Last Entry

---

Monday was our last night in Mahakande Bungalow. The saddest goodbye we had to say was to our cook, Siri, who added significantly to each of our waist lines. The second saddest goodbye was to Stompie, aka Bodhi, aka Pumpkin Doodle. Stompie is the mangy kitten that ran up to us in Polonarua the week before. The girls let out a collective "Awww," scooped him up in their collective arms, and the next thing I knew he was on the bus with us. There was much arguing over who would get to take him home to America. I finally insisted that Stompie not return with us to America when I had a vision of him spending the rest of his life at the Colombo airport.

+++++

We spent the rest of the week in the Sinhraja rain forest with Nimal and Savi Gunatilleke. Nimal and Savi are the types of people you could imagine reading about in a book or seeing in a movie. They have spent the better part of their thirty-year marriage living in Sinharaja, studying its plants and fighting to protect it from the encroachments of neighboring tea plantations. I felt incredibly lucky when they invited our little group to spend a few days with them at their research station in the middle of the jungle.

We drove by jeep to the entrance to the forest. Each time the jeep managed to get around a bend and I could see the next stretch of "road" ahead, I wagered myself that the jeep would never make it. We hiked from the official forest entrance to the research station, stopping every few feet to pick leeches off of our legs. Nora pranced like a Lipizzaner in order to minimize the amount of time her feet were in contact with the ground. Her final leech count was only five.

Along the way we chewed on cloves and cinnamon leaves picked off of roadside trees. I dipped my fingers in a little bowl made out of half a coconut that was strapped to the side of a rubber tree to collect its sap. I showed my students that by simply rubbing the sap between my fingers I could make a tiny rubber ball that actually bounced.

A simple lunch was waiting for us at the research station. During lunch I looked up from my plate and noticed everyone had stopped eating. They were staring intently at two birds standing on a stump next to the kitchen shack. The birds were the size of crows, but neon blue. So blue that at first I thought they were toys, but then realized they were rare Ceylon Magpies. A simultaneous orgasm shuddered through the ardent birders in our group.

Before the sun went down we bathed in the river that runs through a tunnel of jungle vegetation and balloons into a pool under the deck of our bunkhouse. Two water monitors fought at the opposite end of our pool. Concerned, Adele asked one of the workers about the danger of water snakes. The worker answered, "If snake fall from tree, don't bite it." Presumably it's okay to bite the ones that don't fall from trees.

Sitting on the deck is sitting at the edge of civilization. The jungle comes alive at night. Beyond the deck is inky darkness lit by thousands of fireflies. The rush of the river and the din of millions of insects create a wall of sound. It's a harsh world out there, bugs are eating plants, bats are eating bugs, owls are eating mice. One minute you are feasting, the next moment you are the feast.

Up on the deck our conversation flowed. We talked about deep ecology, eco-feminism, neo-paganism, biodiversity, the Gaea hypothesis, life, chaos, and cybernetics. Nimal and Savi were hungry for conversation. We decided to organize a future conference in Sinharaja on ecology and cybernetics.

---

Photos

Me and Stompie
Stompie (aka Bodhi) was the kitten the girls rescued. In this picture Stompie and I finally bond.

Nimal and Savi
Our hosts in Sinharaja

bathing
Bathing in the river in Sinharaja

fishing fleet
Negombo fishing fleet

hauling nets
Hauling in nets at Negombo

fish market
Fish market at Negombo