Housekeeping

I'm up in Sierra Madre right now using Bean Town's wireless connection. Our internet router is down again due to the powerful winds we have been experiencing. The last report I heard stated the winds were clocked at 50 mph.

Today I will be scanning lots of Grandma's photos. We are compiling them for use in her memorial service on Sunday. The memorial will be at 2:30 PM on Sunday at Calvary Presbyterian Church in South Pasadena.

I'm still waiting to upload my photos from San Francisco. I will also have new photos from my trip to Huntington Beach with my dog. We spend the weekend at the Muhs Family Harbor House. Gash (my dog) and I spent a lot of time at the Dog Beach. I also went to my cousin Jenny's All-Star soccer game. Watching her play made me want to play again. I'm sidelined from most physical activities right now due to a flare up of my hip injury. This is the same injury that sent me to physical therapy when I was in high school.

Well, I need to get back home and start scanning those photos.

Sneaking Back

I'm not actually sneaking back, but I'm beginning to post without telling anyone. It has been a long time since my last post. I'm currently visiting Aimee in San Francisco. I'm having a great time, and it made me feel like posting a blog again. I'm interested how long it takes for someone to realize I'm posting again.

I've been back in the US for nearly five months. I cannot believe it has been that long. My experience in Cambodia seems so far away but also very close.

I'll post a full description of my trip once I get home. Cheers

I know I'm back in the US when Britney Spears trumps Kofi Annan in the news cycle. Good to know that the US media has its priorities straight (sarcasm).

Yes, I am working on a new blog site. I will be starting my research this week and hope to have my first post in two weeks. Once it's ready, I'll send out a quick e-mail and post the first entry here.

I'm home (California).

Episode Two

Warming: No elephant conversations in this one. While there was some minor drama, nothing too fantastic happened.

At the end of Episode One, I left off with the hotel in Ampara. The hotel is doing a lot of construction. Ampara was the Sri Lanka district (like a county) with the worst damage. The most deaths in Sri Lanka occurred there. Since there was so much damage there, a considerable amount of reconstruction work is being focused there. This means lots of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and all the expatriates (foreigners, like me) that go with it. The hotel/guesthouse has been trying to construct rooms every since the first relief workers arrived. In the parking lots, there were Land Cruisers from every organization including: World Vision, UNICEF, GOAL and Red Cross.

The dinner was nice. There was Sri Lankan food and Western food. I mixed the two and had french fries with my rice and daal. It was a surprisingly good combination. The only part of the meal that was absolutely horrible was the geese. No, we did not eat the geese. I think the geese were intended as entertainment. There were a half of dozen of aggressive geese that stuck their long necks over two foot barrier and honked and screamed at us. These were the most violent and aggressive geese I have ever come across.

Mom, I have the very distant memory of a goose eating a button off my sweater at Santa’s Village. Did that happen to Pat or me? Or am I just taking one of my friend’s memories and making it mine own? Well, I have to say that if these Sri Lankan geese were at Santa’s Village they would not only eat the button but also take the entire sweater off the child.

After an interesting dinner, I went to bed. The next morning another World Vision expat and I headed off to Batticaloa for the day. I was laughing at our World Vision vehicle. It was completely decked out. I mean logos all over it and a proper World Vision flag off the back. All agencies do this so that their vehicles are properly identified. It was quite a sight.

We got to Batticaloa in just under two hours. The office there was nicer than I expected. Most World Vision offices in districts are in homes. But this was an actual office. I met with the District Team Leader and then went out to the temporary shelter site.

While we were looking at World Vision’s temporary shelter area, we also looked into Oxfam. We bumped into some really fantastic kids. There were four girls that had a cabbage patch doll. The other expat (who was an American as well) and I were wondering what American came to the shelter site and gave the doll. But this was no ordinary cabbage patch doll, she had been transformed into a Tamil Cabbage Patch doll with the appropriate Tamil clothing and red spot on her forehead. I have a picture of it somewhere.

