I am Terry Holdsclaw. This is the story of my 2008 trip to Sri Lanka. This is a one-time post, and I will not be adding to it.

me at the city limit sign

This past August (2008) I had the opportunity to travel to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is the teardrop-shaped island off the southern coast of India. The majority of the people there speak Sinhalese, and a minority speak Tamil. Most speak at least a little English. I was an AFS (exchange) student there in the summer of 1980. I traveled with a group of 38 students from the U.S., and we lived with families in their homes. We were scattered across the island, and I lived in the southwestern coastal town of Hikkaduwa with the Suriarachchi family.

most of our AFS group at Sigiriya, 8/16/1980

As a bit of background, the family consists of my host father Chandra (I call him Tha-tha, Sinhalese for Dad or father), my host mother Malini (I call her Amma, Sinhalese for Mom or mother) and Lalith, their son who is only a couple years older than myself. We have stayed in contact for the past 28 years, and they still live in the same house. Tha-tha is a doctor who still sees a few patients at home where he has his office. Amma hosted tourists in their home for many years up until the 2004 tsunami. Lalith is now a lawyer working for Customs. He lives in Nugegoda, a few miles southeast of Colombo, the capital. Lalith's wife is Prasanna, and they have a daughter named Nipuni and a son named Rahul. Prasanna operates two tea factories. Amma's sister, Chitra, lives in a house just behind Amma and Tha-tha's. Chitra's son, also named Prasanna, is a doctor.

Myself, Tha-tha and Amma, 8/19/1980

Tha-tha, Lalith and Amma, 8/30/2008


Chitra and Prasanna, 9/1/2008

Amma, Prasanna, Chitra and myself in Matara, 8/8/1980

I flew out of Charlotte, NC on Friday, August 22 and after a long layover in Frankfurt, Germany, I arrived in Sri Lanka on Sunday, August 24. The total flight time is about 19 hours, and the time difference in the summer is 9 1/2 hours. Upon arrival at the airport I met the first of two very unexpected problems on this trip. My luggage had stayed in Frankfurt, since the US Airways lady who checked my suitcase didn't tag it to go any farther. Fortunately I had all my necessities in my carry-on, along with a full change of clothes. So this problem really didn't cause any serious trouble. I did finally get my suitcase before I left.

I was able to make my way the 78 miles south by bus to Hikkaduwa, arriving before dark. At six degrees north of the equator, it gets light in Sri Lanka about 6:00 a.m. and gets dark about 6:30 p.m. Reaching the house, I encountered the second problem. My family was not there. The caretaker (Amaradasa Jayasinghe) met me at the gate and gave me a letter that Amma had left me. She had fallen ill, and after a few days in the hospital, she had gone with Tha-tha to recuperate at Lalith's house in Nugegoda. The house in Hikkaduwa was mine to use for two weeks. Unfortunately I had come to visit my family, not to go sightseeing, so this problem was more distressing than the first.

Amaradasa Jayasinghe, caretaker in Hikkaduwa, 8/26/2008

Baddegama Road, Hikkaduwa, 2008

Monday morning (8/25) I got up early, and not wanting to waste my sudden surplus of free time, I took the 6:15 train 12 miles south to the town of Galle. This was the same train (on the same schedule!) I took to school back in 1980, the few days I actually went to school. I walked around the old Dutch fort for a little while, then a little bit around the harbor as the shopkeepers and street vendors were opening up for the morning. Fishermen had their fresh catches for sale by the beach. It was hard to imagine that this very area was wiped out by the tsunami. I went from there to visit Chinta DeSilva, my AFS counselor (each exchange student had a counselor in addition to their host family). I met her son Channa, her daughter Priyanni and Priyanni's son. While I was there she got another son, Vigitha, on the phone. Channa also got his other brother, Hemnath, on Skype, on the computer, so that I was talking to him face to face on a laptop! Hemnath visited our home in Mooresville in the early 80s when he was in college in Tennessee, and he now lives in Virginia. We all did a bit of reminiscing from way back.

