It’s Friday and hotter than Hades. After the suicide bombing, the military retaliated by shelling the east coast where the LTTE is located. About 10,000 Tamils left the area. It is a mess. Our newspaper did not even mention the shelling. I learned about it on BBC news. Then again I bet our paper is a government owned paper. See, it could be worse in terms of the media in the US. The government is pretending they aren’t breaking the ceasefire agreement, just the LTTE. Sometimes this stuff feels like children squabbling. The LTTE promises to retaliate and on it goes. It is quiet right now. Most of the killing takes places in the North and Northeast part of the island where we never go. Ron’s program has work in several towns on the east coast but work will be suspended there for two months until things settle down. Being a city manager type, he has asked his employer for a contingency plan should we have to leave in a hurry. Yesterday I contacted a freight forwarding agent to see what is involved in shipping household goods to Thailand. I feel much better now that I know what is involved.

At this point we feel safe. We get regular emails from the US Embassy telling us where not to go and not to attend any political rallies (duh), etc. They are in no way responsible for Americans living here but do play a role of giving critical information regarding personal safety. USAID, the grantor for Ron’s program, could pull the plug on the program and ask all concerned to get outta Dodge, so to speak. I decided I had better get all my gift shopping done now instead of waiting until time to leave so I started today although I didn’t get very far.

We leave tomorrow (Saturday) for Galle that is on the south coast of SL. Ron has Monday off. SL has more pubic holidays than any country in the world and we are grateful so are taking a little trip to relax. We will be staying in a fabulous old colonial hotel that was built as a villa for a family and that has since been expanded into a small (20 room) hotel. It sits right on the water so we will have lovely views. Think about us on the veranda sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. HA! We return Monday and take off on Tuesday for Nuwara Eliya and Hatton where Ron has a few meetings. I am tagging along as it will be cool there and I have forgotten what it is like to not have my body glistening with sweat. We will return on Friday so I will write a blog in Nuwara Eliya at the beginning of the week but we will also go to Hatton and I really doubt there will be a cyber café there. These towns are located in Central SL.

We miss Mrs. Bakshi who has gone to the states for a year but today Veena brought me lunch that consisted of rice, eggplant, greens, an egg dish with a sauce to die for, lentils and a salad made with jumbola which is a relative of grapefruit only it isn’t tart/sour. I was overwhelmed. And saved some for our dinner tonight.

We have a movie date tonight, going to a facility that shows foreign films but it isn’t a regular theater. It probably seats 30-40 people. We will see Paradise Now about two young Palestinians who are devout Muslims and who have vowed to martyr themselves. It won Best Foreign language film at the Golden Globe awards and seems very timely, given our situation here. I understand it turns out to be a film about peace. I am not a religious person but have been praying for peace. So far it isn’t working so join me in prayer and maybe it will have more impact. Thanks!

We are safe. A female suicide bomber blew herself up at the Army Command Center in North Colombo today, killing eight army guards and seriously injuring a commander. We do not yet know how this will impact our time here. USAID will pull us out of here when they consider it dangerous to us personally. You should know in the 14 years of civil war here, no foreigners have ever been targeted by either side. Recently some foreign civilians were injured when claymore roadside mines were set off and they were on the road near the army vehicles that had been targeted. This has only happened on the east side of the island. The attack today is the first time since the 2003 ceasefire that such a violent event has occurred in Colombo.

My Life in the Tropics

Last week I was sitting in our office working on the computer when I heard a crash outside the window. We have a coconut tree outside the window so I thought another coconut had crashed to the ground. I looked out the window and didn’t see a coconut then I realized there was a two and a half foot snake lying there stunned. After a couple of minutes he slithered into the garden. Then I saw a SL squirrel (we would consider it a chipmunk) in the tree. Probably the snake was pursuing the squirrel and lost. Now every time I water the garden I am expecting a snake to come out of the bushes and chase me. Yikes!

Ron and I went to our first movie theater this weekend. We have seen a few movies since we have been here but they have been screened in embassies or other venues. The weird thing is the movies are shown at 10:30 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. What do they do with the staff with such long breaks?? The theater was a lot like ours just not as nice. Some of the seats were worn or torn and the floor was linoleum. The other weird thing was the concession stand sold whiskey! It cost $2.00 to see a first run movie. In this case Munich by Spielberg. It was air-conditioned which made it worth the price. I was surprised to see several parents had brought their kids. This isn’t a movie for children as it had lots of violence and harsh language. Geez, I’m not turning into a prude am I? I have just read too much about children seeing violence. I forgot to mention the have ads before the movie, including a rude, sexist, ageist Coke ad (but I did laugh) and everyone stood up when the national anthem was played.

Wednesday is Ron’s 21st anniversary of turning 39. He is keeping it low key. We will meet some friends from work for drinks at Alix’s house then go out to dinner to our favorite Indian restaurant. I am going to special order some HOT dishes for Ron as the food is never hot enough for him. The rest of us will eat regular Indian fare. And watch smoke come out of Ron’s ears.

Today I looked up the average income in SL. The average monthly wage per person is SLR 3056. In the urban sector it is SLR 4997 and in the estate (tea plantation workers) it is SLR 1663. One SLR equals a penny US. So that is $30.56, $49.97 and $16.63 a month. Oh my goodness. By SL standards we are Bill and Melinda Gates!!!!

I am still earning about SL time. It is island time and I still get caught off guard. Today is Wednesday. On Tuesday I ordered a birthday cake for RB and said I would pick it up at 1:30 so the manager wrote down for the cake to be ready at 1:00. I arrived at 1:45. No cake but was told it would be there in 30 minutes and they would deliver it since it was late. They managed to deliver it at 3:45! This is the third time I have used caterers and the third time they were over an hour late. Next time remind me to say I want it two hours before I need it!

