For the love of the Britishers!

This Monday the Galle Chamber was in a mild panic as the British High Commissioner was coming for a visit. The High Commissioner, Dr Peter Hayes, was doing the tour of the dignitaries in the south and, for some reason, that included the Chamber of Commerce. The meeting was due to start at 9.45 am which normally in Sri Lanka would mean a 10.15am start at the earliest. To demonstrate the cultural difference, however, the HC arrived 10 minutes early. Boy did that cause a panic! He was greeted with a garland of orchids as well as ceremonial leaves which have to be presented stem forward (but no one could tell me why!).

I'm not really sure what the purpose of the meeting was. The HC is clearly a very bright guy and was asking some very pertinent questions about the status of the business community which the Directors clearly didn't know the answers to based on their responses. After 30 mins of some seemingly purposeless to-ing and fro-ing the HC was presented with a plaque to commemorate his visit. It was a pretty expensive piece of tat. He must have cupboards full of the stuff!

The thing that really struck me about the visit was the level of stress and preparation (a lot by Sri Lankan standards) it had generated. We've had visits by the Canadians (x 2) and the Americans and they didn't get nearly half as much of the pomp and circumstance. When I asked why, the answer was "Because the Britishers did so much for the country". I was surprised to hear such a positive response about the UK as, in other instances, I hear negative comments. This was heightened about 6 months ago when the UN announced it was investigating war crimes in Sri Lanka. Effigies of Milliband and Brown (before the elections) were even burned in Colombo. Despite more recent aggravation, however, there is still a deep-seated respect for the British within Sri Lanka and that, coupled with hierarchy, is a potent mixture hence I should have realised that the High Commissioner of the UK would always get a huge amount of grovelling!

Life and Death in Sri Lanka

On Sunday I was stopped by the police as I was cycling back home from the swimming pool and I wasn't allowed to proceed until 4 army helicopters landed in the grounds of the nearby school. It transpired that the helicopters were carrying President Rajapakse who was visiting Galle to pay his respects to the wife of one of his advisers who had died recently.

Death, as in most developing countries, is a common occurrence here in Sri Lanka and, like all key stages in life, has a serious amount of ritual associated with it. The newspapers are peppered with adverts, sometimes half a page in size, publicising someones death. Equally, street light posts are covered in posters put up by the family telling everyone around that their loved one has died. The area near the house is covered in white flags and white streamers to signify where the body will be laid out. Three days before the body is buried, Buddhist monks arrive at the home and chant. For the next 72 hours streams of family, friends, neighbours and colleagues visit the home to pay their respects and eat rice and curry and drink tea. Unlike weddings were one has to be invited, funerals are for everyone. Even those with the slightest connection to the deceased is expected to come. I've been to 4 funerals since I've been in Sri Lanka all of those of relatives of my colleagues who I'd never met when they were alive.

The deceased is laid out in splendour in their coffin surrounded by fake flowers and elephant tusks. They are dressed in white - the grandmother of one of my colleagues looked rather like a black and white minstrel as she was wearing white gloves which were 5 times too large for her tiny hands. I kept expecting her to sit up and do the Minstrel wave!

It must be incredibly costly for a family when someone dies as they're expected to feed and give drinks to everyone that visits. Not only does this happen for the 3 days before the funeral itself but it is also repeated 1 week after the burial, 3 months after the burial and then every year after the burial in perpetuity. Guests bring sugar and milk powder to help but it must mean the family is left with mountains of these things and nothing else.

At the other end of the life cycle, I am so pleased to let you know I'm an Auntie (although I don't plan to let people call me that - it sounds so spinsterish!). My brother, Tim, and his wife, Anna, had twins early yesterday morning, 13th November. Both boys and their Mum are doing well. I can't wait to meet them in March when I head back to the UK. Well done Tim & Anna!

