Bill and Wendy's ickcillint adventures

Having just completed the book, The Black Robe by Wilkie Collins, I will share a confrontation that was evidently written for me in the book. One of the characters in the novel, Bernard Winterfield, writes in his diary, "It strikes me that I am falling into a bad habit of writing too much about myself. The custom of keeping a journal certainly has this drawback... it encourages egotism. Well, the remedy is easy. From this date, I will lock up my book... only to open it again when some event has happened which has a claim to be recorded for its own sake. As for myself and my feelings, they have made their last appearance in these pages" (Kindle Loc.3735). While this little passage confronted my very large ego, and it has caused me to pledge to be a bit more selective about what might be interesting to those at home, I doubt I have the same will power of Mr. Winterfield... to lock up my computer until something of note takes place. However, in order to reduce the ego, I hav...

  Ok, so Christmas is over, thank goodness. I lived. This morning, in one of my Christmas phone calls home to Canada, my sister, Teresa, was chiding me that I didn't hold the monopoly on crying at Christmas, just because I was far away from home in Sri Lanka. She smartly advised me that she only has to put on Christmas Carols and do some Christmas baking and she is "waaing" all about the house. "We Nordicks, we are all the same when it comes to Christmas," she said. It is true. I am the same. At home, I put play the carols and, as I decorate our banister, our tree and the manger, I am weeping all over the place, my voice raggedly accompanying the carols. My sister is right, but just the same I am glad Christmas is over. Although people attempt to hold Christmas here, Christmas, in my opinion, is sullied due to poor substitutions. Take Christmas trees, for example: styrofoam and shell creations; palapa draped over tall wooden cone shaped frame and stru...

On Sunday, I suggested we (VSO in Jaffna) all go for a bike ride, get some exercise and explore our surroundings. Despite a resounding yes from everyone, the weather didn't cooperate. Monsoon rains poured all morning. Finally, about 2pm, in exasperation, I texted everyone and said, "We are going, rain or not." Besides, who else gets to ride in a monsoon and then meet for ice cream after?   So, we stopped by Mary's and hollered through her gate, "Mary, come out and play with us." However, Mary didn't yet have a bicycle; so instead, she brewed steaming mugs of Jaffna Spice Coffee as we dripped water onto her shiny tiled floor. Gerd borrowed a bike from his security guard, and upon discovering it had no brakes, he had to drag his feet in order to prevent wiping out pedestrians. But finally, our trio clad in rain gear, headed off out onto the causeway that links Jaffna proper to a series of islands. We cycled through deep puddles, splashed mud, tri...

  I sent home Christmas Cards to my children and my siblings. It was a bit of an ordeal, really. The chore was exacerbated at the Chundikuli Post office. After handing me the stamps required for the Christmas cards, he handed me a glue pot with a paint brush stuck inside the pot. I actually had to brush on the paste for the 3 large stamps and the airmail sticker required by each card. It was a painstaking and sticky job. I also wasn't wearing my glasses so am not sure if the stamps were glued upside down or not. Anyway, I remember as a child, my mother sitting at the kitchen table, after she had worked all day cooking and cleaning for a husband and 8 children to write Christmas cards to her family. Now, my father was one of 15 children and my mom, herself, came from a family of 9 children. My dad and mom had left Saskatchewan in the early 60's to come to BC, and they left behind many friends, as well.   So, each Christmas time, beginning in November and after the ...

  When I was a child, about eleven or twelve years of age, Sister Alexina, the Our Lady of Perpetual Heart School's music teacher asked me to sing a solo in our school's annual Christmas concert. I was very proud as my brother Glenn, usually landed the leading roles in the Christmas pageant (the King, the Santa Claus, God, etc). On the night of the concert, I fought with my mom over the styling of my hair for the show. I flounced off to the concert angry, but also a bit worried that my parents might not come and witness my singing debut, given my bad behaviour.   During the performance, but prior to singing the solo, I searched the crowd from my view on stage, but could not spot my parents in the audience. I was distraught that they were angry with me and weren't going to come to the show, due to the dust up over my hair. However, just as I rose to sing my song, I saw my parents entering the auditorium and taking their seat. I was rushed with strong feelings of gratitu...