That’s it from SL for the day. Pray for peace.

Kerala India photos are posted at www.rtsla.photoway.com

There is no shortage of things to learn in life. Today I decided to give UPS a try since I am so disgusted with the hassles at the post office. It was incredible. I walked into an air-conditioned office; spoke to the receptionist who gave me one form to complete. Yes, one form. I was mailing a shirt to a friend. That was all there was to it. I didn’t have to talk to four-five counter staff or get hassled by an inspector. The cost however was through the ceiling. They only ship packages in that weight range express so it only cost me $54 to send a $19 shirt. Ha! Like I said, there’s no shortage of lessons to learn.

On Monday I did two huge loads of laundry and hung them out to dry. Then I left to run errands. At noon the sky opened up and it rained until last night. I have been here six months (can you believe it?) and it has never rained for two days. Usually you get a 20-40 minute downpour then the sun comes back out. It didn’t rain constantly but we didn’t see the sun until today, Wednesday.

I had stopped by Ron’s office and asked him for a lunch date on Monday. Mr. Kularathna, the trishaw driver I use, would wait for me while I ate lunch. When we left the office it was sprinkling. We walked to the restaurant that is quite near his office, down the lane and it is at the end of the lane. When we came out of the restaurant it was pouring. Since neither of us had an umbrella with us, we were debating whether to make a dash or wait it out. We looked up and there was Mr. Kularathna driving up to save us from getting wet. He is the best, a starman! I couldn’t believe he had thought to do that. I rewarded him with a large bag of deviled (spicy with chili powder) cashews when I got home. That’s a day wages for Geetha. I think Mr. Kularathna makes more than Geetha but he is always bowled over when I give him a bag of cashews.
This evening we are having Mrs. Bakshi and Veena over for tea. Mrs. Bakshi leaves for Maryland in the wee hours of the morning. Her other daughter lives there. We are very sad, as she will be gone for a year. She has a green card and is not allowed to stay out of the US for more than six months. When we moved in, she had just returned from the US. Since we will leave before she returns we promised to look her up when we are in the Washington DC area in early September. Ron has an ICMA national conference in San Antonia and we are going early to see Mark and Rachel, our older son and his wife and their new baby boy that is due August 26th. So we will take an evening and take Mrs. Bakshi to dinner. She has been an angel since we have been here. She taught me how to make chapatti, has brought us breakfast, lunch and dinner at various times. The day we moved in, she brought me lunch. I didn’t have anything in the house to eat so I was very grateful. She is a very spiritual woman and we truly feel blessed to have known her. I have heard stories about landlords hear that make me know we are most fortunate with Veena and Mrs. Bakshi. I’ve been told once a landlord has your money (you pay one year in advance to rent here) they never make repairs. I have heard of landlords who come by your house everyday to make sure you haven’t damaged anything. Oy vey. We will take photos tonight so check the photo site soon for a chance to meet Mrs. Bakshi.

A long week-end in Kerala, India

We have just returned from Kerala, India. Kerala is a narrow strip on the sw coast of India sandwiched between the Lakshadweep Sea and the Western Ghats (mtns.) Rice fields, mango and cashew trees and coconut palms dominate the landscape. In the native language, Kerala means land where the coconut trees grow. The Western Ghats have sheltered Kerala from mainland invaders but encouraged Keralans to welcome maritime contact with the outside world. In Cochin, there is still a small community descended from Jewish settlers who fled Palestine 2000 years ago. Christianity has also been in Kerala for as long as it has been in Europe. When the Portuguese arrived here 500 years ago they were surprised to find Christianity already established along the Malabar Coast and more than a little annoyed that these Christians had never heard of the Pope! (From the Lonely Planet)

People have been sailing to Kerala for at least 2000 years. They came in search of spices, sandalwood and ivory. Long before Vasco da Gama led the Portuguese to India, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, and the Chinese had been here. Today the fishermen still use Chinese fishing nets that are cantilevered over the water. Watch for photo postings soon. The maharajas of the areas that make up the state of Kerala paid considerable attention to the provision of basic services and education. It was this early concern for public welfare that gave Keralans a head start and resulted in the post-independence state being one of the most progressive, literate and highly educated in India. One of Kerala’s other distinctions is that it was the first place in the world to freely elect a communist government in 1957. There is little doubt that the relatively equitable distribution of land and income, found rarely to the same degree elsewhere in India, is the direct result of successive communist governments. This policy of equity also applies to health and education. Infant mortality rate in Kerala is the lowest in India and the literacy rate is the highest. We did not encounter any beggars our fist day and only a few in the remaining time we were there. I saw someone sleeping on the street on the way to the airport this morning but in Mumbai I saw hundreds of people sleeping on the streets and entire families living on the streets. I never saw this in Kerala.

We arrived late at night and went to bed. The next morning we walked to the ferry and went over to Fort Cochin that is rich in history. This is a short 20-minute ride on the ferry. We hired a trishaw driver by the hour and were together for four hours. We had a map with points of interest and would point out things we wanted to see and he would drive us there but he also interjected sights he thought we would enjoy. He showed us a ‘ginger factory’. The term factory means commercial more than anything else. There were two workers spreading chalk over the ginger that was drying in the sun. I think if they don’t get some dreaded lung disease they will surely get cataracts from the white chalk dust and bright sunlight. We visited the Mattancherry Palace, built by the Portuguese in 1557 and presented to the Raja of Cochin as a gesture of goodwill and probably a means of securing trading privileges. The alternative name, the Dutch Palace resulted from the substantial renovations by the Dutch after 1663. This palace is most famous for the murals, depicting scenes from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranic legends connected to Siva, Vishnu, Krishna, Kumara, and Durga (Hindu gods). Some of the scenes are erotic such as the one on the queen’s bedchamber where a cheerful Krishna using six hands and two feet engages in foreplay with eight happy milkmaids. What a guy.

