Farewell Sri Lanka

Although we will most probably come to SL again as Ron has more work to do on the project, we thought it would be appropriate to do a farewell blog. We aren’t sure what will happen to the project if SL goes back to war.

What we will miss about Sri Lanka

We will miss being awakened by many different birds singing loudly with tropical tunes we don’t hear at home. We will also miss Buddhist monks’ chants from the neighborhood monastery and the call to prayers that we can hear from the mosque that is nearby.

Being from the great and gray northwest we will most certainly miss the sunshine that we get 12 hours a day. There have been five or six cloudy days in 14 months.

There are some very special people here that we will miss. Geetha who so lovingly prepared our meals, cleaned our home and ironed our clothes. She never failed to appreciate the little extras that we did for her. Mr. Kularathna who drove us all over Colombo and occasionally beyond. He was the greatest resource showing us where to find any items we needed such as aluminum channeling, a welder, drill bits and parts for a clothesline. He and I had many conversations about life, the war, and Sri Lanka. He shall forever be my friend. I spent more time with Mr.K than anyone in SL except my husband. Anton at the Asia Foundation will be missed. He helped us in so many ways: finding doctors, finding a real estate agent who found our home, helping us with our visas, our air shipment arrival and on it went. He was always willing to help us out and we shall never forget his help. There was the staff at the Asia Foundation Suba, Satha, and Lashan, Program Managers who worked in the office … and the Program Officers, Jayatissa, Kumar, Dhilshart and Kukan.. What a great team. And of course I will miss the girls and young women at Shilpa.

Veena and her family will be sorely missed. They adopted us within a short time span of arriving at 475/3A Thimbirigasyaya Rd. Mrs. Bakshi fed me lunch my first day and Veena fed me lunch yesterday. In between we have enjoyed many meals together as well as a few movies and lots of conversations. We very much feel a part of her family and are grateful for it.

Gosh, food at home will seem so bland after so many spicy Sri Lankan and Indian meals. We often eat at fabulous Indian restaurants here and of course Geetha prepared Sri Lankan meals three times a week for us. Yes, we will miss the cuisine.

Year round flowers blooming in the garden and all over the island. It’s a 365-day a year growing season and what colors! Oh the orchids, yes they will be missed. As will the hill country, with tea plantations, waterfalls and yes, cool weather. We even get to wear socks and sweaters there. The wonderful tropical fruits: mangos, rambutan, mangosteen, pineapple, papaya will definitely be missed as well as year round fresh veggies.

We will miss the beaches down south with coconut palms, sandy beaches and sea breezes. The wildlife will be missed. Seeing wild and domestic elephants along the roads, leopards in the national park, crocodiles, water buffalo, wild boar and elk, incredible birds and lizards, oh my.

Then there is the shopping where the cost of things, whether it was food or crafts always caught me by surprise. Limes for a penny, cotton shirts for $3.50, mangos for a dime. Then there are the saris, truly a feast for our eyes. Beautiful color combinations, jewels set in the fabric, silver and gold threads. The beauty of seeing several women standing or walking together with a rainbow of color. It never ceased to take our breath away. We never saw an ugly sari.

We will most surely miss the lifestyle where we traveled a great deal, and never had to worry about money. It was pretty great to have a housekeeper who ironed our clothes, cleaned the house, did the marketing and prepared our evening meals three times a week. We ate leftovers three nights a week and managed to go out the other night.

Oh yes we will miss the wild rainstorms with lots of thunder and lightening. Great gushes of rain, flooding the streets temporarily. We will miss the sweet nature of the Sri Lankans we met. The ready smile that greeted us so many times whether from a friend or stranger, what grand smiles they have here.

Then there are a few things we will not miss: bugs, mosquitoes that carry Dengue and Chickamungaya, ants with a fierce sting, really nasty cockroaches, and whatever those bugs were that would find their way into our bed and bite us multiple times in the night.

We will not miss the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the post office. Then there is the incredibly bad and reckless driving and bad, bad roads choked with traffic from trishaws, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, more buses, cows, dogs, bullock carts, and pedestrians. We will gladly leave the air pollution that causes lots of respiratory problems, burns your throat and eyes and corrodes metal.

And of course this wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t mention our pet peeve: garbage! We will not miss the smell of a neighbor burning their garbage each day, with the acrid smell of burning plastic. We won’t miss seeing garbage littered every single place we visited although it was the worst in Colombo.

We will not miss the continuous fighting between the government and the LTTE, with its senseless killings. We won’t miss the daily lies reported in the news with each side accusing each other of wrongdoing and both were right!
But all in all, this has been a FABULOUS experience that has exceeded our expectations in every respect. This has been a difficult year in some ways and easy in others. But it will be something we will remember for the rest of our lives. This has truly been Ron & Tricia’s Excellent Sri Lankan Adventure!