It’s Sunday morning in Sri Lanka and the sun is bright and golden. A warm breeze is blowing through the green lush leaves outside my window and droplets of overnight rain are covering the flowers--a November morning so different from the November morning you are experiencing on the other side of the world. It seems as if we’ve been gone for months rather than just four weeks and it’s hard to believe that just three weeks ago we were bundled up, walking through Himalayan snowflakes and now we’re on a tropical island, trying to stay cool. Time is different here, the days of the week lose their names and the sunlight and scheduled meals become our clocks. Travelling in India and Sri Lanka isn’t just a journey, it’s a metamorphasis of everything--habits, clothes, food, time, freedom, identity, possessions. Our backpacks are our portable homes and everything in them has its own order and place. We become attached to different daily necessities like mosquito repellent and water bottles and malaria medicine. We sleep under pastel mosquito nets and wake to breakfasts of papaya and tiny sweet bananas, yogurt, egg hoppers, lentils and tea. The women in our group wear bright flowy clothes, very different from the ones we originally brought with us on the trip. Even the men in the group have just started sporting Sri Lankan sarongs. Because everything is foreign and new, each day is inevitably full and weekends don’t exist for us anymore. We’re in school everyday. Instead of reading books, we read into experiences and moments. We’re tested daily in new subjects such as patience, humility, tolerance and compassion. One glance at something or someone can lead us down unexpected paths of thought where we’ve never gone before, realizations that sink hard and deep. We’re faced daily with mirrors into ourselves and the lives we live back home. By the time we go to bed each night, we’re saturated with all that we’ve learned consciously or unconsciously that day through our senses and experiences. These students work hard. We’re no longer just friends, we’re family, nursing each other when we’re feeling a little sick or overwhelmed, watching out for each other, sharing stories of our lives.
We are staying now at the Sarvodaya headquarters in Anuradhapura, in northern central Sri Lanka. The rainy season is still going on so our days are filled with both sunshine and welcomed cool rain. This group is wonderful, small and tight. When minor disageements have arisen, we’ve manged to sit in a circle and talk things out. It’s always a challenge to travel in a group. I like to imagine that we all have an invisible rope around our waists tying us together. If one person is late, we’re all late. If one person is having a hard time, we all in some way feel it. Functioning as a group in strange surroundings is one of the most valuable lessons of the trip and one of the most difficult. Now that we’ve been travelling for four weeks, the midway point of our trip together, we thought you would all enjoy a summary of our trip so far. This is a lengthy one including everything we’ve done so far. It’s also for the students on the trip so they’ll have a summary of all the names of the places where we’ve been.
Our trip began in India after a long flight which included a six hour stay in the Paris airport where we both wandered around to stretch our legs and slept in chairs, overcome by jet lag. We were also lucky enough to have a break in the flight for a few hours in Sri Lanka where we took a van to a beach hotel, kicked off our shoes, and had a wonderful buffet breakfast before hopping back onto the plane and landing late in the evening in Delhi. We stayed at the YWCA on our first night in India and in the morning we all walked through the streets of Delhi to Pahar Ganj, a bazaar buzzing with activity and small inexpensive hotels where many tourists like ourselves stay. We had breakfast on the rooftop of the Anoop Hotel . I took most of the women to a shop in the afternoon where we all bought our first Indian clothes. During our first walk through Pahar Ganj in the morning , everyone looked a bit wide eyed. Some later told me that it was all so stimulating that they felt a bit dizzy. But by evening the group had transformed--the women looked beautiful in their Indian kurtas and we were all ordering thalis and palak paneer off the menu at dinner. The next morning after breakfast, we took rickshaws to Chandni Chowk, the main street running through the heart of old Delhi , where we saw few tourists and sifted our way through streets pulsating with movement, music , bright colors and strange smells, a wild, loud place, swirling with life.
After two days in Delhi , we were finally beginning to overcome jet lag and on the morning of our third day we headed to Dehra Dun on an early morning train called the Shatabdi Express. They served us breakfast and lunch on the train and we gazed out the window at our first glimpses of rural India, stopping for a few minutes in stations here and there with just enough time to run around a bit and jump back on.