We left the shelter site to go to lunch. On the way, we received a phone call from World Vision saying we were not to return to Ampara that evening. Two Sinhalese people had been kidnapped and one was killed. The Sinhalese people of Ampara then came into the town to protest what was happening. They also made some comments directed against NGOs. World Vision decided to close the office for the day and send its Tamil speaking staff and expat staff out of Ampara.

After a very long process of phone calls and SMS text messages, we were able to contact the hotel staff to pack up our rooms and sent our stuff with my driver (who was still in Ampara) to meet us in Batticaloa. The World Vision Batticaloa office secured room for us at a local guesthouse. It was really bizarre driving there. We had to drive through temporary housing areas to get there. People rebuilding their homes basically surrounded us.

Batticaloa is a recovering war zone. I definitely felt it. Even thought the peace deal is still in place, things could erupt at any moment. I’m really glad I was not there when the Foreign Minister was assassinated.

I had the worst night of sleep of my entire life in that guesthouse. The other expat and I shared a room. Yes there was an air conditioner, but it was the size of a laptop computer. We left it on for a few hours straight. It wasn’t until 3 AM that it started to make a difference. The beds were horrible. Any time you slightly shifted a muscle it was make the largest creaking sound. I think I might have gotten about 90 minutes of sleep. I just laid there waiting for 7:30 so I could drive back to Colombo.

My driver and I left for Colombo at 7:30 on the dot. For certain areas in World Vision operations, you are only allowed to travel between daylight hours (7:30 AM – 7:00 PM). We drove straight to Colombo. I didn’t drink any water. So I lasted the 8 hour drive back. The worst traffic was in Colombo. All I wanted to do was to go to bed. When I was about 20 minutes from the team house, I got a call from World Vision. They needed me to come in to clear up some HR and finance issues. I had basically not slept for the past 24 hours and had not eaten. I was in a lovely mood to come to the office at 4 PM.

That is basically all that happened. I know not as exciting as Episode One, but there were some interesting geese.

Sri Lanka Field Visit
Episode One

I wrote this update while on my trip 10 days ago. This is the first part of the trip. I will try to update the rest later.

I made it safely to the Lakeside View Hotel in Tissa on Thursday. It took us about seven hours to drive down. I was pleased to see that the hotel actually had a lake view. Well, there wasn’t a view from my room. I think only two rooms had a lakeside view. The hotel is located near a nature reserve so most people go on safaris. I decided that I wanted to go on a safari Saturday morning after I finished my World Vision meeting on Friday.

We did get lost on the way to Tissa. Due to us getting lost, I was able to see a lot more of the tsunami destruction that I didn’t see last time. Many stretches of area are still devastated. Yes, there are still people living in tents. Most have moved to temporary shelters. I think some people are still choosing to live in tents on their plot where their house used to be. They want to make sure that no one tries to come and take their land.

I am quite an insane packer. While I don’t think that I’m as dedicated to packing as some of my relatives, I am know for carrying many things that I might need. I surprised some friends in Cambodia one evening. We were sitting outside, and the bugs starting getting to us. So what did I do? I whipped out my bug repellant. Everyone appreciated that, but the repellant had deet in it. So our hands smelled bad. Then, I whipped out my Purell hand sanitizer for everyone to use. Later the wind died down and someone was getting hot, I was prepared and whipped out my hand fan.

Usually, I’m prepared for most things. I loved making packing lists. So it came to quite my surprise that I forgot to bring my toothbrush and toothpaste. When I found this out, I was disappointed. I was able to think back to the exact moment this morning that I finished brushing my teeth and but the toothbrush back in the cup above my sink. I was thinking that it would be quite difficult to get a replacement toothbrush and paste out here. I felt that it was quite lucky that there was a store within walking distance. In the end, the new toothbrush and paste cost me a whopping 59 rupees. That is about 60 cents. Since moving to Asia, I have become very dedicated to maintaining good dental hygiene. In all my travels I have come across too many people with missing and rotting teeth and decaying gums.

