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Published: February 7th 2006
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Macaque Monkey
Watching us watch him CLASSES AT PGIS, PERADENIYA PGIS stands for the Postgraduate Institute of Science. Our trip officially began with an impressive opening ceremony in a large lecture hall on campus. Many high-level University officials attended, gave short speeches, and helped to light the 6 foot high brass ceremonial oil lamp with a brass rooster on top. We learned later that this is meant to drive out the darkness and ignorance, and provide light and understanding. Illumination, if you will. We met Prof. S.A. Kulasooriya, Jon's Sri Lankan counterpart, and the Coordinator of the Program in Sri Lanka. He welcomed us, especially as the first group in what everyone hoped would become a continuing communication and exchange between our cultures.
As this trip was actually a field studies class, naturally we spent some time in the classroom. In fact, our first three days were a marathon of fact-filled lectures, mostly on the ecosystem diversity of Sri Lanka, which is one the greatest in the world. I'm not summarizing the lecture content here! To do justice to all that was presented to us, would occupy many, many pages. I'll mention bits and pieces of information I gained from these fine lectures in connection with our outdoor adventures. We also had a brief introduction to Theravada Buddhist Philosophy and Practice- just enough to whet our appetites for more. After class, some people headed for the Computer Centre to email friends or to write early TravelBlog entries. I succumbed to jetlag, and napped on a sofa in the hall.
The classrooms at PGIS were like classrooms everywhere: desks, chairs, whiteboards, a large screen, and plenty of PowerPoint presentations. The only unique things were just outside the window. If your attention wandered a bit and you glanced outside, you might see a monkey staring back at you, or a flock of brilliant green parakeets flying by. The campus itself is a little more unique. Several buildings are bright pink, and some have sculptures of elephants on them. The vegetation on campus is lush, and as I just mentioned, often full of monkeys and tropical birds. Also snakes. Adele, a member of our group and another Fulbright scholar, said that she was teaching a class here outdoors one fine day when a cobra began a leisurely descent out of the tree the class was sitting under. These campus snakes were also supposed to be a feature of our afternoon walk with Anslem de Silva. However, as Mr. de Silva was only recently out of the hospital (we were fortunate that he felt well enough to present his lecture and lab session), he delegated the walk to a graduate student of his. This may have worked O.K., but it was very overcast and rainy- not the kind of a day a self-respecting snake would be likely to be very active. Nevertheless, we all went on the herptile-finding expedition, snake-pinning sticks in hand. We did spot a few tiny frogs near the stream on campus, but the real stars of the outing were invertebrates. Leeches. Blood-sucking leeches. As we walked through the wet grass, they leapt upon us with great enthusiasm. We danced around, flicking leeches off of ourselves with our snake-sticks, so the snake-sticks did get some use!
One of the little blood-suckers got me. I was totally unaware of this until I took my socks off for a cold shower a couple of hours later, and found blood trickling down my foot. Leeches are good at what they do. Their bite is totally painless. They also inject an anticoagulant that causes the blood to keep on flowing. However, a simple Band-Aid provided enough pressure to stop the trickle. And unlike mosquitoes, leeches don't carry nasty diseases.
One afternoon, a troop of Macaques (monkeys) showed up at the Bungalow. These guys are not shy, or subtle. They sat in the large plumeria tree in our front yard, and leaped all over our roof. One of the big males bullied Allegra into leaving the garden. We were advised to make sure that all of our doors and windows were kept shut, as the Macaques come in, steal stuff, and "monkey around". One of our teachers said that monkeys had sneaked into his second floor office, and attempted to use his microscopes! We were told some gory stories about the ongoing war between dogs and the monkeys. Tip: Bet on the Macaques. We were also told about the "scare monkeys" that people put up on their roofs and on unfinished building projects. These are like scare crows in function, and in fashion as well, since they are made by stuffing material into old clothes. Do they work? Are the Macaques that dumb? I don't know.
After a lecture on plant conservation, on the afternoon of January 7, we all toured the National Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya. An impressive collection of plants. We were personally led around the grounds by the Director himself- Dr. Siril Wijesundera. I took the opportunity to do a bit of bird-watching, as well as enjoying the GIANT bamboo, tall double-coconut palms, huge cycads that should have had dinosaurs nearby, real cinnamon trees, and lots of other exotic plants. We saw our first rubber trees here; later we would see whole plantations of them, each with a slashed trunk and a collecting cup for the sap. We had already seen tanker trucks labeled "liquid latex". Rubber is a very important crop in Sri Lanka. So are spices. So is tea.
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