From Dehra Dun we could see the foothills of the Himalayas, and the home of Mussoorie, our next destination, which also happens to be the town where my father was born. We took an hour long taxi ride up a winding mountain road where we stayed in a n area just above Mussoorie, called Landour , at 6500 feet. Rooms were waiting for us at the Dev Dar, an old British hill station house painted white with bright green doorways and window frames and surrounded by flower beds of orange marigolds and tall deodar trees draped in dark green moss. It was a welcoming peaceful respite from all the sound and activity of Delhi . The air was chilly but there was a wood stove in the parlor , wool blankets on our beds, endless cups of chai, and above all, hot showers. Landour has changed little in the fifty years since my father knew it as a boy. New buildings aren’t permitted to be built or the outside of the old buildings changed. Old Mr. Prakash still runs the same general store that Dad visited as a boy ,where he sells almost everything including homemade bread, jam, cheese and peanut butter which he and his son make. My favorite time to visit his store is when the electricity cuts off, which is often in India, when his whole store is lit only by candles. That evening they served us homemade pizza at the Dev Dar, which is owned by Mr. Prakash’s son, Anil. When we woke up in the morning the skies were clear and we saw another range of mountains behind the ones that the night before we’d thought were so huge. Jagged snow capped Himalayan peaks floated in the distance, so huge and beautiful, it was hard to imagine they were real, even harder to imagine that in just a few days we would be heading into them. We were all a little giddy that first night at the Dev Dar.
The students dove right in to village life by taking off on village stays the next morning. After breakfast, we met with Surrender, a member of MGVS (Mussoorie Gramin Vikas Samiti),a village development movement which works in 80 villages in the Garwhal area of the Himalayas. He served us tea and explained to us the purpose behind MGVS and the programs they are doing in surrounding mountain villages. He and his staff arranged the village stays in mountain villages not far from Mussoorie for all the students. After tea, the students piled into jeeps and were dropped off in villages in groups of two or three.
Two days later the students returned from their villages with sunburned cheeks, overflowing with stories of their time in the villages and the people they’d met and bonded closely with in such a short time despite language barriers and cultural differences. They tried as well as they could to join in with the work and spent lots of time just observing and playing with the children. Diving into a village stay so early on in the trip is a confidence booster because once you do something like that, you feel that you can do anything. It was also a good way to see and experience the real India that most tourists never experience, right away. Dad and I loved hearing their stories as I’m sure you will when they return.
The day after the students returned from their villages, we took an eight hour bus ride to Gangotri, which lies in the midst of the same Himalayan peaks we could see far off in the distance from Landour. The journey was arranged by MGVS and they rented a comfortable small bus for us to take. A member of MGVS named Sushil accompanied us, along with a school teacher from Donk, a village close by. Gangotri is a holy pilgrimmage site in India . It is just a short way downstream from Gaumukh, the headwaters of the holy Ganges river. The morning after our bus ride, we set off hiking on the 10 mile hike to Bhojbasa, the base camp and the site where we’d be spending the night.
The hike was absolutely beautiful. Although we were very cold at the beginning, wrapped in all the warm clothes we had, the warm sun and exercise soon warmed us up and we began shedding layers as we ascended the gradual trail that followed above the Ganges. We passed beautiful rock outcroppings and large pines. Birch trees with yellow leaves that reminded us of the autumn we were missing back home, lined the trail in places. Every now and then we passed a chai stand and stopped and sipped chai and rested our legs. Along the trail we passed occasional Indians, coming from and on route to Gaumukh , as well as porters carrying huge loads on their backs and donkeys with brass bells ringing around their necks , tired or young pilgrims riding on their backs. By 3:00 we’d all reached Bhojbasa, our final destination of the day. We were at an elevation of 12,000 feet, above tree line and surrounded by snowy peaks. We were very cold once again. We saw some wild mountain goats but not much else was there aside from a few small tents set up as restaurants. One of them had a small fire burning in it and some of us huddled around it and drank hot chai and ordered food. Our accomodations at Bhojbasa consisted of a large canvas army tent lined with cots covered with wool blankets. Snow began falling softly soon after we arrived and it got chillier and chillier so we all snuggled up close in the tent and laughed and sang and talked until we fell asleep early. The moon was almost full and when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I stepped outside into a silent moonlit wonderland.
