual vaccination but, truth to tell, it was utterly routine.

Loco

In a world gone mad, Sri Lanka is a good place to be. Few countries do daft quite as well. Having been stranded in the UK for almost a year (reasons too tedious to trouble you with) we finally made it back home last month, via two weeks in a quarantine hotel. Back to the social whirl of expat life, featuring lunch with friends in Kandy’s newest gastronomic experiment, a faux-Mexican restaurant run by a couple of Sri Lankans who’ve lived for a while in southern California. Predictably they’ve named it Los Amigos Locos – a case of Sri Lankans racially stereotyping Mexicans. And what are we whiteys to make of that, I wonder?

I’m sure most of my legion of readers will not share my views on the pandemic, or rather the world’s reaction to it, and I won’t dwell on it since I don’t have so many friends I can afford to lose them. But even the most lockdown-enthusiastic among you might find the reception at a Sri Lankan quarantine hotel a little excessive. Like being on the set of Doctor Who, it was.

Cybermanic welcome to Sri Lanka

For a full account of our strange journey from Heathrow to a fortnight’s hotel quarantine take a look at the piece I had published in Lockdown Journal last month: http://lockdownjournal.com/2021/03/28-february-1-march-2021-kent-uk-to-kalutara-sri-lanka/

I may have noted in earlier posts that in Sri Lanka almost all legislation is ’emergency’ and announcements of change are usually ‘with immediate effect’ allowing neither time to plan the implementation nor to undertake due diligence i.e. to check whether this new regulation is consistent with all the other regulations already in force. A member of one of the Facebook groups Sally is on reported a few months back that the Sri Lankan government has banned single-use plastic. Another member commented: “Yes, for the fifth time. Notice any change yet?” Indeed. So we now read that palm oil imports are to be banned and all existing local palm oil plantations must be uprooted forthwith. Squeals of protest, and likely nothing much will happen as a result.

So it is with the ever-changing rules regarding foreign visitors. A tweak here, an (inconsistent) amendment there, endless questions on a bewildering range of online forums from from would-be tourists trying to ascertain whether it’s worth booking their flights yet. Here’s what I understand to be the present position (it will be different tomorrow so please don’t regard this as any kind of guidance). If you have been fully vaccinated at least two weeks before you arrive, and carry the documentation to prove it, you have to spend a night in a quarantine hotel near the airport and in the morning they will check your papers and release you to wherever you’ve chosen to stay. No need for a PCR test – though the day before yesterday you would have needed to have one. Quite why they can’t do this at the airport is not explained. But if you have kids aged under 12 and over 2 with you, they do need to take PCR tests so you can’t leave the quarantine hotel until their tests come back negative. Which could be another day or so, meaning you can’t make definite plans. If your kids are aged 12 and above they are counted as adults, so irrespective of whether you have been vaccinated, if they have not you all have to spend 14 days in one of the so-called ‘safe and secure’ hotels listed by the Tourism Development Authority before you can go to a place you actually want to stay in. As of course you would if you ourselves have not yet been fully vaccinated. Small wonder that so far only a trickle of people have responded to the attempt to welcome tourism back to Sri Lanka. Incidentally we did not go for ‘safe and secure’ status since the requirements include such pieces of complete daftness as (a) having a ‘Management Team’ and a ‘Rapid Response Team’ (response to what?) – we have a total staff of three, not easy to jump through that hoop – and (b) all staff required to wear uniforms at all times – it being, of course, established scientific fact that the wearing of casual clothes contributes to the risk of catching the virus.

The only respect in which being back here is worse than being in the UK is the odd local requirement to wear masks outdoors as well as indoors (penalty – an on the spot fine of Rs5,000/- if the police spot you; a bit under £20). It’s definitely the 18th century miasma approach to infection which the local public health authorities subscribe to. And even if you disagree with my scepticism, you’d surely accept that a country where small children ride on motorbikes sandwiched between mum and dad, fully masked but without a crash helmet; where guys do arc-welding, masked and without goggles; climb trees with chainsaws slung over their shoulders, masked but without harness; or operate road drills masked but without ear defenders – that a country such as that is one which has its public health and safety priorities seriously out of kilter. Welcome to Sri Lanka, then.

