The Traveler's Dilemma

Last night I ventured into an Indian restaurant with the intention of learning to eat something new. I stumbled through the menu, looking for a word I could pronounce, having not the slightest clue what any of the items consisted of. Squeezed between the grimy doorframe and the huge right shoulder of a man who must have been a sort of bouncer, being blasted by a startling array of scents and Indian music, and trying to simultaneously plan my next move, I found it difficult to focus on the dog-eared bi-fold menu in my hands. "Dosa" was what I landed on. For Rs. 140 (about $1.25), and given that I couldn't go wrong in speaking those four letters, I took the leap. What I learned: Dosa is a simple masala with a beautiful array of tastes, some subtle and others, well, not-so-subtle (read: this is the first time in my life I’ve had heartburn). I further learned that it’s probably impossible for a first-timer (in an authentic setting like that) to eat the food correctly. [Remember, most South Asian cultures eat with their right hand (and only their right hand), and masalas have so many…crumbly or liquid ingredients.] The last thing I learned is that even if you look like a child and end up destroying your food before it gets to your mouth, most locals will appreciate that you’re trying, laugh at your strangeness, and will, in the end, send you off with a gracious smile.
I would never have thought to write about so humble of an experience if my next pit-stop hadn’t happened: I walked about a block to the least-authentic place in Colombo, in cultural terms, a place called Odel’s. I’ve mentioned it in past posts because it has served as a bastion of normalcy for me on a couple of occasions: shopping mall, Euro-American setting, air conditioning, decent coffee (!). But my time there last night was different. In order to boost their WIFI for a little while, I needed to purchase a coffee at the lofty price of about $2.25 (that money would otherwise buy me two full rice packs here), and standing in line in front of me was a middle-aged man I later learned was from northern Europe. Odel’s is the only place in Sri Lanka I’ve found that charges “tax” (it must be some kind of racket), so prices inevitably end up falling on strange amounts. It’s the only place I’ve ever received half a rupee in change, for example, (which turns out to be this adorable little plastic-sounding Monopoly-money piece), and the European man needed Rs. 5 to avoid having to carry around a bunch of change. I freely offered the nickel, with a smile, and in short order was invited to drink my B- coffee with him and his partner, a female European who seemed to be a few years older than he. I found that they were expatriates to varying degrees, she retired and he still working through phased-retirement for the Red Cross. They live together here in Colombo, and I thought it would be interesting to get a feel for their situations as foreigners who have lived here for four+ years.
But my talk with them was predicated upon some important events of the past weekend, so my mindset bears explanation. It’s been long enough between my posts (sorry, dear readers) that I can’t possibly recount all the details of what’s happened between now and the last, but in short: I traveled to Kandy (it gets an A+ in my book) two weekends ago and Anuradhapura (too flat for my tastes, though still fantastic) this past weekend. The week in-between was a whirlwind of excitement-and-craziness that I will have to write about another time, because what interests me now is a group of four young European women I met in Anuradhapura. I had met three of them two weeks before, in Unawatuna, and serendipitously (and almost creepily, overall) ran into them again on Sunday. In general, they seem like fun, well-meaning people, two of them in particular. The two I related to the most were only-a-little-bit-afraid to stand in the doorway of a CTB train as it barreled along at 65 kmph, laughing with the other standing-people and soaking in the beautiful paddy-fields and plantations as they whizzed past. The other two were all-too-content to be securely seated in second-class. All four, however, set my mind rolling as to the situation I find myself in: like most expatriates the world-over, they’ve stuck to themselves and they’ve carved out a space in their adopted country where they can practice life as they normally would, venturing out into the real world only on weekends, smoking only imported cigarettes, and refusing to ride CTB buses, etc.
As difficult as it’s been for me, I’ve purposely been avoiding those kinds of communities. The Red-Cross couple represents a striking example: when pressed for specifics about adapting to life here, they admitted that they’ve avoided much of Sri Lankan culture in favor of “keeping to themselves in their retirement” and could not tell me too much about living as Sri Lankans do, even in metropolitan Colombo. I was struck that two of the Europeans I spent the better part of a day with in Anuradhapura remained as aloof as they did. They continually reverted to their native tongue, which the other three of us do not speak, and tried, as best as they could, to steer all conversations back to stories of their worldly experiences, especially their travels. However, it was plain to see that no matter how widely they’ve traveled, and no matter how many stamps their passports contain, they’ve never once stopped for a moment to consider living any way other than their own. I sensed an overriding tendency (a strength, no doubt, in some contexts, but otherwise a failure) to cling to what they know and to perpetuate it as much as they can. They represent a microcosm of their homeland in a strange land, and I doubt they will ever step out of it.
All that being said, it’s really, really hard to step out of one’s cultural context, especially when bombarded on all sides by different lifeways. I’ve refrained from mentioning specific European nations because overall, the global West represents a basic homogenous foundation that is relatively navigable for all its residents. Transplant a Westerner to South Asia, however, and it becomes a different story. The small differences that one consciously dismisses as immaterial and unimportant react synergistically to one another: suddenly the fact that no businesses post their operating hours on their front doors drives you crazy, walking on the left side of the sidewalk becomes a constant burden, and you want to shout obscenities at every earnest tuk tuk driver who solicits you for your business. Being alone in this experience has shown me that foreigners everywhere are stuck between a rock and a hard place: they can either retreat into themselves like bulbous drops of oil in a dish of water, or they can cast off what they know and submit to being tumbled around like a forlorn sock in the dryer. I’m tempted to say that it makes very little difference in the long run which route once chooses, but I can’t honestly submit that as my opinion. The four young Europeans, plus the two older ones, have shown me that the only way to live fully anywhere is to submit to a process of mutual adjustment between oneself and one’s environment. This has been easy for me in a place like Boone, North Carolina, United States of America. It has been much more difficult in Nugegoda, Colombo, Sri Lanka. And yet, I am able to stupidly walk into an India restaurant and try something entirely new, something that scares me, something wholly different from the pork tenderloin I was craving. I can do this because I have nothing else to lean on, but in the end I find that the differences really are immaterial. People everywhere eat food, period. Now I know that, at least in some ways, it’s possible to circumvent the xenophobia that characterizes my culture. And now I really know that Americans are capable of so much more goodness on this planet than we’re currently exhibiting. I think we need to stop being so selfish and start eating with our hands. I also think we need to recognize that Dosa masala is really, really good, and worth craving in itself.

