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Published: January 9th 2006
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Mahakande Bungalow
Our home in Sri Lanka I am doing better at playing tour guide than I expected. My eight students-- I'll call them students even though half of them are professors and I'm not really teaching them anything-- are curious, easy going, and have appropriately low expectations of me. I thought they might retreat into protective cocoons when they got their first look at a Third World country, but instead they seem eager to experience the dusty, smelly, chaotic glory of Sri Lanka.
Any fears they might have had would have been laid to rest the morning after we arrived at Mahakande Bungalow, our home in Sri Lanka. Awakened by exotic birdcalls and monkeys scrambling across the roof, they came downstairs to meet Siri, our cook, who follows us everywhere we go. Siri sets before us plates of mangos, papayas, bananas, and several varieties of fruits that simply don't exist in America.
Mahakande is an old tea estate located in the mountains above Kandy that was taken over by Peradeniya University in the late 1960s. The stone bungalow-- American's would use the word "mansion"-- is where the estate manager lived. It's at the top of a hill (Mahakande means "great hill") and looks out over the tops of jungle vegetation to the hills on the opposite side of the valley. (In fact, I stayed here once years ago and hated it, but that's because I was the only person here and at that time there was no electricity at night.)
We have our own 16-seater bus that takes us down the hill each morning to our lecture hall where we attend lectures on subjects ranging from snakes to Buddhism. After each lecture Siri is waiting for us in the foyer with tea and plates of spicy fish balls. At night he serves us delicious curries. One night he even taught us how to make curry.
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Sri Lanka's main tourist attractions are expensive for visiting foreigners. That's why I jumped at the chance to buy half-price tickets last week in some backdoor deal through a friend of a friend. The transaction needed to be done discretely, in person, and in Colombo. That’s just how things work in Sri Lanka.
Although Colombo is only about 90 km from Kandy, the trip takes half of a day. I learned that the daughter of a friend was driving to Colombo, so I artfully ditched my group (See you later. Don’t play with snakes. Aidios.) and jumped in her car.
My friend, Adele, would be arriving from Tokyo later that night and would need transportation back to Kandy the next day, so I called Fort Railway Station from the car to buy a couple of tickets for the return trip tomorrow. Tomorrow being Friday, they were sold out. No problem. My friend's daughter's husband knew the stationmaster at Fort. He called and I had my tickets. That's just how things work in Sri Lanka.
The tickets would be delivered tomorrow, but to where? I knew Adele would probably be spending the night at my friend Malki's house, so I called and managed to secure the room next to hers. That’s just how things work in Sri Lanka.
We arrived in Colombo in the evening and I asked to be dropped off at Kanchana's office. Kanchana and her friend, Dilanthi, are high-power attorneys in Colombo who are my consorts on shopping trips. If I give the slightest indication that I might like to buy a scarf or a piece of jewelry, they form a protective screen in front of me and negotiate so fiercely that the shopkeeper is reduced to tears and practically offers to pay me to get them out of his shop. That’s just how things work in Sri Lanka.
Kanchana's father is being discharged from the hospital that evening after a bout of Dengue fever. We spend an hour and a half circling the hospital in heavy traffic waiting for him to emerge. After dinner they drop me off at my boarding house and I fall into a dreamless jetlag sleep.
The next morning Adele is stunned to see me at the breakfast table. After my nefarious business with the government tourism office, we regroup at the bar in the old colonial Galle Face Hotel. We sip drinks and watch ships come in to the harbor while waiting for our train. That’s just how things work in Sri Lanka.
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The main focus of our lectures has been ecology, taught by some of the most prominent biologists in Asia. It would take a lifetime to be able to look at a chaotic jumble of vines and insects and see the motion of continents and the succession of ecosystems. The story goes something like this: 200 million years ago India broke away from Gondwana, the southern super-continent, and drifted for eons through latitudes and longitudes across a nameless ocean before crashing into Laurasia, the northern super-continent. The Himalayas piled up like a 20-car collision from the impact. The cars are still piling up as earthquakes beneath the ocean create tsunamis that wash away coastal ecosystems and their inhabitants. Meanwhile, a block of mountains pushed up in south-central Sri Lanka creating a curtain that separated the island into dry and wet zones. Adam's Bridge, the land bridge connecting Sri Lanka to India, hasn't been seen since the last ice age.
Terms like summer and winter are meaningless at the equator. There are no seasons for birth, growth, death, and decay. Instead, what ain't busy being born is busy dying. The Northeast Monsoon sweeps over the island in December and January, and the Southwest monsoon comes to the southern part of the island in June and July. All of this creates a patchwork of microclimates, soils, ecosystems, and indigenous species. I think about this as I stare out the window of the train. Temples and urban squalor gives way to rivers and rice paddies which give way to jungles and mountains. As always, I also think about the friends I would love to share this with.
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The parade of ecosystems continues the next day on the bus ride to Horton Planes. The 60 km climb normally takes about three hours, but the road is being widened, and so it will take five hours. Road work here follows the Chinese method--instead of working on the road 1 km at a time, the entire length of the road will be widened at the same time. This means the entire road is reduced to a single muddy lane strewn with boulders and tractors. I have several emotions to choose from. I can be (1) awed by the view of the sun setting over waterfalls and tea plantations, (2) afraid for my life should the bus slide over the cliff three inches to our right, (3) afraid for the lives of my students and the law suits that their parents will file should I survive the bus sliding over the cliff three inches to our right. Instead, I am amused by the comedy of trying to drive on this road. It seems that we only pass oncoming vehicles on sharp bends. In the time it takes to decide who will back up, six or seven vehicles pull up behind the front vehicles, changing the logic of the decision. People get out of their cars in the rain and mud and calculate the exact amount of room each vehicle has. Rearview mirrors are removed, and the busses squeeze passed each other. I can smell the breath and look into the eyes of the passengers on the opposing bus.
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The next morning the braver elements of our group are hiking to World’s End, the 2400 foot precipice that marks the edge of Horton Plane. This is a rare archaic tropical mountain rain forest. We see species of plants that haven’t evolved since the Jurassic. On the hike back we are caught in a deluge. The trail turns into a muddy river. My instinct is to run for my life, but then I remember that I am the tour guide. I am the “fearless” leader. It’s my job to rescue the stragglers. So I slog through ankle deep mud. I will probably need to buy new shoes and pants if we make it back to civilization.
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