After our lazy day yesterday we decided it was time to make an effort, get some exercise in, what? Also we needed to get some cash – our dolphin jaunt had left us shy of the funds needed to settle our account here. Our host was kind enough to suggest we accompany him on a trip to the local town, whence the return offered the prospect of a respectably strenuous stroll. (The photo immediately below, BTW, is the place we’re staying. Not a great pic, perhaps, but it does give a fair impression: anything but touristville (tho’ we are staying at Dolphinchilling), it’s very much a working fishing beach, with scraps of tourist accommodation – anything from pretty basic to very basic – dotted in between.)
Anyway, on reaching town we found ourselves in a pretty typical setup – dusty, shabby, unremarkable in every way. Our host pointed us to Bank of Ceylon, and we went to discover a busy little cashpoint lobby. I held back slightly, out of courtesy to the people in front (and it was very clear that’s what I was doing). A few seconds later, a man approached and made to move in front of me, as though I didn’t exist. I cut him off, and he slotted in behind us. Shortly afterwards, walking along, Virle suddenly said ‘Did you see the look that man gave me?’ I said no. She said a man coming the other way had given her a really nasty look, ‘…as if to say, how dare you not get out of my way, woman?’ Those two incidents, (doubtless exacerbated by our failure to find a single egg roti for our lunch – it being Ramadan, and all the food places having empty shelves if they were open at all), set me off on a train of thought that kept me company on the hour or so back to our place.
I should start by saying it was a very nice walk. Google being even more useless than usual, we had to find our own way a lot of the way, but we knew that as long as we kept going west and south, all would be well. We found ourselves following a succession of tracks and paths through what was clearly a market-gardening area: all around us, little plots of chillies, onions, is that tobacco? are those beetroots? with patches of shade and ocasional sprayers to mitigate the blistering heat. Many of the places had little gardens full of flowers, clearly just for their beauty.
But here’s the funny thing. We’d heard earlier in our travels that Christian missionaries had had more luck with fishing communities than in inland communities. (There’s little or no Buddhism in this part of the country: it’s all Moslem or Christian.) Hereabouts exemplifying that tendency. The further we got from the Moslem town towards the Christian coast, the more enjoyable our walk became, as the people became steadily more friendly. It was literally path by path. In town, we’d found ourselves on the receiving end of a fair bit of attention, most of it blank at best, often borderline hostile. Smiles were at best acknowledged with a curt nod; seldom reciprocated. Appraising, unfriendly, disapproving looks followed us everywhere we went.
Men gave Virle dirty looks, and I got a fair few of my own, perhaps because as very often Virle led the way, whereas women here, often fully black-clad with eye-slits, generally trailed their menfolk. It just wasn’t a nice place to be. But when we left town, the mood began to lift. The closer we got to the coast, the more we met smiles and waves and friendly hellos. Rank and racist perhaps, but the walk did little to dent earlier impressions of a loathsome ideology, that regards infidels as inferiors and women as breeding stock.
And breathe…
Time for a change of mood, with a few pics from here and hereabouts last night.
But before we entirely abandon racist rant time, let’s not forget the ****ing French. We’re at one end of this veranda, looking out to sea. Sadly the other end is occupied by a French couple who have no problem with watching French comedy programmes on their mobile, sound turned up, and the hell with us and the Japanese couple who’ve moved in next door. They seem otherwise perfectly benign, but oblivious to the impact of their noise pollution on anyone else. Or maybe they really do just not give a shit. Incroyable.
We did end up gettin a lovely end to the day, with our penultimate (*sob*) sunset on the beach, followed by an absolutely stellar dinner at Maduka’s restuarant next door. Ok, so we had to wait about 45 minutes, but boy was it worth it. Our ‘chicken curry’ came with not two or three accompaniments but seven, each more delicious than the last. Green beans, cabbage, okra, dal, pumpkin and poppadoms…it just went on and on. We’d opted for just one serving, having learned from past experience, and ended up staggering back groaning with happy ballast.
