BRCS CEO

The Chief Exec of the British Red Cross is out here visiting us and he went first to our sister program in Batti and he blogs! I love the fact that he blogs.

Go read it here. The first post is up and I know there are more that are filtering through. I can't wait till he writes about Ampara.

February...my month

Very sad that I call Feb my month and yet this is my first post for Feb. It is my month since tomorrow, I turn 30. YAY!

I have been meaning to write but I have been out and about traveling. And things have been busy. Was in Surrey, UK for some management training, a post that is waiting to happen, and got to see friends in London which was lovely and then back to Sri Lanka.

Emma wants me to write about the primaries in the US and I would love to but it is kind of strange since I am not really there and not following as closely as I should be. All I check to see is that Barack Obama, the candidate I am endorsing (belated drum roll please, but really, is it surprising?), is still ahead. It is exciting and I get made fun of by all the Brits that I work with because they think it is all a little bit soppy (I was telling people last night about how I love his line, We are the change we have been waiting for, and that will pretty much do it for me....I love it. How inspiring). I think he is awesome and I want him to win and I think the whole thing is very exciting and this is what I love about America. We are still a country who can have elections/primaries, such as this one. This is really what we should be about.

If Clinton really loved America, she would stop now.

I just had a week vacation with my sisters. They both came over for the first time to Sri Lanka and we had an amazing early birthday party for me at the house of my country coordinator, and it was nice to have my worlds meeting and liking each other. I think my sisters were surprised that people I work with put up with me with the same love and tolerance that they do.

I am back at work after a relaxing lovely holiday and so revved up to be back. And I turn 30 tomorrow which is totally exciting to me as well. Two photos of me...some from the party when I was opening up my gifts and the other from my vacation. I didn't really get out of my pajamas for the 4 days. It was awesome. Photo credit goes to my camera and the lovely Saks who was the official holiday photographer.

I do hope I write more about the month of February. Just wanted to touch base for now but lots to write about, stuff that has been going round and round in my head....I wish I were more articulate...

WTF?

Seriously, what the hell does this mean?

Who is a hoodwinked man and how is one brought in front of him?

Arrested Tamils would be brought before 'hoodwinked' man-SUDAROLI
Hundreds of North and East Tamils taken into custody following the search operation during the last few days in Colombo and suburb will be brought before hoodwinked man. They will be released when they are proved to be innocent. This message was conveyed to Tamil politicians, it is reliably understood.

I think Sudaroli is a newspaper....I get a newspaper summary from two different sources and I am guessing this is translated but really, normally I can read these translations or realiably understand.

The press cuts/news summaries I get are depressing by the way. It is getting worse and worse and crackdowns and killings, abductions and speculation is all rife.

On a funnier note, yesterday when in a disaster management workshop with our staff we talked about floods and the resulting soil erection.

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone

I am a thanksgiving fiend, as most people who know and love me are aware of. This year it was again unlesehed away from home on unsuspecting individuals who for some reason are befriending me. It was fun, even though it was about 10 days late. I messed up the date....I always thought it was the last Thursday in Nov, but no, it is the 3rd Thursday. Rule when abroad is the first Saturday after Thanksgiving is when I will celebrate since I am not going to work hungover on a Friday...no fun. Doing it on a Saturday makes way more sense. Must remeber to get the date right next time...

Anyhow, big turkey (of which I have no photos..I know, I can't believe it either...one minute it there was and the next, it got all carved up...and we nearly finished the 14 lbs bird too...impressive for 14 people!), stuffing (two kinds, one with dried fruit, which I refused to eat and another normal one), two kinds of mash (one with block olives which was tooooooo good), gravy (which was going to be German style and then was not but very good), fresh bread (no joke, as in fresh, kneaded in front of me by Jo...her dough babies, which we are the next day, all fresh as well), pecan pie (yep, you guessed it, fresh and home made, again by Jo), and brownies (divine Jo brownies), martinis, the proper kind (yep, Jo strike again), tiger prawns in some sort of a yum sauce, nice fresh veggies and....and that might be it. I think. It was filling and stuffing and totally deliscious and I loved it. There are photos but strange random ones. I was the only American this year. That has never happened before. Usually there is atleast one more American with me. But I think I held down the fort pretty ok...Everyone had to go around and say what they were thankful for and it is always interesting to see what people will say (and how many will take it seriously)....I was thankful for what I am thankful for every year: A good group of people with whom I can share a holiday that is important to me, and my loved ones, family and friends are all good well alive thriving and that is really all I can ask for.

I am becoming soppy since I almost got all choked up when I was saying it and I hope no one noticed.

It was pretty amazing that once again this year, I got away with putting together a party while having to do ZERO work. This year I had serious rock stars who literally did everything.

I had an adventure with my oven in the morning. I turned it on and all of a sudden it smelled like cooked dead roasted rat meat. You do NOT want that smell in your kitchen, house, nostrils ever. Fucking nasty. I called in the trusty Anoj to fix it (after I called in trusty Leela since one of the mice was sort of stunned on my kitchen floor with third degree burns) and they eventually found the problem and advised I not use the recent grave of the three dead mice as my cooking equipment. I had to go and borrow an oven. Which ICRC was so wonderful to provide us with. I love how Red Cross that reaction is by the way-whatever you need, you first call ICRC...be it visiting prisoners in detention, tracing family members, transporting dead bodies or needing an oven in a hurry....always to the rescue those guys. In the end, it was ok and the meal (and more) got cooked.

Photos of the day soon with more stories...

Bombs and Bad Spelling

So, I noticed, when I go back and read my blog (which of course, is all the time), that I misspell stuff all the time. I should have a spell checker on here and sometimes it works, sometimes it does not and I should be looking at the screen when I type and sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. Apologies for the bad spelling and words that on occasion do not make sense.


