This past week marks the occurrence of a week-long Buddhist celebration in Sri Lanka (and throughout much of Asia) called Vesak, or Vesakha. It's also called Buddha's Birthday. In a country where 85% of the population are practicing Buddhists, you can imagine how much potential it has to completely shut things down in the name of compassion and giving and having-at-least-two-days-off-work. You might also be able to imagine how strange it was for this to be my introduction to Sri Lankan culture. Paper lanterns everywhere, Buddhist flags hanging from every hangable surface, zero car traffic, and all the liquor stores were closed! In all sincerity, though, it was a beautiful week, particularly last Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the start of the festival, we worked a half-day and then Uchita and his family took me out for a "night on the town". We drove, which turned out to be a bad idea due to the ridiculous amount of foot traffic. Regardless, they took me to their temple, which was a beautiful, old complex in a quieter area of Nugegoda. I had worn a white shirt for the occasion, as had everyone else who would visit a temple that day, and I followed the de Zoysas around as they said their prayers and performed their rituals. The first part involved them circumventing a stupa once, stopping with palms together and heads bowed to pray. Then they lit sticks of incense and stuck them in bowls of sand with hundreds of other such offerings. Sheshi, Uchita's daughter, lit a small coconut oil lamp that was hung on a screen between the two biggest buildings of the complex, joining hundreds more lights just like it. Sheshi and Shani made some more rounds, and Uchita took me to the temple's Bo tree to spin some Buddhist lore. There were a lot of old women there, I noticed, sitting or standing around the tree, eyes closed, praying. I was struck by the beauty of it, much the same way I've been struck by the beauty of such devotion in other faiths in the past. If ever there was an appropriate place to worship, though, I think it'd have to be under the cavernous canopy of a Bo tree.
We also spent a few hours with some family friends of the de Zoysas'. The father of that family is a dynamic character, a businessman of various sorts, and a "devout Buddhist". I began to see firsthand that the vast majority of Buddhists (laypeople) use their faith the same way that people whose religions are more familiar to me use theirs: as a frame of reference in a changing, inconstant world. They go about their business carrying their faith in the same way that Christians, Muslims, and all the others do. There's nothing mysterious about Buddhism when you see it up close. It has sects, schisms, and mystical elements that require faith, just like the other major religious traditions. It's also just as beautiful and useful. I'll continually be intrigued by it, I think, throughout my time here.
I finished up the week without much ado. Friday night was spent exploring a ritzy, colonial area of downtown Colombo, called Colombo 7. I found a shopping mall with both air conditioning and coffee, which were both sorely and shamefully welcomed. It was the first time in many years that I voluntarily spent an hour in a shopping mall. It was also the hour that I realized firsthand how successful the development project has been at establishing consumer classes all throughout the world. The goods in this particular mall were more European in style than American, but they indubitably bore the stamp of western consumer culture. Sri Lanka has a strong economy and a wealth of resources, and since its government secured victory in its 26-year civil war in 2009, it's proven to be a heyday for investments from the developed world. It will be interesting for me to witness how this has affected the culture here.
I took it easy over the weekend, and was able to get to the beach on Sunday. I've been living closer to the shore than I had thought, though there's a complicated bit of travelling necessary to get there. With the help of Shani, I commissioned a tuk-tuk to take me to a non-tourist portion of beach called Kinross Avenue, and it was an interesting experience for me. I found myself unable to relax completely, partly because everyone was staring at the long-haired white person with the large tattoo, partly because I had some anxiety about being able to use the bus system to get home, and partly because I'm not good at relaxing anyway. It ended up being a fun six hours, but I was thoroughly drained of energy and quite sunburned when all was said and done.
It's a different experience traveling alone; I've never done so before. It takes a conscious effort to not put up a defensive front all the time. When I first arrived here, I had my guard up all the time, and it was a slow realization that the negative vibes I was feeling from people on the streets were not malevolence. Now, I see the stares as curiosity, and recognize that outwardly in public, Sri Lankans just aren't smiley people. I hope to become fully comfortable with these cultural ways, and hope peoples' curiosity gives way to normalcy. I'm having a good time living here, and hope to live here in the fullest senses allowable by my 3-month stay. Though I doubt I'll ever get used to finding small, flattened, scary-looking dried fish hiding in my rice-packs. Sri Lankans probably aren't used to having plastic-wrapped toys tumble out of their cereal boxes either, so I'll take it as a learning opportunity.
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