Auspicious times

One word you hear a lot of the time in Sri Lanka is "auspicious" - nothing is done unless it is at the auspicious time as decreed by one's horescope. Before a couple get married, their horescopes are compared to assess their compatibility. How your birth date,time of birth and location of birth can tell you how you're going to get on together, I'm really not sure, but Sri Lankans swear by it. A couple will even get a percentage compatability score. Fortunately both weddings that I've been to have >80% scores so I don't have to worry about their futures! Once the compatibility is assured, the horoscope also tells the couple the best date to get married on and the exact time on which the Poruwa ceremony must start. The couple must put their right foot onto the step of the Poruwa Dias (see picture above) at the exact time. It's very precise - the first wedding I went to had to be spot on 1038 - it's the only time I've seen Sri Lankans be punctual for anything!

Both weddings I went to were Sinhalese but, interestingly, one was a "proposal" wedding and one was a "love affair" wedding. My colleagues say that the latter probably accounts for 70% of weddings in the country now. Girls, especially have great faith in their parents choice. The other difference between the two weddings was the choice of dress of the brides. One bride wore traditional "Kandian" style, and the other chose an Indian sari with a hint of western influence - a veil. Kandy is one of the main towns of the Hill country of Sri Lanka. It used to be the seat of the Kandian King and was the last stronghold to hold out to the Brits. Kandian saris are slightly different in styling to an Indian sari that you will be familiar with, and the bride wears countless numbers of necklaces and styles her hair in a beehive with gems running along the parting. Despite my inadequate description, she does look rather beautiful.

I arrived for both weddings about 30 minutes before the "auspicious" time and was surprised to be one of only about 25 guests. I knew both weddings were having about 200 people so I was slightly perturbed. People arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the ceremony. In fact, the sister of the first bride, my colleague and friend, Lanka, missed the entire ceremony, even though she had organised the whole thing, as she was getting her hair done! The ceremony starts with the arrival of the Kandian dancers and drummers (see photo) dressed all in their traditional silver-plated finery dancing the groom into the room. He is followed by his family and is greeted at the door by the parents of the bride. Next comes the bride's turn to be drummed and danced to meet her groom. She, of course, has a bridesmaid or two and a couple of flower girls. Bright lurid clashing colours are the name of the game at the moment in Sri Lanka - neon pink and blue was Harshi's choice for her bridesmaids. Once they meet, there is then a bit of hanging around until the "auspicious time" draws near. Once it does, the master of ceremonies, gets the couple and their respective families on either side of the raised Dias, called the Poruwa. At the appropriate time, their right foot must step onto the stand. Once safely on, a number of ceremonial acts are performed - a conch shell is blown - no one could quite tell me why - and a lot of Buddhist chanting gets done but the master of ceremonies. The couple exchange rings, much in the way we would do, and then a white sheet is tied around them joining them at the waist. This white cloth is (you'll never believe it) used on the wedding night to check that the bride was a virgin. I was politely told by one elderly male guest that he thought that this shouldn't be done anymore because "young girls ride bikes and do sports and things now-a-days so it won't always work"! With the cloth around them, their pinkie fingers are tied together with string and an uncle, on the bride's side, pours water over the knot to signify the union.

Next comes the present giving. The bride is given a necklace by the groom and then a sari which she'll wear to the Homecoming event - more of that later. The groom lucks out and doesn't get anything; instead the couple give presents to key people from both families. The bride's parents are first and they receive gifts, essentially from the groom, thanking them for bringing their lovely daughter into the world. The recipient is supposed to carry the gift away on their head but no one could really tell me why! Finally 4 young girls dressed in their white Temple saris (the equivalent of Sunday School best - see photo) chant at the couple for an inordinately long time. Apparently they are telling the couple the dos and don'ts of a successful marriage - how young girls of about 14 would know this, I'm not really sure! While this is going on, a coconut is split in half with a machete by another Uncle. How well the coconut splits signifies how strong the marriage will be and also confirms how many children they'll have. Fortunately both coconuts at the two weddings I attended, split perfectly, but, unfortunately, no coconut reader was on hand to tell me how many kids they'd have.

