tissama

Went into the field after a long time, with some donors from a major American investment bank who were suitably thrilled with little children playing in the school that they had funded and sat on the seesaws and swung up and down with three children on the other side. Reminded me of how I was living in spiritual squalor during my old days. Then went into hambantota, where the fields were greener than green and visited some schools in tissamaharama, area of good rice production. Also stayed at an ayurvedic hotel in the absence of any other resting house and at night the wind blew so cold and the rain fell so hard that I might have been back in England. Met a local artist who was exhibiting at the hotel, his stuff would have gone for thousands of dollars in the West but here of course it was in the rupees and nothing else. Met a family who had adopted two sri lankan children here and who were here on a quest to find the birth mothers of these children. Stopped in Hambantota at a site where the tsunami had grounded a naval battleship and a year later, the govt, INGO and locals were unable to float it out to sea, digging underneath the ship. Stopped on the way at a village roadside stall to buy buffalo curd and coconut treacle and made myself sick on the stuff. Met the community people at the school sites, a cooperative of women who were slowly building a nearby community center. Wizened, smiling, skin blackened by the sun, under trees whose leaves shook with the winds that ruffled the rice padi fields. It should have been normal, but even after all these months, I am humbled.