Housing

Back in Charlottesville my boyfriend Dan explained to me that everyone goes through three phases of culture shock: first there is the enchantment phase where everything is strange and wonderful. Then the anger and disillusionment phase where you can’t get anything done the way you want. If you persevere through the anger and disillusionment, you might make it to acceptance and live a productive life in the host culture. “I’m going to do my best to help you in each phase any way I can,” he solemnly promised me, kissing my hand. My first morning in Sri Lanka Dan and I went for a walk on the edge of a tea estate. As I ripped leeches out of the thin white flesh between my toes I knew I was headed straight for disillusionment, bypassing enchantment entirely. This premonition was confirmed during my first outing on the streets of Kandy. Herds of young men stared at me, buses rushed by inches from me, three-wheeler drivers honked and shouted “hello my friend.” Walking down the street in the third world was a familiar, well-worn path. Nothing was new, energizing, or exciting. Everything I perceived ranged from irritating to dangerous.

We began our life in Sri Lanka living in a hotel, subsisting off of pre-packaged cookies and bananas. We embarked on our apartment search immediately, even before Dan had made an appearance at the think-tank where he would be working for the year on his Fulbright-Hayes grant. We worked exclusively off of personal references he had gleaned from phone calls to old friends developed over the ten years he had been coming to Sri Lanka doing everything from undergraduate study to tsunami relief work.

Dan told me not too expect too much out of an apartment in Sri Lanka. When I walked into the first annex candidate I panicked at the dank interior space, musty furniture, and rotting straw mattress. For the first time I thought to myself “I can’t make it here.” As Dan discussed details in English with the gnarled old woman in a blue-floral muumuu who owned the building and lived downstairs, I remained numb and mute. The conversation veered from utilities and deposit to her telling us about the five noble truths of Buddhism and how that was all you really needed to know in order to live a good life. I knew that one way or the other I would never live in that place. I was not going to smell that smell, I was not going to listen to that woman.

“Not too bad,” Dan commented when we were back in the three-wheeler, “I liked the tile floor, that’s nice,” he continued thoughtfully. I remained mute. “So, did you like it?” he asked proddingly. I stared at him icily for a second before I cut my words loose.
“Are you kidding? That stinking, rotting, molding pit? Oh hell no. Hell no.” I replied, looking away from Dan, out into the street.
“Ok, ok, but really, that’s not too bad, by Sri Lanka standards, you understand right? That’s just the bed molding. The smell’d go away if we just got rid of that bed… I think.” He replied, not entirely convinced himself.
“Ask Malik about a monthly rate. I would rather live in the hotel than that place. Ask about the super-room. With the fridge and the satellite cable. I’m not living there, tile floor or not. Malik’s place has a tile floor. She even admitted that the toilet needed to be fixed. That’s not a good harbinger of things to come in the plumbing department.” I warned, watching the edge of the road sweep by.
“Alright, I’ll ask Malik about the rate,” Dan conceded. “Actually though, the next place is Malik’s reference.”

We started straight up a steep hill in the three-wheeler with Malik’s nephew, Siam, at the helm. He had to weave the little rig across the road in a snake-like pattern in order to build up enough traction to keep going up. Soon after we topped out on the crest of the hill Siam pulled the three-wheeler up over on the side of the road. We started town some overgrown stone steps that led straight down the side of the hill. Dan and Siam were jabbering in Singhala as I focused my attention on not re-injuring my left ankle, still weak from a nasty fall during a hike with my father back in the states.
“If this is the way into this damn place, then that’s a deal-breaker,” I stopped dead like an angry mule and piped up.
“Malik owns land here, this is where he is going to build a new hotel,” Dan explained as Siam pointed out various pieces of the landscape.
“That’s fascinating, it’s a lovely spot. Now, where are we going?” I retored.
“Uh, right,” Dan replied looking at Siam. The men spontaneously started back up the hill. I was hot and very daunted by the tall weeds and steep land. We walked back up the road and stopped in front of a black iron gate. Siam pushed it open, pushed a little doorbell mounted into the gate, and the three of us started walking down steps sheltered by corrugated tin completely covered with a canopy of fuchsia bougainvillea. It interested me that Siam clearly wanted to see this place, whereas the previous one held no interest for him. All I could see was the sloping red-tile roof and the huge mango tree spreading over it. A middle-aged Singhala woman in western dress left the lower part of the house and started walking up the driveway that curved around toward the stairs. She introduced herself as Mrs. Dissanayake and opened a door at the base of the stairs that led into the top floor of the building, ushering us inside into a narrow, dark hallway.

I felt confused and my head started to hurt behind my eyes as I moved from the afternoon light through the dark hallway with a red-waxed concrete floor behind Dan and Siam. The little hallway emptied out into large living room filled with afternoon light. I suddenly realized that I was standing in the top floor of an Art Deco mansion. The whole east side of the house was constructed on a series of ovals. There was a long oval patio that continued into an oval kitchen. The view from the patio was post-card worthy, looking down over the rooftops and the lush greenery, over the lake, to the gleaming gold roof of the Temple of the Tooth, and off into the distant mountains. Looking out into the view I suddenly felt a new pain, the pain of loss. I knew that I could live in this magnificent, if unfurnished, palace, but not forever. Further exploration of the annex revealed more treasures, a white tile full bath, separate half-bath, two bedrooms, a living room, and dining room. Thirteen total windows, hot-water shower, good flush on the toilets. We would have the run of the whole upper floor and the landlords would live underneath. Dan could park his 1968 Lancer at the top of the stairs on a slab just inside the iron gate.

