Sri Lanka: Days 15-17

Travel diaries for Saturday, April 12 to Monday, April 14 written Monday, April 14

Saturday, April 12:

The fancy romance suite package that we booked for our last three days in Colombo included breakfast in the room each day. The first day, we opted for Sri Lankan breakfast, which consisted of string hoppers, egg hoppers, fish curry, chicken curry, dhal curry (lentils), and coconut sambal (which is like a powdery flaky coconut-plus-spice concoction used as a topping).

After breakfast and some relaxing, we took a Tuk to the Apihappi workshop to make the investment official. Etosha signed over a portion of his shares to Daniel via a very official booklet of share papers that was issued to them by the Sri Lankan government when Apihappi originally formed as a company. Aparna is the owner of 55% of the company so that Apihappi can formally be designated as “woman-owned,” which comes with some benefits and which is why Etosha sold his shares and Aparna retained all of hers. We met some of the workshop kitties, signed the papers, and officially became minority shareholders of Apihappi (a sustainable, fair trade, WOMAN-owned business ;).

Tosh drove us back to the hotel then left to help Aparna finish getting ready for the joint Etosha/Daniel birthday they were throwing at their house later that evening. Daniel and I walked about 10 minutes to a nearby mall to do a little last-minute souvenir shopping. I also picked up a couple pairs of earrings, since basically every other store front in Sri Lanka is a gem store, and I couldn’t leave without a little bit of gemstone as a treat (I got some dangly amethyst earrings and some cute silver studs with cubic zirconia and small blue sapphires). I went back to the hotel while Daniel went to a Pokémon store where he met some cool people and bought a couple cool things.

Back at the hotel, we showered and got ready for our “intimate dinner,” which was included in our special hotel room package. As I mentioned in the previous entry, Sri Lanka as a whole was “dry” this weekend, meaning the sale/consumption of alcohol in public was illegal. I think this was unrelated to the fact that Tamil Nadu had a dry day while we were there; the Sri Lankan dry days were in honor of the Buddhist New Year, which is typically in mid-April around the first full moon. (Apparently every single full moon is a religious holiday called Poya and are all dry days in Sri Lanka! Tough.) We were still able to order alcohol up to the room, but we weren’t able to have alcohol with dinner in the restaurants, and to our dismay, the fancy restaurant where our dinner was supposed to take place was completely closed due to the holiday. So the experience was pretty squarely downgraded from the chic and elite 1864 Club to the much less chic Mambo King Cuban restaurant, which was not very good at all. After the projectile vomiting and the leeches and the almost-not-being-allowed-to-leave-India, this was probably the worst part of the trip – so, overall, a great trip indeed. 🙂

We headed over to Aparna & Etosha’s around 8pm for the party. During the New Year, most people typically leave Colombo to go to their home towns, so we weren’t expecting a huge turnout for the party; however, it ended up being very well-attended, as seemingly everyone in Colombo who hadn’t left and had nowhere to drink on this Dry Saturday Night was game for a house party.

We met a lot of Etosha and Aparna’s friends, including Raki, the artist I mentioned in the very first travelogue. At Tosh’s request, Daniel and I had grabbed a couple bottles of Patrón from Duty Free on our way into Sri Lanka, and it was a huge hit (it’s basically impossible to get nice tequila in Sri Lanka). Aparna made homemade cream cheese (store-bought cream cheese is pretty much non-existent), and it was delicious – she mixed in some spicy peppers and served it with some sort of roti-type bread. She sent me the recipe; I’m definitely going to be making my own cream cheese soon. Party guests hailed from India, England, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, and of course, America and Sri Lanka. Aparna and Etosha tend to befriend people from all over the world. (I had tried to invite a Brazilian girl – a friend of my cousin’s coworker who I met in Paris and who had been traveling in Sri Lanka this past week – but sadly she had already returned to Paris by then. I would have felt extremely worldly if I was able to bring a new guest to Etosha’s party in Colombo. But I still feel pretty worldly, all things considered.) The party was a lot of fun, with much conversation and drinking Arrack and drumming (Etosha likes to play drums at all his parties apparently), and we left around 1:30am.