We visited the Koder House Hotel. This was the home of the Jewish patriarch up until last year when he sold it. It is now a six-room boutique hotel where you can stay for $400-500 a night. Outta our price range. But we ate lunch here and got a tour of the enormous bedchambers, bathrooms and changing rooms. Quite a lovely setting with antique furnishings and carefully restored/preserved environment. It was built in 1808 and remained in the Koder family the entire time.

We saw where Vasco da Gama lived (never authenticated). The house was built in the first half of the 16th century. Then we saw the Santa Cruz Basilica. Built by the Portuguese, this church was elevated to a cathedral by the Pope in 1558. It was destroyed by the British then rebuilt in 1887. We also saw St Francis Church (it was Easter weekend remember) that was built in 1503 and considered the oldest church in India. Vasco da Gama was buried here in 1524 but later his remains were returned to Portugal.

We went to “Jew Town” where the oldest synagogue in India is. The original building was built in 1568 but later destroyed by shelling during a Portuguese raid in 1662. It was rebuilt two years later when the Dutch took over Fort Cochin. It has hand painted tiles brought from Canton in China in the mid 18th century by Ezekial Rahabi. Imagine our disappointment when we discovered the synagogue was closed for Passover. Bummer!

We also saw the Chinese fishing nets, huge nets suspended in the air and cantilevered over the water. Apparently at night they lower the nets into the water and use light (lanterns) to attract the fish then raise the nets. We did not get to see them in action unfortunately.

We were very hot and sweaty so took a ferry and another trishaw back to the hotel to shower and rest. That night we had a fabulous dinner at a Northern Indian restaurant right around the corner from our hotel.

On day two we booked a tour of the backwaters. This meant getting picked up at 8:30 in a cab and riding into the countryside. At ten about 15 of use climbed onto a boat to be poled (no motors) around the backwaters of the area. This was a six-hour trip. In mid morning we had a break. We were in a very narrow ditch and pulled over to a six family village and had a coconut break. This involved whacking off the top of a coconut and drinking the ‘water’ then cutting the coconut in half and having the meat scooped out and eating that. The boatmen used long steel knives and I about flipped out when I realized they were holding the coconut in one hand and using the other had to hold the knife to whack the coconut in half. I wonder how many boatmen suffered severe cuts learning this skill? The one house we saw in the village was made of thatch and about 8 x 12 feet. I wondered how dry they were as the previous night it had rained like crazy. Along the way, we saw egrets, ducks, water snakes, two beautiful kingfishers and numerous water lilies.

The mode of transportation in these parts is a small dugout canoe. We visited a lime factory. Here the villagers collect mussels from the river bed and boil them to extract the meat which they sell in the marketplace but the real money comes from the shells. The shells are brought by boat to the factory where they are laid over burning dried coconut husks. After they have burned the shells, they spray the ash with water and the residue is lime powder that is used in cement, plaster, white wash and those stripes we see on sports fields. They get 250 rupees for each 50-kilo bag. My guess is that’s a day’s wages in these parts. That would be about $6.25. One mussel egg produces over 25,000 mussels so they won’t be running out any time soon.

We also visited a coir factory. Coir is the fiber inside the coconut husk. It requires soaking in water for six-twelve months to loosen the fiber. The husks are removed and the fiber is spun into a thread using a bicycle wheel (think of a spinning wheel) to twist the fiber. Two women feed the thread and a third person spins the wheel. To make the fiber strong the two strands are twined together and you have a very strong thin rope at that point. For a thicker rope, you can twine these two strands together. It was fascinating to watch how easy they made it look. This is a woman’s industry and a company will provide al the mechanisms to produce the cord. No part of the coconut is wasted as the dried husk is used as fuel to burn the shells described above.

We ate lunch on an uninhabited island where two women had prepared a lovely vegetarian meal, served on a banana leaf. No plates. How organic. The bad news is there was a pile of empty plastic water bottles nearby from previous trips. All along the way we saw people washing their clothes in the river and beating them against rocks to get them clean. It makes me wonder how long clothes last with that kind of friction. After lunch everyone except four of us, got off the boat to go on a different tour. Four of us continued back to our point of origination and debarked around 4:00. There had been a motorcycle accident right in the village where we were waiting for our taxi to pick us up and return us to Ernakulam where we were staying. Apparently the cyclist had run right into a concrete pole with no helmet. He was bleeding from his head and obviously in shock when we saw him. A trishaw rushed in and the passenger picked him up and rushed him to the nearyby hospital. On our trip out to the village we shared the cab with a young Indian family. Two young children, five and three, rode up front with their mother, no seatbelts. At one point I realized the younger child was asleep on his mother’s lap, his head about three inches from the dashboard. Oy vey.

We came home and showered and rested and had yet another fabulous Indian (Kerala style) meal at the hotel next to ours. Yum.

On day three the travel desk wasn’t staffed so that limited our options. Not only was this Easter weekend, it is Passover and the Sinhala and Tamil New Year and something to do with Vishnu. So there was very little staff around the hotel. We had seen some wonderful hand hammered copper cups in the Northern Indian restaurant. I had inquired as to where we might buy some and was told to try the market so Saturday morning we headed out to the market. I had envisioned a large crafts market but it turned out to be a street with a zillion shops. We stopped in the stainless steel shops and the crafts shops but no one knew what we were talking about. These cups come from Northern India around Delhi apparently and we couldn’t find them in the market area so gave up.