At least I’m not a politician. This week’s Sri Lankan Sunday Times included a report that a prominent MP and former Prime Minister was “literally roasted” by his party colleagues at a meeting. The report does not say whether they then ate him or fed him to the dogs. Or whether the chosen method was spit- or oven-based. Sloppy journalism, I say.

Clove hitches

The worst deal in history involving cloves was undoubtedly when the Dutch exchanged a small settlement called New Amsterdam on the eastern seaboard of America for the British-owned island of Surinam, in order to access its spices, especially cloves. But we may have just experienced the second worst.

Spot the picker

We have four large clove trees. They last produced three years ago, they’re a bit temperamental like that, but decided to have another go this year. For those who don’t know, cloves are dried flower buds and you don’t need a degree in horticulture to know that this means there’s a short window of opportunity for picking them. Climbing trees is beyond us and our staff so it was a matter of finding some local lads, and quickly. The first candidates insisted on an hourly rate, irrespective of the amount of cloves picked. I wasn’t having that. I wasn’t born yesterday. Payment by weight or nothing. They decided on the second option and went away. Next day we found three more likely lads who were willing to be paid by the kilo. After some negotiation on price we agreed terms and up the trees they went, all the while watched by Martin sitting comfortably in a nearby chair. Keeping an eye on other people working is one of Martin’s two favourite jobs, the other being driving us to and from Kandy at breakneck speeds, with much jumping on the brakes. He was making sure that they weren’t sneakily throwing large parts of our crop over the boundary fence to their waiting pals. What he wasn’t doing, as he sat listening to his radio, was looking into the sacks to see they were actually full of cloves and not lumps of tree. The three lads duly turned up at our front door with heavy sacks and Martin in tow, armed with a weighing hook borrowed from the chicken farmer next door. The sacks weighed in at some impressive figure and I drew a sharp breath as we shelled out more than twice what I’d expected to pay, and off they went.

We still hadn’t checked the bags, and when we did we found that most of the weight consisted not of cloves but of leaves and twigs. Then I helped carry the sacks out to the back verandah for the cleaning process to begin, and it occurred to me that either I’d grown a lot stronger in the past few hours or the sacks didn’t weigh as much as we’d paid for. So out came the bathroom scales, whose main use hitherto has been checking the extent to which we’ve exceeded our hold baggage allowance on planes. Since you can’t read the scale with a sack of cloves (or a suitcase) on it, the method is to weigh (a) you holding said sack or suitcase (b) you on your own. Then subtract (b) from (a). Simples! And at this point we discovered that the chicken farmer’s scales were inaccurate, and not just by a bit but were registering nearly twice the actual weight. Double whammy. And we would advise the general public against purchases from our neighbour – needless to say, Trading Standards is a concept unknown in Sri Lanka.

cleaning on the veranda - Sally, Rani and Jake — Clean-up campaign

The initial cleaning process took four of us two days. After the twigs and leaves have been removed the individual cloves have to be separated (they come in bunches). Only at this point can the drying begin. Our one stroke of luck was unbroken sunshine for the four more days it took to dry them out on the lawn. And of course the drying process shrinks the weight even further. Here are some cloves drying next to a clothes drier For goodness’ sake, please give over with these bloody puns!

Martin, ever the optimist like all Sri Lankans, says that if we hang on to the crop until June rather than selling it now, we’ll get over a thousand rupees a kilo. Which, according to my reckoning, will come to a little less than we paid the charlatans who picked it, not to mention the immense amount of time taken by us and our staff to get the goods into saleable condition. Or maybe I should just invest in clove futures. No, I wasn’t born yesterday, but probably the day before.

Postscript: Coronavirus-related panic buying in Sri Lanka. Panic buying is a cross-cultural phenomenon, stupid idiots not being associated with any one culture. But it can take different forms. In Sri Lanka the items of choice include turmeric and coriander seeds, both of which the locals seem convinced can cure COVID-19. Saves a lot on developing expensive vaccines. doesn’t it? And it occurs to me that if I can convince enough people that cloves also cure the dreaded disease we could turn our misfortune into a goldmine. Sadly, I do retain some principles of decency, though.

