Almost everything was there; the thieves had not had time to spend more then a couple hundred rupees since they were caught so early in the morning. Larsen had been lucky. Larsen told this to the chief and the guy was beaten again - Larsen tells us, that this time, it was much worse than the first time and a horrible description followed. Then the chief had asked if it was enough. It was. The chief asked the guy to give him his taxi permit. Then he started to cry. Confiscated for 15 years. That was the worst thing that could happen to him. Then Larsen had asked for his address and told the chief to translate to the guy that he should leave his house within a fortnight and after that period, Larsen would kill him if he still was there. The chief of police had added that if that happened, he would not do a thing to prevent it. I never understood why Larsen did this. The guy was punished for life anyway.
The 3 of us go to the Indian Ocean and sit down for a while. The temperature of the water is 27-28 degrees (81-83F). When we looked around, we saw a lot of young couples having a good time there. Very romantic. They stay there until sunset - so do we. The commuters from Colombo are also on their way home now - in crammed trains. We take some nice pictures.
We had arranged with Larsen to go out and have dinner. He knows a good local place - a very cheap one. We get Biter Apu (a kind of thin, bowl-shaped pancake with fried egg), coke and tea afterwards. Dinner for 26rs (65c). We found out that Larsen had a chicken farm in the mountain region. He had lived here for 10 years and it was only the second time he had been back 'home' in Denmark. He was from Elborg, but had seemingly not much family left. We asked him if he had experienced the troubles with the Tamils. 'Oh, my God! - What a mess det var!' 'When they started the troubles, we did not feel it, but suddenly we started hearing shooting in the night. The next morning we knew we would find corpses around on the estate - and it happened several times. It was terrible. What a mess! Especially 4-5 years ago. During the last years there has not been anything. The Tamils are isolated on Jaffna and on the East-coast and they don't come this far into the country anymore. But it has been terrible!
Later we went back to write and we also found time for an evening walk to the beach.
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Get up at 7:30 and on our way to the railway station, we buy breakfast: cola and bananas. We had decided to go south along the coast to Hikkaduwa - Kurt and Niels want to go to a place with other tourists - they are a bit frightened. It also has a nice coral reef. We buy second class tickets but the train only has third class. Strange. When we get a couple of stations to the south, to Panadura, a friendly man enters the train, who wants fire for his cigarette. He works at this station and asks about different things and where we are heading. When we tell him, he looks around upset and says that the train we are in, is only a local train! The one we were supposed to be in, is the one leaving from the opposite track right now. The next train leaves in 4 hours. The man (Silver) had a day off today, so he was happy to show us around. We left our backpacks by the station master. Silver wanted to practice his English (which was very nice, by the way). He leads us to his cottage which is pretty close to the beach. It is very characteristic; thatched roof and in the shadows of the coco palms. He has a wife and two children; a very cute 3 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. We are served tea and talk about everything. They are Buddhists, so helping people means 'good luck' to them. He tells us about a good friend from France, Joel, who comes here twice a year. He have been here 7 times and they go to different places on the island - they have been in the mountains several times and even in the Tamil areas on the east-coast - and they got back alive. Silver, Joel and a couple of friends are going to rent a van a couple of days from today and then drive along the south coast to Yala National Park (an animal reservation). It happened to be what we had planned to do, so we were immediately interested. If we were 6 people, this 3 day trip could be done for 1300rs (32.50$) per person - he would be our free guide so we should only pay for rental of the van. We are later going to ask Joel if it is OK with him. Then we look at pictures from several weddings. I ask Silver if we should give the station master money for taking care of our backpacks. No, it would bring discredit on Silver - Silver says a pen would be the right thing. The master is actually quite happy for our 5c pen. We are accommodated with a friend who runs a guesthouse. We are to say that we are long time friends of Silver and that we are students. We got the room for 150rs (3.75$). Sonny, our host, turned out to be a very nice person - and a baker too. They only had 2 rooms in the house but they had a fan and we could use Sonny's TV - and the wife was a very good cook. We went to town and ate lunch (noodles & beef for 30rs - 75c).
We take the train to Mt.Lavinia (14km (9miles) south of Colombo). Joel stayed at a nice hotel - Silver told us that he wanted to stay a place with a swimming pool and that was the reason why he had stopped staying with Sonny. He is not at the hotel, so while Silver is looking for him, we go to the beach. A great sand beach and great water. Silver could not find Joel (he turned out to be in Colombo) so we go back to Panadura. The fishing boats were coming back from the sea with today's catch. Special wooden boats with canvas sails.
