Bill and Wendy's ickcillint adventures

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...