October 5, 2006
Newsletter #2
My world in a (coco)nut shell
As the equatorial sun shines through my window around 6:15 a.m.,
as it will do at about the same time every day of the year, I
awake, feeling the humidity already forming on my skin. My world,
which is nine and a half hours ahead of America’s Eastern
Standard Time, is just beginning, as many of yours are ending.
To begin my day, I walk to a nearby field and run laps, with chickens
at my feet, pecking for their breakfast, and curious school children
running behind me and giggling, getting out their morning energy
before school begins at 7:30. I hear the second call to prayer
through the loudspeakers of the mosque (I have missed the first
one, which is around 5:00 a.m.) and will hear three more throughout
my day. Some days I hear music and prayers of the Hindu temple,
other days it is meditation or song from the Buddhist temple,
while other days it could be hymns from a service of the Methodist
Church and Elders’ home.
This is the pluralist world in which I live.
By 7:15 a.m. I can feel the humidity getting thicker. I walk
back and have breakfast at the family’s house with whom
I am staying right now. This consists of Honey Bunches of Oats
cereal and toast. For lunch I have a Sri Lankan meal of rice,
different vegetable preparations, and some sort of fish curry.
Everything is spicy (except the rice), all delicious. As I venture
into downtown Colombo, I see Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and
a variety of Indian, Korean, Chinese, and Malaysian restaurants.
There are plenty of options here. Most of the street and store
signs are in two languages (symbols that will eventually make
sense to me), Sinhala and Tamil, representing the two major ethnicities
that make up this country, the Sinhalese and Tamils. I pass by
women and girls wearing a diverse assortment of clothing. Some
wear traditional saris, while others wear tank tops, skirts, capris,
and other Western-styles of clothing.
This is the multicultural world in which I live.
Every morning in the newspaper I read about the fighting and
attacks between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military,
mostly in the northern and eastern parts of the country. During
most of my daily walks I pass at least one or two police checkpoints.
These have been set up throughout Colombo to pull over cars randomly,
check the IDs (or passports, for foreigners) and bags of the people
in the cars, and to search the cars for any threatening objects.
They have just set up a checkpoint a couple of blocks away from
where I am staying and, as I walked by one day, I looked up to
see an officer sitting behind a wall of sandbags, with a rifle
sticking out of a small opening, directed toward the street, but
also at me, since I was passing through his target area. It was
just a “minor” wake up call. One sees uniformed soldiers
throughout the city, directing road blocks, standing on lookout
towers, or patrolling a corner, rifles in hand.
This is the turbulent and unstable world in which I live.
My “work” for the first couple of months here is
to adapt and learn about the culture, study the languages, and
get to know the organizations of the network with which I will
be working. I spend time in my room at the Ecumenical Institute,
studying the language, reading about the culture, and resting
from the heat. I am grateful for the director and his family,
who have hosted and fed me during this first month. I have enjoyed
playing piano for the grandmother, who, though she is 95 and cannot
hear very well, happily sits and watches me play.
That was the temporary world in which I was living.
But I have just recently found an apartment two lanes away from
the Institute and will be moving there on Sunday. My office will
be at the Ecumenical Institute, so it is a very convenient place
and is owned by a very friendly retired couple (the husband is
a Hindu Tamil and the wife is a Buddhist). I am very excited to
finally settle into my own place and live an independent life.
I have met some great people here from many countries, some being
Great Britain, Australia, Ecuador, and Sweden. It is a diverse,
expatriate, international community, and I am happy to be a part
of it. And it is finally official that I will be a part of it,
as my visa has been processed and authorized. So let the adventures
begin!
This is the world in which I live.
Peace,
Chenoa
|