Sunday, April 13:

For this day’s room service breakfast, we went with the American breakfast option, which included a bread basket (toast, croissants, muffins), fried eggs, bacon, and sausage. All breakfast options also include fresh fruit, juice, and tea or coffee (we chose coffee). The big plans for the day were: hang out, chill, relax, and be bums, and I gotta say, we nailed it. We spent awhile at the pool, and finally got a bit of a tan (most of the trip has been fairly overcast, or indoors, or we’ve been sick, so this was the first time we actually got some decent rays). I started a new book set in Sri Lanka called The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, and I think Etosha mentioned he knows the brother of the author. One thing about Etosha: he knows a guy who knows a guy. And funny enough, in the book, there is a quote: “The thing that makes you most Sri Lankan is not your father’s surname or the holy place where you kneel… It is the knowing of other Lankans and the knowing of those Lankans’ Lankans.” (Though, to be fair, Etosha’s father’s surname is “Lankatilleke” which means “Sri Lankan Third Eye,” so that is pretty dang Lankan as well.) Daniel and I ordered some cocktails and snacks to the room and started a movie (Love & Basketball).

After such a long and strenuous day, we headed out around 7:30pm for a five-minute walk to a nearby hotel to meet up with Aparna, Etosha, Etosha’s mom, and Etosha’s stepdad (“Uncle J”) for dinner. Tosh’s mom filled me in a bit on the civil war and why they left Sri Lanka. Tosh’s dad is an architect, and he was working with the then-president on an architectural project of some kind. The Sri Lankan civil war in the ’80s and ’90s was a three-way war between three separate parties: the government, the Tamil nationalists in the north, and the Marxist guerrillas in the south. The southern Marxist party was called JVP – it is actually the party that is now in power today, post-dictator – and the JVP forces threatened to kill Tosh’s dad since he was working with the president. Etosha’s dad, sister (four years old at the time), and mom (pregnant with Etosha at the time) fled to Bangkok, where Tosh’s dad luckily had a humanitarian architecture job lined up with the UN. In fleeing the country, Etosha’s mom was leaving her brother, four sisters, and parents behind in Sri Lanka, and she wouldn’t see them again for many, many years.

Tosh’s dad worked with the UN, so after Bangkok, he was transferred to Namibia, where Etosha was born (and was named after the Etosha National Park in Namibia). From there, they moved to South Africa, where Tosh lived until he was about ten years old. To this day, Etosha’s accent is difficult to place, but I would say it most closely resembles a South African accent. Etosha also says that his childhood in South Africa instilled in him a healthy fear of elephants. Tosh’s sister, Malindi, had a baby when she was a teen, and she applied to and got into UVA in the U.S. Malindi and her baby moved to Virginia while Etosha and his mom (who is by this point separated from his dad) moved back to Sri Lanka for about six months, before Tosh’s mom decided to move them both to the U.S. to be with Malindi and the baby. Tosh’s mom enrolled in a local college and got a student visa and a 4-year degree (business management) in order to stay in the U.S. and be near her daughter and granddaughter. Daniel and Etosha met in high school in Charlottesville, where, as I mentioned previously, they were football state champions together. Tosh’s mom eventually moved back to Sri Lanka, and Malindi, her kid (Mavi), and Etosha moved to Baltimore. From there, as we know, Etosha completed high school and a couple years of college before he had to leave to the U.S. and return to Sri Lanka.

Now, as a fun subplot to weave in: Tosh’s mom and Uncle J actually knew each other as children in Sri Lanka, and Uncle J was in love with her, but her father didn’t approve of the match. Uncle J emigrated to the U.K. where he eventually got married, and Etosha’s mom of course married Etosha’s dad. Fast forward a couple decades. Etosha’s mom and Uncle J are both divorced. They’re both in Sri Lanka – she has recently moved back after living in the U.S. for awhile, he is visiting for his father’s funeral, which she also attends. They meet again for the first time in many years at the funeral, and they reconnect. A personal tragedy for him becomes a new beginning, and she eventually moves to the U.K. to be with him. They’ve been together for 15 years, and as of December last year, they have moved back to Sri Lanka from the U.K. to be near Tosh and Aparna.

(Speaking of Etosha knowing a guy who knows a guy. When Daniel and I were ill, we drank a lot of this electrolyte drink called Yeti. It really got us through our worst moments. And we later realized Yeti also makes an energy drink, which we drank before and during the party. It’s a big deal brand in Sri Lanka, and very delicious and refreshing. Uncle J recently sold his childhood home to the founder/owners of Yeti.)

After dinner, Daniel and I finished Love & Basketball, which is a very sweet film.

Monday, April 14:

Another day, another room service breakfast, this time the Indian option – aloo paratha, dosa, vegetable soup, and some kind of fritter things. We had negotiated a 4pm checkout, and we were looking at an 8pm departure time for our flight home. In the meantime, our goals were much the same as the prior day’s: maxin’ and relaxin’ til we were forced to leave. We attempted to go back to the mall to replace an earring back that I had lost at the party, but the mall was closed since Monday is the actual New Year.