My sister called just a little while ago. My brother in law woke her up since he heard on the news about a bombing at a shopping place in Colombo and since that is all I do when I am there and since I was there last they checked, he got very worried. I am back in Ampara and the first bomb went off as we were leaving Colombo this morning and then we heard about the second one. Go read about it on BBC. There was four of us in the car, the driver, me, Mick and our project engineer. We all got texts about it from different people, we said, where is that place? Oh, right, near Apollo Hospital and then I went back to sleep and everyone else went back to doing whatever it is people in back seats of cars do.... The second text message some 9 hours later prompted the same sort of reaction (prompted is a strange word since I feel like we are more non reaction than reaction right now) and I asked Mick if he got the text, he said yes and then we watched an episode of the West Wing. An episode, I am shocked to report that I had not seen before and even more lovely, a Thanksgiving one! So timely, as thanksgiving is just about to arrive in Ampara (Saturday).

I guess it's not good what is going on. I guess I just expected it. I have YET to read the text of Prabhakaran's speech or hear any commentary on it (our TV is dead and last night when I had TV, it was all about Anapolis and Gaza...which is looking pretty bad), but a synopsis that was given to me by staff was, peace not possible, dear international community help us get our freedom and support our cause. By killing thamilselvan, you killed peace and the 2002 agreement lands that were given to us have now been taken back and you are all giving the GoSL free weapons and we want some too. Thank you.

That sounds like a plausible jist of a fifteen minute speech to me. Is anyone really surprised?

My non reaction to everything is strange since I can feel something in the air but not quite sure what it is yet and I think I am just showing uncharacteristic restraint from leaping to conclusions and barracading my staff and hunkering down with a two week supply of dried goods. I also just got back after being away from five days and things in Ampara town feel a little fake to me, you know? Last Singhalese outpost in the area so it is just fortified and I really just got to the office, worked and then came home and the biggest crisis I was dealing with is staff from my old job freaking out since their contracts are over end of the year and this is going to become a reality in a big way here as NGOs start to leave since tsunami money is over and I don't know what else to say to them other than, I am going to go too and will need a job. We all got to prevail and keep our chins up and I will see what I can do. That has superseded any bombs in the other parts of the country for the moment for me, though I suspect, not for long...I need to actually get out and see what it is feeling like. What does it look like driving down the coast, what is the vibe in the villages in which I am working and what do people look like right now....what are their priorities, what is the food situation in their houses, how jumpy or not are they etc....they of course, always have a better feel about stuff than anyone else, living as it were, in the midst of things. I think I wrote about this sense before....or just having a mental list of things which we look at without realizing it when assessing a situation. I use it for poverty levels among other things when driving through or to a place and you can see stuff...like for instance, how clean are school uniforms, is the child wearing shoes, how many school accessories (just a backpack, or a lunch box or flask etc), ribbons in hair, how many shops on the side of the road, how well stocked, how well lit, how populated etc etc etc....there are lots of little indicators that you just get through osmosis in a way.

So, I need to go out and get a feel and then either panic or stay non reactionary. Non reactionary but alert, I think is the way to go. I just got back from a security training course...I am so ready. As will everyone around me, like it or not.

Uh duh....

So I am an idiot sitting in a conflict country, on the conflict side of the country where my mobile network has not been working for the last five days (it is working north of me in Batti and normally they see more problems than we do) and we were told, oh, there are some ongoing ‘operations’ south of here, something in Anaradhpura, army base etc. I thought, ok, yeah, whatever. Mobile down, that’s life. Reading the news TODAY, I find out that the biggest suicide attack by the LTTE took place two days ago. Oops. This might be why I got some emails from people saying, hey, everything ok? I thought they meant that I was sick some weeks back (news travels, sometimes slowly), or that sweet things that they are, they were just thinking about me.

Seems like the LTTE did some major damage. Hmm. I saw a photo that I found utterly offensive on Alert Net (read the whole article which spells it all out nicely, not just the photos on the bottom, but actually, they spell it all out rather nicely as well). The bodies of the 20 LTTE cadres that went in and wrecked havoc on the base dumped into the back of a wooden trolley like thing, attached to a tractor being pulled, mostly naked, through the streets to the mortuary with gawkers and obviously someone or multiple someones with cameras. I do not condone violence for the most part but honestly, where is the respect? That is too despicable and I hope someone from some advocacy organization says something about it.

The mobiles turning off should have been some indicator. They are kind of working now. Slowly. But certainly not in my house. We seem to be some black spot, which is annoying.

The conflict supposedly has moved to the north but in the villages in which I work there are regular round ups and searches and intimidation in tamil villages. The jungle areas inland are still off limits and it sort of sucks for this one group of people that are hunter/gatherer types and now since they can’t live in the jungle and are displaced they have no livelihoods. They are being called some sort of gypsies and I am heading there tomorrow to see what the deal is. In the northern part of the district in Singhalese villages, there are some people called the adivasi (ancient people who lives in jungles is how they were described to me). They have kept their rituals, customs and language which is different for the most part. Excited to work and learn more about them as well.

It is now officially bed time. 2230 hrs.

Eid Mubarik

I actually celebrated Eid this year. For the past few years I have been missing it since I have been away from home but this year, we all got invited to the house of Fathi, one of our Field Officers and since it was a Saturday, we all went for lunch. My mom likes that we three sisters have a new outfit to wear and she was despartely trying to send me new clothes for Eid but it didn't happen, but lucky for us all, Hrusi, my co-worker (we have the same title but he is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more experienced than I am) last time he went to India, with the help of is wife, Dolly, got me an outfit. It was prefect. And so lovely. So some photos from that afternoon.
The night before I was feeling sad for no reason at all and I spoke to my family as they were all gathering at home and I had a wee bit of a melodramatic scene where I was alone at home, (Mick was in Colombo) and I was putting henna on my own hands by myself and tears were running down my cheeks. I let about four fall before I realized how foolish I was being and stopped.

Not sure why I was crying but I was. When did I become so soppy? Maybe that is the change people see in me from before....hmmmmm....

And the good news is.....

Not only am I still alive and kicking (not that it was really ever touch and go, but still), I got my first postcard! From, of course, Saks, my sister who is now stopped traveling and is in DC finishing up law school. It was a very sweet postcard addressed to both Mick and I and it is in Ampara and I am in Colombo which is why I have not written about it as yet since I wanted to do it justice but I suppose I can wait.

Bill in Liberia said that there is no functioning postal system in Liberia. I don't believe him and think he is just being a lazy. A lazy lazy. Both adjective and noun.

