Government curfew, Day 33.
The doorbell rang. That's been happening more frequently. Sometimes, it is a delivery of groceries. Most of the time, it is a panhandler. The government curfew has been especially hard on the most vulnerable. I give when I can, mostly away from the house, from the car at intersections. I usually don't give from the home for the simple reason I don't want to encourage them to come back.
I opened the front door and went to the gate. A man with a handkerchief over his mouth was holding his drivers license out to me.
"I am a driver," he told me. "For a family." He waved down the street. "I want to buy rice."
"What is your name?" I asked him.
He showed me his license again. Four incredibly long names, ending in "Bandara".
He asked for 200 rupees, the equivalent of one U.S. dollar, to buy lunch. He said he would pay me back after 6:00, presumably when he got paid.
I retreated into the house, returned with a 1,000 rupee note, and handed it to him through the metal grate of the gate.
When I came back inside, I found Clementine on the computer googling pictures of doughnuts. There isn't a doughnut shop in Colombo, so the government curfew has no effect on her access to doughnuts though she makes it seem like it is the fault of the lockdown.
When I received an order of fruits and vegetables a short time later, a woman dressed in little more than rags, a surgical mask across her mouth, shaking her clasped hands at me in semblance of prayer or mercy, staggered toward the tail gate of the car delivering the groceries. I hesitated to give her a handout, but asked myself how I couldn't.
The day after Peter appeared in the living room, proudly holding a snapper by the tail he and Elise had bought from the back of a fishmonger's truck, I cleaned the fish. Inexpertly with a dull knife, but I got the job done. Then made a beer batter and fried fish . We are well that night. Elise and Sam made both corn and flour tortillas while Pete, Clementine, and I had gone for a swim. Fish tacos with a pineapple salsa, cabbage slaw, and sriacha mayo. At least we're eating well during the lockdown.
The rains have returned. Just in time. I had heard the month of May would mark the beginning of a second monsoon season. A thunderstorm last night knocked out power on our block, plunging the house in darkness. The generator kicked on, but alas no light.
The facilities team came the next afternoon to replace an electrical switch. They would have to switch the power off again in order to enact the repair. Five Sri Lankan electricians spent the next three hours hiding in the garage as a new wave of thunderclouds roiled the dusk sky and I carefully measured out the ingredients to a cosmopolitan up for Elise in the kitchen by the meager flashlight ony phone, attempting to hold the phone in one hand and the jigger in the other.
Bandara didn't return. I am persuaded the thunderstorm kept him from coming back to return the money I loaned him. Elise laughed at my eternal faith in humanity.
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