I call this blog ‘Somewhere Seeking’ but if I’m being honest, I have no clue what it is I’m actually looking for. Not that it’s beyond me to shortlist a few ideas, but those might more closely resemble goals – nasty little creatures that would threaten to snuff out Travel’s wide open allure and/or set me up for failure. I’m nowhere near as ‘Type A’ as I’ve always wanted to be. That aside, there’s something intrinsically magical about stumbling upon something you didn’t realize you’ve wanted all along.
Travel is hardly a necessary piece of this puzzle; the surprise fulfillment of unknown desire plays out everyday for everyone everywhere. But what Travel has given me is a uniquely simplified canvas. Life out here is often so stripped down to the basics that the listing of ‘Nescafe’ (yes, as in the instant coffee) on a laminated breakfast menu is enough to make my morning. Put another way: Travel makes me thankful for things I’d otherwise take for granted.
Like kind people. Which, in addition to Nescafe, Sri Lanka is teaming with.
Maybe it’s because western tourists are few and far between, making me less nuisance and more novelty. Or perhaps it’s their astonishingly good english. My blonde hair? Or that the heartbreaking impact of 2004’s tsunami and years of sordid civil war have finally lifted enough that they are breathing a collected sigh of relief. Whatever the reason, the result is an overwhelming onslaught of smiles, nods, ‘hellos,’ waves and lit-up eyes, each of them lifting my heart like a helium balloon whose string has been momentarily released. The whole thing has me realizing just how downright unwelcome I’ve felt not only in foreign lands but in America before them all.
It begins in Negombo, a small beach side town outside of the chaotic capital city of Colombo.
David and I are bobbing in the Indian Ocean’s soft salty swells when a trio of Sri Lankan men about our age swim up. Theirs being a culture where grown women don’t ever leave the beach (as far as I can tell) I self-consciously drift a few feet away while David meets them. “America!” I hear one of them announce emphatically. Then: “Obama!”
Now, allow me this slight digression while I send out a humble thanks to our president. No matter your opinion of his politics or his effectiveness or any of the rest of it, I’ll say this much: he has greased the wheels for world travelers like me and I thank him for it. It seems the whole world has a friend in Obama, and together we stand on this common ground when there is no other. The negative backlash I once feared my American citizenship would earn me has not actually come to be. Instead I am lauded for having had the good sense to elect this eloquent and inspiring man and I don’t disagree with the thickly accented english stating this. So America, while you’ve perhaps lost hope in our leader I can tell you that the tuk tuk driver in Sri Lanka has not. His is a relatively meaningless opinion, I know, but out here it’s the only one that matters in the moment.
Back on Negombo Beach, the conversation has grown animated. I wave when David points my direction. “Your husband a very beautiful man!” The Sri Lankan with the best English calls to me a few minutes later. This is a new one for both of us. I have no idea what it is they’ve been discussing but the next thing I know David is out of the water and writing his phone number in the sand with a stick. The Sri Lankan stands in sopping black cotton boxer briefs and recites the number back to him, promising he will call.
“What do you think he wants to call you about?” I ask David as we walk down the beach after a farewell exchange full of false starts and stops.
“He thinks I’m a businessman,” David says with a shrug.
That David has taken to describing himself as ‘unemployed’ does not cease to baffle (and at times irritate) me. Inevitably it raises questions difficult to answer in simplified English and when an understanding is finally reached I can’t help feeling that we’re still misunderstood. Or maybe just frowned upon. Wealthy Americans! All of those jobs that they don’t even need!
Later that evening when the sun is low on the horizon and everything’s glowing like the remainder of a raging fire I wander down a beach cluttered with locals. My bare feet sink into wet sand and I lift the hem of my dress while a rush of warm water swallows my ankles. Camera in hand, I am looking for boats. My list of photographic obsessions, which began with ‘doors’ back in Italy has grown to include bicycles, boats, prayer flags and monks (the later two being relatively absent here in Sri Lanka). Everywhere I look I am met with a smile. The children wave, but this is not unusual; I’ve come to expect their enthusiastic use of the word ‘hello.’ What is unusual is that so do the cluster of Muslim mothers covered in black Khimars. And so do the fathers playing with their children in the surf. And so do the college-aged boys who ask if I want to sit and have a smoke. And so does an elderly fisherman who is perched on top of his boat untangling a net. I stop and talk to him for a minute. He had a good day of fishing, yes. Where am I from? Ahhh, America! he says and I smile sheepishly. I ask if I can take his picture, a simple request that has been the hardest for me to make over the course of my travels but his openness seems to invite it, and he says yes, staring out at the sea while my shutter click-clicks. I wish him a good evening; when I turn to walk away he wishes me one as well.
And there you have it, the highpoint of my day: a three-minute conversation with a Sri Lankan fisherman.
The Sri Lankans are not in the dark about their own kindness.
They know they are good people. “Very welcoming,” as one of our drivers puts it, his head nodding diagonally, and I don’t disagree. It is why on only our second day I announce with conviction that Sri Lanka is my favorite destination thus far. A bold statement, maybe yes, but an easy one to make when my bare feet are burrowing into warm sand.