So, ends up that I have an enlarged liver. Not so nice. Either some strain of typhus or tick bite fever. And I was on the mend too, which was annoying since I felt lovely a week ago for about half a day and then crashed all of a sudden again. Another round of tests, possibly...no, probably tomorrow and then back to good ole Ampara on Thursday. My time in Colombo has been lovely. I have been a grown up living with my boss and his family (I made a big fuss and was being a total baby about coming out to Colombo since I complained that no one would look after me and better to be miserable in Ampara where atleast Mick could see me pathetically passed out on my bed than being alone in some hotel room in Colombo....still had bad memories of my rib recovery from the last time). Anyhow, so my boss and his lovely family have been looking after me, cooking lovely meals, having birthday parties and just all around being great company which I am sure has speeded my recovery. And no, he doesn't really read my blog (though he should every once in a while for content to make sure I am not crossing any lines and he claims that he has at least once come on here), so I don't have to be nice about him just in case he might be on here. His son, however, does read my blog...well, one of them does at least so I should be more careful since....since I should.

He owes me a postcard.

No photos. No real stories either. I could come up with some if I tried. I should. But later. And no, I didn't finish my thesis and the party I had planned went on without me in Arugam Bay. Sad, but true.

Send Me Postcards

So, I want to write about postcards in order to encourage people I know to send me one. I got one. At my cute home in Ampara town with just my name and address on it all the way from La Rochelle, France. Sakina, my younger sister was there and we tried it as an experiment and lo and behold, within two weeks, I had a postcard delivered to my house, a little missive of love from far away.

I love getting mail. When I was younger, I would write letters to people and would try over and over to get people to write back to me. One of my favorite books (and I am using the phrase, when I was younger very liberally...I mean within the last ten years, so technically, that phrase works, but I don't mean when I was 15 or 9, I mean an age where one is socially, age-ly recognized as an adult)....where was I? Ah yes, The Venetian's Wife was a book I loved since it was all about letters (ok, fine emails), and stuff.

We have this family thing where whenever we travel, we send postcards home to our parents. My two sisters are WAY better about it than I am (a typical postcard from me, if I even send one, says, Hi, miss you, love you, put this on the fridge, love z). The postcards tend to be lovely. My elder sister, Appie, actually just has these plain white cards that she then draws on and sends home to us. Which I love. I think she needs to start drawing a weekly update for me and send it to me. The postcard Sakina sent was a store bought one but she made drawings over it of herself doing activities that one does in La Rochelle, (biking, swiming, cafe-ing, walking etc as far as I can tell).

Actually, you know how I love my cluster map (scroll a little down on the right hand side to the map) and there are people from all over coming onto my blog, would you all terribly mind sending me a postcard? I want to see how many postcards make it out here in Ampara, Sri Lanka. You would be making a homesick aid worker very happy. I will keep a log on my blog of all postcards received with special categories of most creative, most sweet, furthest flung location, most bizarre etc. Please please. Anyone reading this blog, send me (and my housemate, Mick) a postcard. I will, once I get a camera soon, take photos once a week of the post cards I receive. Special postcards will be replicated on my blog. And really, it would make me SOOOOOO happy to receive mail. Real mail that I can touch and hold close to my heart (and wash my hands after since god knows where these postcards have been).

So give a shout, send some love in the form of a post card.

Zehra and Mick
138 Buddangala Road
Ampara Town, Ampara
Sri Lanka.

And no one stalk me but Mick and I were talking about this and we decided you would have to be a real dedicated stalker to come all the way out to Ampara, which Lonely Planet in their last edition before the new one said, don't stop there if you can help it. I like Ampara but really, don't expect to show up and shack up with us (if you can get through my security guard, which if you are not brown, you can), since my security rules do not allow for visitors. You may sleep outside the gates if you wish. With all the vicious street dogs and burning garbage. I hope that is enough to deter people. Though again, if you are that much of a dedicated stalker, maybe you deserve atleast an audience with Mick and I. We would rather you sent us a postcard instead which we will then display on a prominent wall on our house and pose with and post photos of on here. Though Mick is on facebook (I know, i can't believe it either...evil evil evil....like the rest of the world, barring me, out there), so perhaps he will post his pictures on there. Maybe he should tell him facebook friends to send us stuff too. Will mention it to him. Does facebook work that way? I really fucking hate that I even had to say the word facebook. Though all my friends are on there and no one really reads my blog so I might be getting diddly squat in terms of postcards. Prove me wrong people.

Show some love.

My first PRA (sort of...depends on what you want to call it)

So today, I headed out for a first meeting with a community in which we are starting our integrated livelihoods program. Went out there in full gear with ICRC, the Sri Lanka Red Cross and ourselves and the whole village came out. It is a village in an area that is both tsunami affected and conflict affected and there are lots of IDP’s from inland areas where fighting still continues though on a much lower scale than before. The east of Sri Lanka was recently liberated with parades and speeches the first week I was in Colombo some short three weeks ago (feels like ages already), and we don’t like to talk about pockets of conflict and violence that still remain. The people we work with however so like talking about it. At this entry point to the village, I love having ICRC there, esp in a village as this, since they can talk about what they do best. It reminded me, since it has been a while (little over a year) that I had sat down and saw an information dissemination session.

I love ICRC. They now have a nice video with Tamil (and Singhala) translations that talk about their work specifically in Sri Lanka. They have been around since the 50’s but set up a delegation in 1989 so they know both parties to the conflict and mediate on behalf on non combatants from talking to armed groups about child recruitment (sending messages or setting up meetings between the family and child if possible and even though it might take years uniting the child with the family), tracing services which they are known for across the globe, talking to prisoners making sure they are being treated humanely as much as possible and keeping them in touch with their families and vice versa (something I would love to do with them someday…someday when I don’t have a blog since ICRC folk are some of the most tight lipped people on this planet and have to be, more power to them) and then other protection issues. They are fucking cool. And I think the community appreciated there being there and talking about the work that they do. ICRC also explained how they are the daddy of the Red Cross Movement, IFRC (International Federation of the Red Cross/Crescent) the mummy and we, the National Societies the babies. I thought that quite cute….and will keep my opinion to myself on what I actually think of that as a working metaphor in Sri Lanka.

