Academic Function

Dan began his Sri Lankan journey by spending a semester studying on the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education Program or ISLE Program in 1996. The ISLE Program draws its students from a consortium of eight private colleges. A professor from one of the member colleges accompanies a group of fifteen to twenty undergraduates for a semester of study in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Two students from previous years accompany the group as “assistant directors.” Each student lives with a local host family for the duration of his or her studies. Students study Sinhala as well as courses on topics ranging from History, to Buddhism, to Environmental Studies in a trimester system. The courses are conducted by faculty of the local Peradeniya University either on the University campus or at the ISLE Program center, a converted mansion in Kandy last owned by a murdered political official. Classes are also conducted at a Kandy-based think-tank, the International Center for Ethnic Studies. The first trimester of study is devoted to Sinhala language and archeology, including a tour of the ancient cities of the north. The second two trimesters allow the students to select two of the five available topics each trimester.

To learn more about the program and Dan’s experience I perused the online handbook for the ISLE students. I paid particular attention to the “Homestay” section. Most of the items were common sense, but some of the points clearly rose from particular incidents such as item thirteen, “do not adopt stray dogs and bring them into the host family’s home.” In Asia animals are strictly kept outside of the house. I could see a nineteen-year-old ISLE student’s heart break the first time she saw a dog engulfed by mange suffering in the street, then horrifying the host family by bringing it into the home. Item number three also spoke to a particular incident, “If your host family leaves you alone for the weekend do not see this as an opportunity to party with other ISLE students.” The handbook also included a section on friendships with the opposite sex, warning the ISLE students that past ISLE students of both sexes had received marriage proposals.

Founded in 1982, the ISLE program was celebrating its Silver Jubilee while Dan and I were living in Kandy in January of 2007. As a Fulbright-Hayes scholar, Dan was one of their graduate luminaries and was invited to attend a fancy lunch at the Vice Chancellor’s Lodge at Peradeniya University. Representatives from some of the member colleges were flown in from the States and the US Ambassador was in attendance. After standing through a blur of speeches we started mingling. When Dan went off to network with some of the senior scholars I started introducing myself to random people from America. “Hi, I’m Sara,” I said, extending my hand toward a well dress, middle-aged, fair-skinned American woman in a light-blue skirt suit, baroque pearls, cream-colored panty-hoes, and cream-colored heels.

“Oh, Sarah!” she said enthusiastically, “I’ve heard so much about you!”

“No, no you haven’t heard about me,” I assured her.

“Aren’t you a Fulbrighter?” she asked, confused.

“No, that’s the other Sarah,” I replied, pointing to a young woman in a brand-new teal salwar across the room.

“Oh, ok,” she replied, collecting herself. “So you are with the ISLE program then?” she replied with a shadow of her previous enthusiasm.

“Uh, no,” I replied. “I’m with Dan,” I replied nodding my head in Dan’s direction.

“So, what do you do here?” she asked with only the barest polite interest.

“Nothing,” I replied with a smile.

“Hmmm….” She replied, looking at me perplexed for a second before moving off.

The food was a buffet with seating at round-top tables seating eight. The US Academics formed a unit and the Sri Lankan Academics left before the food to attend to funeral of a university faculty member killed by a LTTE suicide bomb detonated on a bus over the past weekend. The ISLE people took up two tables. Two of the Junior Fulbrighters, both ISLE grads, drifted over to our table. They were both young men in their early 20’s fresh from college graduation. They both wore light blue button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled-up, khaki pants, and sandals.

“The ISLE program was incredible,” they told us, glowing with enthusiasm and nodding in agreement. Both had recently arrived in-country and were planning on pursuing projects they had begun during their independent study on ISLE.

“Some of the Peradeniya professors were just as good, if not better, than my professors back home,” the one next to Dan told us earnestly.

“It’s true,” Dan agreed with sincerity. “They do have some really amazing teachers here.”

“So, what are your projects on?” I asked them both.

“I’m looking into religious responses to the Tsunami,” the one next to Dan reported.

“That’s good stuff,” Dan replied and proceeded to relay some of the religious expressions he had seen in the immediate aftermath when he was on a Tsunami relief tour. The Tsunami Fulbrighter seemed really interested and engaged in discussing his topic with Dan, so I turned to the other new Fulbrighter across the table and asked him about his topic.

“I’m planning on researching rural Buddhist practices,” he told me quietly. I began to ask him about his Sinhala, his contacts, and if he had a village or shrine of focus. “I just want to look at karma, and how they think that affects everything,” he explained.