The next morning we got up early and along with Sushil, hiked the last two miles to Gaumukh. The hike soon warmed us up and we climbed a dirt trail which led us over rocks and past a couple of shrines of Hindu gods covered with a dusting of snow and surrounded by small red flags blowing in the breeze, until we reached Gaumukh, “the cows mouth”, a small cave in a tall bluish glacier, where the Ganges comes gushing out, cold and swirling with glacial silt. A few of the students braved the cold water and waded in and came running right back out, jolted and exhilerated by the icy water. This was my third trip to that spot.There’s a long legend about the Ganges and its origin which I don’t have time to recount, but nonetheless, this is a very holy spot to Hindus. It’s a holy place to me too, yet in a more undefined personal way, simply in its beauty and power, the natural blend of rock, sky, raging water and enormously bold, snowy mountains and stony silence.
We spent the rest of the day hiking the same trail back down to Gangotri, a chance to get a second look at all the scenery we’d passed on the way up. We arrived in late afternoon with weary feet and hungry stomachs. The sky was gray and we were cold once again. Small restaurants lined the main walking area and we all got some food and rest. We passed orange robed sadhus sitting outside small trinket shops on our walk back to the bus. We headed to a guest house and fell asleep soon after dinner, exhausted. The next day we took the eight hour bus ride back to Mussoorie, following the Ganges for much of the way and passing through small mountain towns and past bright terraced fields on the mountainsides, farmers plowing with oxen , tiny roadside temples,and children walking home from school. There’s never a dull moment in India. On the way we stopped for chai and soaked our cold and weary feet in a natural hot spring, just off the side of the road.
The next morning, back at the Dev Dar, Scott Baldauf, the south Asian bureau Chief of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, arrived to interview us about our study abroad trip to India and Sri Lanka. He heard about us from some other Indian reporters from a newspaper in Delhi who had stayed at the Dev Dar Guest House on holiday during the time the students were in the villages the week before. Dad and I had a long interesting discussion with them about the trip we were taking with the students and I suppose they mentioned it to Scott who came all the way from Delhi on an overnight bus just to interview us. He was interested in the experiential learning aspect of our trip and intrigued by the fact that the students jumped head first into rural village stays just days after arriving in India. We all had a wonderful discussion with him about our first reactions to India and its poverty and the students reactions to their village stays and what they had learned from them and in the process what they were learning about themselves . We discussed the differences between hands on learning and traditional academic learning and how they might carry with them all they are experiencing into their lives back home and their lives beyond college. We felt honored to be interviewed and the interview itself was a wonderful way for us all to reflect on our trip. He took a photo of us and left and we didn’t know if the article would appear in the paper or not. Just recently Dad received a copy of it through email . It was in the Tuesday, November 9 edition of the paper , so check it out if you can. (It is posted on this web site.)
Our first 10 days in India were packed with so much activity and stimulation that it was time for a break. The students spent the next two days working on their projects, catching up in their journals, writing letters, spending time alone and wandering through Mussoorie. Some had handmade shoes made for them at the cobbler and clothes made at the tailor. We dressed up for Halloween and went to a party in the mountains, held by a British man and Pol Edmonds, a former W.W.C. student working with SIDH, the society for Integrated Development of Himlayas, based in Mussoorie. Tlhe honored guest at the party was Debra the zebra, a white pony painted with black stripes that walked around out back of the party in the moonlight. We also spent a short bit of time with another W.W.C. graduate, Lindsey Abend, who was on the last India trip with us in 2002 and who is now a residence director in a dormitory for young girls at Woodstock school in Mussoorie.
Our time in Mussoorie coincided with the 150 th celebration of Woodstock School which my father graduated from in 1954. His class was having its 50 th reunion there at the same time and one evening dad and I went to a special dinner with his graduating class at the school. Classmates of his from all over the world, many of whom he hadn’t seen in 50 years, attended with their families. It was an unforgettable evening and I sat in wonder as they all told tales of their time growing up in India. I felt honored to be there and to get a rare glimpse into a part of my father’s life that I’d only heard of in stories. Then we packed our bags, headed back down the mountain and once again boarded the Shatabdi Express train back to Delhi. Delhi was loud and crazy and now seemed different through our seasoned eyes. The next evening we took a four hour flight to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, and the beginning of a whole new journey.