Chinta DeSilva and myself in Galle, 8/25/2008

After I returned to Hikkaduwa, Sumana Alwis came to meet me. Her father Peter and her sister Lali lived just up the street in 1980 and were good friends of the family. Lali tried to teach me Sinhalese. Mr. Alwis showed me around Galle and took me to his rubber and cinnamon estate. Mr. Alwis died some years ago, and Lali now lives in Sydney, Australia. Sumana lived in the house until the tsunami damaged it too badly to re-occupy. Sumana would come by several times throughout my visit to check on me and make sure I had everything I needed. Monday evening after I returned from supper, Kaniska Jayawardena came by to see me. He is Tha-tha's cousin from Galle. He spent a lot of time with us in 1980, so I got to know him pretty well. Like the rest of us, he is a little older and grayer, but I recognized him right away. Tha-tha had asked him to come and fix up a bicycle for me to ride while I was in town. Now, they drive on the left in Sri Lanka, so I never felt comfortable enough to ride the bike on the road. Monday evening Amma called and asked me to come stay with them at Lalith's house on Wednesday. They had room for me to stay there for a while. That was the best news I had had up until then. I had thought about moving my plane ticket up a week, but Amma asked me not to do it. My suitcase was suppose to arrive on Monday, but it did not come.

Sumana Alwis, 8/26/2008

Peter Alwis and his other daughter Lali, August 1980

Tuesday morning (8/26) Mr. Gunadasa came by to see me. He built Chitra's house, which is directly behind the Suriarachchi's house. (The house was built as a tourist house, but Chitra lives there now.) I got to know him fairly well, because they began construction while I was there in 1980. With him was another man named Patty who also worked on the house. Patty would come by several times during my visit, as he and the caretaker (Amaradasa) were friends. The three of us had several conversations, but they didn't speak English, and I didn't understand much Sinhalese, so we didn't communicate very well. I studied Sinhalese from April to August, but it was only enough to carry on a very simple conversation.

Chitra's house in Hikkaduwa, 9/3/2008

Chitra's house under construction, 8/19/1980

Mr. Gunadasa (in the blue shirt) with two of his workers, 7/28/1980

Mr. Gunadasa, 9/3/2008

I went in the morning to meet up with Sarah Griffith, a woman from Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands) who comes frequently to do aid work. I had read about her work on the internet, and she concentrated on the area around Hikkaduwa and Galle. She is building homes, a school, giving out food parcels to needy families and cricket bats to children. She has started a bag-making business to employ several ladies whose seaside village was relocated inland after being destroyed by the tsunami. To read about the charitable work she is doing, go to www.bridge2srilanka.com. We went and visited a boy who lost both legs to a train. She is trying to raise money to take him to the U.K. for artificial legs. From there we went to see the bag factory. Then we went out in the country to look at a tea plantation. After lunch we went and looked at a house they were building and also the school they are working on. On the way to the jobsite, we saw them pulling a train car up onto the tracks from where it de-railed a few weeks earlier, at the cost of four lives. In the morning I had washed my 'other' set of clothes, just as the day before, but as it rained most of the day, they didn't dry at all. I ate a late supper with Sumana at a local hotel and went to bed.

Sarah Griffith at "Bags of Appeal" factory near Galle, 8/26/2008

tea plants on the hill under the shade of larger trees

righting a derailed train car at Hikkaduwa, 8/26/2008

(note the dented bridge)

one of Sarah's houses going up, 8/26/2008

I got up early Wednesday morning (8/27) and headed back north. After a short side trip to a small town named Bandaragama, I arrived at Nugegoda and walked one long block to Lalith's house. Chitra met me at the door, and then I saw Tha-tha and Amma. Since Lalith's wife and children were in Pelmadulla, the town where her two tea factories are located, they had an extra room for me. I stayed the rest of the day and just visited. Although I had bought a takeout lunch on the way up, they had lunch there at the house. This was the first home-cooking I had had since arriving on Sunday, and it was very good. Lalith came in after work, and he took me to Colombo to get another shirt, since my spare was wet. My clothes pretty much stayed damp the whole time I was there. The humidity was so high (near 100%) that not only did my clothes not dry very well outside, but I stayed wet from sweat all day. I woke up each morning to wet sheets and then sweated the rest of the day. So after 28 years, I finally got to see my family again. And that was the whole purpose of the trip. We got to talk for a long time, and I also got to hear their firsthand account of the tsunami.

