Social Economic Development

“This time we’ll go to Colombo and stay,” Dan remarked as we made up our embassy shopping list at our dining room table. An urgent need for coffee and peanut butter was forcing us to take another trip down the hill. “We’ll stay with Mrs. Ratnavale, she has a house in Colombo 7,” he explained, “she rents a few rooms to scholars and NGO workers. It’s really the best thing to do. It’s affordable and in a nice neighborhood,” he assured me.

“Colombo doesn’t have much in the way of mid-range hotel options,” I agreed. “Either you’re at the Hilton or in some dive that rents by the hour.”

“Colombo 7 is another world,” Dan explained. “There’re nice sidewalks, even a coffee shop. It’ll be interesting for you to see it.”

“I’m ready for another world,” I agreed grimly.

Mrs. Ratnavale’s house was another world as promised. From the outside it looked like an ugly circa 1970’s concrete block-style construction with strange plantation-shutter style oblong windows. Once inside however, my bare feet were greeted by meticulously clean polished dark burgundy floors. The slanted-open windows filtered in plenty of tropical sunlight and air, but the house remained cool and well-ventilated even without air-conditioning. Blue-patterned Chinese vases rested on well-made vintage wooden furniture and framed quality batik hung on the walls. An entire extended family of servants cooked, cleaned, and maintained the large house and small garden. As the servants ferried our bags upstairs they insisted I sign in the guestbook. Each resident put their name and organization or university. I signed Dan in as a Fulbright-Hayes from the University of Virginia. I then wrote my own name and in the place where people were putting things like “University of Oslo,” and “USAid,” I wrote “trailing spouse.” Of course this wasn’t even true since we weren’t married, but I didn’t want a blank next to my name.

After briefly arranging our room we came back downstairs to see the small garden at the back of the house. The walls of other homes formed two of the garden walls and the house flowed into the garden in an L-shaped verandah on the other two sides. I found this postage-stamp sized little slice of manicured order stunning. A slim, young, Caucasian woman with dark hair sat reading in one of the chairs. As we walked along the verandah toward the woman in the chair another slender, older, Sinhala woman came out of the house near the seated woman. I recognized the walking woman as Mrs. Ratnavale from framed photos I had seen upstairs. She waved a socially well-polished “hello,” to Dan who returned her greeting, and then turned to the seated woman and said, “How are you feeling today?” She asked in a tone that implied a serious illness rather than a casual greeting.

“Oh, I feel fine today,” The seated woman replied and smiled up at Mrs. Ratnavale. Mrs. Ratnavale seemed satisfied with this answer and glided back into the house.

Worn out from the journey and intrigued by the reading woman who perhaps harbored some sort of interesting tropical illness, I sat down in one of the verandah chairs near her. I made sure to arrange myself so that my body was open to the woman reading the book. “How long have you been staying here?” I asked Dan once he had seated himself next to me.

“I’ve been coming here just about as long as she has been renting rooms,” he replied. “You see,” he continued, “She was widowed early and I think she started this business to keep her house,” Dan explained.

“It’s really nice,” I commented. “It’s a pretty interesting look into the world of Colombo 7.”

“I knew you’d like it,” Dan replied happily.

“Excuse me,” the seated woman addressed Dan in an American accent, “What organization are you with?”

“I am a Fulbright-Hayes scholar,” he replied. “That’s a senior Fulbright,” he clarified. Dan didn’t like to be thought of as just a regular Fulbrighter, a group he considered to be sporting dreads and doing their projects on “Post-Colonial Queries of Sri Lankan Beach Culture.”

“I see,” she mused, “and where are you based?”

“Kandy,” Dan replied.

“And where are you based?” I piped up.

“Trinco,” she replied, and I was elated. Here in front of me was a woman possessing not only a possible tropical disease, but also from Trinco. Trincomalee was on the northeast coast about 110 miles from Kandy. On a map it looks like a small animal took a big bite out of the northeast side of the Sri Lanka’s teardrop shape to make the Trinco harbor. It is considered one of the best harbors in the Indian Ocean. I have read that it is accessible to all variety of vessels in all possible variations of weather. The LTTE at this time claimed Trinco as the capital of Tamil Eelam. Trinco had the potential to be a major commercial port, but the on-going ethnic conflict as well as devastation from the 2004 Asian Tsunami had stunted its potential.

“Wow,” Dan and I replied in awe. We both knew Trinco was it, the true war zone in our own backyard.

“So, I mean, what’s it like up there?” I asked.

“Well,” she replied slowly, “I have very little freedom; an armed guard goes with me everywhere. Nobody goes out at night. I can see and hear some of the fighting, especially at night.”

