Sri Lanka Journal- Andew and Annette Dey: 3/5/2005

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Links from Andrew and Annette:

Pro Photographer Dixie's web site

Mondo Challenge set up Andrew and Annette's trip.

Unawatuna is the village where they're staying and working

In the north, Andrew and Annette are working with Norwegian People's Aid. NPAID is partnered with the German organization called Arbeiter Samariter Bund.

Bensonwood.com

Andrew

Although Annette and I plan to head south from Kilinochchi by mid-morning, we gather with the rest of the shelter team as usual for our daily 8 a.m. meeting. We spend most of the meeting exchanging contact information and telling each other how much we enjoyed working together. As Roy puts it, “We will very much miss you. You have been very much hardly working.”

When Annette and I are asked when we will return, the best we can offer is “We hope within the next year or two.” This response disappoints our coworkers. We don´t add that it´s optimistic.

Roy and Vimal head resolutely off to the camps. I remain in the office to finish the final report I have been drafting for NPA. Annette makes a last visit to the steel fabricator. We learn from Lingam that Tony has disappeared to dig up a Russian missile that was found recently by deminers. Tony doesn´t strike me as particularly inclined toward prolonged good-byes.

We had thought that we might wait to leave Kilinochchi until the delegation had finished its meeting with the Planning and Development Secretariat, but by 11 a.m. we are ready to go, and the delegates have not appeared. We hit the road with Lingam driving the Prado.

As we drive south through downtown Kilinochchi, I feel as though a chapter is closing. Several of the storefronts we pass have vivid associations. There´s the building material supply store called “Wairamaligai” where we purchased cement, rebar, tin sheets, and miscellaneous supplies. Although the purchasing process here was often interminably protracted, we had no choice but to stick with it. When Mr. Ratnum was hired as a logistics officer, he was the one, rather than we, who ended up sitting by the desk at Wairamaligai sipping sweet tea and wondering what the salespeople did when they disappeared into the back room for half an hour at a time. Or perhaps he knew.

We pass the Vanni Net Café. The town´s only public internet access is run by the LTTE. We see that the rolling metal blind still covers the entrance door, meaning that their server, which was down last night, is not yet back on-line.

The welder´s shop is a block past the Vanni Net. Annette spent far more time here during our last week than she ever would have imagined—a consequence of the local carpenters believing more in steel straps than in timber joinery. Across the street and conveniently next to each other are the bicycle store and the bicycle mechanic. In Tiger Town, the symbiosis of these two shops is as close as that of cattle egrets and cows.

As we crest the gentle rise in the main street, we have a last look at the new water tower, an impressive, scaffolding-clad concrete structure nearing completion. It looks like a golf tee for one of the giants who built the nearby irrigation tanks. Next to the base of the new tower sits the crumbling top of the tower that it is replacing. Under circumstances that have never been clear to me, the Indian Army peace-keeping forces that occupied the Vanni in the late eighties apparently blew up the old water tower, leaving the giant, bowl-shaped top on the ground.

I consider the next stretch of the main street to be “Restaurant Row,” because it contains the only two that we ever frequented. On the left is Seran, just past the athletic fields and the Hindu temple under construction. Seran was our retreat for air-conditioned lunches featuring greasy noodles and cheese omelettes. We always ordered the fresh-squeezed orange juice. Occasionally we found ourselves at Seran for late-afternoon ice-cream meetings. Opposite Seran is the driveway leading to the I-9 Restaurant. We tended toward the I-9 for dinners out, not because the menu was appreciably different from Seran´s, but because of the atmosphere. We would sit outside with cold bottles of Lion Lager, and admire the fake storks and real frogs that inhabited the massive sculptured fountain dominating the courtyard. Just after the turnoff to the I-9 is a restaurant (“hotel” in the local translation) that we never tried, but that always intrigued me, for its sign declares that it specializes in “non-vegetarian food.”

We pass the orphanage, our final accommodation in Kilinochchi, with its unpredictable curfew and predictable morning ritual. The older girls who live in the orphanage probably attend school in the large, war-ravaged shell of a school building that is still in use just down the road. When Annette took pictures of this school from the car several weeks before, I asked our driver Esan, who looked worried, whether this was okay. “Better to ask Mr. Jenna,” he told us. “You can get his permission to take any pictures.” Mr. Jenna is the head of the Humanitarian Demining Unit, the arm of the LTTE that oversees demining operations in the Vanni, and is therefore NPA´s liason with the LTTE.

The southern end of the town is marked by speed limit sign—40 km/hr—and a graphically cautionary billboard featuring a grisly photograph of an auto accident victim. His bloody, half-clothed body is spread-eagled at unnatural angles on the pavement. During the past two weeks, there have been two fatal auto accidents in Kilinochchi. The fine for speeding rose from 250 rupees to 500 rupees with the first accident, and from 500 to 1,000 with the second.

On the southern outskirts of town, we pass the head office of the Forest Protection Division of the Tamil Eelam. Early-on in the shelter-building process, Annette and I would make daily pilgrimages to this office with the hope of speaking to someone who had some control over the flow of timbers from the forests to our job site. That we were often carrying thick wads of thousand rupee notes did not seem to make a difference for the smiling bureaucrats whom, on a good day, we would meet. I used to hope that they were at least treating all of the other NGOs to the same hollow promises.