The next morning our guesthouse owner (himself the very embodiment of ‘welcoming’) delivers us to the Colombo train station through an hour of gridlocked traffic. He double parks and walks us to the correct ticket counter where he shakes our hands and thanks us sincerely and profusely. Good grief, thank YOU.
A train pulls into the station as I’m returning from the toilet (gone are my days of politely calling it a ‘washroom.’ People call it what it is out here and rarely do I see much that would resemble washing.) The train is bursting at its rusty seams – globs of people hang out of open doors. How quaint, I think, and hurry toward my camera so that I might capture this quintessential third-world scene. But now here’s David pulling the air with his arm and calling something to me that I can’t hear over the screech of the wheels. He’s putting on his behemoth of a backpack and getting ready to hand me mine and I shake my head like I don’t know what could possibly be going on. This is our train?
We’re holding second-class tickets which, I learn, means there are seats in the train car. It does not mean that any of the seats will be available to me. While David wrestles our backpacks onto an overhead rack, I find myself a nice piece of wall to lean against beside the toilet. Everyone in the standing-room-only section smiles and nods at me and I feel as if I’ve just been welcomed into some sort of club. A mustached man explains that things are especially busy because of the Christmas holiday. Where am I from? Ah. America. Obama. He’s nodding approvingly. The man adopts the role of my personal translator throughout the two and a half hour journey, and when a vendor squeezes through the packed car selling food from a large basket my he asks am I hungry? Do I like mango?
An hour in I’m feeling woozy and sink to the filthy floor, trying not to speculate about the mud-like substance that seeps from beneath the lavatory wall. I wish I’d worn something practical like my travel pants and not this stupid cotton skirt that I struggle to spread over my knees. Well I’d thought I would have a proper seat. Naturally.
Through the open door I can see blinks of the ocean between blurred palm trees and the occasional cluster of dilapidated huts. The sea wrinkles into perfectly gorgeous breaks and the breeze blows like a warm breath on my cheeks. In the doorway an old woman with leathery skin holds onto her granddaughter’s waist while the little girl leans into the wind. Above me a father stands bouncing his infant daughter. The man with the food basket steps gingerly over me for the third time. I’m listening to Bob Dylan duet with Johnny Cash on “Girl from the North Country” and thinking I’m just about as lucky as it gets. I’m sitting on the floor beside a bathroom that is beginning to smell like exactly what it is and in that tiny moment I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. I’m not kidding.
Of course this is until a man urges me up off of the floor and takes me to to his wife, who will be disembarking with him in a few minutes. She gives me her seat and I, feeling somewhat flustered by their kindness, thank both of them in the nod-smile-nod manner that is now my habit. I have visibly pregnant friends in San Francisco who cannot for the life of them get a seat on the bus and here in a country that’s not remotely mine I’m picked up off of the floor and delivered to one. The irony does not escape me.
A few days later we’re at the counter of a liquor store in the mountain town of Nuwara Eliya. I’m munching happily on a fried vegetable and rice concoction the street vendor outside just plucked from his sizzling wok and David is inquiring about the narrow selection of red wine. Beside me a man with teeth decayed to black stumps sips from a half pint of something strong-smelling. He holds out his hand to me and asks where I’m from. Ahh, America!? The man behind the counter pulls down a bottle of California Chardonnay and sets it front of me. Yes. I’m from exactly there! I point excitedly at the label like its some long lost friend and everyone is pleased to have witnessed the connection of these dots. The man with the stubby teeth asks my name and tells me his. He suggests that America is a very nice place and I tell him I think Sri Lanka is nice as well. Especially the people. Both men agree with me. Like I said, the people here comprehend their own kindness.
I could go on in this manner. Tell you about Aloha, our tuk tuk driver who chauffeurs us on a two-hour road trip along the sparkling coast while he tells us about his life’s greatest ambitions, a concise list which includes helping to support his parents…and surfing. Every word he speaks is encased in laughter.
Or the handful of tuna fishermen we stop to visit with while they straighten their giant red net. They want to take us out on their boat. No money they assure me, in case it is the reason for our polite refusal.
Or our elderly guesthouse owner in freezing cold Nuwara Eliya who wakes at 5am to prepare for us a boxed breakfast for our sunrise hike to Horton’s Plains. He stands there in the unheated lobby wearing only his underwear and, while I try not to visibly acknowledge his state of undress, takes my hand in both of his and wishes me the sincerest of good mornings.
Are the people in Sri Lanka actually the kindest on the planet? Or did my arrival here simply rendezvous with a need to evade a well-nourished jadedness? One that began back in Nepal or Zanzibar or some other poverty-stricken place and continued to fatten itself throughout so many encounters with locals who are nice right up until it becomes clear their will be no exchange of currency. And I get that, I really do. Pleasantries will not feed their children. But where my mere kindness might be worthless to them, Sri Lanka has shown me its value.
For more photos from Sri Lanka click here.
Somewhere Seeking 