A new perspective on giving--tangible and intangible--at the Janoda Foundation.

I first met Karu Gamage, my generous host, at my guesthouse in Mt. Lavinia a few years ago. "You've got to come visit me at my foundation!" He insisted, and he gave me his card, introducing his brother who was with him that day. "You'll have a wonderful time. I guarantee it!" I was in Colombo for a five day conference at the time and though I promised I would come to see him in Hambantota, my promise felt a little empty. I didn't know when I'd be back to Sri Lanka. 

When I got the Fulbright award a bit of a conundrum arose as to where to stay once we would arrive in Sri Lanka. The Fulbright Commission in Colombo encourages grantees to find apartments or houses on their own. I wanted a different feel, especially since I thought I might be working more of the time at Moratuwa University. I had stayed at the Ranveli Beach guesthouse several times. The proximity to Moratuwa, the adjacent ocean, the nice pool, and the lovely owner and staff were all good reasons for wanting to stay there. But I also promised Janet, "all kinds of interesting NGO people come through who you'll enjoy meeting." Karu was the person I had in mind. 

I had misplaced his card and my schedule for the first few months of the Fulbright was less than fluid, so I didn't have a concrete way to follow up on my promise to visit him. Then one fine day in October, exactly the time of year I had met him before, Karu showed up at Ranveli Beach. Our enthusiastic reacquaintancing was immediate and his short visit at Ranveli was punctuated with laughter, hugs, and much twinkling of the eyes. Bu, my host at Ranveli had spoken very highly of Karu and was truly delighted to see him come around. Again we exchanged cards and again promises were made but without a concrete date in mind. I had to get past the semester's end at Moratuwa and also complete the plenary speaking engagement I had committed to at Kelaniya University. Sinhala language instruction also took until late December. Then, when we had a moment, Janet planned for us to go south to our favorite beach at Goyambokka, just west of Tangalle. I suggested we top off a few days at Goyambokka with a visit to Hambantota, just an hour or so away. So here we are enjoying the time with Karu Gamage, his son, his brother, and a few guests. As a sort of immersion into Sri Lankan life, something I've craved for months since we arrived, this experience has been the deepest and most meaningful yet. It has been like being with family. 

Now that was a bit of an introduction leading up to a longer story about giving in Sri Lanka, how it's done and how it's perceived, and the discussion is long and involved but in my opinion, it is a cautionary tale for my own colleagues at the United States State Department. Anyone out there listening?

In 2008 Karu opened the Janoda Foundation (Janoda is a coupling of two words that translates loosely as "community awakening). He built it on land gifted to him by then-president Rajapaksa. This hugely meaningful gift meant something to Karu and to the people of this community who still feel the beneficence of the former government. Gifts that are given are remembered. In a similar way, Karu today gave away two sewing machines to preschool teachers whose schools had closed. We saw him worshipped as I had seen Bu and his wife worshipped at their recent "da-anna" (giving ceremony) in which priests and guests were gifted with food as part of a new home opening. Janet participated in another sort of da-anna with Bu and his elderly parents just a few days back as packets of food and small cash gifts were distributed to the poor, a monthly tradition at the Ranveli. 

Beautiful ways of giving, some major and others minor, are a way of life here. Sri Lankans count as their friends people who give. And while we all understand that giving can be overt or less visible the custom here seems to be that overt giving is the more accepted way of doing things. In fact this is supported by a small aside. The day before Budika's da-anna for the poor I had given him a few thousand rupees toward food packets or whatever he chose. Next day he gave the money back to Janet and asked her to participate openly in the ceremony by distributing the cash as she saw fit. 

So where's my message to America in all this? In my travels around Sri Lanka I have seen numerous examples of aid given by developed nations under many auspices. Bridges, irrigation works, buildings, and many other infrastructure features have been donated by other governments and they are seen and felt and used every day by Sri Lankans. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with a State Department representative at a Fulbright event. I asked why we didn't see more evidence of American giving as we traveled through the country. Her simple answer: "the United States doesn't do infrastructure giving."

I can understand that the US may follow other priorities in giving. We may offer various forms of support that are less tangible but perhaps as effective as infrastructure projects. But in my opinion, based on what I've seen here in Sri Lanka, the way to win friends is to give, to give generously and to give appropriately. Culturally appropriate giving, like the types of giving I've discussed here may be difficult to figure out. But that's our job. 

As I develop expertise in reading the human landscape of Sri Lanka, a landscape that's full of intangibles, I hope I can do something to develop tangible results in cultural collaboration between our countries. 

