The Visual Stew that is Sri Lanka

Our time in Sri Lanka was a wonderful month of new experiences, sights and sounds. Sri Lanka is known as a small country that is easy to explore and cover many different terrains and environments in a short period of time. If you look at suggested itineraries they almost always involve a route that takes you on a loop around three or four distinct locations, all linked by road or rail. Even though we have been approaching this trip with slow travel as a guiding principle, we did feel, since we had a month, that we could cover some ground in Sri Lanka.  Because of this there were a few days during which we spent most of our time in the back of a car watching the world go by.  Travel took longer than usual because, as luck would have it, we arrived in Sri Lanka in time for their 2 week national school holiday.  We did not know this ahead of time, but it explained why the roads were even more congested than usual and why the trains were all booked up.  With trains crowded past capacity we piled into the back of a car with a driver at the helm.  Having a driver was also a different experience for us, but one that is common for many travelers in Sri Lanka, as rental cars are virtually nonexistent.

The back of a car was a wonderful way to see much of the country as so much life happens on the edges of the roads so there was tons to take in.  I jotted down some sights that struck me as memorable or unique.  When I went to find pictures to accompany and realized so much of what I noted was the day to day life of people.  I am not comfortable taking photos of people going about their daily lives (would you be okay with some stranger taking your picture while you were doing your grocery shopping or while you walked to school!?)  So I don't have many photos that capture what we saw.  Hopefully my words can help create an image.

To set the scene, since what I saw was from the back of a car, in the flow of traffic, I need to describe the traffic in Sri Lanka.  We were in cars or vans, but cars and vans are outnumbered by 'three wheelers'.  These are called "rickshaws" in India or "Tuk Tuks" in Thailand.  There are probably differences but ultimately they are small vehicles that are run on a small motor.  The driver sits in the front and behind is a small rounded cab that usually seats about 3 people, although we did fit all five of us in the bigger diesel ones, and we have seen families pour out with more than 3 kids.  These three wheelers zip around the roads, between the cars, trucks, buses and vans, on sidewalks and the road shoulders.  They are found everywhere, in the rural areas and bigger cities, and are the most common form of transport. 

Even trucks transporting elephants are in the mix!

Colourful buses zoom by.

Lots of smiles from the back of a Three Wheeler.

The roads feel chaotic and a bit unsafe.  Unlike Vietnam, where it felt like there was an unspoken choreographed dance, in Sri Lanka it felt like the roads were ruled by a game of chicken.  We quickly realized that although most roads were only two lanes wide (one each way) there was an unofficial "third lane."  This lane was in the middle.  Just imagine straddling the yellow line.  That is where cars, vans, three wheelers and buses passed.  It didn't matter if it was a bus filled with school kids, a van with a Canadian family, a three wheeler or a gasoline pumper with flammable symbols decorating the back, they all used the middle lane, in either direction.  And so, you are probably wondering how that works if every type of vehicle considers the middle lane fair game.  Well, that is where the game of chicken comes into play.  The driver eases out, and starts to drive.  Then, whoever is the biggest vehicle usually wins and the rest duck back into their lane among the other cars and trucks heading in their direction.  This happens repeatedly during any drive.  A lurching nail biting game of leapfrog crossed with chicken.  Ugh.  A vivid, but not a cherished memory.

You are looking at the "third lane"

As we drove along the roads it felt like we saw much of public life happening as the store fronts edge right up to the road or sidewalk.  There were bakeries and fruit stands, clothing stores and auto parts, scrap metal, music instruments, baby care supplies, watch repair shop, fish seller next to a bridal shop.  Sometimes stores of similar purpose were clustered together, especially in larger towns, but often it seemed a mishmash of services and products on offer in a small stretch of road.  One of my favorite was seeing two men sitting under an awning with 6 plastic chairs covered in a white cloth like you would use for a wedding reception.  I just could not imagine the economics working out selling or renting that small inventory from the side of the road.  I would guess there was a larger stash somewhere hidden from the dust and dirt, but maybe not...

Young monks in vibrant orange.

Coconut? Check. Broom? Check? Chips? Check. Propane? Check.

It was notable that men seemed to be the most visible gender involved in the service industry and most "jobs" out in public.  Men worked in restaurants as servers, guest houses as cleaners, construction on the streets.  We did notice that there were women police officers and teachers, but these seemed to be a notable exceptions.  We did not interact with many professionals or office workers, so perhaps women are represented in higher numbers in those industries, but some digging around in statistics suggests this is not the case.  This however is an interesting fact: "Sri Lanka produced not only the world’s first woman Prime Minister in 1960, it also elected the country’s first woman Executive President in 1994. With such a legacy, it is a puzzle as to why there is such abysmally low political participation by Sri Lankan women." (https://salary.lk)

At this point it would be awesome to be able to demonstrate the head waggle that is used throughout Sri Lanka and India.  Imagine the head is like a bobblehead and moving in a subtle horizontal figure eight.  At first the head waggle is confounding.  What does it mean?  Yes? No? Maybe? I think it usually means affirmative or an acknowledgement.  It was fun to see all the ways the head waggle manifests and how much it can (and cannot) communicate.

