Thursday 26th April 2012 - Colombo, Sri Lanka

Today I woke up still coughing but decided that I would head to the temple that Shana had recommended the other day. My surprise dish in the morning was rice that had been mixed with milk and coconut to make square cake type things, served with syrup and bananas. Shana's dad was home and pointed out that he had heard me coughing. Shana's mum then came out with this natural cough syrup and vitamin c tablets for me. They really were all so unbelievably caring.  Once ready I decided to go firstly to the hall of fashion to try and get white underskirts for my white sarees for the meditation centre. For this journey I decided to use a metered taxi to compare the price paid for the same journey two days before without a meter. The difference was surprisingly quite large - like 100rupees difference, so from then on I vowed to only use metered tuk tuks. Once I bought two white underskirts I headed to the temple. The temple was really beautiful. As a tourist they made you pay to go in though which I thought was kind of crazy as I could have been going to pray and would have to pay for that?! Crazy.  Anyway, once inside I walked around and was greeted by a very tall smiling monk. He directed me to follow this group of men that were speaking to the leader of the temple. I felt a bit out of place because I had no idea what they were doing so I stepped back and sat on a chair behind them. Once they left, I sat down in front of another monk who was chanting in Sinhala. I crossed my legs and closed my eyes and just listened - a feeling of such lightness and calm overtook me. Sitting with my legs crossed and a straight back didn't hurt like it usually did and time seemed to fly by - when I opened my eyes the other people that had been praying were gone and I hadn't even noticed.  I stood up and continued to walk around - in my peaceful state the sound of someone asking me where I was from, in a temple as well, was kind of annoying but I replied politely and left the conversation. I continued to walk around and then saw all the monks sitting in a straight line while the main monk chanted. They all had covered metal dishes in front of them. I guessed they were about to eat and were blessing the food. The same tall monk that had been helpful to me earlier saw me and the biggest smile spread across his face as he watched me sit down. I just watched the main monk and tried to avoid eye contact with the other monk but everytime I looked in his direction he would still be looking at me with this big wide white smile. I am talking bearing all of his pearly whites time smile. He wasnt discreet. I would smile back nervously and then  down at my fingers or something. I didn't know why he was smiling like that at me but I was definitely intrigued. I got up eventually and walked away slowly, avoiding eye contact with the monk.  Where I walked next there was an elephant chained up distressfully eating greens. He was rocking backwards and forwards - I didn't like seeing that especially in a temple. In the temple there were many shrines with elephant tusks - again, for a temple this was upsetting but I later asked Shana about them and whether this was legal. He assured me that the tusks were only taken from dead elephants but I didn't think this was true - not that Shana was lying but the elephant in the temple didn't have tusks but you could see that they had been taken because there was a white stub and he was very much alive.  Anyway, when i did eventually leave the temple I checked my phone and I had lots of missed calls from Shana. I called him back and basically he was going to pick someone up from a kite surfing area to drop them to the airport  and he wanted to know if I wanted to go. I said sure, that would  be cool. He told me to cross over the road to the lake and he would pick me up in twenty minutes. The wait for Shana was very entertaining - so many people's heads in the passing cars turned at the sight of me. I had a lot of fun waving at the staring people to show them that "hey, I move aswell!!" I loved it, it was just so sweet to watch - especially when the younger kids in the tuk tuks leaned so far forward that they might fall out with one slight jerk of the vehicle. It was very entertaining. At around 1.15pm Shana and Soomanamateet pulled up in the same vehicle I had been dropped to Shana's house in. It was nice to be in an air conditioned van because outside was so hot.  The drive to pick up the customer was ridiculously long - we didn't arrive at the hotel until 6.30! It was really nice though as it gave me the chance to actually talk to Shana - this kind guy that was letting me stay at his place that I hadn't even really had a proper conversation with -other than discussing places to stay. So Shana has a five year old daughter - I knew he had a daughter from the moment I arrived at the house as there were photos of her everywhere. This was a guy that loved his daughter immensely. I knew a small amount about the situation with his daughter and wife from asking his mum and nan questions but they were very vague in their answers - it seemed to be a touchy subject. My suspicions were confirmed by Shana. He married a lady just over five years ago, it was an arranged marriage, but they were now in the middle of a bitter break up. He was very open about the breakup and told me that he hit his wife one time and then she left him. He explained that she was a very aggressive lady and that he had been unhappy for a long time. They had lived together in Kandy but following the break-up he moved down to Colombo with his parents - the house is his friends house, and his wife moved back to her parents and took his daughter. The courts only allowed him two-hours supervised visitation per week which broke his heart. I listened to him but my lack of response seemed to trigger an insecurity in him as he asked me what I thought about the situation. I told him that he shouldn't have hit his wife. I sympathised with the situation but tried to explain to him that although his wife was the aggressive one and he was the kind, quiet one, in that moment he destroyed the reputation and image that he had worked so hard to build - he became the bad one.  I said that if she got to him that bad then rather than letting her get under his skin to that point he should have left her. He explained that he had tried to stick through it for his daughter but I said, what do you think your daughter would think if she knew you hit her mum. I said if anyone hit my mum I would kill them. He tried to justify his actions by the fact that his wife was aggressive but i think the penny finally started to drop when i asked him how he would feel if his daughter got married and her husband hit her. As harsh as it may have been I tried to tell him that the past is the past but he just needs to learn from the situation and explained that everything happens for a reason. He seems really disturbed by the whole situation and is not at peace with the situation but I feel that he still blamed the wife for the situation when the reality is that he was to blame too - I feel that accepting that fact is going to be the only way he is going to move forward from this.  