With the potters of IththaDemaliya. "Yannava tikak ballanava."

We took a bus to Tangalle and another bus about 16km to Weeraketiya. I planned out a walk that would roughly follow the circumference of a largish tank called Udakiriwila Wewa. The walk started just at the Weeraketiya bus stand where we followed the main road (also the bund road) northward to IththaDemaliya Road. The road would circle back into B450, another way into Weeraketiya, and I figured we could find our way to small tanks along the walking route. 

We were surprised, which I guess we shouldn't have been, when we first entered IththaDemaliya Road, where a few shops, some tuktuks, bicycles, scooters, and a fiber brush-coir rope truck were assembled. Dogs too. And kids. Less than ten miles in from Tangalle, which is crowded with tourists, we light-skinned foreigners on foot were a total spectacle. "Where are you going?!" The ubiquitous exclamation-question came fast and frequent. "Yannava," I answered, "we're walking," and then to explain ourselves a bit more, I added "tikak ballanava," "a little bit seeing."

"Yannava!," echoed our public and then, "tikak ballanava," like a tunnel of responses down the lane. One kid got on a bike shouting "yannava ballanava!," spreading the word that aliens had arrived. 

The road was easy going as we headed west, especially as we left the precincts of "town," passing a community hall, a tiny school, then what looked like pretty much nothing with a few houses in clearings among the trees and a glimpse of the tank. A man on a scooter came by. Always the beginning of a story when you're on these quiet roads. "I hear you came to see. What would you like to see? Would you like to see how we make clay pots?"

Would I ever I thought. So, on to our first detour. "This is my sister. She will show you how she makes pots." And with an insouciant concentration she sat down at a small electric wheel with a lump of gray clay on it. Out budded a pot. Budded is the only word I can use because literally it looked like she was squeezing a bit of clay to do her bidding. 

She took a bit of a sharp object and while the new vessel spun just sheared it off. Touch it. Hold it, she told me. Light as it was it felt strong to the touch and especially the beautifully proportioned rim provided a haven for the hands. Strange words I know but this is how I remember this pot, and also the pots that followed.  And now all the pots I look at and crave to touch here.  

Two pots were made from the single clump. Her hands were sure and they did just what they were supposed to. We saw pots drying in the sun, pots that would have the bottom hammered into them from material of the sides. Pots waiting to be fired and along the wall, pots ready to sell. Amazing to see her wood fired kiln, built with local bricks tightly packed with clay and on the roof of the kiln, slightly shorter than her five feet or so, a layer of wet clay with straw mixed in, about a foot thick. Wood was put in from the bottom and the fire was actively going. I remember the fussy fussiness we used at Medalta when it came to the wood firing, which I could see here off of IththaDemaliya Road, was the easiest and most natural way to build and utilize a kiln. 

The man on the scooter, her brother, invited us into the house to see their other products, very unfancy objects painted with red pigment. A ewer, a bowl, a couple of designed objects. We exchanged numbers and Janet and I said our goodbyes. Wish we could have taken a vessel but we were at the beginning of a long walk in the middle of bus travel. How to carry it? Why? These small masterpieces, created all over Sri Lanka, are available for a song anywhere you go in Sri Lanka. Even Arpico, Sri Lanka's plastic capital, carries clay pots. 

Down the road we continued a couple of hundred meters. Up on a rise to the left we saw a large kiln something like the one we'd just seen, built under a sturdy shelter. The one we'd just seen had a thatched shelter above it, more like a tent, just to keep out the rain. 

Just past this second kiln we saw that this place was an official crafts outlet. Janet said we owe it to then to step inside. So we did and were greeted by four women in half a dozen low-ceilinged rooms lined with pots in different stages of readiness. As in the place we saw just before we observed a large clump of gray clay, maybe a half ton of the stuff. I wonder of it's made from tank silt. The gray color wasn't like the reddish silt I touched and tasted near Mihintale but maybe other parts of the tank produce gray clayey silt like this. 

Again a clay lady showed how the pots were formed. A kind of pinching off a bud, nothing like I've ever seen. I thought about Coomaraswamy's chapter in Medieval Singhala Art and did a quick mental comparison with what I was seeing. Besides for electric wheels (he wrote at the beginning of the 20th century) there was no singing (at least while we were there), no helpers (who I could figure), and the biggest change is that these were women at work! I have always thought potmaking was a male domain. I was wrong. When did it become a women's craft? And where were the men? Must check with Deb Winslow who has spent decades on a pottery making village in Kurengala. 