I had a great meal on Thursday night. I ask for the rice and chicken curry dinner. There was way too much food. Let me try to remember all the dishes:
Rice
Chicken Curry
Potato Curry
Pumpkin
Daal
Fried Bread Pieces – I think they are called Pompados, closest thing to tortilla chip
Tomato and Onion Salad
Cabbage Salad

Yep, all of that for 325 rupees (USD 3.25). It was so good. I ate way too much of it. I did get them to cut down on the spice used so it wasn’t too hot for me to eat. All the food was yummy. My favorite thing is to mix the tomato and onion salad with the daal and then eat it on the rice. I must have horrible breath at the end of the meals. The onions in the salad are raw, but they taste fantastic.

The World Vision meeting on Friday went well. I attended the South Operations Zonal Meeting. The zone covers four districts WV works in: Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Habantota. I have now visited all of the operations except for Galle.

At the beginning of the meeting someone handed out the agenda. I glanced at it quickly. I thought it looked exactly like the one that was sent to me the week before. I should have paid closer attention. I was quite surprised at one point when the meeting was handed over to me. On the orginal agenda, I had no portion. The new agenda gave me 30 minutes to talk about my work and get my information. Wow. I had to pull that together fast. It was more like talking to pull information together. In the end it all worked out, but I would have liked it better if I was prepared to address everyone.

We had a nice lunch. It was pretty much the same thing as the night before. Except the food was hotter. The waiter put a plate of fish and chips in front of my. I was surprised. He said that the staff had ordered western food for all the expats. I asked politely for the Sri Lankan food. For dinner I ordered vegetable and chicken fried rice. The fried rice was really nice. It had golden raisins in it. I will have to add golden raisins to friend rice the next time I make it.

My driver was able to arrange for me to join a tour group on Saturday morning. We left the hotel at 5 AM. Good grief! I did not enjoy getting up at 4:40AM. We were the first car into the park at 6 AM. Sunrise here is a little after 6:00 AM. The first thing we saw were a group of wild boar. Pretty early on we say two elephants. It looked like a momma elephant and baby. I tried to take some pictures but the light was quite low. The exposure was too slow, and I’m sure all of the pictures are blurred from the early moments. Our group was determined to find a leopard. The park guide with us was eager to find one as well. Two leopards had been spotted three days prior.

We saw lots of deer, mongooses, wild water buffalo (oh joy) and hares. I wasn’t too thrilled with the water buffalo. I have seen so many buffalo that it is not too exciting for me. They do stand pretty still which makes for nice pictures. We also saw crocodiles and jackals. Two rarest thing we saw was a momma bear and two cubs. I barely saw the momma. The bears were hidden in the thicket. We saw a lot of wild elephants. One stood right by the roadside and posed. It was as if it was his turn. I could imagine all he elephants getting together and choosing whose turn it was to entertain the tourists.

This is how I imagine the event:

(A herd of elephants standing around the watering hole Friday evening.)

Elephant leader: “Okay, Merle. It’s your turn to entertain the tourists tomorrow.”

Merle the Elephant: “But I don’t want to. There are so many of them on Saturday.”

Leader: “Merle, it your turn. You won’t have to work a weekend for another two months.”

Merle: “Fine. But if anyone utters the word Dumbo again, I’m outta there.”

Leader: “Merle, focus. Now remember what you do. Stand right by the roadside. Make sure to give the tourists a straight headshot. When the first pull up, stand completely still as if you have never seen a jeep before. Then rustle your ears. After a few moments, pick up some dirt with your trunk and throw it over your head. The tourists love taking pictures of that.”

Merle: “Got it. Stare straight on, do the ears and then dirt.”

Leader: “Don’t forget Tanya will relieve you for your morning tea. Then Joe will come by so you can have a proper lunch, and Tanya will come back for the afternoon tea. The park closes about 7 PM. “

That probably didn’t happen. I don’t think Sri Lankan elephants have names like Merle, Joe and Tanya. I think we can safely say that I have an overactive imagination.

We also saw a lot of peacocks. Whoopee. I do have to say that these peacocks are a lot more interesting than the Arcadia peacocks. One neat thing we saw was an iguana. It was huge. It was sleeping on a tree branch.