Each evening, as the dusk gathers, the thousands of bats which hang during the day from trees in St. John's Old Park, respond to their ancient calling and begin to stir. Their sonar sounds can be heard from a distance as they take wing in search of mosquitoes, flies and fruit. If you are in the right place, and look up, you at first mistakenly believe it is a flock of geese flying south in preparation for winter. But these giant creatures are bats, not birds. These bats are huge! They are the size of a raven and at first glance, you just think it is a crow, but then, you see the shape of the wing – scalloped. You see the brown of the breast. You smell the smell. Bats! They are amazing to watch as they dangle in the trees. Yes, we had rabies shots.

Bill and I both finished the book by Gordon Weiss, called the Cage. We couldn't put it down. It is the history of the war between the Sri Lankan army (Sinhala) and the LTTE (Tamil). It is a very well written, and we both think a very objective documentation of the history of the struggle between these two ethnic groups. It is a very disturbing account of racism, discrimination and struggles for power. Here in Jaffna, the war has only been over two years and it was here that the fighting really happened. Evidence of war is everywhere. Bombed and shelled homes, about every 10 th home has been shelled heavily. It only recently occurred to me that with that shelling, people have most likely been killed. It is very sobering. I have begun to learn more about the war. People in the south of Sri Lanka don't talk about the war, because it really didn't affect them. Here, the war was in the Tamil people's back yard. People tell you their stories. At work, I will b...

We are now settling into our new home in Jaffna. We know where stuff is, we have found stuff we couldn’t find and we feel a bit more organized, now that we have some furniture, a garbage can, a couple of tables and desks. We have a lovely big yard, albeit weeds and sand and now Bill has a place to putter about with his laundry lines. I popped the tire on my new pedal bike and he fixed my bike. He replaced the fender on his new bike. He can sit outdoors at the patio table and contemplate. It is monsoon season here and it really rains. I mean it rained in Nuwara Eliya too, monsoon rains, but there, it rained all day – cold rain. Here, the skies open, I mean open and water is dumped from the clouds like God pouring from a giant bucket. It isn’t really like individual rain drops, but more like a wave of rain. It lasts about 10 minutes and then, suddenly, the rain stops. The streets run with water, puddles are so large, they flood alleys. People ride bicycles with an opened um...

  We have friends here; in fact, we hosted a dinner party last night. I cheffed up some lankawa cuisine from recipes in a couple of cook books I have acquired. These friends are VSO, or from our yoga/Tamil class. Four mornings a week (6:30 am), six of us ex-pats cycle over to Gerd's house (guy who works for UN) for Yoga classes. Bill and I love it, although our Yogi has us performing some unusual yoga postures: green worm, dog and the crocodile, for example. He also practices queer breathing exercises: panting like a dog, sucking through our teeth and "drinking" our saliva, the "nectar of our bodies."   Our yogi doubles as our Tamil master. I think he is a better yoga instructor than Tamil teacher, but in fairness, he focuses on useful conversation, so we are sticking it out. We, being 3 other people, and not including Bill. He jammed again on the language training. However, he is working (shh), I mean meeting people for coffee, starting next week. He was approa...

We are in Jaffna. We might as well be in a different country than Sri Lanka. There are few similarities to our other life in Nuwara Eliya and even Colombo for that matter. It is unsettling to be confronted with so much unfamiliarity, when not expected. When a person travels to a different country, particularly one far from home, it is expected that things will not be the same. However, when a person travels within a country, especially such a tiny country, the striking changes are not expected. At least not by me, anyway. Oh sure, I knew we were heading into a war torn area of the country. I knew the people were Tamil. I knew that this area had been largely closed off to the rest of the world for about 30 years, but I knew these things intellectually, rather than emotionally. I worked hard to learn Sinhala and to read the Sinhala alphabet and expected this to help navigate me in this new town. However, there are no Sinhala signs. All signage is in Tamil. Despite being a tri-lingual c...