The grace with which these pots were made was matched by the pots themselves. Simple, useful, pleasing to the eye, and very pleasing to the touch. I saw these useful everyday objects in a new light that shine favorably indeed. So much beauty and grace in simple movements and simple materials. No artifice or invention, which could be taken in a negative light were the pots not of their own perfection. 

Every day in Sri Lanka I see and learn new things and it's exhausting and a challenge to "get out there" but how thankful I am for the opportunity. 

Irrigation Tank Iconography at the Mulkirigala Temple in Tangalle and an unexpected Buddhist step tank

The beautiful vertiginous Mulkirigala Temple is one of a series of Kandyan rock temples built during medieval times in central and southern Sri Lanka. The temple complex comprises several cave chambers that are dominated by huge reclining Buddha statues and exuberant, fanciful sculptures and paintings. The adjacent terraced grounds are marked by assorted dagobas, in which various relics of the Buddha are said to reside. 

The goal of this short essay is to illustrate some of the decorative features that may be directly or indirectly interpretable as illustrations of irrigation tanks. Much of the Sri Lankan landscape is dominated by some 30,000 human-built ecosystems that focus on the "tanks" (so named by Portuguese cartographers of the 16th century). The tanks are actually bodies of water ranging from less than an acre to several square miles. They were traditionally used to irrigate the rice crops of Dry Zone Sri Lanka and continue to be used for this and other purposes. 

During the Kandyan period many or most of the tanks in parts of Sri Lanka were in disuse. However as I have noted in a previous post,  Coomaraswamy elucidated a Kandyan design template that may reflect a longstanding cultural understanding of tank anatomy and function that reaches back over 2000 years. So it is with avid interest that I offer these tank images from the Mulkirigala Temple. 

The first series of images here very clearly depict a tank ecosystem with its floating loud gardens and adjacent vegetation. Fanciful additions like cavorting maidens and spillways that are depicted by spitting elephants add to the charm of this memorable cave painting, as alive today as when it was painted during the 18th century. 

That the Buddha is seated on its shores lends an aura of peaceful holiness to the scene. 

Less obvious but to my mind, equally convincing are these "palmettes," overseen here by a pair of bodhisattvas. 

Of you'll bear with me you may see the the "flames" as spilling waters. The midpoint of the shield could represent a sluice gate, and the frothing bubbles at the right and left of each shield representing spillways on either side of the bund. Visions of abundance, stylized and tinged with decorative religiosity. 

In May when I came to study tank ecosystems in the Dry Zone of the North Central Province my guide Amara mentioned that the bund (dam) of the tanks stretch across the water like a pair of open arms. This compelling image influenced my thinking about tanks, first in the strange, anti-intuitive observation that the bunds lie concave against the waters, inviting pressure to build up against the tank in a potentially destructive way. This led to a whole cascade of questions about water circulation in the tank and tank structure that I am still exploring. Perhaps some key to the question lies in the possibility that tanks were not only personified but perhaps modeled after human anatomy. 

Finally, the bund-like curve over the pink-winged dagoba of this image suggests the connection between flowing water, life, agricultural and natural abundance, and the religiousity of this country that ties them all together. 

A final surprise of the day, which was cloaked in an atmospheric shadow of rain, was the step tank Janet pointed out to me high on one of the terraces. This cultural relict from south India, which we observed in abundance in kovils around the Jaffna Peninsula, was a reminder here in the far south of Sri Lanka of the intertwinings and borrowings between Buddhism and Hinduism. 

It pointed out again to me the richness of culture here, as lush as the vegetation that covers this dazzling island. 

Country manners

We took a longish walk yesterday just a mile or two from the main road. I felt like it might have been another planet. When people decry the loss of traditional life-ways in Sri Lanka it makes me wonder where they're looking. We were deep in a countryside where people look and act differently, where cars are rare and the pace of life...Well. I don't want to spout cliches. But it ain't Colombo. 

Along a "main" road that existed as such only by dint of its label on google maps, and by the fact that it was being widened, we saw village behaviors that mark this kind of life. I wish I had stopped to observe more. 

One thing that stuck out. It looked like groups of people were waiting for the occasional bus. Children in arms, teenagers, young adults, parents and grandparents all standing on a corner waiting for a bus. When the vehicle came one person would get on. A family send off for one person who might be going as far as Tangalle town, just five miles away! 

Kauda?! Breaking the sound barrier and learning how to use the phone

I don't love using the phone, here or at home. I can't hear the devices that well and it seems I'm always on a bus or walking on the main road when someone calls. Talk about impossible to communicate. 