Once being chanted at, the couple move from the raised Poruwa stand and light the oil lamp. A golden oil lamp features in all key ceremonies in Sri Lanka - from the opening of a new office to celebrating New Year. The lamp is normally about 6 foot high with a Cockerel on the top. It has two tiers of lamps which are filled with coconut oil and a wick and lit by key members of the families and any dignitaries that are present. Once lit, the couple sit with the registrar and sign the documents to become legally married. I was surprised to see the groom at the first wedding read the document in absolute detail - it took him about 5 mins. If he hadn't worked out what he was signing up for until then, I would have been rather alarmed.

The formal ceremony draws to a close with the couple "cutting the cake". In the first wedding the cake had been replaced by "kiri bat" or milk rice sculpted to look like a cake. The couple cut it and then have to feed each other some. They then feed key family members some cake too - in the first wedding the photographer was so keen to get the "white women" in the pictures, that he ushered me up and insisted that I was fed some rice cake. In the second wedding, my colleague and friend, Dinushi, had decorated what looked like a traditional 3 tiered iced wedding cake. I was disappointed to learn, however, that they were all dummy cakes i.e. boxes that are iced. The couple simply cut a little piece of real cake hidden at the edge of the arrangement!

After all the formal ceremonial activities are finished, the couple sit on a chair surrounded by flowers - all fake - real flowers just don't last here in the heat. They're given a welcome drink and left to their own devices for the next hour or so. I felt rather sorry for them but, I guess if it's an arranged marriage, it's good to get to know your other half. Meanwhile the guests are given a welcome drink of a very undiluted squash - how I was dying for a cool glass of bubbly! After they've got to know each other, the couple are expected to go around all the tables and meet the guests. Brown envelopes of money are surreptitiously thrust into their hands by the guests as they go.

Whilst the greeting of guests is going on, the booze comes out. All of a sudden groups of men seem to gather and they're plied with arrack, the local whiskey equivalent, and beer. None of the women drink but the men make up for it. Within an hour some are pretty far gone. When stomachs start to rumble, the mother of the bride comes round with a glass of water on a plate which guests are supposed to touch - it is a signal to come an eat which I totally misunderstood at the first wedding. I was really thirsty and I thought she was just being nice and bringing me a glass of water. Fortunately someone stopped me in time before I made a fool of myself!

Food is the standard rice and curry buffet eaten with your fingers and eaten generally in silence. Once it's scoffed down at a fast rate of knots, the dancing begins. I was surprised to see that it's the men that start the dancing in Sri Lanka unlike the UK where it's not until the wee small hours that the men will start to get up and strut their stuff. The girls slowly get involved but the gents certainly dominate the dance floor. In fact, at the first wedding, they also took over the singing (mainly very badly) from the band and everyone was happy clapping the afternoon away.

Having started at 10.30am, both weddings were wrapped up at 4pm. The bride and groom then head off for their "honeymoon" - 2 nights in a local hotel - and are then expected at the "Homecoming" celebrations. These are held in the groom's village and represent him bringing home his bride. I haven't been to one of these but they follow a similar ceremonial pattern to the main wedding except that the bride wears red, the sari given to her from her husband on her wedding day. Most couples then move back into the home of one of their parents and carry on life as before until they have enough money (usually after a couple of years) to build their own home.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to experience both of these weddings but equally fortunate that I'm not a girl growing up in Sri Lanka. Many of the tuk tuk drivers, when they ask me if I'm married (normally the 2nd or 3rd question after "Where are you from?" and "How long have you been in Sri Lanka?") are surprised that I'm not married at 37. As I haven't learnt how to say "I've not found the right man yet" in Sinhala, I simply answer "epaa" which means "I don't want to", to which they respond with raucous laughs and "I'll help you find a good Sri Lankan man" - oh yeah - I've heard that before! Maybe I need to learn what my "auspicious time" is instead.