Our Yaalpaanum (Tamil for Jaffna) house will be ready for occupancy on Tuesday, November 15. Originally a bombed house (well I guess not originally) currently being renovated into two flats. Once the landlord has finished the staircase leading to the upstairs flat and put in the kitchen upstairs, Bill and I will move into the lower quarters. Another VSO, Marcia, a child psychologist from the UK, will reside in the upstairs flat. We are very excited. A real house with a real yard, a real well, a real squat toilet and a real hearth for cooking in the kitchen. It is going to be lovely. Our furniture, cycle bikes and motor scooter will arrive on Monday night and we can move in on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, VSO installed us in a guest house not far from my new work place, Shantiham. With boxes and clothes, ironing boards, computers, baskets and washing lines strewn about our room, Bill and I feel right at home. We have created organized chaos within our hotel room. The maid won...

Many of you have asked for more detail about my work here is Sri Lanka. So here, in point form to prevent boring you, is some detail of my work in Nuwara Eliya: I ran developed and ran two sections of Interpersonal Skills Training to nurses and support staff. Nurses and support staff had absolutely no skill or comfort level in engaging patients. They "hid out" in the staff room and interacted with patients only when absolutely necessary. The nurse I trained to deliver this curriculum is now running the course herself in Sinhala and at the specific request of the hospital director and the nursing matron. I made a presentation to the provincial health ministry and received funding from the regional district to run a course for community social service workers. I graduated 13 community social services workers from a Community Case management course that specialized in mental health. These social service workers are working in social work, but have had no formal soci...

We are now somewhat comfortable living in Asian Court Apartments on Milagiriya Avenue in Bambalapitiya, Colombo 4. The apartment, scrubbed by us after long days of language training, is liveable, at least temporarily. It's only saving grace is a little view of the ocean. The place is riddled with cock roaches, but this is true of everywhere in the tropics. Last night, we walked home from the shops and cockroaches scuttled everywhere. The ground was crawling with them. Bill is our cock roach killer. I can't do it. I mean I could happily kill them, but I can't stand being close to them. They fly and often fly directly towards our heads. When we spy one in the house, Bill sneaks upon it with the very large can of aerosol Mortein spray, gleefully giving them a good shot of the white poison. Within seconds, they roll over onto their back, legs up in the air and expire. Each time, Bill exclaims, "Bastards!" as he picks the dead roach up, his fingers thick...

You may not know this, but when Bill was a child, his nickname was Itty Bitty Blair. Despite his age (or due to his age), this moniker again applies to him. We are now in Colombo. We will be here about one more week before heading up to Jaffna. Colombo is hot, hot, hot, despite the daily rains of monsoon season. However, my husband still finds it cold. Itty Bitty Blair now is packing a blankie with him. I wake up sweating under a thin sheet while he is up, turning the ceiling fan off and pulling a blanket up over him. No wonder he was suffering in the cold and damp of Nuwara Eliya. I empathize with him, because I spend the first fifty years of my life freezing all the time. Just the same, Blankie Bill has received two strict ordinances from me, "Touch that ceiling fan on pain of death" and "Don't even think of letting that blanket touch me."

Just after our move to Colombo on Wednesday night, we left Colombo Thursday afternoon for Jaffna. Objective: meet our partner, Shanthiham, the staff who work there, and to search for housing. So, with a driver, two VSO staff members, a VSO volunteer from the UK (child psychologist also moving to Jaffna), Bill and I make the very long trek toward Jaffna. After six hours of dangerous driving (bad roads, congestion, high speed), we got as far as Mihintale and booked into a guest house for the night. Next morning, we set off to make it through Elephant Pass and into Jaffna (another six hour journey). From Wikipedia: Elephant Pass is a major military checkpoint and controls access to the Jaffna Peninsula. Elephant Pass connects the militarily significant town of Chavakacheri in the Jaffna peninsula to the Sri Lankan mainland. The base was under Sri Lankan Authority control until 2000 , despite repeated attempts to capture it by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, als...

