Ahangama

You may think it would be hard to write a blog post about a relaxing weekend doing nothing. If so, you would probably be right.

This 4th of July weekend, we drove a couple of hours south of Colombo to the jungle of Sri Lanka, just north of Ahangama beach. 

We had been to Ahangama once before when we stayed a Maria Bonita, a tiny, four-room hotel, directly on the beach without hot water or air conditioning. It was rustic, but lovely; we had much needed the escape at that time, I recall, as much we do now. 

Even before the number of coronavirus cases began to surge, I found this period way more stressful than the lockdown. Though there were definitely challenges to the government curfew — not the least of which was where we were going to get groceries and fresh fruits and vegetables without being able to leave the house — there became a quiet rhythm to those almost three months, a quotidian pulse of work, life, school online, and exercise with our nuclear family as the focal point. 

We’ve tried to maintain that while the rest of the world unravels around us. 

While necessary (maybe? Is it? Really? All questions I ask myself), this period of “reopening”, of being wholly responsible for making informed choice that directly effect your health and safety — now, with little to no guidance or direction — is much harder than just hunkering down in your home. Though most everyone would like you to believe otherwise. You’re supposed to want to get out and about, to eat in restaurants and go to beaches. Some of that is true, but at what cost? 

It is stressful to try and figure out if you’re at Phase 1 or Phase 2 (as my office is) and what that means for your own personal health and safety or the healthy and safety of your family. There can be no situation that is more chaotic, that is more random, that is less able to be diagnosed, codified, neatly dissected, categorized, or explained than this one. Yet, our only tools to understand our current circumstances are tools of diagnosis, of codification and categorization. 

Yet, as humans, we are unable to accept this. There is nothing in the world — according to humans — that cannot be diagnosed, codified, categorized, explained. That’s the great thing about being human. 

It doesn’t make it any less stressful to wonder if it is safe to run down to Cargills for a stalk of lemongrass. 

When Elise and I take these drives outside the city, to the beach or the mountains, the kids play games on the Kindle Fire, and Elise and I listen to podcasts she’s cultivated over the course of the week. 

I don’t generally listen to podcasts for lack of time but I really like Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox Media. He has a book out called Why We are Polarized which I would like to read but find it difficult to spend leisure time on heavy reading. He has a way of framing all the craziness that’s going on this year in a way that makes it less overwhelming. He places it in a historical context which reminds me it’s one moment in time and that this, too, shall pass. 

As Americans, I think we sometimes are preoccupied by the ‘now’. Not only that, we’ve become used to bad things happening to other people in places far away like Syria, Sierra Leone, or Sumatra. It’s humbling to realize bad things can happen to us, too.

We’re incredibly fortunate that our income isn’t contingent upon an economy reinvigorating itself and that we are able to find spaces in Sri Lanka wide and open enough to stretch out sticks and wings. I know most are not as lucky as we are. 

Yet to not try to normalize is healthier in some ways, I think. I find my own mindset is stronger when I accept that we’re working through difficult times and some crazy, messed-up shit between the coronavirus and the social and racial disparities in America than pining for things to go back to “normal”.  “Normal” is kind of what got us to July 4th, 2020 in the first place. 

We were supposed to be back in the United States for the 4th of July. Actually, we were supposed to be hiking beneath the Colorado pines outside of Aspen with my dad. Don’t remind me. 

This 4th of July, Sam and I drove to the beach to scout out the surf, to see if we could find a path down to the waves and a sandy spot on the shore without rocks. We were successful and splashed in the ocean for a little awhile before heading back up to the hotel tucked away on a corner coconut plantation amidst the water buffalo, sprays of white heron floating over rice paddies, and Clementine chasing peacocks across the grass. On the way back, a giant monitor lizard blocked the narrow, one-lane mud-rutted path. It was easily six feet long or more and had all its scaly, reptilian girth spread out on the road. Two dogs barked at it, trying to scare it off, but the lizard just started at them. A bread tuk-tuk, piled high with loaves of bread and croissants was stuck facing us on the other side of the monitor lizard. We backed up just enough to let the bread tuk-tuk by. I guess part of me hoped the tuk-tuk driver would help us scare away the lizard, but he just motored away, so I slowly inched the car forward. Sam stuck his head out the window to make sure I wasn’t running it over when suddenly we heard a thumping against the metal side of the car.