The Other Religion - Cricket

Last weekend the 1st Sri Lanka vs. India Cricket Match was held at the Galle International Cricket Ground so it seemed rude not to go. Things weren't as easy as they seemed, however. Not having Ticketmaster here, getting tickets proved interesting. The best I could do was to get a colleague to phone a friend who, in turn, knew one of the security guards at the ground, to tell me when the tickets went on sale. Can you believe that they weren't available until the day before the match started?! I pitied all the Indian fans who were travelling here not knowing if they had tickets or not. In the end we managed to get 8 free tickets through a variety of sources so, with sun cream, cameras and binoculars in hand, we set off for the first day.

The centre of Galle and all around the ground was decked out with banners saluting Murali, Sri Lanka's famous bowler. Prior to the match, he already held the accolade of being the highest wicket taker in both test matches and one day internationals. He had announced that he'd be retiring after this particular game and, as it started, he was 5 wickets off securing 800 wickets. Life-size images of this google-eyed hero were everywhere. A song to him had even been written and was played at every break over the load speakers in both English and Singhala. You've never heard such a kitsch tune: "From the east to the west, the one days and the test, red ball, white ball, no ball, dead ball; the world knows he's the best."

Actually music was the theme for the day. The match was introduced by a performance from 3 school marching bands. Their first piece was, rather incongruously, the tune that goes with "Hitler has only got one ball; the other is in the Albert Hall". I'm sure you know the tune and it got stuck in my head until they they tried a rendition of something that we all recognised but couldn't quite place until someone realised it was a Beyonce number - very strange. The sad thing was that they were totally out of tune and off beat! The bands then dispersed to various parts of the grounds and the "Battle of the Bands" commenced with almost permanent music going on throughout the day.

On the TV the pitch and the grounds looks pretty professional, but in reality it's a mess! We had tickets for a specific tent but, on arrival, none of the officials had a clue where we were supposed to sit. Sarah went back on the 3rd day and was told that our seats were actually in a totally different part of the ground. Around the pitch (is that what you call it in Cricket? (sorry for my ignorance!)) there is a raised bank on which make-shift awnings had been erected with plastic seats under most. We were under a Micromax awning, the main sponsors for the test, whose tag line is "Nothing like Anything" - what they're expecting the consumer to take away from that, I really don't know. Behind the bank is just a swamp of un-draining water. On a baking hot day, to have to keep avoiding the puddles was rather odd! Many Sri Lankans don't even bother paying the 200-300 rupees to enter the stadium as they can sit on the Ramparts of the Fort next to the ground and watch for free.

The crowds certainly got into it, egged on by the bands. One tent for all the school boys in their pristine white uniforms, were the most into it as they jeered/cheered on every bowler and batsman. They kept their spirits up all day. Apart from a slightly extended lunch break, we lasted the full day, too, until things were called off due to poor light (due to the impending and very vicious rain storm that followed) at about 4.30pm. We adjourned for High Tea at the Amangalla Hotel, a very posh place in the fort, which I'm sure is how all Cricket matches are supposed to end.

Unfortunately, due to work, I couldn't go to any more of the days of the test. You'll be pleased to hear, however, that Sri Lanka won the game and Murali achieved the 5 wickets he needed so he's retired on a high. He's even going to get a special award from President Rajapakse now for his achievement - lucky guy! As you can probably tell, I know very little about Cricket, but I have to say that I really enjoyed the day and am looking forward to the next one. For anyone who is interested, the Cricket World Cup is being held in both India and Sri Lanka next February. Unfortunately Colombo is the only Sri Lankan venue but it still might be fun for any ardent Cricket fans out there.

A day in the life of...

A normal day for me starts around 6am. That isn't when I get but that is when the sweeping starts. Sri Lankans are born sweepers and there isn't a better time for them to sweep than at the crack of dawn. Most women are up at 5am so I guess it is logical to get the sweeping out of the way before going to work and, no matter how much you clean, the dust gets everywhere. Anyway, I let myself slowly wake up to the rhythmic brush, brush, brushing and then get a rude awakening with my cold shower. Most of the time a cold shower is a welcome relief here, what with the constant heat and humidity, but I do dream of a warm shower occasionally.