"No Limit" store in Nugegoda where LTTE killed 17 people with a package bomb on 11/28/2007----one block from Lalith's house

Thursday morning (8/28) we had a breakfast of kiribath (milk rice) and stringhoppers. Stringhoppers are thin, steamed rice 'noodles' that are hand pressed in the home. Tha-tha says that kiribath is for special occasions, so I felt honored. In Sri Lanka they eat with their hands, so just as I did back in 1980, I also ate with my hands. Lalith has an excellent cook there named Shirmila. She fixed all our meals and tea. It turned out that my suitcase had been sent to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in an unexplainable attempt to get it to Sri Lanka faster, so I went into Colombo to buy a few more clothes. Other than this trip and walking down to the market at Nugegoda, I didn't do much but visit with the family. For lunch dessert we had curd and treacle. Curd was one of the foods that I really wanted to have on this trip, and it was as good as I remembered. It is curdled water buffalo milk, something like strong yogurt. Treacle is a tasty, sweet syrup made from the sap of the kitul palm. Boiled down further, it becomes jaggery, a solid sugar similar to maple sugar or the Mexican piloncillo.

Terry eating with his hands, 2008

Amma told me back when I was planning the trip that I would be going to Pelmadulla to see the tea factories and gem pits, and Friday (8/29) was the day for that. Pelmadulla is about 75 miles or so southeast of Colombo, or four hours by express bus. 'Express' only means that the bus doesn't stop at every stop, just most of them. Pelmadulla is 12 miles from Ratnapura, and the entire area is known for its gems. Rubies, sapphires, aquamarine, tourmaline, topaz, garnet, amethyst and many other gems are mined there. I got to meet Lalith's wife Prasanna and their two kids, Nipuni and Rahul for the first time, though only briefly. Prasanna is busy running both tea factories and politicking too. Her family is heavily into politics. Her assistant Hasitha took me on a tour around the first tea factory. The factory runs non-stop, processing 33,000 lbs. of fresh tea leaves a day. It's a fascinating process which I still don't fully understand.

a tea plant---only the tip bud and the next two leaves are picked

finished tea, ready for packaging

Later in the afternoon, they took me to see a gem mine. On the way there, we stopped at a rice field and watched the farmers remove the seedheads from the stalks. The seedheads would then be dried in the sun. At the gem operation, the soil was dug from an underground mine, brought to the surface and washed in the river in wicker baskets from which the rough stones were removed. The men had just finished working for the day and were cleaning up in the river when we arrived, but one of them took a basket and some soil and showed me how they sift for the rough stones. We left the mine and stopped next door at the Buddhist temple. Prasanna's father had just completed some new construction there before he passed away last year. Shortly before dark the manager, Dayanath, took me to the other tea factory. It is a new factory, much more automated than the first one.

separating rice seedheads from the stalks

showing how to wash and sift for gems in Pelmadulla, 8/29/2008

the dagoba at the temple in Pelmadulla, 8/29/2008

We stopped at a local restaurant for supper, and I ordered hoppers. Curd, hoppers and rambutans are the three foods that I most looked forward to eating. There's not much better than a breakfast of hoppers and jam. It turned out that rambutan season had just finished, and this was a bad year for them anyway, so I never even saw any of them. A rambutan is a large marble-sized fruit with a soft-spiny husk. Inside is a juicy meat similar in texture to a grape. Inside that is an inedible seed. I could eat rambutans by the dozens.

rambutans on the tree

I got up early Saturday morning (8/30) to get ready to make the trip back to Nugegoda. They gave me two large bags of tea and a ride to the bus stand at Ratnapura. From there I got a bus that I won't soon forget. That driver used the whole road to get us back to Nugegoda in 2 1/2 hours, roughly an hour faster than the same part of the trip out yesterday. I took a short movie out the front windshield so that people wouldn't accuse me of lying when I told them about that trip. Somewhere along the way a man got on the bus with two huge sacks containing bundles of jaggery. Each sack looked like it weighed over a hundred pounds. Although I wanted several bundles, I only had exact change for one.

Amma's youngest sister Swarna was at the house in Nugegoda when I arrived. We went to visit her husband Mano in Bambalapitiya, only a few miles away. Swarna cooked lunch, and then we all got to visit for a little while. Both of their children work and live overseas now. I had visited the family at the same place on a few occasions in 1980, and it was Mano that I finally contacted after the tsunami to find out that my family was alive and safe. Although at that time I had not spoken to him for 24 years, he immediately remembered me when I called!

