Boundaries

Years ago, Bill taught me to spit. I have exercise induced asthma and when I run, I produce phlegm. Before my spitting lessons, I only succeeded in dribbling spittle down my chin or dangling sputum off my running shorts. I could never quite clear my body with the spit. Since my lessons and with years of practice, if I need to spit while running, trees and plants are adorned with spittle instead of me.

I also have some irritable bowel when I run. On many occasions I have dashed behind a large tree, low shrub or clump of sagebrush to take care of urgent business. These behaviours may be deemed unladylike but at least at home, in Canada, it is comfortably reassuring that these behaviours are largely unwitnessed events.

Here on the other hand, a person can't pick their nose or scratch in one of those awkward places without looking up to find a pair of black eyes watching you. People are everywhere! Sri Lanka is only twice the size of Vancouver Island but has a population of nearly 21 million people compared to the 750,000 living on Vancouver Island.

As you drive from town to town, there are no distinctive breaks between towns and villages. They merely flow into each other. Streets are crowded, everywhere. In single family homes, large extended families will dwell: grandparents, parents, young children, adult children and grandchildren all may dwell in the same house. Nuwara Eliya has more than 42 tea plantations that house people in line rooms: 12 x10 ft buildings (tin shacks) accommodating 24 households—one family per room. I read one report where young, newly married women were making suicide attempts due to the lack of privacy in the home. Can you imagine making love to your spouse with your parents or in-laws and young children in the same room with you? There is absolutely no opportunity for any lusty expression of feeling, nor private conversation.

I have heard NGO and volunteers from other countries complain about what they perceive as a lack of boundaries among Sri Lankan people. The complain about people coming into their yard without an invitation, walking into the home without knocking, following them around and not honouring or making office space for them.

Private space is neither practical, possible nor cultural due to the size of the country, the population density, the economic situation and the value about being close to family. We, in Canada, are a society that despite enjoying vast forests and wide open landscapes, a low population in the second largest country in the world, we gate our communities, secure our homes with alarms and maintain only a nuclear family.

Who can be the judge of what is best and more appropriate? It is just different. But I do wonder if, in our privilege, we are less willing to share? I grew up in a large family and had my own big family, so I somewhat understand overcrowding. Even today, I am rarely alone even in my own home. I love the security of a family, but as an adult crave open spaces and time alone. I miss Canada where I can run for miles without seeing people, without people greeting me every two minutes with "Hullo, good morning, where are you going?" I miss the space that I could carve out for myself on my runs. I miss spitting without being watched. I wonder if Sri Lankan people crave space.

See picture of Estate Tamil line housing