We returned to the hotel around 9 AM. I tried to take a nap, but I just wanted to go to the next hotel. Around 11 AM, I left the Lakeside View Hotel. I was quite happy with the bill. Two nights with air-conditioning and hot water cost 2000 rupees (USD 20). I was worried that it might be more since it was such a busy tourist location. The rooms did leave a lot to be desired, but I didn’t mind too much. They were properly screened in. I never saw any bugs or mosquitoes in my room. That made me very happy.

This is probably my last trip to World Vision field operations. I am convinced that on my last trip I will get some disease like dengue or malaria. I’m taking my malaria pills. At first, I wasn’t sure if I needed to take the pills. Then on our way to Tissa, we drove by the district’s office for response to malaria. I am also making sure to wear long sleeves, pants, socks and shoes. I must look funny to all the other tourists who are traveling in shorts, tank tops and sandals. But so far I have been successful in avoid any bug bites. I’m also covering up in deet. It doesn’t leave the best smell, but I’m eating those onions anyways.

On Saturday around lunchtime, I arrived at the Oasis Hotel in Habantota. I understand that it is one of the only nice beachfront hotels that is in full operation after the tsunami. The hotel is nice. We aren’t allowed to swim in the ocean. The waves are quite rough. I think one of the reasons this hotel was able to recover so quickly from the tsunami is because an embankment protects it. I’m reminded a little of staying in Monterey. The ocean is rough, and no one is swimming in the water. I found the best part of the hotel early on. There is a covered deck that looks over the hill and onto the ocean. There are a ton of reclining chairs. The ocean breeze keeps the flies off. I had such a nice time reading there when I first arrived, but I kept falling asleep. No doubt due to my early morning wake up call.

My time at Oasis Hotel was nice. Compared to the other rooms I’m staying at, it felt luxurious. Not that there is anything wrong with the rooms I’m staying at near WV operations. Well Oasis had a tv in the room. There wasn’t much on TV for me to watch. I did watch some of the Indian Oil Cricket Tournament. That was fascinating. I got really into the India vs West Indies test match. The final is Tuesday in Sri Lanka. It is India vs Sri Lanka. I’m disappointed I won’t be in Colombo to see it, and I don’t have a TV here to watch it. I’m sure I can find some guesthouse staff watching it. Sri Lankans seem to be crazy for cricket. I would totally bring a cricket bat back with me, but they weigh a ton. I was thinking it could be a decorative item and a weapon for self-defense. I actually know the correct way to swing a cricket bat – not like a baseball bat.

I did a lot of reading over the weekend. I’m currently halfway through Jon Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I mostly like Irving’s books. “The World According to Garp” was my favorite. I have also read “Cider House Rules,” “A Widow for One Year” and “The Fourth Hand.” I’m really liking “… Owen Meany.”

Monday (8 August) we left Oasis for Ampara. The drive took longer than I expected. It was about 4.5 hours. I have a slow driver, and I love that he drives slow. I’ve had some scary driving experiences in Sri Lanka. The countryside between Habantota and Ampara was beautiful. We didn’t drive along the coastline. There were some bad roads. We also drove through a lot of police checkpoints. I got a little nervous when we approached the first one. I don’t think I have been through a police checkpoint before. But since I’m white, the police just waved us through the checkpoint. I have seen more guns in Sri Lanka than in Cambodia. But that makes sense because the nation is in a somewhat fragile ceasefire after a 20 year civil war.

We made it to the World Vision Ampara office. It is very hot in Ampara. I felt like I was back in Cambodia. I was able to talk to the permanent shelter coordinator and the district team leader (Amapara relief boss). I had great conversations with both. I really appreciated my meeting with the district team leader. He was really engaged in what we were talking about, and we talked for a couple of hours. I really appreciated the time he set aside to talk about advocacy. Before I leave Sri Lanka, I will call him and thank him again.

Instead of driving on to Batticaloa, I spent the evening in Ampara. There were no hotel reservations available in Batti. I was very happy to see that my room had an aircon. It isn’t very strong, but it is doing its job.