For Sale: Culture!

As brave Sri Lankan men sometimes say when greeting solitary, foreign-looking males, "Heyyouguys!"

It's now Thursday, but I keep thinking about the interesting weekend I had. As I mentioned last post, I traveled to Galle and then to Unawatuna, which are in southern Sri Lanka, 120km south of Colombo. By train, it took about 3.5 hours each way. Not bad, except that the train seats were particularly austere in their design, if you were lucky enough to have one, which I didn't for about one hour of each train ride.

I learned a lot traveling for two days. The great majority of my traveling was unquestionably enjoyable, and that's best evidenced by some photographs I took of the weekend (see Facebook or email me for some examples). Unfortunately, some of my experiences left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and I think the relevant points are pertinent to my current study of sustainability here in Sri Lanka. What I witnessed this weekend, in many different guises throughout many different situations, was the commodification of Sri Lankan culture for sale to tourists like me, as well as the accompanying sliminess of constantly being bombarded by attempts to swindle me out of my money. All told, I feel that tourism has had a particularly negative effect on the uniqueness of Galle and Unawatuna, and I wish things had worked out differently in the meeting of cultures here. Even locals avoid those places.

The catalyst for almost everything I did this weekend was a man I met on the train coming south from Colombo. I never learned his name, but he was a police officer of some high rank, and he was extremely friendly to me, right from the get-go. We chatted for an hour about all kinds of things; his English was quite good. I was enjoying his company, and he apparently took a liking to me. From my perspective, he went out of his way to suggest good things for me to see and places to visit, and then to arrange a government-owned tuk tuk to take me to these places. He made it sound as if the itinerary he'd set up was all within a stone's throw of Galle, and wouldn't take very long or be expensive.

