Sri Lankan proper nouns

Many Sri Lanka proper nouns are very difficult for foreigners to pronounce. Cities have names like Anuradhapura, Kurunegala, Nuwara Eliya, and Trincomalee. People have last names like Goonitileke. Gunawardena, and Jayatileke.

Arosha constantly has to help me with pronunciation (however I am getting a bit better, right Arosha?). When I am feeling like a complete idiot I make her try to pronounce Canadian cities like “Coquitlam” and “Kelowna.” It makes me feel better!

Stuck in the Maldives

We were meant to return on Tuesday but there was a terrible storm and planes weren’t able to land in the Maldives. Our flight was canceled and we were put up in a hotel in Male, the capital city on an atoll near to the airport atoll. I guess it is everyone’s dream to be detained on a tropical island, unable to return to work, but unfortunately we did not find out about the cancellation until after we left our lovely resort. Our hotel was in the middle of the city and smelt of stale smoke. It was raining so hard we couldn’t even explore the city. Too bad!

Maldives is an Islamic country but on the resort atolls (where we were initially) things are pretty much as they are in the west. In Male however there is no alcohol and call to prayer is broadcast throughout the city and advertised on tv. Because of Ramadan the streets were very active at night. Pornography is illegal in the Maldives and we observed the censorship of Western magazines in an internet cafe - photos of some (nakedish) women were cut out. Ironically there very high walls around each computer and a bunch of pornography sites were bookmarked on the internet browser!

Fish Bite

I got bit and then stalked by a mean fish with very bad (and sharp) teeth!

Here is a photo of where the fish dragged its razor sharp teeth across my skin.


This fish is known as “the most dangerous fish in the Maldives” according to our fish book because if its aggressive teritorial nature.


Do NOT go back in the water

Trip to the Maldives

We went to the Maldives for the Poya (long) weekend. We had the most amazing time! We stayed in a “water suite” - our own little cabin built on stilts right on the water!

It is the nicest beach vacation that we have ever had.


Hardly any people, beautiful beaches, turquoise water and 1000s of fish including eels, turtles, reef sharks, and octopus right off of our balcony! See more photos on Rob’s flickR site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robmctavish/

Wearing a Sari

With lots of help from Thusana I managed to wear a sari to work today. We went to the opening of a conference, which is a very formal event in Sri Lanka, and I wanted to dress up.



Me and Chathrika at the Open and Distance Education Conference


There is a joke here about wearing saris – it goes something like this:
Chinese women need one meter of fabric and manage to cover most of their bodies, Islamic women need 2 meters of fabric and almost completely cover their bodies. Sri Lankan women need 6 meters of cloth and still leave 6 inches of their bodies uncovered!

Arthur C. Clark

We met Arthur C. Clark today! Read all about it Rob's blog....

Trip home

The drive home was bumpy but exciting as we saw monkeys, peacocks and wide elephants! (video hopefully coming soon)

Pigeon Island and Nailaveli Beach

On Sunday we took a boat to Pigeon Island with Joanna and Yasith (Diyath brother) to do some snorkeling. Remembering a similar boat trip to an island in Greece where the speed boat was crammed full of tourists (standing room only) with no life jackets, I carefully quizzed the man offering us the boat tour – how many people maximum? Are there life jackets? I felt satisfied that the 40 minute boat trip would be safe however when we arrived at the boat I realized that forgot to ask one important question – are there seats in the boat!

Anyways the boat trip was very nice and we saw the most beautiful uninhabited beaches on the way to Pigeon Island. Once we reached the island we were greeted by a soldier with a gun (weird) as well as dozens of young guys desperate for a picture with Joanne and me. They were swarming us and at first I thought it was a set up to steal our video camera but in the end it was fine and the guys were just having fun. I felt pleased that I was as popular as the beautiful 19 year-old Joanne, until one of the guys cried with glee “a photo with my Canadian Auntie” as we posed for a picture. Pooh - I am old!

There was a family swimming near us who were having such a good time. They begged us to come and swim with them and offered us some unripe mango with chili powder, as well as the use of their beach mats. One guy introduced himself to me as “Ronald Regan” and said that the other swimmers were part of his “clan”. They were having so much fun I took some video of them, which I will try to post later.

Yasith accidentally went swimming with Joanne’s cigarettes in his pocket so after a couple of hours we left for the Nailaveli Hotel in search of cigarettes and lunch. The boat driver dropped off on Nailaveli beach – which is one of the most beautiful beaches in Sri Lanka. We walked to the hotel only to find that it had been destroyed in the Tsunami and would not re-open until February. Luckily we were able to get directions to another nearby hotel where we were able to get both lunch and cigarettes. The owner was a professor who had come to Sri Lanka to work at a university but the pay was so low that he decided to go into the hotel business and now provides free lessons in English as well as other subjects to the community.

Beach, Sea Bath, Dinner, and Road Blocks

The beaches in Trincomoli are SO nice





Rob, Ravi and Diyath have a “sea bath”.




Later we go out for drinks and dinner. Our van is searched several times and there are road blocks with armed guards everywhere.

Trip to Trincomoli

One of Rob’s colleagues, Mr. Diyath, had to go to Trincomoli for business this weekend and invited us to join him. Trincomoli is on the East Coast of Sri Lanka and is a Tamil Community. Rob has desperately wanted to go to “Trinco” since he got here so we were thrilled to be invited.

Although Tricno is only 260 km from Colombo, it is at least a 4 hour drive in a land rover and under good road conditions. We left Colombo at 5:00am to avoid the city traffic and made it to Trinco within 5 hours with a stop for breakfast and another short break at a road side fruit stand where we drank Thambili, the juice from king coconuts. The road from Habarana to Trinco was a bit rough and the ride was bumpy –especially for those in the back seat of the van who were often airborne whenever we hit a pothole.

It was difficult to find a hotel room in Trinco because many hotels were destroyed in the Tsunami. Also Trinco is full of NGOs and foreign representatives there to “help”. All the best hotels were fully booked for the weekend, their parking lots full of brand new, shiny SUVs and jeeps proudly displaying the flags of various organizations Nine months after the Tsunami, many people in Trinco are still living in temporary relief camps. We saw two camps with rows and rows of small tin shacks, which must be unbearably hot during the daytime.

I don’t know much about the politics of foreign aid, however it seems to me that the process of rebuilding might advance quicker if foreign representatives were required to live in the temporary housing (rather than beach resorts) until all the local people were placed in permanent housing. ;-) I am sure that many foreigners providing Tsunami aid work very hard and desperately need and deserve time off however, it seems a bit tacky to use official vehicles to travel to posh hotels. Seeing the rows and rows of NGO vehicles at beach resorts also makes one feel a bit unsettled about how the aid money is being allocated.