SLRCS went next and it was all in Tamil but I have worked with the woman before who was giving the session so I could pretty much guess what was being said. SLRCS is a post for another time but one can imagine, as you should, what it would be like to be the SLRCS after an event like the tsunami and being awash (bad choice of word) with other National Societies (PNSs we are called, participating national society) and all the money we brought with us, not to mention working styles. Indonesia had and has a very strong and active Red Crescent Society called PMI (whatever that translates to in Bahasa Indonesia) and the Maldives didn’t have a Red Crescent so I am guessing they formed one there….or are in the process of doing so.

We went last and by this time, everyone was getting tired, not to mention it was getting time for us to leave since we have to be back at base by a certain time but will be going back for what I promised would be a meeting where it would be more participatory and we would actually get down to work. It is a pre PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) meeting with the community and I am hyper excited since I love community meetings and everyone really did seem just so lovely.

When calling into a radio thingie on your car to base, when the conversation from your side is over, you don’t say over and out. You just say out. Over means that you are expecting a response from the other side since you are handing it over to them. I knew this the last time I was here and rarely ever heard it being used correctly but that is a change I noticed. Two people said it right. I have just started using the radio and yes, I do feel cool. My sisters are going to make fun of me but that’s what I wrote about it here.

Ok, it’s 7 pm, I’m tired. Time to go home. More soon!

Big kisses to all.

From AlertNet. Human Rights Watch report.

It's been on the BBC today as well and one would think we were all talking about it here. We aren't- It's just another report. Let's see if anything happens or anything is done. Both sides have abuses.

Stuff like this makes me think if government should be held at a higher standard and perhaps the should since they have internationally recognized status and thus the benefits of being a state. Sovereingty is a big issue for me and that is a much longer conversation. But for now, the article below.


Sri Lanka accused of abuses on massacre anniversary

By Simon Gardner
COLOMBO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's government is responsible for unlawful killings and disappearances, Human Rights Watch said on Monday -- the anniversary of the discovery of the massacre of 17 aid workers blamed on security forces.
Issuing a report entitled 'Return to war: Human rights under siege', the U.S.-based group said President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government is resorting to abuses to fight a new chapter in a two-decade civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels.
"The Sri Lankan government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use 'dirty war' tactics," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"Abuses by the LTTE (Tigers) are no excuse for the government's campaign of killings, disappearances and forced returns of the displaced," he added. "The government has repeatedly promised to end and investigate abuses, but has shown a lack of political will to take effective steps."
About 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict between Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fighting for a separate state for minority ethnic Tamils, and security forces since 1983.
Rights groups say hundreds of people, many of them minority Tamils, have been reported abducted or disappeared this year and 1,000 more in 2006. Rebels, paramilitaries, elements of the security forces, and underworld gangs have all been blamed.
The Sri Lankan government says numbers of disappearances are overblown and many cases are fakes to discredit the administration.
The publication of the Human Rights report coincides with the commemoration of the murder of 17 local staff members of Paris-based aid group Action Contre la Faim, who were shot dead in their compound in the northeastern town of Muttur last August after they were trapped by fighting between troops and rebels.
Nordic truce monitors blamed the killings on the security forces and international observers say an inquiry into the massacre, the worst attack on aid workers since the 2003 bomb attack on the United Nations office in Baghdad, fails to meet international standards.
Action Contre La Faim are not pointing fingers, and are waiting for answers in a case that remains unsolved a year on.
"We want to know who has done this," said Loan Tran-Thanh, head of the group's Sri Lanka mission. "It's very slow, but that's normal."
"We cannot make any judgements ... because we are not the experts. We don't have enough data for us even to give an opinion," she added. "There have been so many contradictions."
The island's human rights minister demanded that journalists be barred from the commemoration ceremony.
The Tigers are also blamed for serial abuses, including killing civilians and troops with roadside bombs and forcibly recruiting people, including children, to fight in the war.
Human Rights Watch is lobbying for a United Nations human rights mission to be sent to Sri Lanka in the name of transparency and to discourage further abuses, but the government has refused.
It says western governments are bullying it on human rights and are hypocritical, citing abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I understand that they are going to commemorate ... these 17 people, but they have forgotten 35 people from the Muslim community butchered in the same place by the LTTE," said government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella.
"How do these human rights work with 17 and not work for 35?" he added. "As far as the government is concerned, it is doing everything possible in relation to human rights." (Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal in COLOMBO)

Amparaaaaa, Amparaiiiiii

I’m here. I really am. Whoa.

It’s amazing to be back in Ampara. Who knew I would actually feel like I was indeed coming home. From seeing old familiar faces, going to the same markets, feeling as frustrated by dial up as always, adjusting (way faster this time than last time) to a swiss keyboard where the z and the y are switched (and imagine what that is like with someone with my name) and just knowing where I am in the 2 kilometer radius of Ampara Town; this feels good.

I am not one of those people who when in a new place needs to go out and explore and know every single street. My younger sister is that way…that is what she has been doing with London in her ten weeks there which are almost up and I didn’t do diddly about directions or scale of the city or knowing where I was when I was there. Why that feels inconsequential to me is a mystery. I think I am a curious person but knowing about the direction of m surroundings is just not of interest. Which I wish it was since I tend to get lost a lot and it would be nice to know where I am going and I think it is some sort of a mental block that I need to work on (behind on the list to the following mental blocks: numbers are scary, rocket science itself is not really rocket science, science is scary, learning tamil is impossible, economics with numbers instead of words and theories is still scary). I need to just sit with myself one day and talk myself into a directional sense. There are ways in which to uncondition ourselves.

So, I am here and I want to write about work but I did something silly and actually inform work that I wanted to write about work. There is no official policy that can be found within my organization about blogging about work and of course I would not do stupid things like publish internal information but I am doing cool projects and want to write about them. As of right now, there is no moratorium on my writing on this blog and I think I will just do so till I hear otherwise and if in doubt, will ask if something can go up or not. If anyone has any guidelines out there (aid world specific please….we are a different breed of blogger. It is easy for people to say to separate your personal and professional but when you work in the field, it’s near impossible to do so. This time, unlike last time I was blogging in SL, I actually do want to talk about work. I have other aid workers reading this and I want to get opinions and comments and suggestions etc from others and to share any best practice type situation we might have going here). Anyhow, blog I shall for now till I hear differently.