Our old and dear friend, Winsor De Silva, who has hosted many Warren Wilson groups in the past, was waiting at the airport in Colombo when we arrived at 3:30 a.m., along with two Sarvodaya vans to take us back to the Sarvodaya headquarters in Moratuwa, just south of Colombo. The early morning air was thick and hot and vines covered in big white flowers surrounded the entrance way to the guest house where rooms were waiting for us. We slept until noon under pastel mosquito nets and fans and met Winsor for lunch in the cafeteria, our first introduction to Sri Lankan food, heavy on the coconut oil, and curries very different from the taste of Indian curries. A nice addition though is the tropical fruit--papayas, pineapple and tiny bananas so full of flavor that they make tropical fruit in the states taste bland.
We rested during the afternoon and in early evening met with Dr. Vinya Ariyarathna, Executive Director of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Society, who gave us an introduction to the Sarvodaya movement . Experiencing the Sarvodaya movement is the whole reason we come to Sri Lanka. Sarvodaya is a village development movement based on Buddhist and Gandhian principles. It is the largest non-governmental organisation in Sri Lanka, active in more than 8600 villages nationwide. It was started in 1958 by a man named Dr. A. T. Ariyarathna to promote self empowerment in poor villages throughout Sri Lanka and since has grown into a movement covering the whole island, unconnected to any particular political party. The word Sarvodaya itself means”the awakening of all” . There are many different aspects to Sarvodaya on the village level such as health care programs, preschool programs, Sarvodaya banks in villages which are run by the villagers and from which people can get loans for businesses which benefit the village and the villagers. Although Sri Lanka is a prominently Buddhist country, Sarvodaya recognizes all religions, which can be seen on the altars in the preschools and other Sarvodaya buildings--images of Buddha and Hindu gods sitting side by side, lit by the same oil lamp.
Sarvodaya villages also participate in something a called a Shramadana, a word which means “gift of labor” . A Shramadana is when the whole village gets together to do a work project in the village that needs to be done. The day is spent working on the project during which time many of the women cook a huge meal together which the whole village shares. At the end of the evening they perform for each other--sing, dance, put on plays, usually around a big bonfire. Some of the shramadanas I’ve participated in in the past included building a mud preschool, clearing roads , building latrines and planting trees together . It’s all centered around hands on work and sharing, young and old side by side. The final project is important but it’s not the only goal. It’s the sense of community and empowerment that’s created by getting a job done together that benefits the village without relying on outside help. It’s a wonderful system that we should put into practice in our own communities in the U.S.
We arrived in Sri Lanka on election day and found out soon enough that George Bush had won the election. It was a hard blow to us all and we sank into a group wide gloom. Yet at the same time, the timing of being in Sri Lanka and beginning to witness a powerful grass roots movement that empowers poor villagers to make change in their lives from the bottom up, unconnected to any political party, was inspiring and a powerful contrast to the top to bottom reign of George Bush. There’s hope yet and maybe it’s up to us to make our own changes.
The next morning we visited the Sarvodaya Peace Center, a Buddhist meditation center built by Sarvodaya which also hosts a peace library. It’s a very tranquil place with a garden and a walkway of stepping stones down the center of a lily pond. While at the peace center, we met Dr. Ariyarathna, the founder and president of the Sarvodaya movement. He’s a small man, dressed always in white with silvery white hair. In a sense he’s a bit of a saint in Sri Lanka and is known by many. Each time we come to Sri Lanka with a group, he takes time out to talk to us. He told us we can transform society without power and politics and asked us, “What is more important, gross national product or gross national happiness?” He told us about a project Sarvodaya is working on to make villages self governing, 1000 villages at a time. The purpose is to enable each village to have its own legal status so that each will be recoginized by the government and to make social change from the bottom up, not working against the government but with it, to promote a more participatory form of government. He talked about village and community self governance which includes observing ancient values such as respect for the environment and cooperation as opposed to competition, a system of inclusiveness where you know people by name and where party politics don’t play as much of a role. He told us about some huge peace meditations organized by Sarvodaya, one of 650,000 people, dressed all in white, sitting in the rain and meditating for peace in Sri Lanka and the world. Lukily the civil war that plagued Sri Lanka for twenty years has settled down now into a ceasefire and we see little sign of the soldiers that used to stand outside the airport and at other check points on the roads. It’s a good time to be here. After that, we visited a sarvodaya orphanage nearby , part of the Sarvodaya Suwa-Setha society. One of the rooms was filled with infants, the other with toddlers. The children were either abandoned , orphaned or the children of mothers to young or poor to take care of them. We spent a short time there and playing with the children before heading back to our guest house and packing our bags to head out on the six hour bus ride to the Sarvodaya headquarters in Anuradhapura, up north.