We are soon flying down the A-9 road in the grand style of “Lingam Schumacher.” He is playing a tape of Tamil rap music slightly too loud, and we are dodging potholes like they are gates in a downhill slalom. Lingam slows dutifully for the speed traps in the few small towns through which we pass, before leaning hard again on the accelerator.

In one village we pass several small cars that look like they just drove off a 1950´s showroom floor, except that their windshields have been personalized with tassles and bangles. The cars are squat with rounded edges like the cartoon cars in my book “Learn German the Fast and Fun Way.” We have seen many of these here in the Vanni, and a number in the south as well. The model I have noticed most is called the Austin Cambridge. The other, less-popular model is the Morris Oxford. A tuc-tuc driver in Galle had offered to bring me to the factory where an enterprising Danish man, if I recall correctly, set up a factory that is still building Morris Minors. I resolve to take the tuc-tuc driver up on his offer if we have time down south.

In less than an hour we have reached the checkpoints that mark the border between the LTTE-controlled Vanni region and land under Colombo´s control. The LTTE does not appear to be particularly concerned about what we might be bringing out of their region. It´s the truck-drivers who may be carrying pornographic dvd´s north who are subjected to the closest scrutiny. On the Sri Lanka Army side, Lingam pulls our vehicle into a stall over a pit, and jumps out with a fistful of papers. While he is having his way with the soldiers in the adjacent guard house, an officer taps on my window and I open the car door.

“Which country?” he asks pleasantly.

“USA.”

“Where you going?”

“Home.”

“Where you come from?”

“Kilinochchi.”

“When you come back?” Even he wants to know.

“Maybe one or two years.” He looks at me quizzically.

“What country you from?”

Lingam is back in the car and we are heading for the baggage check. We pull up next to a bus that has just disgorged about forty people, all carrying suitcases. Two long lines—one of men and one of women—are filing through a curtained opening into a small shed in which I assume they are undergoing body searches. Lingam climbs out of the car and motions for me to join him. We pull two of our four bags from the back of the Prado, and I follow him as he moves quickly around the shed to the back side. The lines that we saw heading into the shed wind up at long tables under a covered extension on the back side. Male and female soldiers are pawing through the contents of bags. Lingam hefts his bag onto a table in front of a young soldier who looks like he might not be too busy. I lift the other bag up. As the soldier is beginning to investigate the contents of the first bag, Lingam tugs on it and gives a look that says to the soldier, “I can´t believe you´re wasting my time with this!” The soldier has barely reached into the second bag when Lingam pulls it off the table with an innocent look. I am reminded why Lingam is considered the most skilful of NPA´s border-crossers. He may be a Tamil bandit, but he is very effective.

We are soon rolling past the Sri Lankan military bases that cover the area south of the border: the Air Force, Infantry, Engineering Corps—even a Navy base, although we are still well in-land. In Vavuniya, the first large town south of the border, the Buddha statues and bookies (called, oddly enough, “Turf Accountants”) assure us that we have entered another land.

Annette and I came independently to the conclusion that, upon finishing our assignment with NPA, we should treat ourselves to a night in a fine hotel in Colombo. We are feeling that we deserve to be comfortable, if not pampered, and a night in Colombo will break up what would otherwise be a ten hour drive. The elegant, colonial-era Galle Face Hotel is booked for the night, but we reserve a room there for our last night in Sri Lanka. We end up at the other end of the stretch of beach and park known as the Galle Face Green, at the Ceylon Intercontinental Hotel. As he is dropping us off, Lingam points to what he claims are bullet holes in one end of the nearby Galadari Hotel. “Tiger suicide attack. Sixth floor. Meeting of Sri Lankan Army commanders. Many people die.” Lingam doesn´t give much away, but I sense that he was impressed by the attack.

In the hotel lobby we pass Japanese business men, European families on vacation, and dark bearded men whose head gear makes me think “sheiks.”

Our room on the seventh floor has a wonderful view of the Galle Face Green and the waves breaking alongside it, I had not really been missing warm showers, but as I slide into my first one in two months, it feels wonderful. We dress in clothes that we have not worn since heading north, and walk to an Italian restaurant around the corner.

The restaurant is perfect, but at first I find myself squirming ever so slightly, as though a teaspoon of sand from the camp sites remains in my underwear. Annette and I are sitting at a candlelit table under a large, hexagonal roof structure with open sides. The menu is wonderful. Beyond the bar I see the curved outline of a swimming pool. The other patrons—a mix of ex-pats, visitors, and Sri Lankans—are dressed fashionably and look sophisticated. Tsunami? What tsunami? The memory of Sadana´s grandmother, who just yesterday had given us the bag of palmyra sticks, flits through my head. Would I rather have stayed in Kilinochchi? No. Then what is it? “It” seems to be the incongruity experienced by anyone who has visited a developing country. Many of the people in the north are living hand-to-mouth, and here we are enjoying Chianti, bruschetta, and jumbo tiger prawns. Eventually I settle into simply enjoying the food, the elegant atmosphere, and Annette´s pleased presence

Back at our hotel room, I admire the view out the window. The lights along the shoreline remind me of the coconut oil lamps that lined the beach at Unawatuna on the one-month anniversary of the tsunami. Annette and I fall asleep to the distant sound of breaking waves.