It has been two and a half working days since I have been in Ampara but lots going on.

Want to give a shout out to two blogger buddies o mine, both in London, The Buddha Smiled and House Negro, both of whom I hung out with when I was in London for a week and it was awesome. With TBS, I always have a good time, he was an occasional guest at my dinner table and House Negro is a new friend with whom it was easy to just sit on Charlotte Street, eat good food and shoot the shit (I would love to pretend we were talking about techy geeky computer stuff (mental block on techy geeky stuff which I would like to remove), but we weren’t. More interesting things actually. I don’t know lots of Australian Pakistanis (ok, I don’t know any), and hearing about that diaspora community was good for me since it was different.

One big difference that I do need to comment on....the office has 'high speed' internet. Higher speed than dial up and my computer doesn't freeze up when I open up my blog so I can indeed post with relative ease.

Also, I do want to draw everyone's attention to my little cluster map thing on the right hand side....I have NOT checked my blog since I got to Sri Lanka so I have NO idea why that dot tha tis now obscuring this fair little island is that big and I seem to have got my first hits from Central America and Africa!! And other European places and American places that I don't recall seeing before...

That is it for now. More soon.

Hugs and kisses.

TWO HOURS

Ok, three hours but my dad will wake up in two in order to have his tea and check his email and read about the world for an hour before he takes me and my mum to the airport.

I am sitting in the middle of my stuff overflowing from suitcases and I am tempted to throw most of it back in the drawers that I have pulled it out of. I have no idea how much anything weighs and I don't want to know. I want to keep my hands on this keyboard of my pretty little mac which I will also give away, my constant companion for the last year, my big purchase with the big money I made with my first real job...keep my fingers moving, not look up at the time since I know I will forget things and will wonder why I didn't pack more systematically. I was just getting used to being in my room again. There are still drawers in here that I have not properly re discovered. The ghost of Zehra past has been very much alive while I slept, skyped, smoked, read, day dreamed in this room in the last few weeks. She will stay where she is and I will leave.

Ican't turn my suitcase over and just leave everything on the floor. Panic will strike at that moment which I am holding at bay with denial. I got home at midnight (two and a half hours ago) and slept on the couch for an hour. My parents keep asking if I have packed and my response has been to stomp my feet like a four year old and shake my head and say in a four year old's voice, Main NaheeN JaRahee HouN! (I'm Not Going!). I think they have enjoyed asking the last few times just to hear me say that and smile.

I am terribly excited about going to Sri Lanka. And strangely terrified. I realized it is because I don't know when I will see my family next. Usually, there are some milestones, some distance to reach in time, some inevitability that I will see them that keeps me going. Being the family that we are, we don't have anything planned right now. Everyone is too jet set.

Why am I scared? I hate that it keeps peeking out from under all the excitement.

I want to do well. I think I am also scared since this is real. It is not a fluke. I APPLIED for this job. It wasn't right place, right time. I went to school in order to do this. I have talked about it and dreamt about it. I am going to do this. I want to do it well. My expectations of myself must be reasonable. I shall have to be gentle with myself. I think I am perhaps putting undue pressure on myself. Fine, I have worked in Ampara before but no one will expect I know everything and that is just me being crazy. It's new for me. The streets will be the same, but everything else will be new and I need to just realize that everyone knows that.

Rant over. Sorry about that. Momentary panic. It will be ok.
It is ok.

Oh yeah, I still have a THESIS to write.

I'm off. Next stop, London.

Oh My God

Anton Balasingham died.

What the hell is going to happen now?

They must have been expecting this.

----------------
From the BBC:

The senior negotiator for the Tamil Tigers, Anton Balasingham, has died of cancer in London, the BBC has learned.
A Tamil Tiger spokesman in Sri Lanka said an official announcement would be made shortly.

Last month it was reported that Mr Balasingham, 68, had bile duct cancer which had spread to his liver, lungs, abdomen and bones.

He was the chief ideologue of the rebels in their war against the Sri Lankan military.

----------------

My heart did actually jump when I read about it. I have no idea what the consequences are or have anything savvy in the least to say, I am just shocked. People reading me in SL, write me, tell me what the hell is happeneing. I want the low down from the field.

My archeology experience

Once upon a time, I was an archeologist. For those of you who do not know, (I don't even know who you would be, since everyone reading my blog knows me...well...I guess all you potential flat mates who I tell to go to my blog don't really know me and anyone coming over from DesiCritics), my sister is an archeologist and is in the process of writing her dissertation. And it is indeed, a fucking process. Everytime I talk to her (four times a day) I tell her, don't worry, it will get done. When I live with her, I just scream it out to her from my permanent residence on her couch and I try to do so on the hour every hour. I tell her this so that I can believe. I think it is vital that we all keep hope alive. She is putting together all the research she did in India, Rajisthan. That was three short years ago. She is still going through all the stuff and fell upon some photos (no, she does not procrastinate..its research, god dammit!) which she forwarded to me. Posting here since I feel that me and water buffaloes and peacocks are important for you all to know about.

It starts with me and John. John was a student of my sisters who used to be my work study student when I worked at the New School for Social Research. I hooked him up with a job with my sister and it was his first time in India. He was amazed that beer cost a dollar and cigarettes were even less. I think I ruined his health totally by hooking him up with the job. I was amazed that he left India alive since he was constantly going off with kindly strangers who would feed and inebriate him who knows what and sell him who knows what.

I was out in the field with my sister for about five days and it was only working in Sri Lanka were I realized, wow, I learned a bunch in those five days. It was my first field work experience and it turned out to be priceless in the way I observed (and who knew actually retained) the ways in which my sister worked with the communities there. Her work is looking at pottery from that region and the pottery shards she is looking at are WAY old but are mixed in with current stuff that people living there right now are using. It is literally littering the ground but once you get the hang of it, you can tell the difference between the old and the new stuff. One of the types was called OCP (ochre colored pottery) and I would run around colelcting it, singing, OCP, Yeah you know me!

