Seeing America as a Sri Lankan cop

Sri Lankan city of kings, one of the oldest continually-occupied cities on Earth, and focal point of Theravada Buddhism for centuries, Anuradhapura has many claims to fame, but I was having trouble seeing past the heat. The midday sun already felt like a sunburn in the sauna, and all I could think about was the relative cool of my stifling but shaded hotel room. But Anuradhapura had another surprise first.

I was sweltering, I don't know how these
guys survived to make the wedding

He pulled up on a thick-bodied motorcycle, ornate white cuffs on his uniform and a thick handlebar mustache that would have fit comfortably on a California Highway Patrolman. Some things say “cop” in any language. He stopped, appraised me through mirrored sunglasses, and waved me over without a smile. “You are a foreigner” he stated the obvious, then paused a long sweaty moment. “Where are you from?”

“America, the United States,” my customary answer covering both forms.

“Ah. America.” Another pause. It was the Obama years so I was relaxed, but the question of whose family might have been blown up by US weapons always lingers. But a grin split the stone crags of his face. “America, good!”

He asked me how I liked Sri Lanka and if I had already eaten lunch, then asked the question that I could see had been on his mind all along. “America, it is very dangerous there, isn’t it?”

There I was in northern Sri Lanka, one of the few tourists in a region abandoned by tourism during the atrocious Sri Lankan civil war. People all across Sri Lanka had urged me not to come to this region where land mines and trees decapitated by artillery fire were still common, but he thought America was the dangerous place.

“Um. No, not really. I don’t think America is dangerous” I said, anchored in the awareness that American fears are far outsized but not wanting to go into the fact that my white privilege gave me a different experience than people of color might report. And probably not a great idea to discuss police shootings with this policeman.

He leaned forward and asked “But is it not true that anyone can have a gun in America? Big guns. That there are millions of guns in the hands of normal people? Untrained people? Even mentally unwell and unstable people? Anyone who wants them, and as many as they like?”

He had me there. “Well….yes...” He sat back and grinned, having won his point and I had to concede that I was at more risk in the US than I was in war-torn Sri Lanka.

I remembered that perception of America after watching Trump humiliate our country in his meetings with Angela Merkel this week. Few people conflate citizens with their government, but that was easier when it was just policy differences. Now, when the very sanity and moral decency of our country is being daily called into question, I fear what everyone else on earth (outside of Russia perhaps) is thinking about us.

In one short month I’ll head back to Europe, including Merkel’s Germany, and I’m going to need these weeks to think of competent answers to the inevitable question “What the hell is going on with you Americans?”

Electrons on vacation, so the neurons went too

At first, it seems like one's travel computer going on the fritz on the eve of a trip would be a bad thing. It probably is. But right this second, the lack of current photos and presence of a few from last year are gifting me an unexpected return to the trains and misty mornings of Sri Lanka.

The pancakes on my plate somehow taste like string hoppers, the rice flour noodles that you swipe through curry with your right hand, and the mimosa in my cup is a shock when my mind is thinking about rich milk (chai masala) tea.

My goal today is for my feet to take me everywhere I want to go, but that day was on a train, rocking through tea plantations, exchanging emails with new Sinhalese friends, and trying for a particular photograph, a person held mostly in focus while their surroundings obey the momentum of the railroad.

Actually getting the idea to work was irrelevant, beside the simple warm air joy of sitting in the open door of a moving train, gradually working my way through a paper bag of fried somosa-things with dried chili peppers.

My computer might not work, but luckily my memory does.

Care for a cup of snake-infested tea?

I have a cold. I am not a fan.

Congestion in my lungs, congestion in my head. I should not be asked to do anything today, nor tomorrow nor the next day. Okay, it’s a man cold, I’m whining, but still. I just want to read and drink tea.

Tea plantation near Ella, Sri Lanka

Tea...

My last trip wandered through two tea producing highlands, the first in Sri Lanka, the second in Malaysia. Both were cool in comparison to the boiling oxygen of the nearby lowlands, but were perfectly suited to a shorts-&-sandals kid from California. Both spanned curving hills with winding lines of tea shrubs like fingerprint whorls, endless vistas of fields, and simple worker housing below large white processing plants.

A single tea bush (apparently) produces 3,000 harvestable leaves annually, which is a lot of work to generate a single pound of tea. (Green and black tea comes from the same plant, just harvested at different stages and processed a little differently.)

Chirlden of a tea plantation in the Sri Lankan highlands

The tea fields of Sri Lanka stood silent and untended for miles, disturbed only by the rambunctious passage of my train, whose insatiable metal arhythmic dance would occasionally disturb or distract a small group of women and children out in the fields, working a job notorious for its poor wages.