“You know, they see us that way too,” I told him. “They see us as being drawn back here, like we were Sri Lankans in our past lives. They see us as a part of it too because we’re here and not back in America,” I furthered, remembering reading that idea in some of Dan’s old notes. The Rural-Interest Fulbrighter nodded his head in interest. I then asked him if he had applied to graduate school and if so in what field and he shook his head “no.”

Looking past the Rural-Interest Fulbrighter I saw the US Ambassador in the dessert line almost alone and I knew I had my chance. “You’ll have to excuse me, the gelatin is calling,” I said to the Rural-Interest Fulbrighter, getting up. As I approached him I realized that the Ambassador was extremely tall and thin; I estimated 6’5”. He wore a grey suit clearly tailor made for him. The fabric had the subtle variation and sheen of high-quality light wool. He had a polished, but slightly lopsided smile. He had mastered the art of looking people not in the eyes, but focusing his eyes on the bridge of the nose of the person he was speaking to.

When I reached the dessert table he was talking to another young woman about his previous posts.

“So, my last post was India,” he began as he considered the colorful array of gelatin-based desserts. “It was very different from here,” he continued. “I was the acting Ambassador there for awhile and people asked me every day about all sorts of things. Things that related directly to India and things that didn’t. Here, nobody cares about anything except for what directly relates to Sri Lanka here and now. This is a true island culture that way.” His comment reminded me of being quizzed about “Operation Iraqi Freedom” by a random rickshaw driver on my last trip to Delhi.

“That’s really interesting,” I replied. “But what about the Patriot Act?” I asked.

“They care about that because it affects them,” he replied, taking a heaping dollop of lavender-colored frothy gelatin with chunks of dark purple solid gelatin embedded into it.

“But what about the Patriot Act and the PTA?” I asked quickly, seeing that he was losing interest in the dessert offerings. I imagined the poor man thinking “I can’t even get a shitty gelatin dessert without someone pestering me.”

“I brought that up to them,” he corrected me. “I made that connection for them to make a point about civil rights,” he confirmed as he politely moved back to the table with the US academics.

The woman who was next to the Ambassador in the dessert line turned out to be an ISLE graduate who was back in Sri Lanka working for an NGO addressing human trafficking and living in Colombo.

“So, how’s that? Living in Colombo?” I asked.

“It’s tough. When I go places by myself people assume I am a Russian prostitute,” she replied. “They think ‘she is a foreigner but she is not in a hired car, she is here on the bus all the time. So she must be a prostitute.’ That is the role they assign you. Here they assume you are a tourist, or if they see you around more, a student. That is the role that you get here in Kandy,” she finished.

I looked at her blue eyes, boy-cut dirty-blond hair, and fushia kurta top paired with tight acid-washed jeans and thought to myself, “Man, she does look exactly how I would think that a Russian prostitute in Sri Lanka would look.”

“Hmm….” I replied.

“But maybe it would be different for you,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders encouragingly, “everyone has different experiences,” she finished. She spoke with the accent of someone who had modified their speech to help the Sinhala understand them. Because the Sinhala would rather hear British English, Americans that worked directly with the Sinhala sometimes pick up a slight accent fed by being understood better when they spoke a certain way. Dan would also drop into this affected-sounding accent also when he addressed Sinhala people in English, but he would snap out of immediately afterward.

“Well,” I replied, “We are thinking about living for the last month in Colombo. But if we do that, then it’ll be in a good neighborhood where I can feel comfortable taking a walk, I’ll tell you that right now” I said, raising my right index finger to put some emphasis on my point, ghetto-style.

“That would make a big difference,” she admitted, “I live south of the city, it’s not the nicest neighborhood,” she agreed.

“To me, living here, walking here and running here, is like being in middle school again,” I replied. “People think that they can say all sorts of rude things to me, vaguely threaten me, and generally bully me. Every time I go out it’s like walking down the hall to my locker and having to go through crowds of older boys who taunt me and I just have to keep quiet and take it,” I finished as she nodded in sad agreement. “But I have to say,” I continued, “I have made real progress on my street. On my street there are some hotels so there are touts, men selling coconut monkeys, and three-wheeler drivers. On my own street nobody ever bothers me anymore. They know me. It’s like a little victory.”

“Yes,” she replied, smiling knowingly, “you have to focus on those little victories,” she finished as we were being herded into a group photo with the Ambassador to mark the end of the party.