Ron encouraged me to buy a sari so we went to the biggest sari shop in town. They had advertisements everywhere. It was three floors of saris. Where to start? There must have been at least 100 staff and I was directed to the third floor. Turns out that’s where the expensive saris are. You sit in a chair at a low counter and the staff pulls saris off the shelf and you start refining what you want. The first thing I told them was my price range. They immediately told me to move to another area. Guess they thought I was a rich American with no limits. Meet Tricia Bergman, The Frugal. So we looked at saris on racks then they moved me to another counter and we proceeded to look at saris. I told them the colors I wanted and in a short time I found one I loved. They got me out of the chair, had me come to the platform (sans shoes) where the staff are and proceeded to drape the sari so Ron and I could get the effect. It is lovely. As soon as I have the halter-top made, we will take photos to do show and tell. Saris are basically six meters of fabric that is draped and as I understand it you don’t have any sewing done to the fabric other than making the halter top. More on this as I learn about it. I have discovered that I can use Dilrukshi, one of my students at Shilpa, to do the sewing I need done. She is an exquisite seamstress so I am excited about creating some income for Shilpa and for her, not to mention having someone I can trust to do it right.

We then went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch and had Northern Indian Thali (me) and Southern Indian Thali (Ron). Thali is served on a stainless steel plate with about five small stainless bowls each filled with a different food. Yum. Not as special as our evening meals but for $4.50 for the two of us, I’m not complaining. We repeated our pattern of shower and resting. Kerala is on the same latitude as Colombo so the weather was identical although it cooled off each evening with the rains. We returned to the hotel next door for our evening meal and walked around town on our last night. So the love affair with India continues.

I forgot to mention that Ron punched me in the nose in the morning of our first day and ended the day by throwing water on me at dinner. Let me explain. We were trying to figure out how to get to the ferry to go to Fort Cochin. He walked into a shop while I waited outside. He was asking for directions when he realized I had the map so he signaled for me to come into the shop. As I was walking up to him with the map he turned to the shop clerk and pointed his arm to the door and just as he did that I was by his side so in effect he punched me right in the nose. He was mortified and I was in pain. I turned on my heel and exited to deal with the pain and waited outside. That night when we were at dinner I was admiring the copper cups the restaurant used as water glasses. Ours had just been filled. Ron picked his up and turned it upside down so he could see the bottom and his water came rushing out, wetting my lap and half the table. I stood up to keep the water that was on the table off me and got the giggles. He was mortified and couldn’t believe he had done something so stupid. I managed to make light of it by telling him, ‘Well first you punch me in the nose and now you throw water on me’. It’s a good thing I think he walks on water because he can do no wrong as far as I am concerned. - TB

And I’m not even going to try and defend myself! Anything I say can and will-be used against me. - RB

Ron spent a lot of time this weekend posting photos of South Africa and India so take a look at www.rtsla.photofreeway.com

It’s been a day in hell in paradise! Today is Monday and let me tell you, I have not been having any fun. I started by going to the main post office to mail three packages (two to the US and one to Thailand) and to buy stamps. It took me 95 minutes and numerous hassles. I was required to fill out three forms in duplicate using carbon paper for each package. Each form required my full name and address, the addressees name and address, detailed description of contents (as if I could remember everything I crammed into those boxes for our kids), value, etc. So I took the boxes off the counter and carried them over to a low table. I placed them nearby and pulled a chair over to the table in order to complete the forms. I have discovered the hard way that your pen won’t work on the paper if you sweat onto it. So I used the backside of one of the forms as a blotter for my sweaty arm. Filling out the forms took a while. Then I returned to the counter and was instructed to go to a different part of the counter, then behind the counter so I could be questioned about the contents. The inspector asked me to open one of the boxes because it had jewelry in it. I had no means to open the package so asked for a knife. He inspected the jewelry and closed the box. I asked for tape and was instructed to go to the shop and buy some. I then discovered that they had cut open another box so I had two to reseal. I went to the shop inside the post office and bought tape. It was worthless. Every time I tried to peel it, it would tear off in little pieces. I tried borrowing the knife to get a good start on it and gave up. Back to the shop and demanded better quality tape. Back to borrow the knife. They weren’t too happy with me by this point and I was ready to throttle someone, anyone. Keep it mind my nose is running and it is hot in the unair-conditioned post office. Once I sealed the boxes it took an inordinate amount of time for the clerk to weight the box, figure the charges and process the paperwork. $125.00 but I had expected it would be worse so was pleased about the cost.

Once done I went to another counter to get stamps but was summoned back to the box shipping counter. They were questioning the address on one of my boxes so the clerk rewrote the address to the left of where I had written it. Go figure. Back to the stamp counter. You should know that Sri Lankans do not stand in a cue or line. They all hover at the counter nudging each other and trying to get ahead of you. For a person like me who is slightly claustrophobic this is a real trial. It took two people a long time to sell me stamps. They did not have stamps today for postcards (17 rupees) so I was sold three stamps for each card that totaled 17 rupees. I got enough for 20 cards to avoid this craziness for a while. Then they didn’t have any stamps for foreign letters so I bought two stamps (16.50 rupees per stamp-that’s 16 and a half cents!) and again got enough for 20 letters. All of this took one hour and 35 minutes. Oy vey! I went postal at one point (yes, in the post office) and was walking through the post office muttering obscenities aloud. Things like ‘this is f—king unbelievable’ and such.

Okay then I went to get a prescription. More crowding around the counter. Then to the grocery that happens to be one of the largest stores in town and they didn’t have the juice or soy milk I needed. Whaaa! I came home and ate lunch and rested. Then I checked the mail and found a notice saying our electricity would be shut off in two days due to no payment… but of course we have paid and have the receipts to prove it. However, that probably won’t mean a thing to a Sri Lankan bureaucrat! Tomorrow the offices are closed due to one of the 29 holidays per year and we’re leaving Wednesday night for India. That means I’ve got Wednesday morning to take care of this!

