I am the only teacher in the village

Of course this is not true as I am totally unqualified but I have found myself in a rural Sri Lanka village being the only English speaker and volunteering at a language center.

8 Things I have learned from village life: 

idyllic simplicity

1. Rice is life 

They grow it in the beautiful paddy fields that dominate the landscape, they eat if for breakfast, lunch and dinner and they use rice flour to make sweet cakes.
It is the gift that keeps on giving - me constipation.

2. Inside toilets are a luxury 

As someone who has grown accustomed to having a toilet only a few steps from my bedroom, my bladder acts like a spoilt and lazy child as a result. I could never have imagined that going to the toilet in the middle of the night would be such a mission, requiring a well thought out plan, a head torch, weapons and bribes.

It has become clear from multiple near death experiences that many families in Sri Lanka have three or four seemingly stray dogs as 'pets'; these pets are not treated very well and serve more as guard dogs for the house. When I first arrived the three dogs that surrounded my home stay seemed feral, incessantly scratching themselves and growling and barking at anyone unfamiliar. Which of course included me.

So my first night time adventure to the outside toilet involved a great deal of fear. The first step was to climb over the low wall of the house veranda and grab my flip flops, holding a water bottle for a weapon and a head torch for light. The dogs are particularly intimidating at night, it is as if they are mad with their flees keeping them awake and need to let everyone know about it. When some of us just need to pee.

After climbing over the wall and nervously shining my torch around to see if the dogs are ready to attack, while holding the water bottle in one hand to distract them and whispering 'nice doggies' - I do my best dramatic tiptoe around the house and to the toilet building. I never thought I would feel safe in that smelly dark shack but when life is at stake this is a proud moment.

The downside of having a head torch is illuminating every cobweb, spider and family of ants that inhabit the toilet. The toilet itself takes some ((*a lot)) of getting used to: no seat, just a hole in the ground with a blue grid to stand on. Good mantras for these moments are, "I am just at a festival doing a nature wee" "this is how our ancestors did it" "I am one with the earth".

Safe to say there is a very satisfying feeling once you have returned into bed after this stressful ordeal. However I would probably be okay with living without it and instead doing the bog* standard semi-conscious stumble to the real toilet at home.

(*pardon the pun)

The beasts: Dani & Shani

 

3. You can bond with people over fruit knowledge 

I think we are very privileged to be able to buy almost any fruit we desire at any time of the year. After multiple conversations with local people involving questions like 'you like Sri Lanka banana? We have mango coconut, pineapple too. Your country have?" - with my instant thought being 'why wouldn't we?' I was intrigued to know why this was difficult for them to imagine. After a week I realised that these fruits actually grow in people's gardens. It is not unusual to see an 80 year old woman holding a small axe to chop bananas off their plant stalk (??) or for the father of the family to climb up a ladder and cut down coconuts from their own coconut tree. As empty coconut shells are used to line the flower beds as fertiliser, its clear that these people literally know the fruit inside out and better than we ever will buying it plastic packaged from Salisbury's once a week. I have so much respect for this lifestyle and I am very grateful for the insight I have been given.

4. Drinking warm water reduces waste 

For foreigners travelling in hot countries we are seemingly forced against our environmentally-friendly-goodwill to buy plastic bottle after plastic bottle to stay hydrated. Of course when making this purchase we will always choose the nice cold bottle from the fridge. Living in this village has forced me to become accustomed to drinking lukewarm water from the filter, which makes the occasional fresh cold coconut juice that much more refreshing. The benefit of refilling one bottle from the filter also means that I only used one plastic bottle in 8 days, whereas since being on a two day holiday I have bought 3 different plastic 1 litre bottles - which is unavoidable but worrying.

5. Power cuts are wholesome 

I have been humbled by how often there are power cuts here and how much we take for granted having all of our devices charged at all times and being able to access Wifi whenever we want.

One day there was torrential rain at the language center and a power cut so the older students played indoor cricket. They are hoping to fundraise for a solar powered generator which will make a massive difference. However there is some joy in everything going back to basics when there is no power.

6. Spitting is for adults 

Before I understood that (mostly male) adults chew the betel leaf for a small high, I thought that they were all suffering from an awful disease that makes their gums bleed, as I was continually greeted with smiles of red-stained teeth with red dribble. I could not work out why there were spatters of blood all over the ground, like an unsolved murder mystery throughout the country.

Of course once you spend time in Sri Lanka and watch tuk-tuk drivers, men on buses...and pretty much every man near to a window spit the juice that has accumulated in their mouths onto the pavement, you start to put two and two together.


7.  How to be wide awake at 6AM. 

Anyone who knows me well, will know that I love sleep more than anything and would never ever be awake at 6AM (or even 9AM) unless I had to be.

It turns out that I have found out a method that has me waking up at 6am.

5AM: Play deafeningly loud Buddhist prayer song behind a locked door that I cannot turn off. Play this repeatedly for half an hour.
5:15AM: Force my brain to be conscious enough to register that I need to go to the loo (and we know how much adrenaline this involves)
5:30AM: Switch from prayers straight to blaring Sri Lankan radio news to greet me upon my return from the loo
5:45AM: Throw in some family arguments in a different language (usually this involves one of the kids shouting with direct translation:  'Ughhh, no, mum!!'.
6:00AM: Finish with some Sri Lankan EDM on high volume that makes me wish it was still the prayers.

And voila I am awake against my will! Not only does this work a treat while I live in the house, but it also has a knock on effect during my holiday away from the village- in fact as I write this it is 8AM and I have been awake since 5AM.

8. It's a small world 

When I first arrived to the village members of my host family asked, 'you know Nazj?' to which I answered 'no who is she?'. And they said she was a previous volunteer who was from England. I thought errrm no of course not she could be from anywhere. It was only after I spent about four days here and had a few conversations with other families about who I was living with and said 'I live with Pabasara's family do you know him?' and they always said 'OH YESS we know Pabasara! He is my best friend/ my neighbour/ my uncle's friend's son' that I realised that everyone DID know everyone around here.

I was then more prepared when I got on the bus and made friends with the conductor, who after learning I was from England said 'ahhh England! You know Sarah?'