Breakfast for Sri Lankans is string hoppers and curry. For those of you who have read my last blog, you'll know that Sting hoppers are like vermicelli pasta served cold in little bird nest shapes. They don't do much for me at the best of times so you can imagine my delight when I found that the newly opened Keels Supermarket in Galle has started to stock Dorset Cereals. I know they are expensive but, oh, they are worth it!! Over breakfast I try to learn my 10 Sinhala words for the day. My flat is strewn with flashcards with all sorts of words, some of which will be useful, and some of which I will probably never need to now. I have an Sinhala lesson once a week so I hope my comprehension skills will continue to improve.

I head to work at 8.10am on my bike. I have a Chinese bike with no gears which, although it was new when I got it, is already rusted and the breaks are crap. The quickest way to work is about 2.5 km which includes lugging my bike over the railway tracks at one point. It is a bit of a gauntlet dodging the dogs, cows and goats not to mention all the school children and their parents (as there are no pavements here) and the tuk tuk drivers who never look or indicate. Fortunately there is no road rage here (apart from me cussing under my breath every 10 seconds) which is a good thing as blood pressures would go through the roof due to the ineptitude of the driving. Diabetes is already extremely high here, due the incredible quantities of sugar that is eaten, so it's good not to have further ailments on the nation's plate.

It takes me about 15 minutes to get to work and then about another 15mins to stop sweating. A pretty picture - I can tell you. They have recently got the air conditioning working again in our office but I think I preferred it with the fans. The office is an ugly building. Architects in Sri Lanka should be shot. It was built about 10 years ago and is already dilapidated. The ground floor and half the 1st floor are rented out to a bank and leasing company respectively. The Chamber's main office is on the 1st floor with the administrative staff, the Chairman and the secretary squeezed into a small but light office. Behind that is the board room which is a dark, dank room with a strange outcrop of rock in one corner and no decoration bar the dowdy pictures of past Chairman staring down. The 2nd floor is made up of a large auditorium which is in need of a major overhaul. The flat roof constantly leaks which means that the floor is patchy, the roof it stained, the A/C is patchy and the iguanas and rats can be seen running across the light fittings in the roof. Next to it is a large but extremely unappealing canteen with a kitchen off it which looks like something out of the middle ages. The whole space needs a lot of TLC and cash spent on it. Finally, I'm on the top floor. There are 3 classrooms for the "Chamber Academy", a bright and airy "library" (with a few token books that are arranged in the oddest order), a computer lab, some stinky loos, and the project office. Yours truly is stuck in the Project office which is a dark, gloomy space in which 5 of us are housed. I'd read about it being important where you work but have always taken the amazing facilities that I've had at P&G and then at Glendinning for granted. I've realised what a negative affect this horrible environment has on my attitude to work. I think if the room had more light, it would feel better. The fact that there is a flood in the middle of the floor every time I come in after a night of rain is less of an issue!

Work starts at 0830 and as I tuck into the "To do" list for the day, most of my colleagues get their breakfast out, along with the day's newspaper, and head to the canteen to have their breakfast. It doesn't seem to matter what you actually do here at the office but rather that you're in on time. My days are pretty stress-free with me either working with a staff member to develop a project proposal or work through the finances, or meeting with a Director to understand their business and get their feedback on some ideas for the Chamber. I've realised, though, that I need more stress, in a positive sense, to get a kick out of work. The less work I have, the less motivated I am.

By 12pm, I'm normally starving, so I head out to either do some errands in town and buy a snack to eat at me desk, or I head to "Sahana Coolspot" for some vegetable fried rice. The owner of Sahana's, Mr Saman, is a Director of the Chamber and a really nice man. His Hotel (for some reason all restaurants in Sri Lanka are called Hotels) is in the centre of town and one of the most popular. The staff are starting to get used to me now but still insist on giving me cutlery even though I eat with my hands, as the Sri Lankans do. Lunch is officially 30mins but, if I need to head to the post office and glue my stamps on and my envelopes shut (self-adhesive hasn't got here yet), I often need more time.