In Anuradhapura, we are staying at the Sarvodaya district headquarters which is also the home of our friend Winsor, the director of the Anuradhapura district, the largest Sarvodaya district in the country, and his wife, Thalatha. All the women in our group sleep in one room and the three men in another, under the same pastel mosquito nets we’ve become accustomed to. In the evening we can hear chanting from a nearby Buddhist temple as we make our way to dinner in an open walled dining room. Thalatha and a group of other women cook three homemade Sri Lankan meals for us each day. We eat string hoppers , dal, yogurt and fruit for breakfast. For lunch and dinner, curries made of eggplant, okra, pumpkin and potatoes among others, and often fish. They feed us so much food and eagerly watch as we fill our plates, like grandmothers at a Christmas dinner. I feel like they’re our surrogate mothers and they take such care in feeding us that I feel guilty if I don’t finish everything on my plate and as a result, my belly is certainly growing.
On our first morning in Anuradhapura, Winsor took us to a Sarvodaya village, Rajanganaya to visit a preschool and a village bank. We drove through paddy fields dotted with long legged white birds and passed a school parade on the way. Children, some in school uniiforms carrying colorful sticks wrapped in paper streamers and some dressed as elephants, marched past our van down a country road. Winsor said the parade was to raise awareness to environmental issues . We drove down more red clay roads until we arrived at the village. As we climbed out of our vans, little children in red and white school uniforms walked up to greet us and one by one they placed fresh flower garlands around our necks. The preschool was a tiny one room place with open walls and decorated with children’s artwork. The mothers were there helping serve the children a lunch of rice and vegetables. they fed us cookies and juice and the children sang and danced so sweetly for us. Winsor explained to us that the Sarvodaya preschools were originally started as nutrition programs to make sure that children, many of whom were malnourished in villages, received a nutritious meal each day and at the same time to educate the mothers on nutrition. The preschool teacher is practically a volunteer, receiving 500 rupees a month, roughly five dollars.
Next door to the preschool was a Sarvodaya village bank run by the villagers. As Winsor explained to us how villagers in Rajanganaya can receive business loans from the bank to start businesses that benefit the village, a silver haired woman in thick glasses proudly displayed to us her bank book showing deposits she had made. Winsor led us into another room to show us an example of a business that had been started from such a loan. A woman in the village started a garment business from a loan she received from the bank and the room was filled with clothes she had made. We also visited a village bakery close by that was started from a loan from the village bank. Inside the baker’s house, a huge brick oven was filled with loaves and loaves of bread, baking. It made our mouths water. Just as we were getting into our vans to leave, the baker ran out and motioned for us to come back inside. The bread was ready and in his living room he cut it up into thick slices and served it to us. We ate steaming hot bread while the rain outside began to fall. Our visit to the village bakery couldn’t have been timed more perfectly.
The next day we visited the Mehintale temple outside Anuradhapura, a place with huge spiritual significance for the sinhalese because it’s where Buddhism originated in Sri Lanka. The story is that in 247 BC King Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura, while deer hunting around the hill at Mihintale, met Mahinda, son the Indian Buddhist emperor, Ashoka, and was converted to Buddhism. Mihintale is located on a hill surrounded by large rocks. A gradual stairway of 1840 granite steps lead up the hill, sprinkled with fragrant white temple flowers that have fallen from the trees and occasional vendors selling things such as mangoes and bright artificial flowers. At the top of the staircase we left our shoes with a man who watched them for us for a small fee. This happens at all holy spots and temples in Sri Lanka and India, a wonderful excuse to go barefoot for a while. On the top landing was a building where Buddhist monks still live and behind it, freshly washed bright orange monks robes hanging in the trees to dry. Above the monks place, up another stairway to the left is a huge glowing white statue of a Buddha sitting in meditation. Another stone stairway leads you to a higher point on the hill where a huge white dagoba sits. You can walk all the way around it and look out at the view, an excellent one of Anuradhapura below. Another stairway leads up to a steep path onto an enormous meditation rock which you climb around using handrails. from the top of the rock is yet another beautiful view of the countryside below--paddy fields and palm trees, small houses dotted along red clay roads. We all wandered around the top of Mihintale and met at our van in an hour or so and headed back to our place for lunch.