The lizard was beating the car with its tail in self-defense. We drove off around it, still in awe, and when we got to the hotel, Sam ran up the path to tell Peter and Clementine about the encounter before returning to his quiet reading spot poolside in the sun, soaking it all in before having to leave and return home. 

Amba

We had longed to return to the mountainous interior of the island since our first visit in January. Six months and a government lockdown later, we finally made it back to one of the most magical places in the world, Ella. 

We spent four nights at Amba, a 120 acre tea estate in the shadow of Ella Rock, overlooking rice paddies, the alabaster white conical, wizard’s caps of Buddhist temples, rusty bicycles parked on the side of narrow lanes, propped up by a single metal leg like pirate captains, and 25 year old Toyota sedans sleeping under silver tarpaulins. 

As soon as we entered the wilderness, an entire encyclopedic plethora of flora and fauna, some with common names, most likely known as no more than two Latin genus and species words strung together. The kids slept upstairs. Elise and I slept downstairs. Between us, I left the light on in the stairwell in case the kids needed to find us in the night. In the morning, we found moths the size of our hands, praying manti, and bees making out on the stairs like crazy, lovesick teenagers. Clementine told me she didn’t think bees kissed. “Tell that to those two,” I replied, pointing to two bees shamelessly necking on the stairs. 

We hiked three hours to the top of Ella Rock, then another hour back down the other side, through a eucalyptus tree forest. The three months in isolation had not been kind to many of us; the going was tough as the path took us, literally, straight up out of the valley. The trail down crossed a river with women bathing and doing laundry; we crossed the footbridge and stumbled onto railroad tracks. The directions we had been given told us to follow the tracks until we reached Ella town. So, we did. Just like we were River Phoenix and Corey Feldman in Stand By Me. We stopped for water at a trackside cafe where two young men shoveled rice and curry into their mouths by hand with ergonomic flicks of their wrists. When we reached the train station, we decided we had enough walking for the day and took a tuk-tuk into town.

Ella town was deserted, post-apocalyptic, which it very nearly was, like a slumbering ski town in the summer. We found an open pizza parlor and ordered Lion lagers, fried curry leaf fries, and margarita pizzas, all offerings the best we had tasted. Everything tastes better after putting a long trail underneath your feet. 

Much to the kids’ delight we were accompanied by four dogs and three small kittens during our stay. The kids visited the kittens, Sher Khan, Bagheera, and Raksha (all names, appropriately, from The Jungle Book), every day. Sadly, Peter discovered he may be slightly allergic to cats after he rubbed on of the kittens all over his face. 

One afternoon, following a day spent at the watering hole a short walk from Amba, the smell of rain filled the cottage, the sky darkened, and the soft pitter-patter of a mountain rain struck the roof and formed muddy puddles outside the dogs had to walk around. The kids had gone up to the main farmhouse to play with the kittens just before the rain had started. I squatted at the coffee table in our room, at the laptop catching up on email. Elise read on the patio. Peter came through the door, sopping wet, dribbling rain from his eyelashes and blinding bangs pasted to his forehead with water. 

He had run down from the farmhouse in the rain. I wrapped him up in a dry towel. I asked him if he was okay. He stood in the doorway, staring straight ahead, batting away some apprehension with his eyelids. Then he burst into tears. 

What was the matter, I implored. 

In broken, stammering phrases, punctuated by sobs, he told us he watched Sam cradling a sleeping kitten from afar. Drowsily, yet with little warning, the kitten woke, perhaps yawned, then looked at Peter longingly. 

Peter fled.

He couldn’t bear not being able to hold the kitten, so retreated, crying, running, through the torrential jungle rain, giant drops of land splattering on bright green palm fronds as though in dinosaur times. 

Elise and I ran mountain roads in the morning. The kids flew a kite off the side of a mountain. We ate rice and curry for dinner, egg hoppers and dosas for breakfast, and lunch out of a picnic basket on a rock in the sun by the river. 

We had planned to spend four weeks in the States this summer, visiting family. We aren’t able to do that do obvious reasons, so we’re trying to give the kids the next best thing, a summer full of adventure in Sri Lanka, comic books and Star Wars movie marathons, ocean waves, and mountain trails. In short, hopefully, the summer they deserve and will never forget.