Gosh I feel so much better having whined and complained for several paragraphs here. Thanks for listening.

The one bright point of the day was when a young Cambodian woman introduced herself on our morning walk. She lives two lanes away from us and is here with her husband, Peter and two daughters. Peter and Leasna came over in the evening to check out our mattresses as they are starting to look for a king size bed, as Peter is 6’6”. He is a program manager for UNICEF and Leasna is an at home mom right now with a five month old. Her other daughter is 12. They have been here since January. We are thrilled to meet some neighbors and make a good connection. We look forward to spending more time with them. Peter grew up in LA as did Ron.

It is now Tuesday and I am staying at home and resting today to try and get rid of this cold. It is the Holy Prophet’s birthday so many offices are closed. My health continues to improve but I am not well yet. Today I am coughing a lot but am hopeful the antihistamines will kick in soon. I am delighted to have a day where I am not leaving the house. It rained again last night so I don’t need to water the garden today that usually takes about an hour. It also has helped to keep the heat bearable at least so far today. It’s 10:30 a.m. I plan on reading some and spending some time researching investments on the computer and learning more about Cochin where we are going tomorrow. What a life! Can you believe how blessed we are? Goodness, we keep pinching ourselves thinking this is all dream. At some level I guess it is but we happen to be living our dream.

I took my electrical bills and cut off notice to Veena to get her help in understanding if I had done something wrong or missed something. She agreed with me that it looks like their mistake. But the amazing thing is she said she would go in tomorrow and handle it for me. I was floored as I don’t see it as her responsibility but she said she wanted to handle it. I am most appreciative because it is difficult when you don’t speak the language and I must say that is frustrating at times. I had a representative from the electrical board hang up on me yesterday because she didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Sinhala. I told Veena I owed her big time. I can’t tell you how I was dreading going in and dealing with the problem knowing that I wouldn’t understand half of what was being said to me.

Yes, we are still taking Sinhala lessons but when you are starting out you learning how to say your name and introduce yourself, how to shop at the vegetable market and such. We are a long way from learning how to resolve billing problems.

Well that’s it for the day from Paradise. We leave tomorrow for SW India and will return Sunday so probably won’t have a posting before Sunday. We understand that Cochin is beautiful so we are quite excited to see it. Until then.

It’s Saturday April 8 and we got home on Monday April 3. I can't remember if I mentioned it but our plane left Mumbai at 3:20 a.m. meaning we arrived at the airport a little after 1:00 a.m. We arrived in Colombo at 6:00 a.m. and got home about 7:30. We fell into bed and slept until 11:30 and unpacked and puttered and napped off and on the rest of the day.

This week I managed to get some sort of bug and was in bed with a fever on Thursday and resting on Friday. Today I managed to get out of bed to run errands with Ron but came home and went back to bed, as I have no energy.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any hotter here, it is now hotter than the gates of hell. One day I checked it is was 90 degrees and the humidity was 95 degrees. You can’t even imagine how hot that is. Consequently, I water the gardens as soon as I finish breakfast. Veena was a saint and watered for me while I was ill. This is supposed to be the hottest month of the year and sometimes May is just as hot. I may have to check into an air-conditioned hotel. Just kidding. I wouldn’t mind a trip to Nuwara Eliya about now. Many people from Colombo head for the hills during April to get away from the heat. Unfortunately it is a five-hour drive and even in an air-conditioned car it can get uncomfortable.

We leave Wednesday night for Kerala in SW India. We will be staying in Kochi aka Cochin. We hear it is beautiful and are eager to see it. I can only hope it will be a relief weather wise. Next week is a huge holiday week: Tuesday is the Holy Prophet’s Birthday (Islam), Thursday is poya day (Buddhist) and Friday is the Tamil and Sinhala New Year. So everything pretty much closes down. Our laundry/dry cleaner is closed from April 11th- 16th so it is a good time to travel. Ron gets Thursday and Friday off. Unfortunately there is only one flight home and it is in the morning so we will just have Thursday-Saturday to tour the area but being as experienced as we are we will make the most of it.

We have categorized our vacations into three categories: vacations of obligation (this is when you visit family and relatives), tourists on speed (this is when you have a brief period of time and want to see everything because you may never come this way again, and finally what RB calls PMB (park my butt) This is when you wake up and stroll down to breakfast and then go the to the room and grab your novel and stroll out to the palm tree and get a lounge chair and sit there until time to take a morning nap or time to eat again. Nap in the afternoon and go back out and read some more under that tree. Well, you get the picture. So Kerala will probably be tourists on speed. In Mumbai (Bombay) we were very good about slowing down and resting each day as we were nursing bad colds.

Ron had his out of town field staff in town this week so he wanted a party on Thursday night. I agreed and did most of the shopping and made arrangements for catering on Wednesday. It is a good thing since I had a fever on Thursday and didn’t get to attend the party downstairs. Ron pulled it off like the champ that he is. Geetha couldn’t stay to help so he picked up the food and ice, chilled the drinks (our refrigerator is quite small so drinks need to be iced), did set up and cleaned up afterwards. What a guy! I would be as rich as Bill Gates if I could clone this man but alas, I won the husband lottery and am content with that.

Last night I managed to sit up for two episodes of West Wing and we completed the third season with three to go on our DVD packet we bought. It will be a sad day around here when we finish this series. We have loved watching it. We never saw it when we were in the states as we went to bed early and rarely watch TV. When we were in South Africa there were some movies showing near our hotel that we wanted to see but we had no free evenings so didn’t get to catch any. Munich is coming to town so we will go to our first real movie theater in Colombo when it is playing here.

That’s it from paradise where it currently is hotter than the gates of hell.