The roles of men and women in public life, and especially in the service industry, may be a leftover of the British colonial legacy.  We noted a strong colonial style in hospitality with great attention to service, place settings, abundant foods, offering tea, hovering nearby to respond to any requests, etc.  Even in budget accommodations we were often greeted with a tea or a juice and breakfast was usually included.  One of the other things I noticed was that most servers and drivers spoke to me first as the "Madame".  So different from other countries where women are definitely not addressed and the man rules the roost.  When I asked someone about it he said that they "know" that European and North American women should be addressed first as the decision maker, but if we were a family of Asian tourists they would expect the man addressed first.  When we asked about his own wife he said, "well we know that she keeps the family running".  Truisms from around the world.

One of our breakfast spreads.

Because men were most commonly seen in public I had lots of chances to observe their fashion.  Men tended to be put together and tidy with a collared shirt on regardless of their job.  I love that you often see men wearing a sarong paired with the collared shirt.  A sarong is a cloth wrap that is wrapped and tied around the waist.  Driving past a clothing store I chuckled when I saw the store display were crisp button down shirts on the mannequins paired with jeans on two of them and a sarong on the other.  So cool that is continues to be a viable fashion option.  Women often wore saris and children wore crisp white school uniforms. Even though there were not a lot of women that I saw working in public spaces there were women moving about in public spaces and I did not feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

School kids in their crisp white uniforms.

Women in Saris and girls in dresses.

A downside of fashion was the obvious preference for lighter skin in the models on billboards and advertisements.  The kids noticed that most of the models were blatantly not Sri Lankan (blond, blue eyed) or were very light skinned.  It seemed like a sad comment that in a country of beautifully brown people those held up as the "model" of attractiveness or desirability are light skinned.  It is not so different from everywhere in the world.  This was one of my first observations 22 years ago when I went Brazil and continues to be a constant in our media saturated North American world.

Here is a non sequitur but will break up the text: Cricket was played everywhere and monkeys were often found swinging in trees and lolling around.

I spoke in my first post about Sri Lanka about the intermingling of religions within families and communities.  There were many visual reminders of the four religions in Sri Lanka.  Mosques and Churches were usually tucked in neighborhoods or larger buildings, but Buddhist or Hindu shrines and temples were scattered throughout the cities and countrysides.  Street corners would often have a simple shrine and you would see people stop to pray on their way past.  This added colour and sound to the hum of life in Sri Lanka.

Hindu Temple

On the street corner in Colombo.

Food and the experience of food was another important part of the experience.   The days usually started with a large breakfast spread in the tradition of British colonial life.  We were served up fresh fruit and bread and eggs at most of our guest houses.  The meals eaten by locals were usually rice and curry.  The curries were spicy and some curries are unique such as jackfruit curry.  The curry is usually accommpanied, not only by rice, but also by a coconut sambal which has grated fresh cocount and chilies as its base.  The food is eaten with the right hand.  We all enjoyed, to varying degrees, eating with our hand.  Ironically the girls enjoyed it most of all (Leo and I kept asking why the boys, who like to use their hands at home where it is not "proper" didn't like to in Sri Lanka.  There was no satisfactory answer).  I would say that we "liked" the food but did not love it.  I think we were expecting it to be more like Indian curies and Indian food that we have at home, but of course, we should know by know that whatever food we have at home is not usually a true representation of authentic food in its country of origin (looking at you Japan...).

I thought going to Sri Lanka would be a bit like going to India "light".  I was not up for the intensity of India; the masses of humanity; the poverty; sensory overload.  I thought Sri Lanka would give us a taste of what I remembered of India: the flavours, sights and sounds, without the intensity.  I think I was mistaken.  Sri Lanka truly is its own country with its own cultures, people, sights and smells.  Indeed there are virtual and real flavours of India that are found in the country, but it is not the same.  It did not have the intensity, which is both good and bad.  The food is just not as delicious as Indian food, the colours are not as intense without Saddhus wandering the streets among the cows, but it is also more digestible and less overwhelming.  I found that Sri Lanka was a bit of a slow to warm stop.  It took a bit of time to settle into the rhythm and enjoy the beauty of the people and the land.  But once that rhythm was reached it was a wonderful stop.