After lunch we visited the ancient city,also the site of the Sri Maha Bodhi temple. We were led byan enthusiastic and knowledgable tour guide, an older man dressed all in white, wearing a Harley Davidson baseball cap. After Buddhism was introduced to King Tissa of Anuradhapura at Mihintale, the ancient city of Anuradhapura rose in importance and became a great city. For 1000 years kings ruled from the city. The ruins in the city are over 2000 years old. Our tour guide led us around and explained the symbolism behind many of the rock carvings of images such as seven headed cobras, buddhas and dwarfs on the ancient buildings.
The Sri Maha Bodhi temple is of significance because it contains the sacred bo tree. The sacred bo tree is the oldest historically authenticated tree in the world and was brought as a sapling from the very tree in Bodhgaya , India, that Buddha attained enlightenment under. Many devotees prayed in the temple where we walked barefoot across the marble floor. Others prayed outside it, beneath the bo tree where monks were chanting. Oil lamps were burning, prayer flags of all colors hung in the trees, and little boys chased birds through the sand outside the temple. I passed two older, beautiful female monks with shaved heads in bright orange robes who smiled brightly at me as they passed. I’ve found while visiting Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka and Hindu temples in India, that even if I don’t understand the religion fully or know the stories behind all the images and deities I’m seeing, that just being in a temple and witnessing the faces of the devotees and their offerings of lotus blossoms, hearing their prayers and the ringing of bells and smellling the scent of oil lamps and incense, is a humbling and holy experience in itself.
The next day we drove to another Sarvodaya village. There we visited a small health center where a Sarvodaya worker was being trained. In the room was a bed for patients and on the wall a poster of the seven poisonous snakes in Sri Lanka . Next door to the health center was a small Sarvodaya library run by Buddhist monks and in it an example of a water pump they use when water is low. The rainy season in Sri Lanka began just before we arrived and before that was a drought that affected many of the villages. Many of the water tanks in the area which look like small lakes, some of which are hundreds of years old, had almost dried up and the farmers who get water from the tanks for irrigating their fields were having a difficult time. Although it’s rained briefly and daily since we’ve been here, the water levels are still low.
We also visited a preschool in the village where once again we were treated as special guests. The tiny children in their school uniforms danced and sang for us. The first dance was lively and a bit chaotic. They were all singing the same song, making motions of different animals and bumping into each other while one little boy turned cartwheels around the rest of them with a big smile on his face. The little girls did another dance with wispy sweet arm movements, carriying small water jugs on their hips. We all laughed and clapped and they served us refreshments. Visiting the preschools is always so much fun.
The village was filled with people young and old, all gathered for a Buddhist ceremony in honor of the monks. A few people carrying a colorful cloth over their heads, walked up to an altar of Buddha under a tree. Then prayers were started and with hands clasped in prayer, they all faced the tree and chanted prayers. After that we all mingled with the villagers, some of us taking pictures, some of us playing with the children. I sat on a grass mat in the shade with a group of buttery soft grandmothers who all spoke to me excitedly at the same time in Sinhala . I know a small bit of Sinhala and we related as best we could. They were asking me the name of my village. Since I live in the country and the closest town is Hot Springs, that’s what I told them and they repeated the name over and over.
