What is Normal?

One of the great things about living overseas in a country such as this is that almost everything is an adventure. What is normal here can seem quite peculiar to those of you back in Canada. A couple of things quickly come to mind. Yesterday we only had to walk about three blocks but during the heaviest rain I have encountered. It was raining so hard that my umbrella was actually imploding under the weight of the water. We waded in the streets in water up to our knees. I then noticed that there were several churning pockets of water that were bubbling up from the street. It was then we realized that all of the sewers were backing up and we were walking through rain water liberally sprinkled with raw sewage. MMMMMMM. Don’t that make you feel clean all over.

Another example would be our attempt on Sunday to get to church. Now normally that would be a fairly routine task but not so on this occasion. What normally would take about 5 minutes to drive took closer to 50 minutes. On our way we noticed an inordinate number of soldiers, guards and generally menacing looking people with guns patrolling the streets. Our keen observatory skills also had us notice that a multitude of streets were blocked off with buses, military vehicles, police and menacing old ladies ready to throw ripened papayas. Okay maybe not the last one but you get the idea.

So all of our normal routes were unavailable so we used every side street, nook, cranny, and yak trail for the entire district. Upon arriving at church we were congratulated on our perseverance. Why all the seemingly tough security? First off there was to be a funeral for an important Tamil MP that was killed. This is in addition to the ethnic tension here that is mounting between the Tamils and the Sinhalese people. A group of refugees was shelled by government forces on Friday. During that attack they killed 23 people ( 10 of which were infants) and injured another 150. Needless to say this has stirred things up a bit. You may have heard about this on the international news. Alan Rock as a UN special envoy is in town. This week has been marred by Hartels (see blog 10/26 entry ), protest rallies (one in support of Saddam Hussein by the Muslim community) and occasional explosions. We are safe but our national staff continually senses the tension and is most directly impacted.

All of this to say that life is interesting and most everything is an adventure. What is normal here can seem quite peculiar to those of you back in Canada.