“What projects does your NGO focus on?” I asked.

“We do social economic development, you know, small-scale infrastructure rehabilitation, livelihoods restoration, stuff like that” she replied matter-of-factly and paused. When met with our blank, uncomprehending stares she explained, “Basically we pay day-laborers to repair the roads after the fighting moves through.”

“Shouldn’t the government do that?” I blurted out. “I mean, shouldn’t they be responsible for the mess they’ve made?”

“Well…” she shrugged.

“So,” I began. “Let me see if I have this right. The government can trash Trinco and they know that an NGO will come along to pay their citizens to pick up the pieces so they can roll through the town again?”

“I signed up for a year assignment on this project, but I’m trying to get out early,” she admitted. “It does feel a bit enabling. I question what we are really accomplishing here.” I could see her total exasperation in this admission.

“Do you think that either side really wants peace?” I asked. She paused for a moment.

“No,” she replied. “The government clearly allows things to go on. Five telecom workers were abducted from their building by the LTTE and nobody saw anything. That big arms bust up there, how did all those guns get as far as they did? How then did they find them when they did?” We all sat in silence for a moment, thinking about the gravity of these issues.

“So, where else have you worked?” Dan asked, changing the tack of the conversation. As she began to list places I realized that working NGOs was a career path, an international corporate ladder. I felt stupid and naïve for ever thinking it was anything different. I envisioned most NGO workers more like Christine and Karen, people wanting to take a few months out of their live to live abroad and change the world. This woman was making a lifetime of aid work. She mentioned that after her experience in Sri Lanka she wanted to stay in the states for awhile and get her masters in International Development. “Then I’ll be able to get the really big jobs,” she explained.

“Ok,” I replied jovially, “but at what point do you get to ride around in the UN car with tinted windows and the snorkel on the front? Is that only for people with advanced degrees in Third World Hell Hole?”

“Probably,” she replied laughing.

“So, do you know Cindy?” Dan asked. As Dan and the NGO worker started to triangulate acquaintances, I studied her closely. She did not shift her weight or move around much in her verandah chair, which to me indicated some sort of exhaustion. Once they had established that Dan vaguely knew her roommate, an expat woman with seven indoor cats and a bread machine, I asked “So, I heard Mrs. Ratnavale ask how you were feeling, are you ill?”

“I came down to be tested for Typhoid,” she replied.

“Don’t you get vaccinated for that?” I asked, surprised.

“My vaccine is getting old, and just because you are vaccinated doesn’t mean that you can’t get it,” she reminded me.

“That’s one of those fecal-oral diseases right?” I asked. “Not too surprising considering that this is a culture where everyone eats curry and rice with their hands and there is rarely soap in the bathroom. How do they diagnose Typhoid anyway?”

“It’s a blood test,” she replied. “Then I have to wait a few days for results. It’s nice to get out of Trinco for a little while anyway.”

“I bet,” Dan replied, starting to stand up. “Well, we’ve got to get going to lunch; it was nice talking to you.”

“Good luck in your research,” she replied.

“I hope you feel better and they find a replacement for you soon,” I told her as I got up to leave. She brought her book up to eye level as we started off back into the house to call a cab.

“Man, Trinco,” I remarked to Dan once we were in the cab. “What was it like when you were up there?”

“I only got to go twice in the ten years I have been coming here,” He explained. “In 2000 some friends tried to get me to go. They assured me that the road to Trinco was ‘swept for mines every day.’” Dan laughed. “I wasn’t really comforted by that, so it wasn’t until the 2004 ceasefire that I finally went. First just to see it, there was so much hope during that time; this was right before the tsunami. They re-opened all of the roads. I went up there and Trinco was beautiful: beautiful white beaches, great diving and snorkeling. It has a great old Dutch fort also. It had so much potential. The second time was in 2005, after the tsunami. I went to interview a monk up there. Things actually looked pretty much the same; the hotel where I stayed was totally rebuilt. There were more NGOs and more relocation tents, that was about it.”

“It’s all just really sad,” I agreed. “I don’t think that either side really wants peace either, otherwise why would they have destroyed it? What is the LTTE fighting for at this point? They don’t represent most of the Tamil people, like the owner of the hotel down the hill. He’s a Tamil just running business, does the LTTE represent him? No. Do they represent the tea plantation workers? No.”

“Right,” Dan agreed. “And what you have to understand is that the LTTE is claiming a huge chunk of the eastern side of the island. A much larger area than they’ve ever been able to control.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “And then you’ve got these NGOs up there literally paving the way for them to fight back and forth in Trinco. No wonder that woman is questioning what can really be done here.”

“No kidding,” Dan replied, nodding in agreement.