Back at the hotel Malik greeted us in the packed dirt alley. Malik was taller than the average Sri Lankan, nearing six feet. In a country of warring Buddhists and Hindus he was a hard-working Muslim man with two hotels and a cell phone glued to his hand. He spoke excellent Sinhala, Tamil, English, and French, conducting business in all four languages every day. It was said in Kandy that his hotels were the only places you could get a beef curry and a beer at the same place. He asked us how the apartment hunt had gone. Dan told him that the first place was not an option, asked about a monthly rate, and told him that his contact had a nice annex, but she wanted $200 US for it furnished, not including utilities, a king’s ransom. Plus she wanted everything up front, the whole year, which was not possible for us. Malik lead us up past our little room to the deluxe room. As promised there was a mini-fridge, a small tv, an attached bath, and small balcony on the alley-side of the building as opposed to the open-sewer side of the building. The floor of the room was large yellow tile and the whole bath was blue tile. The ceiling was high and featured a ceiling fan. Malik would give it to us for $200 a month. “But I will speak to Mrs. Dissanayaka also,” he promised, “I’ll see what I can do there,” he continued and smiled reassuring. As I met his gaze and smiled back I realized that Malik possessed an almost unique quality amongst South Asian men, the ability to interact with a Western woman in a friendly but respectful manner.

Back on the tiny balcony of our little room Dan and I carefully weighed the options. We sat facing each other in teal plastic chairs, my freshly-washed feet up and resting on his thigh. My notebook was open on my lap and I made a list of all concerns related to each option. “That place up the hill, on Rajapilla Mawata, it smells of maintenance and upkeep,” Dan warned “it has one of those red-waxed concrete floors. Those things’re a pain in the ass. You can never really keep them clean. Plus, since it’s on Rajapilla Mawata, that means monkey attacks and I didn’t bring my sling-shot. Rajapilla Mawata is monkey central.”
“I do hate monkeys. All monkeys,” I conceded. “And it’s true that if we lived at the hotel everything would be taken care of. There would be no unknowns,” I agreed, “and no monkeys around here, it’s close to the office for you, lots of plugs, tons of hot water, no disasters,” I mused, writing furiously.
“The house is in a nicer part of town,” Dan countered, “I can take a three-wheeler back to the think-tank, and maybe one day my car will be finished and then I can park there. We could easily walk into Kandy to eat out and run errands, the place is internet ready, we could run around there, and there would be plenty of space to do yoga. Mrs. Dissanayake would have to come down in price, get us a decent bed, supply some kitchen things, and adjust the payment schedule.”
“We would have to deal with getting a servant for the house to do the laundry at least, and I’m not going to have a male servant in the house,” I warned, knowing that house-servants in Sri Lanka were most commonly male since an army of Sri Lankan women went abroad to work as domestic help sending back millions annually.
“But you could totally kick the ass of most lower-caste Sri Lankan men who would be working as servant,” Dan interrupted teasingly.
“That’s not the point” I bristled, “I want to feel comfortable in my own home. I want to be able to lounge around in a tank top and Capri pants. I don’t want to have to wear the chador-version of my Western clothes like I do out on the street. Not that it matters. I’ll probably get groped like once a week anyway. After what happened to me in India though, if some asshole decides to cop a feel here, he’d better melt back into the crowd and keep on moving,” I ranted, visualizing myself pushing some dirty man in a longi up against a wall, remembering myself frozen as a man grabbed my body over and over on a crowed street in Delhi.
“I know, I know Sweetie,” Dan soothed and rubbed the floral henna-design tattoo on the top of my right foot. “No men in the house. I won’t even have my research assistant over, where we live needs to be our sanctuary.”
“And we would need a floor fan since there are no ceiling fans,” I mused on, reviewing the lists for holes. “The view at the house is breath-taking, but you can’t live in the view.”
“Really though, we will have to see what Malik can do in terms of price and furnishings. This place is safe, but it will never really be ours. The house on Rajapilla Mawata will be an experience, one way or the other,” Dan replied.
“Well, I did come to Sri Lanka to have an experience, not live in a hotel. If Malik can broker it for us, then I think that we should take the house,” I said decisively, meeting Dan’s gaze, smiling, and seeing the view in my mind.

By the time Malik was through with the landlords he knocked the price down to $175 a month, payment in three month intervals, a new mini-fridge and gas cooker were to be provided, and for the coup-de-gras: a bed of our choosing was to be purchased. The only catch was that we could not move in for a week, until after the Perahera, the annual festival, was over. We agreed to the terms, paid the first three months up front, and hunkered down into the hotel to wait. “I don’t want to start work until we are settled in,” Dan said after we paid our deposit the next afternoon. “We should stop in over at the think-tank, but that’s it. Let’s be tourists for the week, I’ll get out my Nikon and wear it around my neck and we’ll have to get an ugly Batik salwar for you,” he proclaimed.