Back in Colombo

Thursday 12th June 2003, Ratmalana
Back in Colombo we feel drained. The house is permanently busy with friends and relatives coming and going. There are dozens of pairs of shoes by the front door and wedding presents are piled up waiting to be packed for the return to England. The ceiling fans are insufficient to cope with the heat and insects are invading the rooms. Cockroach powder and ant killer has had to be sprinkled around the skirting boards and somehow the mosquitoes have managed to get inside the protective net where we sleep without even a sheet as it’s so hot. We woke this morning to find ourselves covered in itching insect bites.

The day began with torrential rain, thunder and lightening. Abey and Nita went off at 5am to a wedding in Ratnapura. Neil and Jeev hired a driver to take them back down to Bentota so that they could try to sort out the problem as to what has happened to their marriage certificate and its English translation. I don’t think it has been properly sorted even now.

Once the rain had eased, Ian and I took the bus into Colombo and explored the Cinnamon Gardens area where the embassies, parks and museums are to be found. We were obliged to walk along busy, dirty roads, filled with traffic and with no pavements. We found it all very depressing, particularly in the exhausting, humid heat. We walked around from place to place hoping to find something worthy of seeing but it was all generally very uninteresting, though less dirty, dilapidated and seedy than the Galle Road area.

We visited the cultural museum but found it stifling, badly lit, poorly presented and largely deserted. The “recent acquisitions” display had not been changed since 1988! Nobody cares for the collections properly and it looks as if nothing has been developed since the museum was set up in 1874. The most interesting gallery for us was the display of gifts to the Sri Lankan government from other nations visiting heads of state. Interesting in that they all seem to have appallingly bad taste when it comes to selecting an appropriate gift.

We walked past a lake with many pelicans and cormorants on the water and itinerant “bag people” sleeping with all their possessions under the trees beside the lake.


Just around the corner from the luxurious Galle Face Hotel with its atmosphere of colonial charm, we saw an abysmal shanty development of torn plastic sheet homes erected under the shelter of a few coconut palms beside a bright green stagnant pool. Yet even here there were lines with scraps of washing drying and the people seemed personally clean.
Colombo shanty town. Beira Lake.

Eventually we reached Galle Face Green and the touts began to pester. We made our way to the air conditioned coffee lounge of the Galle Face Hotel, shaking off our human leeches at the door. Bliss is crushed ice lime juice with a fresh salad baguette. I don’t care if it is unethical to be white and relatively rich compared to the locals! On a suffocatingly hot day in a noisy, overcrowded, dirty city, such an oasis of cool tranquillity is paradise.

Deciding enough was enough, we took the first bus we could find back to Ratmalana and left Colombo with a great sense of relief. The bus ride back was chaotic, dirty, crowded, dangerous, noisy and only ten rupees each.

Kate and Rob reached home shortly after us having taken a cab with all their luggage from Fort station after being unable to get off the train when it went through Ratmalana on its route back from Hikkaduwa to Colombo. They seem to have had a good time with Marc but poor Rob has been badly stung by a Portuguese-man-of-war jellyfish that caught him as he snorkelled in a lagoon by the coral reef. Local fishermen on the beach seemed to know how to treat him but he has horrible wheals on his arms and back. He says it’s the worst pain he’s ever known and at the time it affected his nervous system. The fishermen said that if it had been on his chest it would have been really serious as the nerves of the heart muscles could have been affected.

Marc has been unable to use his surf-board as the sea has been too rough and dangerous. He has now gone on down to Galle for a few days.

Kate says the three of them were invited to eat in the home of one of the local fishermen with his family. It seems to have been a great success and afterwards they gave them 1,000 rupees for the meal and to help towards the cost of building the family a toilet!

On their train journey back to Colombo they crashed into a car trying to cross the track just in front of the train. It is apparently - and not surprisingly - quite normal to drive across the track without looking or slowing down and there are rarely barricades outside of Colombo itself to be lowered when a train is due. The train halted and there was a mass exodus as everyone poured off to look at the carnage. Fortunately the train was not derailed so the vehicle was dragged off the track, everyone clambered back on and the train continued on its way. Kate didn’t know if anyone had been injured as she and Rob seized the opportunity of the train temporarily emptying to grab a couple of seats for the rest of the three hour journey. Some passengers seem to have spent the entire journey hanging on to the outside of the third class compartments because it was so packed within! Small wonder they had been unable to fight their way off the train before the terminus!

Back at the house we all showered in the tepid water that passes here for cold. We still emerged sweating, to be greeted by the local nightlife – nasty biting bugs, armies of ants, swarms of mosquitoes and the much nicer fireflies and the indoor lizards that run across the walls in pursuit of the creepy crawlies.

It is now 10pm. The evening has been spent packing up the luggage of all six of us and all the wedding presents to take back, including assorted toasters and brass Buddhas, a brass prayer lamp and a huge dried flower arrangement set between sheets of laminated plastic.

Money cooked everyone egg hoppers and prawn curry for supper. Bless him, he didn’t know when to stop and the hoppers just kept on arriving. He’s become used to cooking single-handed for nine or ten people in the kitchen every evening whilst we’ve been staying. He’ll appreciate the peace once we’ve gone! So too, I’m sure, will Abey and Nita. It must have been exhausting for them preparing for the wedding and having thirty guests from Europe permanently ringing up for one thing and another as they arrived with wedding clothes needing to be looked after while they went off travelling or bottles of whiskey and champagne to deliver that we were all requested to bring. Then all the many relations wanted to see Jeev while she was over and to meet Neil, so there has been a constant stream of people calling at the house both before and after the wedding to wish the couple well. I think it has been fortunate for everybody that we have been away from the house for most of the time, only spending two nights at either end, staying in the annex to the house. Neil and Jeev have had less freedom and in many ways will be glad to be back in their house in Didcot to have a little time alone together for the first time since they left England on 20th May. It must have been very frustrating for them confined to the stifling heat of Colombo, surrounded by wedding chaos, knowing that we were off around the country having so many amazing experiences. I feel particularly sorry for Neil who must long to see more of Sri Lanka. However, he and Jeev have been the cause of it all and it has been a tremendous undertaking for Abey and Nita who have organised everything so precisely. Neil is easy-going and seems to have made the best of his confinement. It has certainly helped him to improve his understanding of the language and he is even able to join in conversations now. We are astonished and most impressed. He’s worked hard and Jeev is obviously an excellent teacher.

Well, we will be going home in a few hours time. I don’t think I will be sorry to leave. We have had many experiences, good and bad. As a tourist it has been an interesting and very enjoyable experience but the contact we have had with some of the local people has not been good. Most are lovely, but the poverty and the life style distress me. Everyone seems healthy however. There is something strange in the Sri Lankan character that seems to hinder material progress. There is no elasticity of thought. The people seem oblivious to aesthetics and are quite unaware of how awful most of their towns look to foreigners. Kate says it’s even more pronounced in India.