Since I obviosuly love cameras. and after a while even a gazillion year old pottery loses its stagnant charm, my sis took photos of me hanging with the locals. It was the first time that I was hanging out with random livestock that roamed the areas we worked in and I decided we should make friends. John would work like a serious archeologist should and I woudl make friends with sheep. Or goats. Water buffaloes are a dime a dozen there and I woudl run around making horns on my head saying Tatonka! Tatonka! re living one of the only things I retained from Kevin Costners movie Dances with Wolves. I think he was talking about bison but they all look the same to me. I didn't really want to make friends with the Water Buffaloes since some of them are HUGE (even in then rain starved, drought laden Rajisthan) but under pressure of a camera, I thought I should at least attempt and I found the most malnutritioned, anemic, child Water Buffalo and pretended to want to be his/her friend. S/he was more into my sunglasses. Well, to be fair, both of us were.

In all my time in South Asia, I had never really been to the rural parts till this experience. Good thing since then I spent a year in Ampara in Sri Lanka which though a town by some standards was still rural to me. Going out in the field with my sister was...interesting. I didn't think I was the kind of person who could survive a rural life.

I don't knwo what that sentence means anymore. I did survive. And not just survive but have a lovely time. Part of the lovely time was complaining about it. I suppose I got lucky that when I did live in a rural area, I had others there, like me, who were also living it. We all bonded over that (over many things). If I had to be the only person, yeah, not sure if I could hack that. But who knows. Anyhow. Enjoy the photos and send good dissertation vibes to my sister. We need them.

A priceless lesson learnt, by the way on this trip was that getting heat stroke SUCKS ASS. I didn't cover my head one afternoon on a cloudy day and the morning was great, but as soon as the afternoon hit, after lunch, I had a headache that nearly killed me and dehydration that again, nearly killed me. Black hair in hot areas is a bad combination and I might not burn with my dark skin but god damn, that heat stroke was awful. My sister pumped me full of water (she made me drink so much water and salt and sugar in an hour that my veins were popping everywhere) and then she massaged the water into my body somehow. I peed clear water the whole next day...amazing. I don't really know what she did since I felt like death but what ever it was, it sho as hell helped. This is why in Sri Lanka when I was running surveys out in the field and had twenty kids (young adults...we made sure to not let the appearance of a sweat shop come through) to look after, I would badger them to keep their heads covered (hats, scarves, umbrellas, whatever, I didn't care) and to keep drinking water. As I told them, I don't care if you get sick, I care that one of you might not come to work tomorrow and my survey won't get done. Now cover your head, take a sip of water and get back to work!

My sister badgered me to keep my head covered. I ignored her, esp since she is my elder sister. Lesson Learnt.

Sri Lanka 101.

The main actors:

GoSL: Government of Sri Lanka. The president and prime minister posts tend to circulate between four or five political families.

LTTE: Liberation Tamil Tiger Eelam. Allegedly the only voice of the Tamil resistance. Leader V. Prabhakaran. Offical LTTE site

Karuna Faction: Split off faction from the LTTE said to represent the eastern Tamils. Led by Colonel Karuna

SLMM : Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission. Nordic truce monitors who are now in trouble since many EU countries have banned the LTTE and the Tigers refuse to have members of those countries serve on the SLMM (Finland, Sweden, Denmark are out, only Norway and Iceland are in). Norway is the big player in this having brokered the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) to begin with in early 2002. Eric Solheim is the Norwegian star of the peace process.

The country is definitely back to war. I was working there for a while (year and a half) and therefore have something to say about this but first and foremost, a short history lesson. I want everyone to know that this is just stuff I picked up and it is not, by any means, a definitive history (can history really ever be?) and I feel it is necessary to know this background information to really understand where the country is at now.

The Tamils want a separate homeland and have been fighting in this regard for a while now. Everyone knows that. The Tigers are now supposed to be the sole voice of the Tamil people and they claim that ALL Tamils belong to the Tigers, which is not true but they like to think it is and in this vein, coerce villagers, students, young women, old women, young men, old men, kids etc to learn how to defend themselves. For those Tamils that do join the resistance (ah, and I said I would be objective), it is like joining a gang. You don't get jumped in (unless you are a child soldier) but you do get jumped out.

No one should underestimate the power of the Tigers. You could be part of the huge Tamil diaspora, but you will not break the code of silence once you have left. You will be killed, regardless of where you are. An excellent documentary dealing with this can be found at the BBC website here, called No More Tears Sister about Tamil activist, Ranjani Thiranagama, who did belong to the LTTE and then left but continued working in Jaffna.

The Tigers have an interesting history in that there have been lots of internal struggles and to get an idea, read the book, Inside an Elusive Mind – Prabhakaran by M. R. Narayan Swamy. Swamy goes through the two decades of history detailing the rise of Prabhakaran, the leader of the resistance movement. The book stops short of mentioning Colonel Karuna, a recent thorn in the side of the Tigers at the moment. The Tigers want a separate homeland that is in the north and the east of the country. The northern Tamils are seen as the elite Tamils and the eastern Tamils are marginalized within their own movement and in this vein, we have the Karuna Faction split within the LTTE.

Karuna split from the LTTE since he felt that the eastern Tamils were not getting full pieces of the pie and I have no information on how valid his claim is. Karuna has, in a cyclical Sri Lankan pattern, joined forces with the government to take the Tigers out of power. This is very reminiscent of the Indian government in the late 80's, early 90's joining forces and supplying weapons to the LTTE to get the Indians out who had originally come in to help the government rid themselves of the LTTE. The Karuna faction is being armed and trained by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA). It has been one of the demands of the LTTE at recent peace talks (February was the last one, the ones for March were postponed and then dropped all together) that non-state actors be disarmed. In a blatant slap in the face, the Karuna faction opened up a "political office" in Batticaloa (the eastern district bordering north of Ampara) in April.