Swarna and Mano, 8/30/2008


Mano, Swarna and their children with Terry, 8/10/1980

After returning home, I walked down to the vegetable market to get some pictures. I bought three different kinds of gourds at the market--and for my friends in the gourd club, they were--snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina), bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) which is known in gourd circles as balsam-pear, and a regular birdhouse gourd (Lagenaria vulgaris). The birdhouse gourd was found in several different shapes, from a long, narrow one to a regular birdhouse-shaped one. I also saw two other gourds which I did not purchase--ridged luffa (Luffa acutangula) which I have grown myself, and ash pumpkin which we know as wax gourd (Benincasa hispida). Okay, serious gourders know. All these were sold as vegetables, and people seemed unfamiliar with other uses of gourds except the regular luffa sponge.

birdhouse gourds for sale as vegetables


snake gourds in the upper left, bitter gourds in the lower left, and ridged luffas in the lower right, all sold as vegetables in the Nugegoda market, 8/30/2008




two more shapes of gourds used as vegetables, U.S. $0.17 per pound, 8/30/2008


dried fish at the Nugegoda market, 8/30/2008


Mrs. Sriyalatha at her stall at the Nugegoda market, 8/30/2008

In the evening I got to spend some time talking to Amma, Tha-tha and Chitra. Even though they all grew up speaking English as well as Sinhalese, it was still a bit difficult to follow their dialect of English with their pronunciations. I think they had more trouble understanding my English, though. We had a nice supper of rice and curried vegetables. Rice is served with every meal, but there are always different curried dishes, and every one of them is delicious.

On Sunday (8/31) I didn't really do very much except stay around the house and pass the time talking to the family. Shirmila took the gourds I bought the day before and started preparing them as curry dishes. She let me take pictures all along the way. She prepared the bitter gourd and the birdhouse gourd, but not the snake gourd. We ate these vegetables with rice at lunch. They were very good. The curried birdhouse gourd had no special gourd flavor that I could tell. The bitter gourd curry was just a tiny bit bitter, but it had a good flavor. I think the slight bitterness may have helped the flavor a little bit. I got these recipes and a few others from Amma too. Late in the afternoon Tha-tha and I went a couple miles down the street to see their new house. They are trying to sell the house in Hikkaduwa and are planning to move to Nugegoda.

Shirmila preparing the gourd for lunch, 8/31/2008


preparing the bitter gourd


finished---curried gourd!


and curried bitter gourd


Tha-tha at their new house in Nugegoda, 8/31/2008

In the evening Rekha Hewavithana (her maiden name) and her family came to pick me up, and we all went a few miles south to Moratuwa to her sister Nayana's house. Nayana was having a birthday party for her daughter. Back in 1980 Rekha and Nayana lived in Galle and were host sisters to Debbie Bakken, one of the girls in our group. Since Debbie was a friend of mine and they lived around the corner from my counselor Chinta DeSilva, we got to be friends. I visited their house on a couple of occasions. It was Rekha, Nayana and their father that escorted me to Hikkaduwa the very first time, since they were headed to Galle with Debbie and my family's home was right on the way. They called me 'vandura moona', which in Sinhalese means 'monkey face.' When I asked them if they remembered the nickname they had given me, Nayana immediately said 'vandura moona'! They continued to write me for a few years after I came home, but eventually we lost contact. I have to thank Lalith, because he knew where Nayana was living and put us in touch. It was an unexpected and wonderful surprise to get to see not one, but both of them again. Rekha and her family live in Qatar (in the Middle East) and were home for summer vacation since the temperature in Qatar is around 120 Fahrenheit. Upon hearing that I had to wonder if the chocolate bars in my suitcase in Saudi Arabia had turned to liquid. Each day I called the airline to see what the story was. All they could say was that the bag was in Riyadh and that they would get it as soon as they could. Lalith and Amma seemed to think I would never see it again, and slowly I was beginning to agree.

