Home again

Sunday 15th June 2003. Exeter
We were all up and ready to leave Ratmalana by 5.30am. on Friday while it was still dark. Our flight was not due to depart until 10.30am. but because of security arrangements it was necessary to be at Colombo airport at least three hours beforehand.

A driver and minivan had been hired. We loaded in our cases, rucksacks, bags and boxes. Then Kate, Rob, Neil, Jeev, Ian and I climbed in followed by Abey and Nita who were determined to see us all off at the airport. Kalinga was booked on the later flight and had been unable to change it in order to return with us.

Even at this dark hour of the morning Galle Road was busy, though less chaotic than usual. Tuc-tucs still buzzed along, most without lights. The hired minibus was not fitted with seat belts.

As we neared the centre of Colombo dawn broke and the road became snarled up with people going to work. Many walked. There were children in their immaculate white uniforms making their way to school. There were motorcycles carrying whole families – none with crash helmets. There were cyclists braving the hazards of the road to get to work. Everyone was very casual about the danger. They did it every day and relied on fate to protect them. We passed, or were passed by, open-backed lorries, trucks and vans bursting with people standing shoulder to shoulder, hanging outside on the tailboard or sitting on the wooden edges, their legs dangling outside the vehicles as they wove in and out of the tight-packed traffic, belching black smoke, the drivers adding to the general tumult by keeping thumbs permanently pressed onto horns. There was a permanent cacophony of hooting as everyone warned everyone else to keep out of the way as they were coming through. What must inevitably happen to the human cargoes packed into the lorries when there is an accident just does not bear thinking about. There appear to be absolutely no road rules or safety standards in the country. We passed the inevitable crash shortly before we reached the airport. Three vehicles piled up in the centre of the road with three lanes going in each direction. The traffic simply swarmed around the accident like an army of ants encountering a blockage in their normal route. Nobody seemed concerned to help. In any case, how anyone could get near to give assistance I couldn’t tell.

As we neared the airport security became very apparent with patrols of soldiers with armed weapons. Roadblocks were set up and sandbagged patrol posts were manned by uniformed soldiers ready for action behind tanks and machine guns trained on the traffic. We drove through at a crawl and were escorted to the airport entrance where our papers were examined before we were allowed to unload and enter the terminal. Two years ago the Tamil Tigers launched a very serious bomb attack on the airport with many killed. The remains of the attack are still very apparent as the original building now stands in ruins beside its recent replacement. Our luggage was both searched and scanned. I was picked at random for a body search by a woman soldier wearing rubber gloves. I had a tight tee shirt and trousers and couldn’t possibly have hidden anything so after a perfunctory pat of my boobs I was allowed to rejoin the others.

Once we had left Abey and Nita we quickly tired of the duty-free shops so went for a very expensive cup of tea overlooking the airfield. Kate’s request for a top-up of hot water was refused unless we paid the full price over again! We were told the quantity issued is monitored and has to exactly match the number of cups sold. If it doesn’t the money is deducted from the wages of the staff because it is assumed they have been stealing! How very horrid and what an appalling impression it gives to visitors. If the country is keen to encourage western tourism some of the dogmatic bureaucracy that underlies so many things in the country will need to disappear.

Eventually we were on the plane. It was half empty. There was no reason why Kalinga’s request to change his flight should have been refused other than the inability to think laterally. Another example of the unbending bureaucracy surrounding everything. As it was, Abey would be making the same journey again a few hours later to see Kalinga off.

Our non-stop flight was uneventful and we all enjoyed nearly twelve hours of being spoilt with very reasonable airline food and drink served by charming Sri Lankan airline staff, the girls looking so very beautiful in their peacock-feather patterned saris.

So we left the country, a green verdant jungle beneath us and headed north out across the Ocean, to fly over India, homewards. We’d had an amazing experience but I don’t think any of us were sorry to leave the heat, noise, dirt and poor social conditions behind. The island has so much beauty but its inhabitants seem to lack the vision to manage its fertile lands and natural resources for the benefit of all its people. It may be the most advanced third World country in Asia, but it is still a long way behind even the poorest countries of Europe. I don’t think I have a great wish to return to Asia again though I am immensely glad of the experience Fate presented to us.

In London we went our separate ways, Kate and Rob to Hastings, Neil and Jeev to Oxford where George met them from the coach and drove them, with all their luggage and wedding presents, to their home in Didcot. Ian and I returned by coach to Exeter to find Margaret waiting at the station with an emergency parcel of bread and milk to welcome us back and drive us home. It seemed odd that we’d been with her only six days ago in Bentota and that she had shared so actively in our family event.

Home has never seemed so welcoming. To sleep deeply in our own bed again, the light duvet shielding us against the cool night air, unmolested by biting bugs with no need for a mosquito net or citronella oil and to wake refreshed and to rinse away the grime of Colombo in a HOT shower!

The birds woke us with a dawn chorus far sweeter than the croak of the ubiquitous black crows or the rasping screech of the cicadas of Sri Lanka. Blackbirds hopped across our lawn and fluttered in the flowerbeds filled with pink carnations and foxgloves. The sun was shining, the sky a beautiful blue and the temperature a pleasant 23 degrees rather than the humid 35 we had experienced in Sri Lanka. Our daisy-spangled lawns were in need of cutting, our radishes and rhubarb has bolted, there were piles of letters to be answered and the dreary prospect of work on Monday. For now though, it was just bliss to be back in out own, clean, comfortable, beautiful home with two days ahead of us to enjoy it, to get straight and to realise just how lucky and privileged we are. We really begin now to understand that the majority of the World's populations live in circumstances that to us would seem quite intolerable. But they survive and are happy, unencumbered by debts or mortgages, living life by the day, in the only way they have ever known.