Mystery shopping

“O tidings of comfort and joy!” a friend texted shortly before Christmas. “Cottage Ham has reappeared in Keells supermarket”. ‘Cottage Ham’ is what Keells call their sliced ham, a pale imitation of what one can buy in any UK supermarket but manna to us expats. So off we all trotted to buy out the stocks and cause a further shortage. Cooked ham is but one example of a range of goods that mysteriously appear and disappear from the shelves of Sri Lanka’s three main supermarket chains: Arpico. Keells and Cargills/Food City, and the expat community regards it as a sacred duty to monitor their comings and goings, and to buy in bulk whenever these treasures put in an appearance.

Now I don’t know whether the ham is imported (which might explain the periodic shortages) but I do know that many of the other things that regularly do disappearing acts are locally produced. Since there is no discernible seasonal pattern to their presence and absence I am at a complete loss to explain why it is only sometimes possible to buy rhubarb (grown up in the mountains of Nuwara Eliya and thin gruel compared to its Yorkshire cousins but still very welcome); button mushrooms (grown in nearby Kurunegula and hardly seasonal); and most bizarrely of all, supermarkets frequently run out of coconuts for which Sri Lanka is justly famous and produces in biblical quantities. On one occasion following a prolonged button mushroom drought, we encountered a friend in Keells with a trolley loaded with button mushrooms. “Whoopee! They’re back!” we exclaimed but she, shamefacedly, admitted to having bought up the entire shelf, before passing two packs on to us to assuage her guilt. Local butter, produced in the hills of Kotmale and Ambewela, is sometimes available and equally often vanishes from the shelves for weeks at a time. Why? Does something happen to the cows? The imported New Zealand alternatives cost fully twice as much. Why are orange and mango cordials always available but our favourite, passion fruit, from the same range, only occasionally pops up? We shall probably never know.

But the deepest mystery of all concerns cling film. Sri Lanka is plastic-obsessed. The supermarkets all display signs asking customers to refrain from single-use plastic bags while their staff put everything into single-use plastic bags, staring in slack-jawed amazement if you ask that they desist. “But sir, the bags are free”. ”Yes, that’s precisely the problem”. Arpico is especially the home of all things plastic. It wouldn’t surprise me if their buildings are constructed from some form of plastic. There are shelves of plastic bags of all kinds, as well as aluminium foil, and an inevitably empty section labelled “cling film”. Meanwhile the staff in the fruit and veg area are busy in pairs wrestling with industrial sized cling film dispensers to wrap around anything larger than a peanut. But can you buy a domestic sized roll of the stuff? Only very rarely. And will they sell you the industrial sized rolls? Nope. We’ve taken to asking UK guests to bring out Tesco’s finest in their suitcases so we have some way of keeping leftovers fresh in the fridge.

In Jungle Tide we bake our own bread, so maintaining a supply of dried yeast is crucial. We usually have plenty in stock but in November a national yeast shortage struck and this went on until we’d completely run out by mid-December. Sally does not take such things lying down. She asked a staff member in Keells why there was no yeast. “All finish, Madam” was the predictable and uninformative reply, accompanied by the usual Sri Lankan grin and wobble of the head. “When is more coming?” “I do not know, Madam” (grin, wobble). “Then can I ask the manager?” “Sorry, manager not here” (grin, wobble). “Then who is the next senior person I can talk to?” “Ah, Madam, that is me”. “So can you tell me why there is no yeast?” “Yes, Madam, it is management decision.” (grin, wobble). “Why?” “I cannot tell.” So we left two full trolleys near the checkouts and stormed out in high dudgeon (expats tend to do these pointless things despite knowing better). The yeast returned after Christmas, and rumour had it that there was some kind of temporary national ban imposed to prevent the locals from brewing up too much festive hooch. But one never knows which rumours to believe in Sri Lanka. We managed to get some UK guests to bring out an emergency supply.

The mysteries continue to pile up. UK guests often offer to bring out Marmite, assuming we can’t get it here. But the shops are full of the stuff. However, Bovril is unknown. You can get Lea and Perrins easily, if expensively, but not English mustard (they have some horrific creamy concoction masquerading as it). Squeezy bottles of lime juice are easily available, but not lemon juice. Some common proprietary medicines are easy to find, others don’t exist. Thank goodness we run a guest house with plenty of European people passing through our doors, bringing us good cheer. I’m off for a ham and mustard sandwich. Happy New Year.