The afternoon continues much the same as the morning apart from the weekly English lesson that I've agreed to give the staff. I could fill my time entirely with English lessons if I wanted to here and no one can quite understand why that's not why I've been sent here. Even the Chairman only really praises me for the fact that the staff are speaking more English now. There are 2 levels within the staff - the OK and the terribly shy. I am slowly trying to work on the latter to get their confidence up but it's tough in a culture where students haven't learnt only to answer when they're being asked a question. It means that the more confident are always chipping in with the answer not letting the other speak.

Come 5pm, I'm ready to get away and, like my colleagues, clock watch for the last 15mins or so of work! Some evenings I head to the Lighthouse hotel, a beautiful place a couple of kilometers from work which was designed by the famous Sri Lankan Architect Bawa. Why he didn't teach his colleagues a thing or two, I don't know! They have 2 beautiful pools and a small but perfectly adequate gym. I've become a member and I'm trying to go 2 or 3 times a week and either swim or run. One night a week I have my Singhala lesson given by an English teacher, Geetika, who is a great teacher when she is not running around sorting out her 1 year old daughter who draws on the walls all the time. Sri Lankan mothers let their kids draw on the walls and then, once they grow out it, repaint the house and get on with life. I can never imagine you letting us get away with that, Mum! At least one or two nights of the week I'll meet up with one of my friends here for dinner. There are some very nice and expensive (although not in British terms) places to eat and them some OK and cheap places to eat in Galle and the nearby Unawatuna so we're always spoilt for choice.

Once home I either do the tasks I hate (like clean and sweep (like a good Sri Lankan!)) or enjoy like catching up on e-mails home. I then often watch a DVD. I've got really into TV series here given the fact that DVDs (copies) are really cheap. The problem is that they get very addictive and one's promise of "I'll only watch one" soon goes out the window. Someone was telling me that your brain reacts in the same way when you meet a good friend and when you watch a TV series. It's sad but true - you do start to feel the actors are people you know. I finally wind down from the day reading a book on my E-reader which I really recommend to everyone. I've been able to bring 120 books here to Sri Lanka all on something the size of 1 small paperback. The hounds of the baskervilles next door normally have their howling contest at the time that I want to sleep but, tucked up in mosquito net, it doesn't seem to matter and sleep comes easily.

Night, night all....click!

In the land of curry

I know this is sacrilege to say, but I'm bored of curries now. Can you believe it?! Sri Lanka has the most incredible curries but, it seems, that's all they have, and the monotony is getting to me somewhat, so I thought I'd get it off my chest and tell you about the food here.

The first thing you have to know is that Sri Lankans believe that you can't properly enjoy the flavours and textures of food unless you eat with your fingers. The good news is that everyone washes their hands before they eat although the bad news is it's pretty cursory and the scanciness of the soap leaves a lot to be desired. They then sit down and, if it's lunchtime, unwrap their lunch packet which is wrapped in newspaper, inside which is a hotch potch of rice and various curries wrapped in cling film. People eat off the cling film even if a plate is provided - why wash up a good plate when you don't have to, after all? The wife or mother in the family will have got up at 5am and cooked 3 or 4 curries and the rice and created the lunch packets for her brood before sweeping the house and heading to work herself. By lunchtime, therefore, the meal is luke warm which, given you're eating with your hands, makes sense, I suppose. I do miss piping hot meals, though.

Eating with your hands is tricky. Like in many cultures you're not supposed to eat with your left hand. People do, though, and as long as you don't serve someone else with your left hand, you won't be looked down on. The trick is to sort of squidge some rice and curry together and, with your thumb bent in your palm, flick it into your mouth. It's considered bad to get food beyond your first knuckle and this + the thumb flick is an art that I'm only just mastering.

The curries are scrummy though. Sri Lankans know how to use spices and so the flavours and fragrance of the food is stunning. They do like their meals, spicy, though so be warned if you're palate isn't used to that. I, fortunately, seem to be surviving fine with the spiciness but some of my fellow VSO-ers are struggling with it.