Unfortunately, I was being taken advantage of. ("Conned" would be too strong a word.) I later learned that the police officer was getting kick-backs for much of the "kindness" he showed me that day, and that my taxi, though government-owned and "metered", was giving me the not-so-kind tourist rate of approximately 250% the normal fare. Two of the stops I had agreed to turned out to be nowhere close to Galle, contrary to the police officer's impressions, and I'm certain the driver took the longest routes possible to get to them. But alas, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first part of my tour was Galle Fort. I mentioned it in my last post. It's about 300m from the train station and is a pretty neat edifice, in all honesty. It stands militantly out-of-place on the edge of the rolling sea, edged by palm trees. Its central clock tower is impressive, and its lighthouse is delightful in a sort of quaint way. Unfortunately, a man tried to rob me near the lighthouse by backing me into a corner and then doing who-knows-what to get my cash. He got much too close and was mean-looking and filthy, and was trying to push me out of sight of some far-away bystanders. His hands were up in an offensive sort of position, and he kept saying something like "Would you be kind and do me a favor, like your country did after the tsunami?" I had to gruffly shove past him to avoid being cornered...regardless of whatever aid he received from the US in 2004. I then made a quick retreat to where my taxi used to be, only to find it missing. "Great!" I thought, "I've been ditched by my taxi and now I'm going to be robbed by Dirty Dan." I was grateful when my taxi driver started shouting from behind me, about 60 meters off. He had apparently moved the tuk tuk to a more convenient parking spot closer to the fort's exit. "When I saw that man come to you," he said in genuinely worried-sounding English, "I was worried he would rob you. It happens a lot here and I'm sure that man is a thief!" I would really have appreciated some advance-notice in this case.

I hopped back into the three-wheeler and was driven throughout the old Galle town, which sits within the fortifications of the fort. I've not yet visited Europe, but I felt like I was in an old European town. I now believe the reports that the town has changed very little since the days of the Dutch. (I came back to the old town before my train left on Sunday to explore some more, because I liked it during this initial fly-by.)

With the little noisy 2-stroke spouting blue fumes behind us, we quickly darted out of the fort and through the city proper. We were headed to Yatagala Temple, the 1200-year-old Temple-Under-the-Rock. Unfortunately, the Buddhists who founded the temple chose to place it under rocks that were not near Galle, but about 15-20km out. (Remember, I'm paying the taxi-man a rate that I should have known was too high, and I'm paying it per kilometer.) I had at least one "Where the hell is this guy taking me?" moment on the drive, but was otherwise too busy feasting my eyes on the passing scenery to sweat it too much. We arrived at the temple and I climbed the 120 stone steps to the top, passing raucous monkeys and saffron-robed, 10-year-old Buddhist students on the way. The temple was gorgeous, though I understood very little of its symbolic elements. There were at least two large statues of Buddha, including the phenomenal yellow one that greets you at the top of the stairs. I puttered around and was planning on having some quiet time, since I wasn't feeling exactly spiritual at the moment. I sat on what I thought was an appropriately out-of-the-way bench, and there was no one around but me and the monkeys, who had even fallen silent in their feast on a jack-fruit. I started to let out an "Ahhh" but couldn't even finish it: the taxi-driver had huffed up the stairs and was now calling for me to come back down. "Excuse me??" I thought, but said "What's the problem?" "We must go now," was his terse and urgent-sounding reply. I thought I'd upset some hidden priest by sitting where I had, so I hopped up rather sheepishly, looking around to see evidence of the indiscretion I'd committed. I hustled back down to the tuk tuk, and it wasn't until he screeched off in another cloud of GHG's that I realized that the only mistake I'd made was in not telling the taxi driver to wait quietly while I took my time to observe the ancient holy place. Time was money for him, and I was being herded along like a cow to maximize his workday profit.