Silver follows us to the beach and we start talking to some of the children of the village - everybody is very friendly and warm hearted. The sea is just great. Big waves and sand everywhere. It doesn't seem dangerous in any way - just great. Afterwards we get tea at his house. Mrs. Silver plus some family and friends come to see pictures from Denmark. We gave a few small gifts to Silver's children: a couple of pens, small flags and a picture from Tivoli in Copenhagen - they were wild with joy; it is amazing how little it takes. Furthermore, Mrs. Silver had fetched a couple of young girls who liked Danish boys very much - they said. While Kurt and Niels fetched more pictures from Sonny's house, one of them, a young slim girl, declared her love to me - after knowing me for 10 minutes. We could probably have gotten married quickly, but she was satisfied just getting my address (I haven't heard from her since - but then again, she could not speak much English). A lot of pictures were taken of the family, the children and us in front of a wonderful sunset between the palms.
Silver wanted to take us on a little trip. First we went to a Buddhist temple where the whole story of the life of Buddha is pictured on the walls and roof. Silver also tells us the story. We take a auto-rickshaw to another temple which has a lot of Buddha statues - pretty neat, by the way. We move on to a batik factory. The gates were closed but it don't take long until the whole shop is opened for us. They make handwoven scarfs, shirts, dresses etc. with nice patterns. Well, we do find some nice things there. Then home for dinner. Silver thought that we ought to have a little drink before dinner, so on our way, we buy a small bottle of arrack (coconut snaps). At Sonny's place, dinner is ready: rice, fried tuna fish, salad, beans, bananas and much more. You could not do anything but eat and eat. Silver came by again and tells us that Joel is glad that we are coming. The time is about 9pm and we decide that a night-swim would be the right thing to do. It should be mentioned that there are no bright summer evenings here; no, when the sun has set, it is pitch-dark in a few minutes. Strange. We take along our flashlights and find the ocean. In the beginning the water feels a bit cold but soon it is great.
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By now, we have experienced so much that we could go home now and tell about it. Ate breakfast at 9. We had decided that I should go to Colombo by train and withdraw enough money to the rest of the period. They would go to the beach meanwhile.
In the train, I meet a friendly, old man. He was 53 but looked like a 70 year old. He was a former bank employee. First we talk about how cattle is killed in Denmark. The reason for this subject, I discover, is that he is a Buddhist, and they are not allowed to eat meat from killed animals; an exception is if they are not killed, to their knowledge. If you kill an animal, it should cause defects in and/or on the body! He could see that I definitely hadn't killed any animals - or humans. In Sri Lanka, cattle is killed by draining the blood from them. He thought that our way was much better - but also that I still should keep away from meat. We also talked about how Credit Cards and bank cards worked. Next time we were in the country, we were very welcome to stay with him.
On my way to the bank in Colombo, I find the first postcards from the country. I withdraw 6000rs in the bank and mail our letters and a silk scarf to our mother (for her birthday). I get our plane tickets for Bangkok with Thai Airways reconfirmed. Buy the Daily News - the Sri Lankan newspaper in English. At the beach at 1.30pm - Niels and Kurt is taking pictures of a man climbing a coco palm, fetching coconuts for them. He also gets one for me. The ocean and the sun did good to me. Niels and Kurt had been to a show in Panadura. They had tried having a real cobra snake crawling around their necks and a monkey looking for fleas in their hair. They said that the snake felt like a dry eel! Since then, they had been at the beach and were quite scorched. Kurt had ordered a pair of hand made shoes, genuine leather college shoes which would take a couple of days to make: 700rs (17.50$). We fetched them and I continued around the market streets. The village had hundreds of small shops and vendors and you could buy everything - except the thermometer I needed. I could sense the very exotic atmosphere and all the people seemed happy and smiled to me. I go back to Niels and Kurt at the Guesthouse and we find out that we need some mineral water (the water is not good here). On our way back to the market, Silver comes running to us and says: 'I have trouble!'. We thought that the Yala trip had been canceled but then he shows us his forefinger: a piece of barbered wire has pierced it. We hurry back to his house where his wife is waiting nervously. Kurt don't feel so well with blood so he steps back a bit. We cannot understand why Silver hadn't hurried to the doctor. He tells us that a auto-rickshaw is on its way. It arrives soon and we (Silver, his wife, Kurt, Niels, I, the driver and a co-driver) all tries to get in to the 3-persons vehicle. Kurt gets off and the rest of us hurry on. I think that the reason why Silver came looking for us instead of getting to the doctor immediately is, that he thinks 'we give him good luck'. Afterwards he tells us about how happy he was that we came along.
We reach the doctor and there seem to be quite a lot of patients waiting. They are quickly led to the doctor who then tells the nurses what to do and then he rings a bell and the next patient is led in. During the whole 'operation', we stand close by, so Silver can talk to us. The doctor is very interested in talking to Niels and I while a local anaesthetic is applied on Silver. Then we gets his testimony: 'If this hurts, can you imagine the suffering of Christ on the cross ?'. |
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