We are in Colombo. We have been installed in Asian Court, a small two bedroom apartment in Colombo 04, a desirable Colombo address, close to Galle Face Green and Cinnamon Gardens. This ocean view apartment was previously used by a VSO volunteer who has since returned to his home country. VSO has decided to keep it as a "guest house" for VSO volunteers visiting Colombo for meetings and trainings. After much deep cleaning of our Nuwara Eliya home and after travelling six hours we arrived in Colombo on Wednesday afternoon, tired and stressed. We opened the door of the Asian Court apartment and nearly cried. It was filthy. The floor was gritty; the cupboards were filled with dirt, food stuffs and cobwebs. A rusty and dirty stove awaited us as did a moldy and wet fridge. Grunge clung to the kitchen sink and side board. Soap scum clung to the bathroom sink and tiles. Toilets black. Mummified plants dangled on the balcony. I got mad! We couldn't put away our things unt...

With only ten days notice to leave Nuwara Eliya, it sent Bill and me into a dizzy of activity. I focused on getting all ends of my work at the hospital, the community mental health clinic and the community social service agencies tied up. Then, we began our goodbyes and our good byes and our good byes. I said goodbye to the nurses I had trained in mental health (and some I didn't). I got presents. I said goodbye to the community social service workers that I have been training since July on case management. I got presents. I said goodbye to the acute psychiatric staff. I got presents. I said good bye to my precious colleagues in the community mental health clinic. I got presents. I said good bye to my Sinhala teacher, Sandamalli over a dinner at the Grand Hotel and I said goodbye to my nurse/colleague/translator and friend, Chamali and her husband. I said goodbye to the doctors and the psychiatric consultant. Bill said his goodbyes. He said goodbye to Rahim over lunch...

It's official. We are moving to Jaffna! We have a measly week and a day to pack up our belongings, tie up loose ends at work (several dangle at the moment), and say goodbye to those who befriended us here in Nuwara Eliya. It is all moving very quickly. We are scheduled to move from Nuwara Eliya (the coldest climate in Sri Lanka) to Jaffna (the hottest climate in Sri Lanka) on October 19 th (penance, on earth)? Well, actually, before we go to Jaffna, we have 2.5 weeks of Tamil language training in Colombo before moving north on November 2 nd . I will work in Jaffna at the hospitals (job description unclear at this time), but VSO and the partner organization, Shanthiham, built in flexibility thus allowing me to continue supporting the post graduate diploma in social work program (for which I have begun to write the curriculum). So, am getting both jobs instead of having to make choices about which to take. I am feeling a bit sad to leave behind our little house nestled up agains...

Do you remember when I wrote the blog about Sinhala people's singing? It was in March and entitled Vindication. Well, my mother, who has always held me and my siblings to higher values, wrote to me, "Wendy, if there is problem, you need to be part of the solution. You have a beautiful voice." Now, that same mother of mine did come to see me in Sri Lanka and actually got to hear the din herself. She was in agreement that the music was NOT what she was used to; it was not lovely, sweet hymns and vespers. However, she re-issued her challenge. So, in acknowledgment of the challenge from my mother, and in desperate need of a sense of belonging, I joined the 5pm. Saturday night English mass church choir. The choir, on a good night, consists of about 4 nuns, a couple of teenagers, a couple of ladies my age and a teen organ player. We have no choir practice, no preparation, we just arrive at mass and we sing the number in the song book that one of the nuns announce...

For the most part, people here wear either cheap plastic flip flops or bare feet. It is so interesting to be a foot watcher (different than having a foot fetish, mind you). Feet on people here, like anywhere, come in all shapes and sizes, but mostly smaller than we are used to in North America, at least in length. The width of feet here is another story. Feet that have not been bound by shoes tend to spread very wide. Toes splay over the sides of the flip flops. Huge spaces exist between the toes. The feet tend to have lost the arch and take on a flat footed appearance. Besides the toes, the heels are worth mentioning. Men's heels are deeply cracked and some must be very painful. The other interesting thing about feet, particularly heels, and one doesn't seem noticeable in white skinned people, is that there is a strong demarcation between dark pigmentation and white pigmentation about the middle of the back of the heel. However, this is not prominent in all people...