By now I was having difficult concentrating on the scenery, but was instead imagining myself throwing handfuls of rupees into the air as we drove along. It took a conscious effort to bring myself back down to earth before our next stop, which turned out to be a bit stultifying. Galle is one the last places in Sri Lanka where men still fish from stilts. The pictures of it make it look pretty incredible, and it's surely one of those beautiful cultural practices that is worth holding on to. The stilts are firmly stuck into the rocky bottom of the seabed along the shore, and men will climb to them to fish when the tide is right. The total number of stilts is fixed by the little seaside villages, so men pass them along to one of their sons and the art of fishing from stilts is thus passed along from generation to generation. Unfortunately, very little actual fishing is done nowadays. This is because it's much more profitable for them to charge tourists for photographs and only to climb onto the stilts when said tourists have forked over their cash. When I was dropped off at the shore, two fishermen immediately approached me and offered to demonstrate their "craft", for a fee. I told them I'd love to see them fish but wasn't willing to pay them anything, so they promptly sat back down and continued chewing their tobacco. Thus, I now have a number of photographs of empty stilts and this beautiful cultural craft continues to be degraded by the influx of expendable tourist money. I did buy a king coconut from a roadside stand here, though, so I had a quick pick-me-up. They're delicious, by the way.

Next stop was the tea garden! It's been a dream of mine to see a tea plantation, and while this garden was small by plantation standards (only 200 acres), it did not disappoint aesthetically. It was stunningly gorgeous, from the small streams to the sloping hills of tea plants, to the hibiscus flowers hanging over the pathways. Here is where I hoped I could find some breathing time. The tuk tuk driver parked and started napping in the back seat, looking like he'd been here many a time before and had some expectation of how long my tour would be, so I figured I'd be free from his hustle for a while. Unfortunately, I was hustled along by an entirely different breed of hawk, this one in the guise of a tea garden proprietor. A real creep, this one, he proceeded to give me a tour, but would not allow me a moment to stop and observe anything. All my questions were answered curtly, if not dismissed outright, and the whole deal was a race to the gift shop, wherein, he hoped, I'd spend an outrageous amount of my money on tea (almost $50 for 148 servings of their white tea). Even so, he couldn't resist swindling me out of some other money first!Part of the tour included a sit-down tea break, and I could not tell who was making my tea or putting my small bits of cake on the plate. My tour guide was serving me these things directly, and then hurrying me along as fast as he could. A little while down the trail, he told me that it would have been appropriate for me to leave a tip for the kitchen staff, which was complete news to me. In Sri Lanka, tipping is more or less discretionary, and it's not generally expected that you tip in restaurants, though it's surely welcomed. He told me that distributing tip money throughout the kitchen staff was part of his job, so I naturally gave him a generous sum for the tea-and-cake services I'd received. It wasn't until I was leaving the gift-shop with my tour-guide nowhere in sight that I saw the real tip jar with its courteous sign requesting tips for kitchen staff, tea pickers, drying-and-sorting room staff, and gift-shop tea-makers. I find it impossible to imagine that my tip money made it into this jar, or anywhere other than the tour guide's pocket. And I should have been more discerning, because the gift-shop staff surely thought I was a Scrooge. Lesson learned.

The next thing I learned was that taxi drivers have also learned to expect tips from foreigners, even if they've already commenced over-charging you. I (grouchy, at this point) handed over a solid tip, only later remembering that he'd borrowed money from me earlier in the day to put gas in the tuk-tuk. Double-tip-extortion! A swing-and-a-miss! Here's where the story gets better: I asked to be dropped off at the east end of the south-facing inlet that is Unawatuna. I then hopscotched my way from guest-house to guest-house, looking into renting a room for the night. My prices kept getting better and better and I got more and more aggressive in exaggerating the low rates of their competitors, until I eventually landed on a beautiful little one-room guest house called The Yellow. For Rs. 1700 (about $15.50), I had a spacious bedroom with a queen-sized bed, working shower, and ocean-facing balcony for one night. It was right on the beach, and was finally my chance to sit and relax.

I immediately went swimming and almost swam with a sea turtle but almost got knocked out by a wave-borne coconut instead. When finally I made it past the breakers into the more-gently rolling bay-water, I couldn't help but float on my back and reflect on how quirky life really is. Just four months ago, an opportunity like my internship here in Sri Lanka was a distant dream. But here I am, through a strange combination of happenstance, go-getterness, and the gracious support of so many of my friends, family, professors, and administrators. So, I spent about $100 on a weekend trip that should have cost $30...I'm still living an incredible experience and I'm growing into a better person by the day. Being treated like a tourist will never suit my fancy, but that's what I am for the time being, and this whole experience is something I will never, ever forget.