April 1&2
We are in Mumbai! For over five years we have wanted to visit India and alas, we are here. What a thrill! Although the temperature is high it is not near as hot as Colombo because of lower humidity. The bad news is we both caught colds from an ICMA committee member. Our first night in Jo’burg I sat between Zarka and Bob, both of whom had bad colds. I have managed to share it with my darling husband.

We had our doubts about India when we arrived. For starters our plane left Jo’burg one hour late. A passenger who was quite ill boarded and was later asked to get off the plane since they couldn’t land once we took off. There was only ocean between Jo’burg and Mumbai. Once he deplaned they had to find and remove his luggage. Once we got to Mumbai we had to circle for a long time (45 MINUTES) because they were working on a runway which reduced the number of available runways and air traffic was backed up. So instead of arriving at 20 past midnight, it was 2:00 a.m. Then we went through customs, went right past the money exchange place so we could go to an ATM. Well the ATM didn’t work so a person took us to a place very far away to another nonworking ATM. We then trudged back to the international terminal and tried to get back in to the money changer and every door was staffed by an armed guard. After whining and pleading they let Ron in and I stayed outside with the bags. We were hounded by numerous people who wanted to help (for a price of course). There were people sleeping on the pavement outside and numerous people begging at the airport.

We paid for a prepaid cab once Ron got some money. We requested an air conditioned cab. The car we were assigned had NO trunk and we had one large suitcase, one carry on and two other small bags. This required another 15 minute delay as the driver went back to the stand to argue. Ultimately we squeezed it all in the front and back seat. It was a 45 minute ride to our hotel and after about 15 minutes the air con stopped working. We got to our hotel around 3:00 a.m. and couldn’t get to sleep so read for awhile. We set the clock for 9:00 because our friend Raju had arranged a car and driver for us for the day and the driver was to arrive at 10:00. We jumped out of bed in the morning and ate a toast and tea breakfast at our budget hotel. No driver so we went about our day without him. We walked over to the Gate of India which is an arch de triumph built in 1924 to honor King George V. Across the way is the famous Taj Hotel built in 1903 by the Indian industrialist J.N. Tata. He had been refused entrance to the “European” hotel Watson’s so he took revenge and built the much more opulent Taj Hotel From there we hired a cab (again we paid for AC and it didn’t work either) to take us to three more spots as we realized we could barely talk, much less function, due to sleep deprivation. We saw the famous municipal laundry (dhobi ghat) where some 5,000 men use open concrete troughs to wash the thousands of kilos of laundry brought from all over the city.

Next we went to a marble Jain Temple where we got blessed by a holy man who put a dab of sandalwood mixed with water on our foreheads. There are many statues of Jain priests (?). The eyes of each statue were diamonds. Next came the Hanging Gardens which were laid out in 1881 and derive their name from the fact they are built on top of a series of reservoirs that supply water to Bombay. We then passed by the Parsi Towers of Silence. Parsis hold fire, earth and water as sacred and therefore if possible they will not bury or cremate their dead. Instead the bodies are laid out within the towers to be picked clean by vultures. Fortunately, none of this can be seen from the road but there were vultures overhead.

Next we went to the Cottage Industries shop. Here were beautiful crafts from all over India. We got lacquer boxes and a beautiful textile that we will use as a wall hanging or on top of the bedcover. It was way past lunch so we dropped our goods off at our hotel and grabbed a great salad at a place nearby that turned out to be Italian cuisine. They had a dessert case to die for so we ordered a ‘gooey chocolate’. Something got lost in translation and we ended up with two with chocolate sauce and ice cream. So we ate it. What can I say? To demonstrate our fatigue, while we were having lunch, my darling husband said ‘You know I have been to every place we have traveled to’. I gave him a look and said ‘yes you have’ and asked if he realized what he had just said. We got the giggles and he explained that what he had meant to say is that most of the places we have traveled to are a result of his association with ICMA. I think we rested after that. We had a nap and went back out to explore the neighborhood. We had a great Indian dinner at a nearby restaurant and Ron talked me into a Punjab sari, the kind with a long over blouse and pants. The tailor said it would be ready in 24 hours. The cost? $25 for material (cotton) and labor.

On Saturday we ate breakfast at the Italian bistro because they had French press coffee. We then came back to the hotel expecting our friend Raju. Instead his cousin’s driver came and took us out to a very active Hindu temple and fruit/veggie market. Ron found a luggage store and got a great deal so bought a carry one to replace our ten year old one that is ready to bite the dust. Our head colds were getting the best of us so we came back to the hotel to rest. We got up around 3:00 and went down the lane to an Indian restaurant and had mineral water, two fancy teas, prawns marsala, chili chicken with rice and two kinds of breads (naan and roti) for a grand total of five dollars. We stopped at an Internet café to check email then went shopping again. I found a beautiful silk caftan and we got more gifts for our kids. Tonight our friend Ragu is driving down from Gujarat to join us for dinner and spend tomorrow with us.

It’s now Sunday and our friend Raju had to fight traffic and didn’t arrive until after ten p.m.. We got to meet his handsome 16 year old son and his lovely wife and we had a Indian feast at a nearby restaurant. We finished eating at midnight! Unfortunately Raju and his family had to return to Gujarat last night due to the death of his uncle so we parted with the promise to meet next in Gujarat.

Things I failed to mention about Mumbai. There are many more homeless here than in Colombo. Every night there are many people sleeping on the dirty sidewalks. We saw neighborhoods yesterday with hovels for housing that are right on the sidewalk. Our first morning out we had a charming 4 year old (I’m guessing on the age) who followed us for two blocks chatting away asking for rupees. Yesterday there were many children beggars some quite aggressive, banging on the car windows at traffic lights. We saw children with no clothes on the street. We also saw beautiful British colonial architecture, and porters with huge (2 ½ ft across and 8” deep) flat bottomed baskets. They would stand around waiting for someone to ask them to carry their load. We witnessed a taxi drive up, the passenger get out and unload three heavy cartons from the trunk. The porter loaded them into his basket and three men lifted it onto his head. His knees buckled slightly when the load was placed on his head. My guess is the cartons contained printed materials such as magazines or books.