We have not, since my mother and daughter left back to Canada at the end of June, seen a glimpse of the sun in Nuwara Eliya. The hard rain, angry winds, heavy cloud and ethereal mist have daily tormented the entire community since that time. However, today, the sun shone! All of the townspeople emerged from their homes, rejoicing! People welcomed the sun, opening the doors and windows of their homes. Blankets, towels and items of clothing were jubilantly draped about the yards as people attempted to dry out the soggy bedding and linens and clothing. People greeted each other and small groups of neighbours collected in the alleys as people chatted, hungry for social relationship after the long quarantine provoked by the unending rain.   Bill and I dragged out every blanket in the house. Each and every one of them smelled of mildew. We draped them over the many clotheslines in the yard. We opened every window and door in the house, allowing the wind to whip through, doors banging lo...

Over the past two months, I lead fifteen nurses through a Nursing in Mental Health Certificate Course . This course involved the class learning about the biopsychosocial aetiology of mental illness, the diagnostic criteria of mental health disorders, understanding psychotropic medication and some side effects, learning how to conduct a psychosocial assessment, how to conduct a suicide risk assessment, learning about substance abuse work and other critical trainings in mental health. One other assessment tool taught to the class was the Mental Status Exam. As luck would have it, on the day I was to present this skill to the class, a foreign man presented to our hospital in Nuwara Eliya, badly in need of a mental health assessment. Therefore, in the interest of education, I assessed this patient in front of the class. As part of their training, the class then had to complete the mental status exam form and discuss the apparent symptoms of the man and what they had asses...

Canadians from Saskatchewan, Judy and Rob came to visit us in Nuwara Eliya. Their son, Shaun Humphries is a volunteer for VSO working out of Colombo. Shawn directed their Sri Lanka tour which included a trip into Hill Country to stay at our place, see tea estates, experience Horton's Plains and enjoy the cooler climes of Hill Country. Judy and Rob Humphries Shaun Humphries, VSO volunteer from Canada Now, tourists arrive in Nuwara Eliya totally unprepared for the cold weather. Oh, they have been warned about the cold, but like us all, they think, "How cold can it be? It is the tropics." Then they arrive and find out how cold it can be. The merchants of Nuwara Eliya gleefully clap their hands when they see unprepared tourists shivering as they walk along Main Street because they know that eventually, they will stumble into Bale Bazaar. Bale Bazaar is an open air market hosting more than forty stalls of warm, winter jackets, fleeces, hats, toques and blanket...

Marte and Ely VSO from Netherlands Cows working on their tan The lovely Kamal, VSO psychologist from London Oh, we discovered paradise. Trincomalli is a coastal town on the north eastern coast of Sri Lanka. Two VSO volunteers, Marte and Ely, from the Netherlands have been posted there and they invited us up for a visit. I am reluctant to admit this flaw in our characters, but Bill and I simultaneously displayed bright green envy for their placement. White sand beaches, hot lovely sun, a three bedroom house with large kitchen, dining areas and lovely patios with a garden area; they had a stray cat to feed and monkeys to greet them in the morning.  Marte and Ely played hosts extraordinaire! Trinco is the favoured spot for tired, lonely and for Bill and I, cold, VSO volunteers. It is a long trip (about 7 hours for us from Nuwara Eliya), but an easy drive, as once we got to Kandy, the hills flattened out and the drive became flat, and the landscape drier, more like gr...

Two weeks ago, we travelled to Kandy for the annual Perahera with three other Canadians in the car. Shawn Humphries is a VSO from Saskatchewan and his mother, Judy and his father, Rob had been up visiting us in Nuwara Eliya and so we shared luxury travel in a van equipped with a driver (this is how ex-pats travel about the country). Us poor volunteers, living on VSO salary, cannot afford such expensive costs, so in pure luxury we travelled to the town with the grandest parade in the country – the Perahera). The Perahera is a nine day parade. It clogs Kandy town with thousands of tourists for this nine days. In order to attend you need to secure accommodation months in advance and secure a seat for about $5,000 rs ($50). Seats consist of plastic deck chairs placed so close together you can feel the person behind breathing on your neck and the chair arms are virtually overlapped to ensure placement of additional chairs. It is a racket. Basically promoters try and sell as man...