The main difference in Malaysia was that I saw only men working the fields. I walked through a few miles of fields on my way to a processing facility, saw men carrying big bags of leaves on rounded shoulders, hooking other bags onto ziplines that carried them down to end in an explosion of leaves at the bottom, and sorting the verdant wreckage in tall piles on the pavement.

Near the zipline's end (background), Malaysia

Anyone who was in the Malaysian fields wore thick yellow rain boots, despite the clear blue skies and absence of mud, I suspect as protection again the venomous snakes who infest the fields.

I have no experience with a life like theirs.

My earliest memories include my British grandmother asking if I would like a cup of tea. I have had a few million cups of it in my life, but never spent a day in the life of a harvester. There’s something wrong there. Why is it only now that I’m back that I realize I should have done something about that?

I’ll have to fly back and change that. As soon as this damn cold goes away.

Catching up

A week or so of incredibly slow internet connections have left this blogspot site falling behind the wordpress version.


There is more to Anuradhapura than my emotional problem
http://vagabondurges.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/anuradhapura-monkeys-tuk-tuks-and-something-sacred-for-2400-years/


Who knew elephants like to dress up too? In Kandy for Buddha's birthday.
http://vagabondurges.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/happy-sad-bieber-im-feeling-it-all/



And a lack of information suits me just fine as I got ready to head for the hills.
http://vagabondurges.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/if-id-had-a-clue-i-wouldnt-have-met-the-wigi/


The power was out in this town for the last two days and is only recently restored, so we'll see if tonight's post about food makes it on here...

Feeling it all fall apart in Anuradhapura

Tortured thoughts of her kept me up late again last night, despite the exhaustion making my limbs ache. She filled every dream and nothing was ever right, and I was halfway though a thought about her when I woke up.

Another day trying to see the beauty of it all through shit-colored glasses.

It's something after 7:00 when I walk out to get food from the Family Bakery on the main road, where the women will smile shyly as I order, and they will ask if I have change when I try to pay with a 1,000 rupee note ($8) but I need the smaller bills for the bus to Jaffna today.

The roads are good here, smooth pavement between reddish dirt shoulders where plants grow so ferociously they are like sedentary explosions. Men in tired slacks ride bicycles slowly, while younger men in crisper shirts zip past on motorbikes.

Women in brightly colored saris give cameras a meaning as they walk slowly along the road with consummate dignity. Someday I'll get a picture of it... One in forty makes brief eye contact with me. One in a hundred smiles back. None are unfriendly, it's just the way it is here.

The men all meet my eyes and say good morning, usually with a smile. As I walk around this town I feel like the guest of honor strolling the grounds the morning after his speech, but my only performance was how much I can sweat during dinner...

The flock of schoolgirls in bright white skirts giggles as I approach, and responds eagerly to my “good morning!” with a chorus of replies. Just past them the boys are swaggering a little, but grin even wider and all reply as well.

The town's motorcycle cop has a stern mustache and hard eyes that make me double check that I have broken no laws in the last...ten years. He stops me on the way out, his manner relaxed, his uniform sleeves bright white, with red reflective tape accenting the gloves.

“Excuse me sir. Yesterday I saw you walking that way, now you are doing so again.”

“Yes, I am going to get breakfast.”

“You are still here.”

“I am still here. For another couple hours.”

“Very good sir.”

I buy a devilled chicken bun for breakfast and two vegetable buns to have in my bag for the ~5 hour bus ride.

On my way back the officer does a U-turn to pull up beside me.

“Excuse me sir. Come here.” My mind does another quick check. I don't have my passport on me, could that possibly be a problem? “How long you have been in Sri Lanka?”

“About a week. I was in Colombo, Kandy, and now here in Anuradhapura.”

“What is your country, sir?”

“The United States, America.” I say, since different people respond to different versions.

“Aah! America! What are the differences between your country and Sri Lanka?”

I search for something interesting but innocuous. A passing car honks at the bushes. Good enough.

With a smile, “People here honk more often.” His answering smile is bright under his dark mustache. I am encouraged that he does not chew betel nuts.

“In your country sir, how is the police?”

I don't know what to say to that, and he helps me out. “There the law is very strong, yes?” I agree with him. “And in your country there are many murders.”

I waffle a bit. “Well, there are many people, but yes, there are many murders.”

“And in your country anyone can have a gun?”

I decide not to try and remember felon gun restrictions. “Yes, anyone can have a gun.”

“There is no need for a...” he taps his pocket, “a permit?” I tell him we do require permits and he asks if I have a gun in my country. I tell him no.