But here in Sri Lanka people are addicted to their mobiles. People call for the smallest things. They check in constantly. They keep calling long after you're gone to make sure you're OK. Everyone wants to exchange numbers and I do it reluctantly.

When the phone rings (and it does plenty) you see a random lineup of numbers. I don't know why. I always put in the contact name with the numbers. But the random strings of digits keep coming. If your phone is put away or shut off and you don't hear it ring it's polite form to call back. That costs Dialog minutes which are easy enough to reload unless you're away from the kades (small shops) like I am. And sometimes you have to reload by little perforated cardboard cards with the code number hidden like a lottery. Then there are more codes to press in and another if you want to check your balance. 

So I'm not sure why I did it. Maybe it was hoping we'd have a reliable driver on tap. Maybe I was so proud of putting together a sentence in Sinhala. Anyway the other day I asked our tuktuk driver here in Tangalle to write down his number in our phone. 

When we were supposed to meet yesterday at one he wasn't there. The lineup of drivers said in chorus, "Deepal? He's gone to Mirissa. Hire me! I'm his brother! I can take you!" Just the tiniest feeling of loyalty (and not wanting the hassle of getting to know a new driver) made me think of calling him. So I rang three times and hung up, pretty desperate to not use up my Dialog minutes. Anyway it's what people do. About a half our my phone rang. 

"Kauda?!" asked the voice on the other line. "Who is it?!"

A new use for a simple word and a new insight into using the phone. I broke the sound barrier by learning a two syllable word and how to use it. 

A long walk in the back country near Tangalle and three tiny village tanks.

 Finally free to use our own feet we took the first road inland just east of road marker 194. The ascent wasn't too steep on a fairly busy road with lots of scooters and tuktuks and I'd say it was about 15 minutes before we reached the tank spillway. No way to see how deep the turbid flowing water was so Janet offered me a stick. The water was no more than a foot high and we crossed the spillway without trouble but still, feeling brave. 

The tank was tiny, no more than an acre and possibly less. Janet suggested it was peri-urban and though I didn't agree at first in retrospect, after we saw more remote tanks during our walk, I would agree that is was a kind of sub-urban water feature. One way you could reckon this is that there was no rice cultivation below the tank. Land use, however it's organized, includes rice cultivation in a functional tank landscape. The bund path, which we reckoned to be a bit too wild to follow, was set on by another pedestrian who stopped for a moment ahead of us. I thought he was hesitating because of the thick vegetation but then Janet pointed out his phone had just rung! Another hint was that within a minute or two of our arrival a tuktuk came by, father driving with young son aboard, and settled in the middle of the spillway, which was about a dozen feet wide. Cleaning vehicles is a way of using spillways I've seen a lot. Not a kind use of the waters but it tells you something about how local people see this resource.  

We continued a bit uphill, maybe a kilometer or two and then turned west to our left on what appeared to be a main road. Broad it was and in places undergoing heavy duty construction. But there were hardly any vehicles on it. Even scooters seemed to be taking the parallel Galle road about a mile downhill to the south. This road, the B628, is in the heart of former president Rajapaksa's electorate. The widening of this almost deserted road has to have been a boondoggle of the former government. Maybe there are long-term plans to make this a highway to Hambantota. For now it offered easy walking with a broad view of village life. Occasional bus stops. People with umbrellas, mothers and children, scooters entering the road from driveways, comfortable family houses with clean shady verandas, dogs, and old men sitting or making their way slowly down the road. Toothless but eager to talk to us. 

At one major construction junction we saw a community house at the bottom of the hill near a rice field but decided not to turn because of construction noise. Another hundred feet or so we came to a small road on our right that led steeply downhill and arose from the bund of our second tiny village tank. 

I've been looking for the "classic" tank conformation since we got here in September. When we were at Madduma Bandara's our first evening in Anuradhapura I asked him about this tank form and whether we could visit one. I located a few on the topo map and he offered, "yes that is a kind of classic shape," but we never visited a tank like that. My guess is that he might not have ever considered the "bell" or "dagoba" shaped tank that we discovered today as significant. Maybe he never saw the shape. But my guess is that this tank shape is one of the most ancient. Here it was today in the deep south but you find it as well hundreds of miles away in the North Central Province. I haven't looked at topo maps for the whole country but my conjecture is that this form is the classic Sinhala adaptation of the village tank, topography and other conditions permitting. It may be a very old form, perhaps dating to the first village tanks built by the Sinhalese. 

