The Agony and the Ecstasy


The Agony and the Ecstasy is nearly over.  We fly home on December 12th and flying into the time zone, we arrive home on December 12.  Our adventure into development work in a post conflict period of Sri Lanka has been ecstasies come true.  It has been an adventure.  Whilst Bill and I have travelled sufficiently to foreign lands, we have never lived in a foreign country, never been a visible minority and this move into uniquely unfamiliar territory to us or to anyone we knew was certainly adventure.  The ecstasy contained challenge. 

Challenge was unleashed by twisting our tongues around Sinhala and Tamil languages, both completely unintelligible to the other. Challenge was navigating the daunting, jumbled, disordered and colourful marketplaces in order to find the essentials of life: food, matches, clothing, and household items.  Challenging us was adjusting to the pace, timing and lack of urgency in a collective culture and the difficult balancing of ethnocentrism with capacity building in the workplace.  Challenging was keeping alive as we navigated the muddy, bumpy roads and rabid traffic, as a pedestrian, on motor scooters and bicycles.  Necessarily, we prayed in order to stay alive on public transportation where the rickety red buses heaved along, grossly overloaded, in poor repair and as a colleague described it, where only convicted murders were allowed to apply as bus drivers.  Adventure and Challenge gave us ecstasy.
Sinhala lessions with Sandamalli
Paradoxically, the same adventures and challenges gave us agony.  Agony is sneaky.  It crept up when we least suspected, catching us at a vulnerable moment and leaving us awash with loneliness and a sense of entrapment.  The distance from home, the length of the time commitment felt like a trap, a tribulation, a grief and a loss, separated from our homeland, our family, our friends, our home and our community.  Agony was not being there for family events, being apart whist three grandchildren were born, having no friends, no community activities. Agony was being isolated by colour, language and custom.

Bill and I with Shanthiham crew
We were always free to come home, but at times, it didn’t feel as if we had the freedom of choice. Our choice was robbed by the depth of our commitment to take on this challenge of development work in Sri Lanka.  We had to fulfil the commitment that we had undertaken and that embodied a commitment to ourselves, to VSO, to the people of Sri Lanka, for the profession of social work, for human rights, for peace.  Yet, at times, when the pain washed over us, it was hard to remember the values that shaped our decision to be here in the first place and two years away from home felt magnified into ten years as we morosely counted our losses, one by one.

Yet, here we are.  We are just one month away from the end of this adventure and challenge. The ecstasy continues in our sense of “we gave it our best”, we gratefully accept this amazing experience that provided us with opportunity, experiences we will pull out,  mull over and treasure for a life time and the gift of new and treasured friends.  The Agony continues now in new form and again in paradox: this experience is over, the two years are done and the commitment shrinks to what seems like only a few months. We leave behind treasured friends. On December 12th, the agony and the ecstasy end.  We are grateful for the deep joy of the ecstasy and the painful growth provided by the Agony.

 

 

Comments

  1. JenNovember 11, 2012 at 9:14 AM

    I feel so fortunate to have had a glimpse into the life you have lead in Sri Lanka. I can imagine your ecstasies and agonies. I so admire you for it all.

    ReplyDelete

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