A hardliner government was voted in November 05. Mahinder Rajapakse ran a hardliner campaign and was backed by the JHU (militant monk party…don't ask but these monks in complete Buddhist monk ensembles are some of the most angry men I have ever seen…real rabble rousers who will go on hunger strikes, incite hatred and march in protest. There seem to not be enough meditation practices to keep them busy otherwise. Hunger strikes and protests are fine. It's the hatred incitement part I can't get over ).

Ranil Wickramesinghe, famous for being the PM when the CFA was signed in early 2002, and loosely speaking, a candidate for peace, was running but the Tigers in an interesting development, asked Tamils not to vote. They didn't and the hardliner won.

According to people who had lived there for a while and were neither Muslim, Tamil or Singhala, the Tigers did this since they wanted to go back to war. The CFA was already falling apart right before the tsunami, tsunami happens (Dec 04) and luckily, the whole country turns to relief and recovery efforts. The relief and recovery is also fraught with political problems (aid sharing with the north and east of the country where the damage was severe, and even more so since basic infrastructure was already war ravaged), and accusations of the Tigers using the opening of the borders as an excuse for bringing in more weaponry. The government did hold back funding and the Tigers probably did bring in weaponry and money for the war chest. We were constantly compared to Banda Aceh in Indonesia, for many reasons (their construction efforts seemed to be MUCH faster than ours in SL), the one reason most talked about was how Indonesia took this opportunity and worked with and found a peaceful solution to their separatist/rebel issue.

To get an idea of how there are indeed two states within a state right now, to get to the Vanni (Tiger controlled areas north central in the country) there is a demarcation line where in order to get anything to the other side, you first have to get checked by the SLA and then 100 meters down the line, by the Tigers. So bringing in cement or sand for reconstruction means having to unload your entire truck (and this is Sri Lanka so it's not like this is in bags) first on the government side and then on the LTTE side. There is an ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) monitor who sits on the lines and just watches what is going on. There is lots more to say about the work of ICRC, but not in this post. Nothing happens in the Vanni without Tiger permission. There is no SLA there…there is no GoSL there. For a while, the tiny country of Sri Lanka had two time zones. This changed in April of this year where the rest of Sri Lanka went to Tiger time (also Indian time). This was not political. It had to do with electricity consumption and also the monks looking for karmic calm. You can read more about that here.

The second part of the BBC newspost on the time change is funny since resident bigwig literati man science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke decides it is inconvenient for him to now make international phone calls.

In his annual Hero's Day speech last year on November 27, 2005, 10 days after the National Election, Prabakharan talked about waiting to see how the struggle for Tamil independence would progress under the CFA and also that if things were not to the satisfaction to the LTTE, the new year would bring changes and they would intensify their struggle (the Tamil and Singhala New Years were on April 13th and 14th). It was not to his satisfaction. (surprise surprise…this megalomaniac has said time and time again, he will NOT stop till there is a Tamil Eelam). There had been a shadow war for a while there and over the past weeks we have come to a full on war. Neither side is well equipped but neither side will back down. Over a water dispute in Trincomalee (a once gorgeous harbour), we have moved to the holy grail of Sri Lanka, Jaffna. Everyone loves the Northern peninsula of Jaffna and everyone will keep bombing it till they get a piece of it. It has been under both SLA and LTTE control, one of the most cultured places in the world in its heyday and now a bombed out military spoil for whichever side is occupying it at that time. Right now, it happens to be the SLA.

The GoSL is training and equipping the Karuna faction. The GoSL is made up of hardliners who have required all Tamils in Colombo and other areas to register with the police. They do marginalize the Tamil people and are being bitches about meeting basic demands of the Tamil people. The LTTE forcefully recruits people and is ruthless in fighting for its Tamil homeland. They do recruit child soldiers. They have one of the highest rate of suicide bombers of all guerilla outfits in the world (last I checked) and have no qualms at all in using them. They are bitches for ruining the lives of ordinary Tamils.

When I first went to SL, I was sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Of course I was. A majority power oppressing a minority. I worked with Tamils in Ampara and my field officer, a young man of 20 wanted to just study. Get his college degree, a Masters and then a PhD. One of the most able young men I have worked with who was actively being recruited by the LTTE and actively harassed by the STF (Special Task Force who roam the streets of conflict areas to keep the peace, i.e. tote guns and attitude and harass all ordinary Tamils). He wanted nothing to do with either and just wanted a life. He has lived his entire life under war.

In my opinion, both sides suck ass and I wish I had a solution, but of course, I don't. I loved working in Sri Lanka and I met lovely (mostly racist to the other side) people but never have I seen a country so stubbornly sticking to war. Well, Palestine and Israel, I suppose.




Me and the team in Ampara at my going away party. A mix of Tamil, Singhala and Muslim. I want to say that we can get along. I don't know about that.

another monday

it is indeed, another monday. i guess that makes it a week since i have been blogging. hurrah for that. everytime is say hurrah i feel like i should be in an english rose garden throwing my straw hat up in the air. i should also be blond and blue eyed with ruddy cheeks.

it's all the enid blyton i read in pakistan growing up.

The photo by the way, is of my very good friend saniya, in bombay. she was taking us to Chor Bazaar. this is her in her element. front seat, directing and simultaneously giving us a tour of the area, keeping track of the other taxi following us, looking good and yelling at our driver.

the political situation in the country does not seem to be getting better, but the only way i can tell is by reading the newspapers. where i live, in Ampara, we don't feel the rumblings that much anymore...or perhaps i have gotton used to them and it's normal. people are killed but our movements are no longer restricted so we just hope not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. the more serious stuff is taking place north of me in Trinco and Jaffna. i guess we just wait and see and continue working. what else are you gonna do? it reminds me of being in karachi and yes, there were riots and one was never sure what the next day was going to bring but you didnt stop life and living and living with uncertainty becomes normal. i was not old or aware enough to see what is was doing to people around me, how they dealt with the stress. it felt normal at the time.

friends and family have been emailing me after reading my blog and i have been getting interesting comments on the blog. one said it was kinky that i was publishing my 'diary' for all to see, another said it was impersonal.

i really dont know how i see it. i do write free style and i enjoy that. i rarely, if ever, edit what i have written. i do love editing other peoples work though :) i do that alot in SL, as a 'native' speaker.