The form is similar to a dagoba but also to a human breast. At Mulkirigala yesterday Janet suggested this might be connected to the shape of the palm of a hand. Similarly it is not unlike a footprint. Might its makers have considered it as a memento of the Buddhas footprint? 

Leading to the rice fields a steep pathway with coppiced narrow tree trunks and wooden fence construction, looking temporary. I was reminded of my time in the North Central Province where Amara and I spotted temporary wooden structures used to modify and control the flow of water. 

  

This was the largest tank we visited today. It watered rice fields that mirrored its shape and seemed to take up just a bit more acerage. Maybe it's because we're not fully in the Dry Zone here. The rice fields were ringed with forest and so was the tank. The narrow bund road was paved, likely more than 50 years ago. It led to a narrow paved spillway, that crossed a continuation of the roadway. From the spillway we looked back toward the south bank of the bund, the left side of the bell if you will, and saw two or three people using steps to do their laundry in the water. You could hear them slapping the wet material across the tank. To their west, at the apex of the bell or dagoba lay what appeared to be the village. We could see traffic moving there and a few houses. 

We followed the bund road northward where it petered out and ended, its paving stone surface giving way to a dirt road leading east-west. We decided to turn around and recross the bund road, reveling again to the sight of giant lotus leaves, lush vegetation on all sides, and the remarkable green of the ripening rice fields just to the east of the bund. 

Back up to the B628 we followed the paved road westward to a hamlet called West Kadurupokuna. I wonder if our tank, unlabeled on the google map, might be Kadurupokuna (Kaduru Pond). 

We came to a junction marked by a Sanasa Development Bank building, a couple of small kades (one of them conspicuously new and clean), a bus shelter, a larger general store, and a sub-post office, a ubiquitous feature of the rural Sri Lankan landscape. Here a road appeared at a sharp left hand turn, apparently headed southeast, the way we had to go to get home. It was close to 11, the sun was getting high and hot as shadows disappeared, and we had seen two great tanks, one more than I expected from my screen shot of the google map, which showed a dead end-something I haven't observed yet in Sri Lanka. 

Following the narrow, almost shadowless road to the southeast we came to a gaudily painted vihara and across from it a former construction zone, which now looked sort of like a rest stop. Partially shaded, we stood there for a moment. And in that moment we saw our third, and perhaps most interesting tank of the day. This small tank watered rice fields many times its surface area, leading me to the conjecture that it might be quite deep, perhaps fed by a spring. In the middle of the tank was what looked like a tube well. But I reminded myself that contemporary engineers copied and replaced ancient structures around the tanks with concretized versions. This "well" must have been a unique sluice built in the middle of the tank with underground tubes to feed the rice fields. The dimensions of this tank were so small (less than an acre) and its bund so modest that this internal sluice might have been constructed to avoid stressing the bund. Assuming a large volume of water in this narrow tank, at least my guess is worth considering. 

Seeing these unusual structures, sensing the ancientness of the tanks, and experiencing the natural and human life around here is a dream. There have been ups and downs during these months, especially when I've felt the urge to get out and see Sri Lanka on foot. But today's walk is exactly what I've been hoping for in this Sri Lankan landscape adventure. 

Am I in Sri Lanka or not?

Exactly three months into our Fulbright and the question arises whether I'm actually in Sri Lanka or not. Of course physically we are very much "here." Bus rides, food and music, acquaintances, friends, and work are all going on here. Even language has begun to bloom and though no one can understand me when I try to speak Sinhala at least I'm putting the thoughts together in a Sri Lankan language.

So here in my guesthouse outside of Tangalle there's the usual conundrum. Great to not be isolated. To have people around, especially Sri Lankan people. In our guesthouse in Colombo there are lots of Indians and Maldivians in addition to Sri Lankan guests. But to get back to Tangalle, a lovely small guesthouse with just a handful of rooms, the unfortunate reality of a table full of Germans speaking their language with the gusto of young drink people somehow not ashamed of who they are. 

Their happy drunk voices travel in through my front window and through the back window the Sri Lankan staff, the houseboys and kitchen boys and server and manager can be overheard. 

All of these voices are in their own way Sri Lankan, even the obnoxious guests who bring their own food and beer and make a racket and put their feet on the tables and smoke. Lovely European visitors. 

But as the months slip by my feeling of being rooted in Sri Lanka seems to deepen only incrementally, neither as fast nor as deep as I wish it were. The countryside flies by. My feet don't touch it. My hours are spent with flies and Germans and something somehow is missing in this experience.