Sri Lankan time

In my conversations with volunteers and fellow Westerners here one theme that keeps emerging is people’s different experiences of Sri Lankan time and productivity.

Time in Sri Lanka is very fluid. Deadlines, appointments and timetables shift and pass. Apart from the remarkably punctual train service, it is rare that things start or finish on time or that people turn up at a predetermined moment. Few people have diaries and I reckon on about a 30% success rate with my research appointments. This fluidity affects productivity as well and I am pleased with accomplishing in a day what in the UK would normally take me an hour or two.

For the British colonials who arrived to govern the country in the mid-nineteenth century, this laissez-faire attitude was a consistent cause of frustration and indignation. The Singhalese were quickly stereotyped as lazy, simple and uncivilised. As with other forms of cultural difference, open-ended Singhalese temporalities were taken as a sign of backwardness in need of prompt remediation.

Victorian engineers erected a series of ugly clock-towers at major intersections and town centres in the country in a vain effort to instil punctuality and a national consciousness of clock time. The clocks still work, though they rarely show the correct time and their bells toll at peculiar hours. The promptness they were designed to engender never materialised, though the pleasant squares within which the clocks stand do provide useful spaces for idling.

Sinharaja rainforest

Sinharaja is the last remaining stand of rainforest in Sri Lanka, it is but a fragment of the forests that previously covered the island but the excess of life it contains is still impressive.

On a recent road trip around the hill country we stopped off at Sinharaja – perched in the southern foothills. Thanks to the inimitable Rough Guide we were put onto the jovial Palitha Ratnayake, who runs a local guesthouse and provides guided tours of the reserve. Sinharaja is dense and only accessible by foot and it soon became clear to us why a good guide was invaluable. 

Despite having read and written extensively about biodiversity over the last seven years, I realised on entering the forest that I had never really seen the density and diversity of wild life that inspires tropical conservation biologists. Sri Lanka is a lively place but the wealth of living forms increased tenfold within this teeming sanctuary. As we left the tea plantations that buffer the forest, the canopy closed over us. Like an eclipse the sky darkened and as the light receded so the smells and noises increased.

The air was filled with the rich and putrid odour of rotting vegetation, punctuated by the sickly sweet aroma of vivid flowers. High up in the canopy monkeys laughed their haunting belly laughs, myriad birds chirruped, craked and trilled, while tree-frogs gasped and croaked. On either side of the narrow path unseen creepy-crawlies crept and crawled with sinister rustlings. 

Leopard hunt

On our recent trip to the South we went on safari, tracking and spotting leopards in Yala National Park while jostling with a dozen other jeeps.

Ever since European visitors starting coming to Sri Lanka, the leopard has been up there with the elephant as a must see/must shoot icon of the county’s wildlife. Its elusive ecology, beautiful appearance and skilful hunting are the sources of legends and compel many people to spend long dusty hours in parks and jeeps to get a first hand impression.

We spent an evening and morning in pursuit of leopards and other wildlife in Yala National Park, in the South-East corner of the country. Along with Wilpattu in the North, Yala has the highest densities of leopards in the country and a fair number of desensitised animals likely to appear for the time-pressed visitor. Although tourist numbers are down in Sri Lanka, the park was still busy and we made our way to the entry gates amidst a long convoy of battered Land Rovers.

On entering the park there is a clear air of competitive collaboration amongst the drivers and trackers that accompany each vehicle. They really want to show you the animals you are after, believing that their tip depends on it. They are also proud of their own expertise. It is, after all, quite a skill to drive a 40 year-old jeep along muddy roads, avoid potholes, look for animals of different sizes on land and in the air, and give a commentary while chewing and spitting out bettle nut.

Our driver was an anarchic past master. He drove at breakneck speed, spotting and identifying a dizzying diversity of wildlife unaided by binoculars. He had superb vision and the sixth sense for where animals would be that comes from long experience. He was also scathing about new comers in flash jeeps, and his glee was palpable when we encountered a collision between two upstarts a few hundred yards into the park. A mile further down the road we had seen crocodiles, wild boar, innumerable birds, mongooses, big lizards and elephant. Happy with our progress he set out for leopards.