the end of the year bought on an exodus of many friends i had made here. damn them all for leaving me here. i find it incredibly rude and mean of them. that means you reza, sitting on a thai island somewhere, reading my blog. i never saw the movie the island, i think it was called, but i know bad things happened to people on a paradise thai island so watch your back, boy.

reza was cool. i guess is cool. i have a photo of him somewhere, will post it soon. most of our local colleagues love asking where we are from, and reza hated answering that question. ha ha. especially with a name like reza in a majority muslim area, he would have to inevitably answer the are u muslim question and it was always fun to hear the multitude of ways in which he tried to avoid that question.

i on the other hand have many lies all over the district as to what i am religion wise, country wise and civil status wise. it depends on who i am talking to. i can be a paksitani who prays ten times a day, and has 3 kids or be an immoral american sinner. everyone does think im married. that is important. that is always the first question. mostly i tell everyone im pakistani. it makes my work much easier. which is funny on so many different levels.

i feel lucky that i am able to use my identity so fluidly. i think sometimes it pisses people off. i am so many different 'things' though and the different sides of myself pop out of me in the weirdest scenarios and places that i just deal with it. so there isnt just a definitive Z, but different versions of her. i like that. it keeps me from being bored.

that's important. i hate being bored. i don't do it gracefully. i am actually appalling to be around when bored. or hungry.

hungry Z is a scary Z.

perfect new york nights

im in sri lanka and it is the rainy season (we've been waiting since december and thought or i thought, ok that wasnt so bad, it was all hype, but it isnt), anyhow, the weather is cold for me but this would have been the perfect temp for a balmy NYC summer night. except its the monsoon in ampara, sri lanka and its not like there are outdoor bars to go sit at and drink margaritas and watch all the beautiful people walk by or watch a movie in fort greene park in brooklyn or walk over the manhattan bridge at dusk and end up on canal street where you keep walking to nolita and have some corona and grilled corn at cafe havana on mulberry street. instead i am sitting and smoking and blogging.

im not complaining because now when i go back to NYC, i dont have to wait for the evening to do all these things since i dont have a job and can do it all day while everyone else is at work.

who am i kidding? i used to do it even when i did have a job in NYC. i would just take the afternoon off and walk to noho and marvel at the great number of people who seem to be unemployed, young, beautiful, carefree and rich (they all had cute lower east side or nolita boutique shopping bags). who are those people? they all look like the belong or have walked off the set of a lenny kravitz's music video.

i do miss these things but last time i was in NYC, it was pretty disastorous. people wanted to talk to me about sri lanka and they kept saying, they need more moeny, those poor people out there and i wanted to yell and scream and shout from the top of my table, NO. stop sending money to tsunami victims, stop stop stop! send it eleswhere in the world where they actually need it. everyone in NYC wants to be aware and on top of complicated world situations and i was no different when i lived there. it's easy to do it over a some dirty martinis and tapas at the cool new neighbourhood bar that just opened up. it's fun to do it.
will i ever be able to go back to that again?

i moved to NYC for those reasons. i wanted to be self aware and more aware of the world around me. it is a good place for that to a large degree. it is easy to get caught up in it and to not realize there is the world out there to see that one keeps talking about from the bar stool.

i love to tell people, i was raised in NJ but i grew up in NYC. it's true. it kicked me around but gently.

i have yet to figure out what this experience in SL is doing to me. need the distance.

i had a lovely evening with friends. Chris and Jessica invited a bunch of us over for a pasta dinner and in the land of rice and curry, it is a treat. i spent the first half of the evening talking shop (as Ronan called it) with Emma. We are trying to figure out the livelihood situation in ampara and i liked doing it. i used to never sit and passionately discuss my work but i was and i liked it. i love it.

perhaps that is why i deal with the mosquitoes that are currently biting the shit out of me and feel like pasta is a treat. from what i am feeling right now, it is a treat. sri lanka is not the place for a person on the atkins diet by the way. carbohydrate heaven. good for runners.

will i be sitting blogging two years from now pooh pooing myself from jan 2006?

im impatient to know what happens at the end of the journey...yeah yeah, the whole journey thing is important but still...what's at the end? it's not death. that's part of the whole journey thing.

i see it as a set of little journeys anyhow and i am impatient and what i have to do is be better about the thinking process. i like to hurry it along and that is probably not a good idea.

anyone got comments on the thinking process? do you ever follow thoughts through to their entirety? how do you know you are there?

i could never be like rousseau.

posting a photo of my two favorite french people, Johan and Vero. they keep me calm and balanced. i dont think they know that they do.

rude girl

i cant decide if i should keep this photo on here or not. i know its rude but i still like it.
so... im going to put it back on. it reminds me of the girl i used to be in my halcyon NYC days. somehow that girl escaped long enough in small town sri lanka for this photo. thank goodness for that.

Some writing

Something i wrote recently for publication. My writing can be checked out at www.chowk.com by the way. I've been writing there since 97 so some of it i wish would disappear forever. some of it, i still like.

just an excerpt but then again, a lot of my writing reads that way.

Transit in Madras Airport.

We talked about Sri Lanka, we talked about Pakistan. He self identified as an Urdu speaker when I asked if he spoke Hindi. He brought me biryani of sorts from outside the airport and set me up with a little chair and stool behind the counter, where I was eye level with the display of chooris on one side and pashmina shawls on the other, so that I could eat. He spoke about the first of ramazan and did so while alternately watching women gyrating on the screen and a balatkar scene which culminated in a shot to the stomach at the khush khabri, main tumharay bachay ki maa banay wali houn. Extortion and it reminds me of Sri Lanka and hopeless situations. Everyone is still brown and we all still meld into one another as white person after white person walks in and ask me while I eat my biryani in loud enunciated voices how much things cost. Yeah, it does remind me of Sri Lanka.

I could hold out my hands and money would come pouring in.

You have something the rest of us don’t, the other ex-pats say to me. The currency of my skin. On the streets of Brooklyn I was asked if I could do the hoola hoola dance and on the streets of Sri Lanka, I am asked the same thing. Doesn’t matter, does it, in the end?

I listen to the Cure, Cold Play and the sound track of Bunty Aur Bubli over and over. I think of Ash s