Rekha Hewavithana, Debbie Bakken and Nayana Hewavithana at their house in Galle, 7/1/1980


Rekha, myself and Nayana, 8/31/2008

Monday (9/1) would turn out to be a long, busy day. Since Lalith's family would be coming back from Pelmadulla (so the children could begin the new school year), I was losing my room and would need to go back down to Hikkaduwa until Thursday. Shirmila made stringhoppers again for breakfast, but this time she saved back a little flour and showed me how to make them myself. So I also got to make a few of them. Chitra's son Prasanna was leaving for work, so I got a few pictures of the two of them together. I went into Colombo (Kollupitiya and Bambalapitiya) shopping for books. I had been wanting some language books and also a Sinhalese Bible. I found the Bible and several bilingual booklets at the Ceylon Bible Society. I left there and went to two other bookstores on Galle Road and bought several more books. I must have walked two to three miles before catching a bus back to the house. In 1980 on more than one occasion, Richard Mandel and I had walked several miles down this same stretch of Galle Road just to avoid having to pay for a tri-shaw. And 28 years later here I was doing it again!

stringhoppers ready for steaming

I arrived back at the house in time for lunch. Chitra had gone to the store and bought a coconut scraper and a stringhopper press and gave them to me as a gift. One last call to the airport found my luggage to be coming in "tomorrow", if that could be believed. Then I left to go back down to Hikkaduwa. On the way down, I had planned to stop in and visit Achini Kandana Arachchi, a girl I met on the internet. MyLanguageExchange.com helps put people in contact who are trying to learn each other's languages. I was searching for someone to help me with Sinhalese, and she was looking for someone to help her with English and also Japanese. That is how we met, but until now we had only corresponded by e-mail. I went to Bandaragama to the factory where she works as human resources manager and met her and some of her co-workers. She took me to her home near Horana, about 10 miles down the road. She lives out in the country with her parents, her brother and her sister. It is beautiful out there, and so quiet. Up until then, I had only been in the city where the traffic noises permeate everything night and day. Her family has a small 'farm' where they grow half an acre of tea under the shade of rubber trees. They pick the tea once a week and collect the rubber sap every day. They have regular coconut trees as well as the orange variety called king coconut (a favorite drink of mine), guavas, pepper vines (the source of our black pepper), rambutan trees, lemon trees, banana trees, mango trees and a jackfruit tree. She gave me a beautiful framed painting of traditional dancers (which survived the plane flight home perfectly). Unfortunately my gifts for her were in my suitcase. All my gifts were in the suitcase. As it was getting late and getting dark, she and her brother drove me all the way to Hikkaduwa. Buses get harder to find at night, and I would have had a hard time navigating in the dark, so that was a blessing. By the time we arrived in Hikkaduwa, Amaradasa the caretaker had already gone to bed, so I got the keys from the neighbor and said goodbye to Achini and her brother.

Achini and her family, 9/1/2008


Achini and myself, 9/1/2008


This is the vine from which we get our black pepper.


"tambilis" or king coconuts

Tuesday morning (9/2) I was back to washing my own clothes by hand again (Shirmila had done it in Nugegoda), and as it was a dry, sunny day, they dried relatively quickly on the clothesline. As I went out to get breakfast, I bought a cluster of 10 king coconuts for 200 rupees ($2.00 U.S.). I suppose Amaradasa thought I was crazy. About 11 o'clock I started out walking to Peraliya, about 2 to 2 1/2 miles north of Hikkaduwa. Peraliya is where, during the tsunami, a train with over a thousand people aboard washed off the tracks, drowning most everyone. I had wanted to see three of the four passenger cars that had been moved down to the Hikkaduwa railway station after the disaster, but only three weeks before I came to Sri Lanka, they had moved them back up north to Ratmalana, so I never got to see them.

three carriages of the Samudra Devi parked as a memorial at Hikkaduwa

All along the Galle Road from Hikkaduwa to Peraliya there were damaged and destroyed houses alongside repaired houses and bare foundations. The Galle Road is right beside the ocean. After the tsunami the government decreed that no one could rebuild a home within 100 meters of the ocean. Damaged houses in that zone, however, could be repaired. Thousands of people not only lost their homes, but also lost their land in this way. It was at the Thotagamuwa community, between Hikkaduwa and Peraliya, at one of those damaged homes that I met a family when the little girl wanted me to take her picture. As I came closer, her mother and another woman came out to speak to me. The mother said that their house "had been broken" by the tsunami.