Then everyone began to gather around a table set for the monks. A drum began beating and a strange horn was blown in a procession with the same colorful cloth held over the heads of those in procession. Winsor explained that the ceremony was an ancient Buddhist one carried over from India. Traditionally the monks went from house to house for food yet during the rainy season villagers would bring food to them. This celebration marked the end of the rainy season and the last of the meals brought to the monks. Although it wasn’t the end of the rainy season here, it was in India and although the monks no longer go from house to house for food, it is still celebrated as a Buddhist tradition. A long low table was set for the monks and about seven of them entered and took their seats, all wearing robes in different shades of orange and brown. Two of the monks were very young, ten or twelve years old. One monk with a large palm leaf fan held in front of him, recited verses in Pali, an ancient language. The monks were fed special traditional village food and presented with gifts from the villagers such as new robes. Winsor said the same ceremony was going on at the same time in surrounding villages and temples.
The next day Winsor took us down another red dirt road lined with rainy season puddles to a Sarvodaya village, Katukaliyawa, to witness a Sarvodaya Shramadana Society meeting . These meetings occur monthly in all the villages with the village Sarvodaya Shramadana Society president leading the meeting. This particular meeting centered around the opening of a bank in the village and the possibility for business loans. When we arrived they greeted us each with a flower garland around our necks of lavender, white and yellow flowers, some made of gold and red tinsel. It’s hard to understand why a normal college group like ourselves is treated with so much honor, but we have no choice but to accept it with thanks and go with the flow.
We entered a long room under a tin roof, rows of yellow tissue paper streamers hanging from the ceiling, blowing in the breeze. They gave us seats at the very front, facing everyone there. The room was filled almost completely with women and children. What I noticed was their long black hair, their eyes, the patterns in their clothes, the way the mothers held their children, our mutual unspoken contact through glances at each other. I also noticed how the children seemed to be such a part of everything, how they moved and squirmed and made noise without being silenced and a woman in peach in the first row breast fed her child during the meeting. The president , a woman in a pink sari, stood and gave a speech . We asked the women questions and Winsor translated for us. We learned that the reason why the room was filled mainly with women was because the men were working since the rainy season had just begun. Yet still it seems that many of the leadership roles in the Sarvodaya villages are filled by women and the village women take a large role in everything. To receive a loan from a Sarvodaya bank, you also have to participate in many of the activities of the village, for instance attending meetings. There’s a feeling that everyone belongs and everyone has a place. After asking questions, they served us coffee and halipa, a traditional sweet made of coconut, millet and sugar and baked in a large leaf. We decided to leave before the meeting got underway so we wouldn’t be too much of a distraction. It was a nice afternoon.
The next day the students packed small bags and took off on their village stays which would last three days. Winsor dropped them off in groups of two in Sarvodaya villages in the area. Once again they returned with wonderful stories and a deeper feel of what Sri Lankan village life is really like. They bathed in sarongs at village wells and no doubt had endless cups of sweet tea. Baikal and Mike got to witness a rare scene--some villagers came across a wild elephant that had just been gored to death by a larger one. Lots of people arrived down a path through the woods to see the elephant. We always hear of the wild elephants in this area that come out at night and on one village stay years ago I was awakened by the sound of some crashing outside the hut I was staying in, but this was the first sighting by our group. The students no doubt have endless stories of their own to tell and are working on photographic and narrative projects of their village stays right now.
The day after they returned from their village stays , Winsor took us to Padaviya, an hour and a half north of Anuradhapura. There we visited the Kabithigollawa Sarvodaya district center. It was a beautiful place on the edge of a very old water tank dotted with lotuses. In the building they had a wonderful collection of traditional agricultural equipment, from tools to baskets to gourd containers. Outside was a small thatch building and high in a tree,a thatch roofed hut built as an example of the huts that farmers often slept in to guard their fields at night from wild animals. We sat inside and they told us about the biodiversity projects they’re working on and a special project promoting the cultivation of traditional rice seed.
They are educating villagers about farming using traditional tools and methods without the use of fertilizers and other chemicals and about planting tradional strains of rice that are more nutritious. Apparently there has been a large rate of kidney disease in that area that they suspect could be partially due to chemical fertilizers getting into the water supplies. They fed us a meal served from bowls made of leaves and we ate off of huge lotus leaf plates picked form the tank. Just before we left, an eighty year old man waved his hands in the air as he sang us a blessing to keep us healthy and safe. On this trip we’re never sure of what surprises might happen next. It was beautiful.
