Happy New Year!

It is New Years in Sri Lanka! On Monday, all the doctors I work with surprised me by wishing me, in Sinhala, a Happy New Years and accompanied the greeting with folded hands and a bow. Due to this New Years celebration, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were official government holidays, so naturally, I took this as leave as well. Bill and I hopped a bus and headed south.

The bus descended from the tea plantations in the chilly Hill Country down through the rice paddies in southern interior toward the coast at Hambantota. From Hambantota, we followed the coast where the weather warmed appreciably, the bus crowded appreciably and the salty smell of the ocean became seductive. We ended our seven hour journey in Tangalle and the Lonely Planet directed us to Ganesh Gardens. It was sheer heaven; palms, beautiful beach, good food and cabañas. We also visited the towns of Matara and Marissa. We whale watched (saw Blue Whales) and we read. We suntanned and we swam. We met and played Apples and Pictionary with Americans working at the American Embassy in Colombo and we met some Australians doing NGO work as well. It was wonderful.


Today, after five days of rest and relaxation, we again boarded an ancient bus heading for home. We boarded at 7:30 am but didn't actually take a seat until about 2pm. Remember I was telling you about the jolly train ride and how crowded it was? It was jolly because we were seated and watching others stand. Well, let me tell you, it is not so jolly standing. First of all, people (including Bill and I) are packed like sardines; every space on the bus is filled with a package, elbow or a knee. At one point, I wondered if we should get off the bus due to seriously dangerous overcrowding. The bus fender scraped the road as we veered around corners featuring 1000 foot ravines. I thought, surely, they will not let on more people, but then ten more people hopped on and wiggled their way into the middle aisle on the bus. Here is how it works:

You get on and there is no room. You lean into the body of the person in front of you and you forcefully press your leg against that person's leg. They are forced to shift a bit. That is when your foot becomes an opportunist and thrusts its way forward, all the while applying the same pressure with your hips and shoulders. Again, the body part that has been given an opening becomes opportunistic and finds a small space to fit itself. You continue in this fashion, pressing your bum into someone's face, spooning the butt of another, until you can plant both feet, find an anchor point with each hand and hang on for dear life, because you can't let go of these anchor points or you lose your balance, creating a domino effect of people losing their balance.


At times, I had man's elbow threatening to take out my eye while my hip was pressed into a short man's stomach. Then, another person embarked and everyone shifted. Then, I'd have my breast pinned against a woman's shoulder and my butt against a seated man's cheek. With each body shift or new embankment, the combinations of interlocking body parts changed. The bus was meant to seat about fifty five persons. I think we were close to 100 persons for most of the trip and this was not counting all the cargo of leeks, carrots and cabbage that had to be stored by the Bahinawa man.

The Bahinawa guy is the man who takes the money and stows the items, packages, luggage people bring onto the bus. He ensures the bus stops at the destination of the passengers and fetches the correct parcels that he stored somewhere in the bus, usually, at the feet of another passenger. Bill and I are both in love with the Bahinawa guy that runs the bus from Nuwara Eliya to the South. He is about 35, is completely impartial to who gets a seat or not and is very organized. He does a very good job.

Hopefully Bill likes him for other reasons than I like him. Bill likes him because he handles the chaos inside the bus with a steady hand and is reasonable about his judgements regarding people and packages. I like him because today, he had to sidle by me in order to collect the money. For a short time, but what seemed like a very long time, he and I were face to face, in a deep pelvis lock and both of us horribly embarrassed as we struggled with great difficulty to get past one another. Bill assisted by pulling me toward him and a man was pulling the Bahinawa guy the other way, all working to assist his passage along the aisle of the bus to enable him to perform his duties on the bus. Our fellow passengers found it all quite amusing.

I liked him because he was embarrassed, of course.

I may have been particularly attracted to him because Bill had an incident today that transformed his good looks. The difference between being a hunk and a hillbilly is ... one tooth. See below.


Hunk

Hillbilly

Billy Boy is off to the dentist tomorrow.