Looking north along the Galle Road just south of Seenigama. The island temple is visible at the far left in the distance. 9/2/2008


This is the little girl who waved to me at Thotagamuwa, 9/2/2008.


the girl's family, except her father


the father, who drove a tri-shaw

A little farther up the road at Seenigama, there are two temples to same Hindu god. One is on the beach and the other is on a small island a few hundred yards out. Devotees go to the on-shore temple for blessings, but they go to the offshore temple to put curses on those who have done them wrong. An interesting article on the two shrines can be found at www.themorningleader.lk/20060419/Travel.html.

the offshore temple at Seenigama

I walked on up the road to Peraliya where they now have a tsunami memorial. There in a small lake is a large Buddha statue built as a replica of one of the Buddhas destroyed in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001 by the Taliban. When the first wave came in, a southbound train, named the Samudra Devi (Queen of the Sea), stopped at Peraliya because of water on the tracks. Many of the villagers, thinking the train would be the safest place to be, came and boarded or took shelter behind it. The second wave swept the entire train off the track, killing most of the passengers and villagers in, on and behind it. A fascinating account (with lots of pictures) of a private international relief effort at Peraliya can still be found at www.peraliya.com.

tsunami memorial at Peraliya


Samudra Devi carriages turned over at Peraliya, December 2004


another view






three houses along the Galle Road destroyed by the tsunami

On my way back to Hikkaduwa, as I passed by that woman's broken house, her husband had come home and came out to speak. He is a trishaw driver. As I walked over the bridge where, the week before, they were righting the derailed train car, I met a man named Ranjith Karunasena who owns a small restaurant just south of Hikkaduwa. He spoke very good English, and he gave me his personal account of the tsunami. He and his wife and four year old daughter watched the sea come in and ran for safety, and they all survived. Although the building was not destroyed, he lost everything inside. He has reopened his restaurant, but is still trying to recover from what he had lost.

Ranjith Karunasena, owner of Hotel Galaxy restaurant, 9/2/2008

When I got back to the house, Sumana had been there and left me a lunch of rice and curry. I went back to town in the afternoon to shop for gifts. Amma called to tell me that they had delivered my suitcase, so I was able to buy gifts to take home. Without the suitcase I would have been limited to putting very small gifts in my carry-on. When I got back to the house, Patty was there talking to Amaradasa. I tried to have a conversation with them, but we just couldn't communicate very much.

Hikkaduwa railway station, 7/6/1980


Hikkaduwa railway station, 8/24/2008


Hikkaduwa railway station after the tsunami, December 2004


Galle Road, downtown Hikkaduwa, 8/26/2008

On Wednesday (9/3) I didn't do much except finish shopping for gifts. After lunch at a local restaurant, I came back to the house to find that Sumana had left me some gifts to take home. Lalith was supposed to come by the house in the evening on his way back home from Galle, so Amaradasa and I stood by the gate for a couple of hours, just waiting and watching traffic and people pass by. Occasionally, throughout the day, some people would come to see the doctor (Tha-tha) even though he wasn't there. Sumana came by again while we were waiting for Lalith, and she brought some more gifts for me to give my sister Kathy. Patty came by again, and his wife and son also came. His son was interested in my camera, so I let him take some pictures with it. While we were waiting at the gate for Lalith, Mr. Gunadasa drove by and spoke. A short while later his son Grashan came by to say hello. Grashan was only four when I was in Hikkaduwa the first time, but he often came with his father when they were building the new house in the back. He is 32 now and has five children of his own. Lalith came by and he took a couple of large items back to Nugegoda for me, so that I wouldn't have to carry them on the bus when I went back. After Lalith left Mr. Gunadasa came back, and we got to visit a little while. He speaks enough English that we could hold a decent conversation. As best I could understand, he lost his house to the tsunami.

Amaradasa the caretaker


Patty with his wife and son, 9/3/2008


Patty's son --- self-portrait


Mr. Gunadasa's son Grashan, 9/3/2008


Building Chitra's house, 8/19/1980---Grashan is the small boy standing on the scaffolding, and Patty is the one sitting on the scaffolding at the right.


View of Galle Road looking south past Abba's Restaurant, 8/25/2008.


View of Galle Road looking North past Abba's Restaurant after the tsunami, December 2004.


rocks near Coral Gardens Hotel, 9/3/2008


The same rocks as the ocean pulled way out between tsunami waves, 12/26/2004.




two different views of damaged tracks in the Hikkaduwa area after the tsunami


Galle Road in Hikkaduwa after the tsunami---what a mess it must have been!