Elephant polo

Our recent trip to the south coast coincided with the annual Ceylon elephant polo competition – a four day event that is held under the walls of Galle fort. 

The game is loosely modelled on its equine forebear. Each team has three players and three elephants which are arranged up and down the pitch. Each elephant has a mahout who receives his instructions from the player, who is perched behind him, roped into a Hessian saddle with stirrups. The aim of the game is to hit a hard ball through a goal with a long mallet. Each goal is about 10 metres wide and the pitch is roughly the length of a football field. In practice both the ball and the mallet head are small and it appears very difficult to make a good contact from four metres up on a moving pachyderm.

There is a lot of swinging, scuffing and missing, dust is kicked up and the ball is kicked and squashed under numerous feet. Eventually it runs clear and pursued by the one elephant that had worked out what was going on, it is dribbled slowly and laboriously into a goal. I think one elephant was responsible for 90% of the goals scored and as the teams changed elephants at half time the secret was to try and score as many as you could while you were on her. Human skill was negligible compared to the advantage given by this perceptive animal. 

Whiteness

Walking through the aisles in our local supermarket I was struck by a shelf in the hygiene and beauty products section selling an assortment of skin-whitening make-up, creams and soaps for both men and women. What’s this all about I wondered?

In his ground breaking study of Orientalism the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said critically deconstructed the negative stereotyping of people from the East by Western scholars during the European Enlightenment. He exposed the tendency of these authors to lump together people from other cultures in exoticised and pejorative identities. A less well known strand to his argument also discussed the tendency amongst some elites in colonised societies to aspire to Western norms as a way of assimilating and ingratiating themselves to the ruling classes.

Race and skin colour were key facets in this process and brown and white skin became moralised markers indicating superiority and privilege. White women in the tropics and at home sought to protect their pale skin as a sign of both their perceived racial superiority and their class position above manual labour – and its associated exposure to the sun. Some aspiring men and women with darker skin brought into this currency of whiteness and tried to whiten up – perhaps the most famous recent example of this is the macabre spectacle of Michael Jackson.

Helga’s folly

Set high above Kandy lake Helga’s folly is an idiosyncratic hotel, decorated in an excessive, gothic style. It is a wonderfully atmospheric place, steeped in its own glamorous history.

My parents have come to stay for a couple of weeks and last night we took them to Helga’s folly. This unique hotel in Kandy is must-see, must-visit for all bohemian or bourgeois bohemian travellers to Sri Lanka. The rambling building is perched in the jungle, on a steep slope that drops eventually into Kandy Lake. The views are spectacular. Even arriving in the dark, you are struck by the gaudy colours of the hotel and the bizarre detailing on its exterior. Across its concrete walls swoop mural birds and prowling animal. Lianas and bougainvillea weave between terracotta soldiers and china swans, while cheeky monkeys play about the terraces and fruit bats screech in the trees above.

Inside it is a showpiece of gothic excess; the deep crimson and purple sofas and long low coffee tables of the sitting room are lit by dripping candelabras, seemingly unmoved in the last 60 years; the vast wax stalactites recording decades of long nights and raucous parties. The spacious dining areas are festooned with mirrors, which reflect a planetarium of suspended stars and baubles. These are set against striking aquamarine Buddhist iconography above austere oak panels and polished teak shuttering. The staff and fellow guests blend in and are camouflaged against the ordered chaos of antiques, furniture and unclassifiable objects, while the bedrooms appear to have been decorated on LSD. Their Daliesque neon swirls, four poster beds and black mosquito nets are not for the faint hearted or mentally unstable.

“Two-timing Minister’s wife on the warpath”

Another article from The Island, which appeared on the front page on Friday 19^th January. This one gives an interesting insight into Sri Lankan politics and the status of women in this society. The majority of readers must know who the minister is, as he is not named in the article. My guess is he has recently fallen out with the editor…

A ruling party politico, well-known for his lavish lifestyle, is in a fresh fight with his wife over an affair he is having with a senior employee, attached to an institution under his purview.  

