In those moments when you don't know what to write, mostly because everything looks so bleak, you can find something nice to write about. Everyone likes to read nice things. And everyone likes to see nice things on Twitter. Let's see...
The joyful laughter of our guesthouse crew when I brought them a beautiful expensive dress suit to be cleaned and pressed. They swore up and down they weren't laughing at me. But I couldn't care less. I'm well looked after and I feel entirely comfortable with the crew. If they got a laugh at my expense, all the better. Maybe it's because I'm almost always in near-rags. Where did I dig up the suit and where am I going?
To Colombo I'll go on Thursday. An important State Department person is making a special visit to Sri Lanka. We're such a small Fulbright program here (she was just in India where there are hundreds of Fulbrighters) I want to give the program my support. I'm hiring a driver to take me to Colombo, Janet will meet us at the reception, and we'll drive through the night to get back to Batticaloa in the morning. There. Two paragraphs of niceness.
Third paragraph: an older European couple at the pool are approached by one of the help who works the grounds nearby (not the pool itself). He is deaf-mute and his mien, like mine most of the time is pretty serious. Say somber. He's trying to offer the people a towel, which the new pool person forgot to do. They are, predictably, scared. I pick up on what he's trying to say and seeing that I'm trying unsuccessfully to "translate" for them (English is not their first language and my heavy cold makes my pronunciation awful) he runs to get the towels. Smiles and thanks all around. And so very nice to see this young man do this one small confidence-building thing.
More nice? Darshan and I had a nice long chat. His father took me in the car for a little tour of Batticaloa, and I mentioned to Prince that I want to ask the driver to stop for half an hour on the way to Colombo. Where will we stop? Matale. What will we see? Your guess is as good as mine. But mentioning this to my friend here re-awakened in him a quest to help me with my finding out mission, "what happened in Matale." Talking about the lies or imposed ignorance of most of the people I've talked to in this country about the subject made for a breezy few minutes for him. And took his mind off of how his nephew is doing a not so good job around the guests these days.
Anything else nice? A dead hot day where I sat at the "locals" (also staff) side of the big hall and got some surprisingly chilly breezes. Can't complain about that!
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