For Breakfast, Sri Lankans, or particularly Sinhalese, will have String hoppers and curry. String hoppers are like vermicelli noodles and are served cold in little bird nest like swirls. I have to say they're not my favourite, especially not for breakfast. They shouldn't be confused with Hoppers which are delicious. They are a small bowl-shaped pancakes made from a batter containing coconut milk and palm toddy that is cooked in a small wok-like pan. Curries are then poured into the Hopper and eaten - stunning and zero calories (not!).

Lunch and Dinner are then the ubiquitous rice and curry. Given the plethora of vegetables here, there are some incredible vegetarian curries - aubergine, carrot, cauliflower, bread fruit and beans create a veritable feast of colour and taste. Fish and chicken are also wildly used although I tend to avoid them having seen the street sellers stalls covered in flies on a daily basis. Curries are normally served with a sambol on the side. This is designed to give that little extra kick to the food. One of the most common (and most eye watering) is coconut sambol which is chilli powder, chopped onion, salt, grated coconut, and "Maldive fish" (salty intensely flavoured shreds of sun-dried tuna).

The alternative for curry at lunchtime are whats called "short eats" which are plates of wadei (spicy donut of deep-fried lentils), rottys (dough pancake filled with veg or egg), fish cutlets (spicy fish balls), and other deep fried delicacies. You're served a plate with a mixture of these and then pay for what you eat. The only watch out is that what you don't eat is served to the next table and the next and Sri Lankans don't have any qualms about touching food and then eating it.

One of the most dramatic dishes is kottu roti. I'm still not sure exactly what goes in it bar lots of vegetables and whatever meat you want. The spectacle is when the chef gets his two massive cleavers and starts chopping up the ingredients as if he was the drummer in a marching band. The noise is part performance part advertising as it is normally done in a glass booth at the front of the joint and seems very effective at luring the punters in.

The beauty of Sri Lanka is, given the different cultures - Tamil and Sinhalese (and to a lesser extent Muslim) there are two distinct cuisines. Unfortunately there are no Tamil restaurants in Galle but I have been to one great one in Colombo. The Tamils eat something called Dosai which are like giant pancakes which you tuck into with curry. Their curries are much the same as what we'd imagine of when we think of Indian curries and, as they say, a change is as good as a break, so I'm looking forward to my next Colombo trip to have some more.

The fruits here are incredible. I have never seen so many different types of bananas. I still haven't worked out which is which so sometimes I end up with the plantains by mistake and other times hit the jackpot by getting the sweetest tastiest bananas you've ever had. The streets are lined with stalls selling pineapples, guavas, jackfruit, papaya, and things I'd never seen before like wood apple (which won't be missed either - they taste as their name suggests!). It's the season for mangoes at the moment which are so cheap and so delicious it's difficult to stop eating them. Interestingly the only fruit that isn't nice here are apples. They began to be imported when the Brits colonised Sri Lanka and are very expensive and not tasty at all.

All of this is, of course, washed down with tea. In the land of tea, though, you'd expect to have the best stuff ever. Unfortunately the best is exported and Sri Lankans are left with the dregs. It doesn't matter too much, though, as they drink it in roughly a 50:50 mix of milk and tea and also with heaps of sugar. The other tipple is arrack, the local hooch. Arrack is made from toddy which is tapped from the flower of the coconut. When fermented and refined it produces arrack (33% proof) which is either drunk neat or with coke or lemonade. I've found it goes well with the local Elephant Ginger Beer here. Last night we had this month's board meeting and the board at the end (11pm!) adjourned to my landlord's house (just downstairs from me) for dinner and drinks. They quickly polished off 4 or 5 bottles of arrack and some got extremely pissed. I was allowed to mingle with the guys (but stuck to beer) but my landlady stayed firmly in the kitchen. It's not done for women to be around men when they're drinking in Sri Lanka.

As you can imagine given the sugariness of their tea, Sri Lankans have a very sweet tooth. There are always stalls at the market selling the most lurid coloured sugary sweets and something that is very similar to Scottish tablet. Cakes are also big here. We went to the funeral of one of my colleague's Grandmother recently (more of that in a future blog), and we took presents of two bags of sugar and a cake - what more do you need for the afterlife, after all?!