The hot-tempered wife of the minister, who is currently away on an overseas visit, had recently stormed the office of her estranged husband’s latest love.  Well informed sources said that there had been a fight.  The minister in a bid to soothe the furious girl had taken her on an overseas visit.  She had been given the opportunity to go in the cockpit, the sources said.  The Island learns that the minister had not visited his official or private residences recently.  “The wife seems to be in charge,” the sources said.  The minister had been forced to park his two luxury vehicles at the residences of two of his close associates who had worked at institutions coming under his purview.

The trouble on the home front preceded a COPE report which targeted the main institution under his ministry.  The politico’s latest love is the number two in a key section in this institution which is under fire for brazen acts of waste, corruption and irregularities.

Human-elephant conflict

I have just got back from a week in the field, shadowing a group of volunteers from the UK and US in and around Wasgamuwa National Park. The volunteers were working with the Sri Lankan Wildlife Conservation Society, a local NGO that is trying to tackle the ongoing conflict between small-scale farmers and crop-raiding elephants. The elephants come out of the park at dusk and traipse through the paddy fields, browsing at will throughout the night before returning to the dense forest in the morning. An elephant weighs several tons and is heavy enough to break down the fragile and complex irrigation systems that sustain paddy fields. With their large appetites they can destroy a small farmer’s annual crop and tip them over the poverty line.

Furthermore, a small number of largely male elephants become particularly malevolent during a period know as ‘must’ – when they come on heat as it were. These rogues suffer from a form of male PMT and are extremely dangerous to humans. We visited a small house in a nearby village that had been damaged by a rogue elephant. The animal had arrived in the dark the night before and had literally put its head through the wall of house, raining down bricks and masonry onto those inside. It was not clear what it was after but it terrified the woman and two children who were living there. Her husband had been up in his nearby tree hut at the time looking out for animals, but was powerless to intervene as the elephant banged into his property. We later learnt that the same elephant came back and completely razed the building – stories abound of vengeance for a previous shooting but this is difficult to corroborate. Fortunately the family escaped, but they have no insurance and there is little compensation available.

“Shooting below the knee for destroying the environment”

The following article by Cyril Wimalasurendra appeared on page 3 of The Island, a major Sri Lankan newspaper, on Monday 15^th January. There is no obvious indication that it is be taken ironically. Unfortunately I missed the event itself.

Kandy – Those responsible for destroying the environment should be shot below the knee, Agriculture, Mahaweli Development and Environment Minister Maithripala Sirisena told a media briefing at Hotel Swiss Residence, Kandy yesterday.

The minister addressed the media after attending a certificate distribution ceremony at the end of a seminar on Environment conservation organised by the University of Peradeniya.

Destruction of the environment he said was a severe crime and laws to punish those responsible for the destruction of the environment by shooting them below the knee would be introduced shortly.

Wanton destruction of resources and the environment, the Minister said has risen so much that not only rural areas but also urban areas are subject to landslides and earthslips. Floods are frequent causing loss of life and property.

Some unscrupulous traders are also responsible for causing destruction to natural resources, he said adding that laws would be brought to curb such activities.

Perhaps Miliband should look into it?

Being an ‘other’

A perceptive social theorist once remarked that there are two types of white people – those who have found themselves the only white face in a room and those who haven’t. Although I spent the best part of year in Southern Africa after leaving school, it is only really here in Sri Lanka that I have consciously felt different and in a minority. 

Granted I am in a privileged minority, but this privilege is two-edged. As my Sri Lankan friend Palitha recently explained to me – to your average Sri Lankan, white people signify either sex or money. In this regard Magali has been finding life tougher than me – as her emails testify – but it is still disturbing to be so quickly judged by my skin colour. While the random locals I meet everyday are disarmingly friendly, this is too often a preface for a sale or appeal for money to now take it at face value. 

Palitha is of course being facetious, but his pithy summary captures a more general sense of otherness I have felt here over the last three months. In its most general form this relates to losing the anonymity I am granted in Oxford or London, where I look, dress and act enough like everyone else or there is already enough difference for me to blend in. Here much of that invisibility vanishes when I show my face. Magali has contemplated wearing a veil to blend in – Sri Lanka has enough Muslims to make that guise a passport to a more open identity.