We saw vendors who were selling garlic, that’s all they were selling. In the famous Crawford Market (food mostly) we spied vendors who sat crossed legged in their stalls that were tiered surrounded by their veggies. So if you walked up to the vendor, he would be about head/shoulder height to you and he was seated. On the street we saw vendors who would refill your disposable lighters for you. There is much less trash here than Colombo and no where did we see garbage on the streets. Given the poverty level here, if you put garbage on the street there would be people running to get it to see if it was edible. I saw two instances of people going through dumpsters. We saw people who live on the sidewalks, cooking a meal, visiting with neighbors and living in squalor. We saw hand trucks about 20 inches wide by about 10 feet long. We were surprised at how many things are loaded onto these ‘lorries’ and moved about town. Sometimes the loads were so heavy it took four or five men to move the load. It is interesting that it is cheaper here to move goods this way with four or five laborers than using a motorized vehicle with one person.

The roads in Mumbai are far superior to Colombo. Drivers aren’t quite so crazy although our driver loved his horn. Sometimes he would be two or three car lengths away from anything and blow his horn. He would blow his horn when we were stopped at a red light. Well you get the picture. Today we got up at 8:30 since we had gone to bed at 1:00. Had another French press breakfast and when we got back our driver was here. Since we weren’t feeling up to snuff, we cancelled the aquarium part of the itinerary and went to the Haji Ali Tomb/mosque. This mosque is in the ocean about 200-300 feet off shore. During low tide you can walk out to the tomb on a concrete walkway that is lined with beggars of every description. They don’t ask for anything as you go out to the mosque. Near the mosque are money changers who take a small fee and will give you one rupee coins in exchange for your bills. That way when you return you can give a rupee to many of the beggars. So to make this work easily since there were so many, we alternated with me giving a coin to the first person and Ron giving a coin to the second, me to the third, Ron to the fourth and so on. Two or three times we got swarmed by children who were the most aggressive. All the adults simply sat on the concrete and extended their hand or bowl. In all we gave out close to two hundred coins, not a lot of money but a lot of beggars. It was an interesting experience. From here we took a long drive to Juhu Beach, a ritzy resort. Since Ron wasn’t feeling all that well, we cut this short and headed home. This afternoon we are just cooling our heels until time for the tour. This evening at 7:00 we have booked a city architecture tour. Our plane leaves at 3:20 a.m. so we will leave the hotel around 12:30. Oy, just what we need, more sleep deprivation, with our colds. We will get home at 6:00 a.m. Monday. So until next time Mumbai bai.
Post script: Our friend, Jon Bormet who hired Ron, describes India as “an assault to your senses”. Tonight while we were taking the tour of Mumbai, I was sitting in the top deck of a double decker bus. There was no roof so I got a panoramic view. We were stopped at a traffic light and I looked down and saw a homeless girl of about four years old squatting in the street by the curb and playing in the sand on the sidewalk. She was very busy. I then realized she was doing number two on a busy thoroughfare with hundreds of pedestrians walking by. This didn’t assault my senses, it broke my heart.

March 27th

Today is Monday and we have been in South Africa since last Monday. We left Colombo Sunday evening around 7:00 pm. and flew to Mumbai (Bombay) India where we had a 6 hour layover. Oy. The good thing was they provide lounge chairs with thick foam pads so you can put your feet up and sleep which we did as our plane for Cape Town departed at 2:00 am. Oy vey. The bad thing was they have a security rule that requires you to identify your luggage before they will load it on the plane when you are transferring. We started hounding them at 11:00pm to do this and at 1:20 Ron was finally taken to a section of the airport to accomplish this mission. We are not sure if this would have happened had we not constantly inquired about our luggage. The other bad news is we discovered that our luggage had been pilfered when we got to Paarl. Our hair dryer and Ron’s leather tie case and ties were gone. We are fortunate that we had nothing of real value in our luggage. Apparently you can lock your luggage here which we had not done. We will on our return trip. Our flight to S. Africa was an eight hour trip and we took our favorite drug, Ambien, and slept most of the way.

We started out in Paarl which is just outside of Cape Town about 50 kilometers. Cape Town has to be the most beautiful city in the world. It is right on the ocean with Table Mountain as the backdrop. We stayed with our South African family in Paarl, Joan and Abie Sauls and their son Anthony with whom Ron did a professional exchange in 2000. The Sauls’ daughter and granddaughter, Alexis and Zita, are also living with them at this time. Zita is three and bilingual speaking English and Africaans. As a consequence, Joanie and Abie speak a lot more English than we remembered them speaking in 2000. This allowed for much greater communication than when we were there in 2000. As a result we felt an even closer and stronger connection with them. One evening we went with all the family including Abelia, Anthony’s sister, and Mendall, her husband to dinner at a huge casino development. It reminded us of Southern California .

We spent most of our time in Paarl visiting with the family. We took one day and went into Cape Town to look for African masks and other crafts. We were fortunate that Anthony’s nephew was free and willing to take us into town. There is a daily market called Green Market Square where crafts from all over Africa are sold. Each vendor is eager for your business so there is lots of banter to ‘buy from me’. I personally find it tiring to shop in that atmosphere but we persisted. We stopped by a stall where there were masks from all over the continent and found two, a male and a female mask, from South Africa. I believe they are Zulu masks. We also found some potato print placemats. From there we went to the Malay quarter where stucco homes with very flats facades are painted in bright tropical colors, each house being a different color. We will post photos when we can. One house would be painted fuchsia, the next house would be turquoise and the next would be purple. It reminded us of the Victorian ‘painted ladies’ in San Francisco.