The next day was a big one. We got up earlier than usual and took off to another village to participate in a youth camp organized by Sarvodaya. It was a rare event and we were lucky to be a part of it. I learned that Winsor had changed the date of the event just so we could participate in it. The youth camp was organized to join a group of about 50 Tamil youth between the ages of 18 and 21 from the northeastern coastal town of Batticolla with the youth of a Sinhalese village near Anuradhapura. For the last 20 years, Sri Lanka has been divided in a civil war between the predominantly Hindu Tamils of the north of the country and the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese living in the lower half of the island, until the recent cease fire. The first time I visited Sri Lanka 18 years ago, it was a completely diffierent experience. There were soldiers everywhere and everything was heavily guarded. For the entire lifetime of theTamil youth from Batticloa who came to the youth camp, their country has been at war and they have probably never been far south of their home or had a communal experience with the Sinhalese. They speak a different language and are Muslim and Hindu. They took an eight hour bus ride to participate in the youth camp and while there, they stayed in the houses of Sinhalese families.
The entrance to the youth camp was decorated with an amazing sign made of woven leaves with the word welcome spelled out in flowers in Tamil, Sinhalese and English . The day started out as a shramadana, a work day, and we worked together clearing grass and bushes from the edges of a village path with hoes and scythes. The sun was hot and the air was humid and the tools were limited and we soon scattered off in our own directions talking and playing with others there. Some of us joined the women and watched as they cooked lentils in huge pots over small fires and Caitlin helped them wash rice in big metal pots, all for our lunch. I admit, during the first part of the day we were all having a bit of a hard time with the heat and the humidity. But after lunch came and the sun became less intense, we all came back to life. A volleyball tournament started after lunch and we all gathered in chairs around the volleyball court to watch. The first match was the Tamil men against the Sinhalese men, and then the Sinhalese women against the Tamil women , and finally, our group against the Sinhalese men, who just barely beat us. It was full of laughs and full of fun. Then the cricket match began. Some of the students borrowed bicycles and took rides through the village. Dad, Becca, two Sarvodaya workers and I took a walk to a water tank nearby . It was magical. I realized that it wasn’t only the connection with Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka that I was in love with , but the beauty of the island itself. The air was cooler and the water tank was covered in lily pads and graceful white water birds. We passed thatched roof huts and tropical trees and flowers. A young Tamil man picked bouquets for Becca and I . The sun was setting over a rocky hill and everything felt peaceful. We walked back to the village along a narrow dirt path following the lead of a little village boy.
Soon it was time for dinner and we all walked in the twilight to a village house where we were once again served an amazing dinner by people we didn’t even know. We walked in the dark back to the sight of the youth camp. They built a big bonfire fire and the Tamils and Sinhalese came back for the festivities fresh from their baths and dressed up for the cultural show. Speeches were given about peace between the Tamils and the Sinhalese and the festivities began. People stepped in front of the fire group by group, some in elaborate costumes, performing both Tamil and Sinhalese dances and songs. The contribution of our group was a wild and suddenly improvised dance and song routine of a Michael Jackson song, “Man in the Mirror”, sung by Cheryl and Anna , including an amazing group of back up dancers--Joanna, Jo, Caitlin and Kathryn. They stirred the crowd and represented us well and then Mike backed up Baikal with drums in another impromptu rap performance spontaneously written by Baikal about Tamils, Sinhalese and peace. It was all so beautiful. The rain was falling hard and we decided to head on home , twelve hours since we’d arrived. It was an amazing day for all of us.
Finally, today is a rest day for us all. It’s the first chance the students have gotten since we arrived in Sri Lanka to sleep late and spend the entire day as they please. Tomorrow we will set off early on our tour of the island which we will describe to you in future letters. This written summary of our trip has has stretched on longer than I planned . It’s both hard to include everything and leave anything out. Hidden in between the lines of this letter are sights of mountains I will never forget, images of beggars faces, thoughts of home and the incredibly fortunate lives we all live, incredible tastes and unimaginable colors, moments too beautiful to explain in words. I love this group. We hope you all are doing well on the other side of the world, rest assured we’re all doing well.
OUR TIME WITH SARVODAYA
Susie Mosher