Greetings from Sri Lanka

Greetings from Sri Lanka. We've been here awhile, and I thought I'd update you on our travel adventures. We've had an amazing time so far. Sri Lanka is a beautiful and relaxing place to visit with amazing, lush scenery. Everywhere we go we are greeted with smiles. Since almost everyone we've met speaks English we've been able to talk with people all along our travels. Travel distances are much shorter than in Vietnam, so instead of overnight sleeper buses, we've been taking short bus rides around the country. These rides although not air conditioned, and often crowded come with Bollywood soundtracks, and inquisitive schoolchildren, making for memorable experiences. 
We began our visit here with a few days in Colombo. There we visited the visa office to extend our stay, had dinner on the beach at Galle Face Green and accidentally booked ourselves into a really fancy yoga hotel. (I think the hotel was updated between when I booked it and when we actually stayed.) We also toured the National museum in Colombo, located in the Cinnamon Gardens neighbourhood, formerly a cinnamon farm, and now a swanky neighbourhood. The museum is in an old British Colonial building set in a lovely park area. The museum had exhibits of crafts around Sri Lanka, including textiles, ceramics and jewelery. I particularly liked the ivory combs and a water clock with small holes. A certain amount of water running through the holes demarcated a certain passing of time. Most memorable of the museum were the parrots in the massive trees outside and the hordes of school children in white uniforms being led through the museum by their teachers at lightning speeds. All through Colombo we saw great groups of school children and their white uniforms and I could only think of their poor parents struggling to keep those uniforms clean.

The National Museum in Colombo- a fine example of British architecture. 

 

Still, white must keep all those children cooler, which is a good thing, because Sri Lanka is REALLY hot. I mean, really, really hot. I felt especially for some Muslim women tourists dressed all in black including the niqqab, or face scarf. Dassa initially thought these women were ninjas and was completely fascinated by them. I apologize if anyone finds this offensive. 

Another group of people who wear white in Sri Lanka are people at Buddhist temples offering prayers. We went to one such temple in Colombo, where people circumnavigated around a tree, and poured water into carved lion's mouths to water the tree. There were concrete benches around the tree where we sat listening to women do Buddhist chanting. It was really lovely, until we realized that this temple had an elephant tied up in the back. This elephant was clearly in distress, and was even being hit by his mahout, or caregiver. This was disturbing in so many ways, but especially awful that this was part of Buddhist practice. 

Buddhist stupa, Colombo temple - Dassa is standing in the shade because you have to take off your shoes and the sand is ROCKING hot.

Watering the Bodhi tree at the Buddhist temple 

Flowers for sale outside the temple

I have a lot to say about elephants in Sri Lanka, and our experience of them but first I have to explain how Asian elephants differ from African ones. Although elephants in Africa are only wild, Asian elephants exist both in the wild, and in captivity. Domestic elephants are used in both the logging industry, and in Buddhist temple rituals. Asian elephants, are also really different than African ones. They are smaller (although still massive) have smaller ears, a rounder tuchus, and many of them don't have tusks. I know all this now because after Colombo we spent a few days as 'volunteers' at Millenium Elephant Foundation, a center to give domestic elephants a better quality of life. This was an interesting, but complicated place. There are 10 elephants at MEF, and most of them are owned by temples who allow MEF to house and feed the elephants and offer the elephants a better life than in a city temple. Since elephants eat A LOT, the center supports itself with a lot of tourist activities, including elephant rides. Although they do not use the howdah, a kind of platform for people to sit on, the rides must be very annoying to the elephants, and the center is trying to phase them out and offers elephant walks where you can walk with an elephant through the center's forest instead. The center also makes money through their volunteer program, where people like us pay to stay there, clean up poop, scrub elephants in the river, and feed them vitamin balls. Although we all had mixed feelings about paying to be volunteers, and the zoo-like feeling of the center, we all still really enjoyed ourselves. We got up early in the morning to walk with elephants outside the park, helped put out fruit for the elephants to find on their walks, and cleaned up the river bed of trash after it rained. 

Rob is washing Lakshmi while she takes a nap.

 

Early morning walk with Ramenka the elephant

We loved the beautiful Jungle Book-like setting, eating meals in a beautiful old colonial house, and playing volleyball with the staff in the evening. (Okay the boys played.) The center also has ten rescue dogs which Dassa loved. By far the best part was meeting other volunteers, and the great communal feeling created by the volunteer coordinators. I was particularly impressed with a Canadian coordinator, Ryan. He answered our endless questions, cleaned huge piles of poop, led yoga sessions, and sweated it out in his beautiful garden. Through all of this he smiled as he interacted with everyone- from the mahouts, to Russian elephant-selfie-taking tourists and Canadian kids with a lot of stories. The center also hosts high school groups from abroad and it was easy to see how he would thrive with them as well. 

Attempting to pose with elephant

Ryan also took our group of volunteers (about ten of us) into Kandy where we volunteered with a group of adults with disabilities. There's not a lot of services for differently-abled people in Sri Lanka and I was really moved by the MEF's involvment in this group. We participated in their free movement and yoga activities, and then Rob and I led a sing-a-long, singing some Rob Smith favourites such as The Cat Came Back and Bumping in My Little Red Wagon. Dassa also did a solo performance of the Arrogant Worms song, Canada Is Really Big. At one point one of the youngest members came up and sang She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain with us, which was really nice. As we sang I was reminded of the parts of teaching that I actually really like, until one of the women decided to tackle me in a head lock while we were leading He's Got The Whole World in His Hands. (This reminded me of the parts of teaching that I'm not so fond of.) 

This picture was taken right before the woman beside me put me in the Half Nelson.

Some other highlights of staying at MEF was touring the elephant poo paper factory next to the center. Elephants mainly eat leaves and grass, and all the fiber in their diet allows it to be made it paper, mainly for tourist items. The best part of the factory was that all the machines were hand-operated, which meant we were able to see how the machines worked, from the vat that boils the poop, to the tables of young woman painting flowers and elephants on poo paper notebook covers. 

The other memorable experience at MEF was seeing the cobras. This was not intentional, and not one of the animals that I planned on seeing in my life. The kids and I were given the job of putting out fruit for the elephants in the jungle when it started to rain. We stopped on the path to admire some impressively large snails when I saw two cobras, with their heads flared, hissing at us. I pointed, screamed and ran, which is what you're supposed to do, but my brave (stupid?) little naturalists stood staring until I insisted/screamed that they move along. Luckily we saw a documentary on animals of Sri Lanka a few nights later at our hotel which showed how far cobras can spit their venom, and the kids are feeling slightly more cautious. I could talk of nothing but these cobras for days. Someone would mention something about the elephants, and I would reply with something about the snakes. I'm still a little jumpy from this unexpected wilderness sighting. Snake-like twigs and even snake-like braids and pony tails startle me. Rob, of course, finds this very entertaining.