Daniel had a workout and we went back to the pool. While doing laps, Daniel’s wedding ring slipped off. Daniel asked the pool attendant guy for some goggles, and he put some Scandinavian kids who already had goggles on the case of looking for the ring. After about half an hour of fruitless searching, he was ready to give up, when the same pool attendant guy reappeared, now dressed in swim trunks and goggles. In less than five minutes, this guy found the missing wedding band in the depths of the (actually quite deep and quite long) pool. He came up to me and was like, Is this the ring you lost madam? And I was like, well, yeah, definitely, it would be kinda crazy if it was a different ring. Before I could properly thank him, he had scampered off. Daniel dried off and tracked down the guy to give him a generous tip.

By 4pm, we were showered and packed and Etosha and Aparna were waiting for us in the lobby of the Galle Face Hotel. The four of us went for one last meal at a Lebanese place, one of the few restaurants open on the Buddhist New Year. Aparna and Etosha had spent the morning getting back to work after a long holiday with us, and Aparna’s first act was to sew two beanbags in the color my mom had requested. Apparently, it’s an important tradition/ritual in the New Year to physically do the thing you plan to do for the year – so if you resolve to study hard in the year, for example, you have to start the year by actually physically touching a textbook. Aparna viewed sewing these beanbags as the ritual kickoff of the new year.

We enjoyed a final feast together, then Etosha and Aparna drove us to the airport. On the way, they told us some pretty hilarious anecdotes about Aparna’s parents, who always without fail complain to companies about products whenever they are dissatisfied. There was one time when Aparna’s dad opened a pack of cookies, but the cookies had totally crumbled in the wrapping, and so when he opened them, the crumbs spilled all over his bare chest. He took a picture of his cookie-crumb-covered “man-boobs” (in Aparna’s words) and asked Aparna to email the cookie company the picture to complain. She wasn’t keen to do so. As another example: apparently Sri Lankan books are often published with the author’s personal info on the back cover, and in many instances, Aparna’s mother has been known to phone the authors to complain about their shoddy writing, asking “Why did you write this??” More than once, her parents have called tea companies to complain that the “tea tastes different.” The companies are always very accommodating and understanding, for some reason.

We hugged goodbye at the airport, and Aparna left me with a handwritten letter that I read later while waiting to board our flight from Colombo to Doha. In it, she expressed how she usually struggles to make female friends, and she was so delighted how easily she and I connected. She talked about how she was nervous to meet Eto’s childhood friend, and she hoped we weren’t disappointed with her or the trip, because she had an amazing two weeks with us. She also emphasized how our investment in their company has given them so much hope and strength, and they will ensure the blessings reverberate throughout their whole community. Overall, it was an incredibly sweet letter, and I feel so grateful to have had this experience and met these wonderful people.

As I write this, I am on the flight from Colombo to Doha. We have another long layover in Doha, then a 13-hour flight to Atlanta, then a 5-hour drive to Kingsport. Unless anything extreme happens on the last few travel legs that is worth writing about, this will be my last update. I hope you all have enjoyed following along on our adventures in Sri Lanka. Before I sign off, here is my parting wisdom:

Pack Zofran (and other drugs – Lomotil, Claritin, miconazole – anything you think you might need): you might get sick, and you might be somewhere where pharmacies are closed on Sundays.

Pack more underwear than you think you think you need – not more than you THINK you need, more than you THINK you THINK you need. More than you think you need is not enough.

Put sunscreen on all your “high points” – nose, upper lip, clavicles, shoulders, the line of your scalp that shows through the part in your hair.

Print out your boarding passes in advance if you are flying out of Chennai.

Don’t go on “advanced” level hikes in the mountains of Sri Lanka.

Don’t forget to be grateful for your American passport.

Don’t forget to be grateful for days when you are not ill.

Keep a diary and send it to people who care about you. The best way to remember your memories is to write them down. The best way to experience your life is with and through other people. But don’t let that principle interfere with the joy of truly living in the moment, either. Smell the aromas, feel the breeze, touch the snails, eat the roadside curry, put your toes in the ocean, put glitter on your eyes and nose and cheeks for a party, tip generously, make eye contact, say cheers, ask personal questions, let yourself feel the fear and awe and joy of being temporarily alive on this wonderful and insane planet.

Save up for business class flights – so worth it.