I've already begun to consider the ways in which this experience has and will continue to influence the trajectory of my life.I can't dwell on those thoughts too much because there's still too much uncertainty, but I can and ought to sit comfortably in the new-found understanding that, indeed, I can become an influential force for positive change because I'm fully a part of this strange, beautiful world of ours. And I fully intend to.

This weekend, I brave the trains.

I've spent the last hour preparing for a small weekend trip I've concocted. I'll be travelling to Galle Fort, which has some interesting historical roots. Historians believe it is the Tarshish of Biblical literature, where King Solomon obtained his gems, spices, and peacocks. Until Colombo took prominence, it was Sri Lanka's most-used port. It was first occupied by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and the Fort itself was built in 1589. The Dutch destroyed the Portuguese fort in 1640 and built another, larger one it its place in 1663. It has changed very little since then, judging from what I've read. And there will be a beach or two to get burned on. YES.

This week has proven to be a bit bewildering, and I admit, not my most productive one yet. A number of wrenches were thrown into the works for me, not the least of which was the necessity of extending my tourist visa to accommodate my entire stay here. I was granted 30 days, free of charge, upon arrival, which was easy as pie. Getting the extension, however, proved to be a bit more...taxing.

I'm not trying to complain, so here are the constructive lessons I learned. First, waiting only four hours for ANY sort of paperwork processing at a government office in a developing country is a miracle. I've heard numerous horror stories about the inefficiency of government agencies in this part of the world, and have been told that just three years ago, my wait would have been double what it was. Apparently, Sri Lanka has embarked on an aggressive campaign to streamline its Immigration services, and I was the lucky recipient of their efforts. It wasn't too bad, honestly, waiting as I did. I just have to harumph because I forgot my book in my rush out the door that morning and had nothing to read while sitting.

Second, the US's immigration policies piss off the rest of the world. Apparently we make it abhorrently difficult to enter our country for any foreign national, and getting a visa extension like mine would have been close to impossible for a Sri Lankan. I began to get a feeling for this situation when I was applying for my visa to visit India. They reciprocate every bit of America's nasty immigration policies, and thus make it stupidly difficult to get into their country in any way, shape, or form. My boss tells me that India has become extremely guarded, much the same way the US has, in their paranoia about terrorism over the past decade.

Further, my visa extension was above-and-beyond more expensive than any other charge I could get a feel for at the Immigration office. Whereas an India would pay the equivalent of pennies for the same extension, and an Italian I was sitting with paid just over $30, my extension cost over $110. I was reminded that entry visas into the US are consistently more expensive than other countries', and Sri Lanka has chosen to reciprocate. So, in effect, I've been getting a taste of what the US has been dishing out to everyone else for a few hundred years. I can't blame the Sri Lankans, and wish every American could experience having the tables turned at least once in their lifetimes.

In terms of Sustainability, what have I learned? Well, an interesting Buddhist lesson, as the case may be. The concept of sustainability has a lot of, how shall I say it, grey areas. For example, it's easy to settle into the basic idea of considering the wellbeing of current and future generations without considering, exactly, how far into the future we ought to consider. Pop sustainability has latched onto the "7 generations" idea, but even that is kind of arbitrary. It's easy, therefore, to often think in terms of "forever" and "infinite", but I've long realized that this is probably too far into the future to be useful. My boss today dropped a line that struck me. He said "As a Buddhist, I know that nothing is forever. Nothing. What we instead need to aim for in sustainability is an endurance process within the regenerative capacities [of the planet]." He means, of course, that it's silly to focus on "forever" when we can't possibly achieve such a lasting effect in anything we do. As Wes Jackson says, we can never do better than nature, but we can hope to do better than we are. And perhaps gaining an understanding of the inherent contingency and timeliness of all things, like my Buddhist friends strive to do, will help us make good decisions in both public policy and throughout our daily lives.

The next big decision for me, as it stands, is between SPF 15 and 30. But if all things are contingent, should I care about my skin?? Sheesh. Maybe I should find some shade and drink a fruity drink instead. I guess it is as the Buddhists say: life is full of suffering.

; )