Thursday morning (9/4) I headed back up north to Nugegoda. Since my flight was to leave at one minute past midnight on Friday morning, I could spend the whole day with the family and then go to the airport in the evening. Before I left Hikkaduwa, Amaradasa's son came by to meet me. I caught a fast, air-conditioned bus back towards Colombo, and I wish I had taken a movie of that ride. The driver turned a 55 mile, 2 1/2 hour trip into a two hour trip. He passed everything that was in front of him. He passed on the left. He passed on the right (into oncoming traffic). He passed in blind curves (into oncoming traffic). When there was no room to pass, he would pull out to pass anyway and make the oncoming traffic worry about what to do. It seemed to me like what the final lap of a NASCAR race must be like, except into oncoming traffic. And most of this trip was in the rain. Another unusual thing about this driver was that he never used his horn, even once. All of the buses and tri-shaws use their horns, and they use them constantly. The horn simply says "I'm here" or "I'm here, move over." The big buses stay on the horns constantly, using them to pass other vehicles, to warn people walking in blind curves or in town, and often for no apparent reason. In two weeks I saw no patrolmen and only two wrecks. I don't know how it all works!

Anyway, when I arrived at Lalith's house, I told Amma that that was the most fearless driver I had seen. She said "not fearless, but reckless." Swarna came mid-morning, and we went shopping for a saree for Kathy since I didn't know what to look for. When we got back to the house, I had plenty of time to visit while everyone was there (except Lalith). Finally I got to open my suitcase, and to my surprise, the chocolate bars were in excellent condition, unbroken and only a little soft. I had feared having chocolate juice all over everything if the temperature in Saudi Arabia was 120. I got to pass them out as gifts after all. That was my biggest concern about the whole suitcase ordeal anyway. Swarna stayed for a while and told us all about her recent trip to the Holy Land. It was very interesting. She even gave me a small olive branch from the garden of Gethsemane! She told us about her trip to Egypt too. It was fun to listen to the three sisters talk over all sorts of subjects. They were avid book-readers as children and all still enjoy reading and comparing notes. The conversation would be in Sinhalese, but then they might throw in a few English words here and there. Then the conversation might go to pure English or back to Sinhalese. It was constantly changing, and the English words weren't for my benefit. That's just the way the conversation progressed.

I had enough time to pass out gifts and pack my souvenirs and other gifts back for the return trip. And I was very happy to change into a dry set of clean clothes and shoes. In the evening the time finally came to say goodbye, and then Chitra's son Prasanna and the driver took me to the airport.

three sisters---Chitra, Swarna, Malini (Amma)

Both flights back home were very nice and seemed to go quickly. I was able to pass a lot of the time on the Sri Lanka-Germany flight by looking at the TV screen on the back of the seat in front of me. One of the channels had a view from the front of the plane, one had a view down below, and another channel gave a map of the journey with all the relevant flight statistics such as height, speed, outside temperature (down to -52 F) and ETA. The map always showed the plane's location, even as it changed scale. It was fascinating to watch the take-off and landing from the cockpit's point of view. Before leaving Sri Lanka I had to show my passport and ticket several times, but as we exited the plane in Frankfurt, Germany, the police were at the top of the ramp checking passports again! I wonder if they thought we picked up some extra people on the way?? On the Germany-Charlotte flight I passed most of the time reading a book I bought about the tsunami, an interesting first-hand account by a reporter who was in Sri Lanka at the time. At the end of the flight, as we dropped below the clouds, it was neat to see Mooresville, the nursery where I work, the peninsula where I live on Lake Norman (we were too high to make out my house), and many other familiar landmarks. Thirty minutes after landing, I had gotten my bags and was on my way out of the terminal where Mom was waiting for me. Our flight touched down at 3:15 pm, but the arrival board was telling Mom that we would not be in until after 5 pm, so it was a pleasant surprise for her when I came out on time.

Although the day-to-day plans had changed drastically due to Amma's illness, I still count the whole trip as a worthwhile undertaking. I did all the things I wanted to do. Any regrets, like missing out on rambutans, were trivial. I saw everyone I wanted to see as well as a few people I hadn't imagined seeing again. I also made a few new friends. I got to share my faith, if only briefly, with my host family. Most of all, I just got to spend time with my family after 28 years and get to know them again.

our Airbus A340-300 as we got off in Frankfurt, Germany, 9/5/2008


map of Sri Lanka

detailed map of the southwestern coast showing the different places where I went