The next topic of conversation was his reasons for letting me stay at his place. He asked me if I felt he was going to drop me a hefty bill at the end and what I thought his intentions were for letting me stay there. I actually respected him a lot for bringing up the topic because it was a pretty big elephant in the room. I told him that I didn't know what his intentions were but that even if he were to drop me a big bill, you couldn't put a value on the amazing experience I'd had at his place. I said that i hadn't really given it much thought as doing so would stress me out so i had just decided to take everyday minute by minute. I said that he could even be some crazy serial killer that was driving me to the middle of nowhere to kill me and dump my body, but that even if that were the case, it's been fun! He said that it wasn't good that I was so trusting but that he didn't know why he had let me stay at his place. He said his parents couldn't understand why I was at the house but he just felt something in his heart that told him he should look after me. It seemed to trouble him that he couldn't find an answer to why he let me stay at his but I definitely trusted that he didn't have any hidden agendas and felt hugely blessed to be so lucky.  During the long journey we first stopped at a road side stall to buy pineapple. Shana was constantly asking me if I was hungry but I wasn't so pineapple was the compromise. It was so delicious and juicy. We drove for maybe another two hours before stopping at another place - this place did rotis and finger food. I ate a beef roti, a chicken samosa, and then I greedily stuffed in an egg samosa which topped my stomach to the brim. Whilst eating I drank a strawberry milkshake and then had a cold fizzy drink by Elephant house (the famous drink Sri Lankan drink brand).  The drive to pick up the customer was not only really cool because of the talk with Shana but also because of the sights. We went passed salt farms (where they make salt from sea water), shrimp farms, amazingly beautiful lagoons, crazy little villages with goats, cows, donkeys and suicidal dogs that would run into the road trying to eat the tyres of the passing vehicles, and a fishmerman village filled with wooden shacks. It was a beautiful but long drive.  Shana's intention for bringing me along was to show me kite surfing but by the time we reached the customer it was pitch black and there was a massive storm. So we literally picked up the customer who was a girl from Norway that was a professional kite surfer in the phillipines for half of the year, and a excursion worker on a ship for the other half of the year. She was at the end of her kite surfing season and on her way back to norway and had paid 6,000rupees for the taxi to take her to the airport (even though there was a direct bus for a small segment of the price) because she had so much luggage. Imagine how pissed she must have been when out of nowhere I started getting this earache in my right ear. At first it just felt like a blocked ear but within half an hour I was in so much pain - the earache had spread all down my face and down to my shoulder. I tried so hard not to complain because there was nothing anyone could really do - this girl Rebecca had a flight to catch and was paying massive bucks for the taxi and I didnt want to inconvenience anyone.   Shana asked me if I had anything like a scarf to put over my ear but all I had was my white underskirts but that would have to do. Apparently cutting off the air might help - unfortunately it didn't. I really had to hold back the tears and sat there in the back with my legs crossed sweating in pain. Shana told me to try and sleep and pulled the lever to put my seat into the lying position - I couldn't sleep though. There was no comfortable position and the sharp pain was horrendous, making even my mouth and jaw feel uncomfortable. Shana kept looking round at me and was so concerned and told Soomanamateet to pull over at a chemist. He ran in and came back with some kind of balm. He leaned over from the front seat and rubbed this balm on all the skin surrounding my ear and then tied my underskirt back around my ear. After 5minutes he asked me if the balm eased the pain - I wish I could tell him something different but it made no ddference. I sat there uncomfortably again and then all of a sudden there was an explosion in my ear followed by loads of loud pops. I screamed in pain which distressed Shana who told Soomanamateet to quickly pull over, instructed Rebecca to get in the front and then jumped in next to me. He put his arm around me and rested my head on his chest while he rubbed the area behind my ear in a downward motion It was such a protective and caring act, like a dad and not sleazy at all.  He had told me earlier that I looked like his daughter and that he had told his mum that he thought she was going to be like me when she got older. I think she may be why he felt drawn to look after me.  The rubbing helped so much and that balm is like magic! It released the pressure and the pain reduced immensely. My ear started leaking fluid though and Rebecca insisted that they take me to hospital. So after we dropped off Rebecca at the airport Soomanamateet and Shana took me to the hospital. I felt so bad because Shana had been on the night shift the night before and didn't sleep when he got home because he wanted to take me to this place and now it was 11.30 at night and he was having to take me to the hospital and Soomanamateet had been driving all day. I felt awful. Luckily the wait at the hospital was nothing like England. We were in and out within half an hour. The verdict was that I had a chest infection, hence all the coughing, and the cold drink and pineapple from earlier mixed with the heat had triggered an ear infection!! I have never heard of such a thing in all my life but it happened and did so within hours! It was nuts. They gave me a course of antibiotics to take which consisted of five different tablets for seven days. Shanas next mission was to find me food so I could take my tablets. I insisted that I would eat a banana or two but he wouldn't have any of it. Soomanamateet was falling asleep at the wheel and Shana was exhausted and had to be up at 5am but they were just so completely selfless and searching the roads at 1am to find me food. They finally found me an egg roti and then drove back to the house.  We had to wake up Shana's parents to get in through the gates - I felt so bad for causing such a massive inconvenience to everyone but everyone was so modest and shook it off like it was nothing. It was definitely something and I really was so lucky to have met such beautiful caring people. Shana was such a good guy but I had no idea how I could ever repay him.