Adventures and Observations from the Road…

...One day in Galle, January 30th
(Janet's note:  Lloyd asked for some space in this blog--here is his first posting.)

What a blast of impressions wash over us each day we are travelling.  Just today we were awakened at about 5:10 by a Muslim call to pray… broadcast from several loud speakers situated around this small community inside Galle Fort… We both happily got back to sleep to awake some hours later to hear kids heading off to school at about 7:30… including one wailing youngster who obviously did not want to go. We also heard the workers on the street below begin their daily tasks... shoveling, mixing and hauling cement, more digging, scraping and banging…all from the comfort of our bed in a concrete room painted bright white with a wonderful ceiling fan churning away at 100 kmh…no AC rooms available so we must make do… it was quite tolerable. Tuktuks, the small three wheeled vehicles that are everywhere here begin to buzz along our street… some are dropping workers off, others are picking up travellers to take them to the bus station and still others are set up as delivery trucks that haul all types of equipment and building materials.

Breakfast was at 8am in the guesthouse kitchen where we met several other guests around the enormous table… An older fellow from northern Germany who has been coming here since 1979 and a transplanted Brit who lives in southern Spain for most of the year but is here in Sri Lanka for four months this year…all the fellow travelers we meet have interesting stories and are a wealth of practical information and background stories. Breakfast is heaping plates of fresh fruit, Papaya, Pineapple and finger sized bananas….yum… roti pancakes, toast, jam and of course a strong pot of Sri Lankan tea…the scrambled eggs were marvelous! The cook is a woman in her forties and very kind… always offering more… there is another older couple who are around the house cleaning and sweeping and tending…the level of staffing is about 1 to 1 for the 11 rooms…

After brekky off to explore the Old Fort with an excellent map provided by our new Brit friend… takes about 5 minutes to walk to the main gate and begin our poking along small alleyways and climbing the battlements… wonderful views of the sea and port… along the way we come to an old Dutch Reform Church that is about 200 years old… we were welcomed by the old caretaker…he provided us with a loving tour and tidbits of congregational history… wanting nothing in return other than a small donation for his church…the floor of the church was paved with old tombstones some dating to the late 1700s… they were gathered in this church when the British redeveloped several old Dutch graveyards when they took over here in the early 1800s…some of the stones carried sad reminders of how short life was in those colonial times for new arrivals…one young girl died at 17 just months after arriving from Holland…

We wandered by the courthouse and saw the crowds of petitioners gathered about in groups and clutches of lawyers all decked out in their black suits and robes in the tropical heat waiting for their turn before a judge. The Galle Fort Library was our next stop… overseen by a kindly old retired civil servant who was so proud of the 175 year old local institution… his assistant was quite happy to show us their oldest volume (it is a bit worm eaten around the edges) … published in 1803… it follows the journeys of a young Englishman as he explores the interior regions of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before foreign domination was finally complete…

Lunch was had at the same restaurant we had been to the night before … run by several young men

who had just started it as a family investment… they work long days and during the week deliver meals to local business owners or lawyers’ offices within the fort… while waiting for our food we could hear all  the kitchen sounds wafting out over the counter…chop, chop chop, sizzle of the wok, whir of the blender… then poof a fresh delicious lunch appears on our tiny plastic table on the front stoop…tasty!

Another adventure began as we were finishing lunch… the owner of the building we were lunching at wandered by carrying his grandson… a Muslim man in his sixties, he struck up a conversation and filled us in on some of the history of the community and his business background… when he found out we were Canadian he praised one of his Canadian business associates up and down… we couldn’t take credit but that’s ok. As it turned he was a semi-retired gem merchant dealing in precious and semi-precious stones from Sri Lanka…he invited us into his home (next door to the café) to explain the differences between the various stones that were being offered in the dozens of Gem shops around the fort… uh oh we thought… sales pitch???... but no, we spent the next hour and a half learning all sorts of fascinating details about the different stones, colours, lustre, hardness etc… we were greeted by family members as they came and went and could hear the daily sounds of the house as our host took repeated phone calls. Our host showed us several of the lots of stones he had gathered and was holding for his clients… at no time did he try to push us to buy … we left happy to have learned a whole bunch and felt good about the chance encounter… we got a glimpse of the inside of a private home and made a connection to someone from a totally different culture…

Later that afternoon as we returned to our guesthouse we ran into our Muslim friend again… he had been sent out to walk with his grandson again and to pick up some bread for dinner… ah the role of husbands everywhere… as we chatted, his friend from the vacant home next door came by and said hello and we were then offered a quick peek a boo tour of the very large and luxurious home next door to our guesthouse… it is owned by a wealthy family who only visits a few times a year… the house was huge and quite opulent by local standards… high ceilings, stone floors, large fans, all facing onto a large enclosed garden… nice place… again a peek into local lives that we would normally never get… ah the art of smoozing which eases­­­ almost all travel…

We fell asleep a few hours later listening to the street settling in … the evening call to prayer, people sweeping their verandas, couples shuffling by on an evening walk… the crash of the surf a few blocks away … and the whir of the fan…

Cheers from the Road

Lloyd