Well, all this talk of food is making me hungry, so I'd better go and sort some lunch out. If you're interested in trying to cook some Sri Lankan curries, there is a good website called infolanka.com that has some great recipes. I'd recommend the Cauliflower and cashew nut curry!

10 things you didn't know about Leeches!

Sri Lanka has about every different type of climate and terrain that you can imagine and we visited one of it's most diverse areas last weekend - the rainforest. Centuries ago the whole of the South West quarter of the island would have been covered in dense rainforest. Now only about 3 or 4 sections of it remain intact, the biggest of which is Sinharaja. It became a World heritage site about 30 years ago which, fortunately, stopped the logging.

8 of us woke up at 5am on Sunday morning and donned our long sleeved shirts, long trousers and, most important of all, our leech socks, and set out for about 1 hour to the edge of the Rainforest. Walking through the trees you expected to hear "Gabriel's Oboe" from the Mission playing in the background, but instead we were serenaded by the occasional motorbike driving through on the foot-wide path. There are some 22 villages within the forest and, despite regular petitions to the government for a road and bridge to be built further upstream, the only access they have is via the path into the forest.

Once we got off the main drag, things got much more foresty but, with it, came the leeches. I think if I had to go into George Orwell's Room 101, my worst thing would be leeches. They are the most tenaciously, skin creeping creatures you could meet. So here goes with 10 things you didn't know about leeches:

1. Leeches detect you through skin oils, heat, blood or even the carbon dioxide you breathe out. Every 2-3 minutes we had to check our boots and leech socks to pick off the little blighters before they managed to get into your shoe.
2. A leech has 32 brains - 31 more than humans!!
3. A leech will gorge itself until it's full and then just drop off. It will drink up to five times it's own body weight in blood!
4. Some barbers used to do surgery as well as cutting hair, and they used leeches. When a barber finished surgery, he would take the bloody cloth he'd use and wrap it around a pole to show passers by that he did surgery. This is the origin of the red and white swirled poles we still see today.
5. Scientists are studying leech saliva. They believe that chemistry that the stops the blood from clotting when a leech bites you will soon be able to be used on humans to prevent heart attacks and strokes. Sarah, one of our party, suffered a bite near her shoulder which didn't stop bleeding for 24 hours!
6. Hungry leeches were a problem for soldiers in 1799 who were marching from Egypt across the Sinai peninsula to Syria. The thirsty soldiers, drinking anything they could find, would drink leech-infested water. When the leeches attached to their mouths and throats, some died from blood loss, whilst others died from their throats swelling, filled with blood-filled leeches, thereby cutting off their air - horrible! We fortunately didn't have any fatalities within our group although 3 of the group were "attacked".
7. Four or five large leeches can drain the life out of a rabbit in half an hour.
8. The bite of a leech is painless due to it's own anaesthetic.
9. Burning a leech is not supposed to be a good way to get rid of them as they vomit things into your blood due to the shock!
10. The largest leech discovered measured 18 inches. The ones we encountered were little buggers but they couldn't half move!

Well, I hope you're all itching and feeling ghost leeches as much as I am. For a day after the trip I'd keeping having to check to make sure I hadn't missed one of the blighters. I can't say I'll rush to do the experience again. Because you were constantly checking your shoes and also having to look where you put your feet because the path was so uneven and slippery, the amount of animals and insects we saw was less than I'd expected. One of the highlights, though, was this Kangaroo Lizard which bounces as soon as a camera comes out just like its namesake (see picture). We also saw beautiful Doctor snails with bright pink, large shells, and some stunning butterflies. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and would be able to last a series of "I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here" quite easily as he knew all the plants and what medicinal properties they each had.

I'm glad to say that I'm back on safe, leech-free land now, and things are going much better at work, which is great. There is certainly some interesting wildlife to deal with here, and that's just the Directors!! More about that another time.

I wish you all a leech-free week!