“I am sorry to be bothering, sir, but I am police officer and when I see person from another country, I like to talk to him to work on my English.”

I assure him I don't mind at all, tell him he speaks very well (he does) and ask where he learned it. He gestures at the street with a smile. “Here. Have a nice day sir!”

Near my hostel there are three brothers who are always out riding bicycles. Yesterday I made race car sounds with the oldest as he rode his overly-large rusty bicycle barefoot and at top speed down the road, his youngest brother perched on the rack behind him with wide eyes.

They are out again today, and smile shyly at me. When I say good morning they burst into grins and say good morning back. They keep waving until I am out of sight.

Mornings like these, non-events in some respects, are exactly why I travel. That walk should have me high all day, but as I open the door to the spare room with smears on the walls and mosquitoes in the bathroom, I remember how I've felt the entire time I've been here...I try to hold onto the good feeling, but it is not easy.

Time for a new place.

Leaving Israel, passing through the future (and the past), and arriving in Sri Lanka.

It was difficult to leave Israel with a good taste in my mouth.

Tel Aviv traffic at night

Trains and buses were sleeping due to a holiday, and the hostel told us it was a flat fare for a taxi to the airport. I found an extremely likeable professional dancer from Holland to share the cab with, and away we went. Halfway there the driver asked which terminal we needed. Dancer Man was on a budget carrier, Terminal 1, and I was on Royal Jordanian, Terminal 3.

“The price you paid only covers one terminal. Another 40 shekels to go to the other.” That's just over $10.

Then I was scanned, swabbed, and under suspicion before I even entered the terminal.

“Why did you go to Morocco?” (Three years ago.)

“Um...because it's pretty?”

“Why twice?”

“I took my girlfriend the second time.”

“What's her name?”

“Do you want her measurements too?” (No, I didn't say that. I am not writing this in an Israeli prison.)

Obviously there is a lot of love in this country,
I tried to focus on images like this...

Then I stood in front of the bag inspection corral, where 3 of the 13 to 16 staff were actually working, slowly, and waited for my turn to have my underwear spread across the desk and rubbed with a magic wand. I knew I needed to do laundry, but this was just embarrassing.

I sat there planning my packing list for next time. 1 leather T-shirt/harness, 3 blow-up dolls, 5 vibrators, 7 riding crops...would that be a mitzvah?

I had two flights to reach Sri Lanka, changing planes in Amman, Jordan. That was a big hit. I had to try and explain why I was stopping there...on Royal Jordanian Airlines.

Finally I was handed a boarding pass. “You'll have to go to the transfer desk in Amman to get the other two.”

“Two?”

“Yes, for the flight from Dubai as well.”

“Dubai?”

Given the assortment of words that were floating around my head, the theory was the less words I actually used, the less likely I was to get in trouble.

My second flight had been canceled, so for the second time in the last three years I was flying to Dubai to be passed off to Emirates Airlines. This is not a problem, because Emirates is fantastic, and the airport is a trip in itself.

Hard to tell (I was running to my gate)
but that black wall is a waterfall...

I've been to some oversized and ostentatious airports (see: Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv) but nothing matches Dubai International for sheer sci-fi spectacle. You walk for miles through a canyon of subtle commercials and stylish ornamentation, ascend and descend escalators alongside 3-storey waterfalls, and pass hi-tech displays that are ready for Tom Cruise in futuristic white haute couture to chase an alien villain past at any minute.

Take a train, because, hey, why not? Eventually you reach Terminal A to find yourself inside the massive arching ribs of an international transportation behemoth, but luckily it swallowed some nice bathrooms too. I brushed my teeth and took a seat behind Jimmy Buffet's younger brother, who was telling a lengthy story about calling his credit card company to two women who were both immersed in their phones.

Dripping down through it all was the awareness that last time I walked those corridors I was with K, our backpacks stuffed with toothbrushes for kids in South Africa. Her absence this time made every bench into a memorial as I wondered “Is that the one where we fell asleep on each other's shoulder?

I wonder if the guy whose giant hairy arms flopped into my side of the armrest noticed my refusal to look up.

Good thing I put the camera away before I started
falling asleep. Not a great idea in a tuk tuk...

A sleepless interlude in the surreal world of air transport, Gangster Squad showing on my tiny screen, and then I was in Colombo. I navigated the customarily poorly-marked process of visa and immigration, then through the waiting taxi drivers to reach the local bus across the street.

I got on, heard Sri Lankan music, talked to four women in brilliant-colored saris who giggled at me, and saw the scurry of 3-wheel tuk-tuks that dominate this hemisphere. I was exhausted, hungry, and completely in love with travel.

Bring on Sri Lanka!