From the Malay quarter we went to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. Here is where the rich and famous dine and shop. It is a beautiful development with lots of shops in the loveliest setting. Table Mountain is right there with the waterfront in the foreground. We ate a great lunch outside then went to a shop that specializes in African crafts. We bought some gifts then went to a department store to buy a present for Abie’s 72nd birthday. We managed to beat the traffic home. Apparently the traffic into and out of Cape Town during rush hour is horrendous. For Abie’s birthday on Thursday we prepared a typical American meal (his request) so Ron and I served baked chicken, steamed pumpkin, carrots, salad, and squash.

On Friday morning we left for Johannesburg. Our tour books and Lonely Planet online all warn of the street crime in Jo’burg. Consequently, I left all my jewelry in Colombo including my wedding ring and decided that I would not wander around on my own here which is what I would normally do. Friday night there was another organization, Institute for Local Government Management, that was holding its annual meeting with a gala dinner complete with speeches that we attended. On Saturday Ron’s committee met all day, the ICMA International Committee of which he is the chair. While he was working I went on a tour that included another spouse form the ICMA meeting and three men, two from Egypt and one from Lebanon. All three were engineers who are here to work on a light rail system that will go from Pretoria to Jo’burg. In 2010 the World Cup Soccer match will be held in South Africa so there is a lot to accomplish before that date in terms of infrastructure. So we spent the day seeing quite a lot of Jo’burg. We saw the downtown area including where the gold houses are. Some of the world’s biggest gold mines are here in the area. We saw old equipment used in the mining process. It takes 9 tons of material to produce one ounce of gold. Jo’burg is surrounded by these very large flat topped mounds which are the tailings from the mining process. When the price of gold drops, they reprocess the mounds as they are easier to access than the gold in the ground, thousands of feet below the surface. To get one ounce of gold, you process 16 tons of the tailings. They then fill the old mines with this material and can reclaim the land. Keep in mind that originally they used mercury to extract the gold from the dirt and then found a better process using cyanide. Oh my goodness. From an environmental perspective, can anything be good about this process???? We then went to the top of Africa which is a 50 story building to get a panoramic view of Jo’burg but by then it was raining and little could be seen.

Other sites included Soweto, the township created under apartheid where blacks were forced to move when the whites got paranoid about the number of blacks in the Jo’burg area. The township is about 9-10 miles from town. It is a township of 4.5 million people and ranges from shacks made of corrugated metal and scrap materials to upper middle class homes. It covers 400 sq kilometers. Within Soweto we saw the homes of Winnie Mandela complete with guards and security cameras, the former home of Nelson and Winnie Manadela , now a museum (Nelson’s granddaughter was there at the time) and the home of Desmond Tutu who lives in Cape Town most of the time. Mandela and Tutu lived on the same street and it is the only place in the world that can claim two Nobel Peace Prize winners!

We also saw ‘elephant houses’. These houses were built by the government for the blacks and housed three families. I would guess the houses were maybe 600-800 sq ft and were then divided into three sections, one per family. They were called elephant houses because the roof had a humped shape, somewhat like an elephant. Today the houses are occupied by a single family.

We visited the Regina Mundi Church. This is the Catholic Church where Mandela and Tutu and others were holding meetings when the police attacked the church shooting bullets and tear gas inside. The damaged altar and railings remain as evidence of this horrible episode. Bullet holes remain in the ceiling. This is where the Soweto riots occurred. There was a wonderful photography exhibit of the history of Soweto including some shots of the eventful day.

Next we ate lunch at a shabeen which is a neighborhood pub. Originally they developed because blacks were not allowed to buy alcohol under apartheid laws. A black would give a white some money who would buy the alcohol and the black would take it home and have friends over or sell it from his home. We had a delicious meal and listened to some musical performers. Next we went to the Hector Peterson Memorial Museum. Hector Peterson was a 13 year old boy who was demonstrating peacefully with other children to protest the use of the Africaans language in the schools. The children were going to present a memorandum to the officials asking that they drop the Africaans language requirement. The children were fired upon by the police and Hector was killed. The museum was filled with photos, videos and the like. I spent much of the day with a lump in my throat and ‘teared’ up numerous times. We passed funeral parlors with signs advertising funerals from 25 Rand and up. Twenty-five rand would be $6. One last statistic about Jo’burg is 67 cents of every rand spent in South Africa is spent in Jo’burg. And the saddest of all statistics is that 1700 people die every day in South Africa from AIDS related causes and this number is expected to double every six months. Part of the culture in Africa is you never talk about sex so educating people about safe sex was not an option. Apparently when the education program was started in the 80’s blacks were quite suspicious of the whites thinking that encouraging blacks to use condoms was a ploy to reduce their population so there would eventually be a white majority. Consequently, initially the admonition to use condoms was ignored. Today that has changed and safe sex is openly discussed in schools and elsewhere.

On Sunday I went shopping for sandals and clothes as the choices in Colombo are limited and here there are mega shopping malls, including one within walking distance of the hotel. I was successful in finding sandals but nothing else. I was thrilled as the shoes were the most important. In the afternoon, the committee meeting ended at 2:00 so we all piled into two vans and went to an African crafts market and flea market. We found more gifts and a few things for the Colombo house. Last night six of us dined alfresco at a Jamaican seafood restaurant with Granville, the former chair of the committee who lives here in Jo’burg. Today is a rest day and I may even manage to waddle down to the gym and work off a few calories.

That’s it from the city where the streets are literally paved with gold as they used the tailings from the mining process to pave the roads and the tailings contain minute particles of gold.