Migration Story

A podcast by Peter Hanna:

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Empty Skies

When the pandemic struck, many of my coworkers returned to the States. We never seriously contemplated the same, but I recall those first few harried days of curfews and the looming threat of a lockdown as fearful and harried. 

By staying in Sri Lanka, I assumed many of my departed colleagues’ duties on top of my own. For a stretch of six week in the wild heart of the summer, I worked 12-14 hours days, many spent sitting at the dining room table, taking calls, responding to emails, and leading various teams. 

Our trip to Unawatuna was a revisit, of sorts. This was the sleepy surf twin we had visited on our original sojourn to Sri Lanka five years ago when we were living in South India.  This time, we stayed at Kaju Green Eco Lodge and slept in open air cabanas under mosquito nets, the closest to camping we have had in the last year, opening ourselves up to the screech of crickets, chirping of geckos, and chorus of morning birds. Daily, we would fine giant monitor lizards, stalking through the swamp beside the lodge and slithering in and out of the muck. 

We canoed through mangroves and went down to the shore one morning where the kids were able to play in the shallows for hours until lunch. We had lunch at a surfside pizza shack, the same one we took my mom to that many years ago, the one with the whalebone in the courtyard. I don’t know if anyone besides Elise and I remembered being there, but the Lion lager tastes the same and was just as cold. 

At one point, we found a small squirrel under a chair in our room, frightened until Sam coaxed it into his hand and set it free.

The rain started after lunch and wouldn’t stop for a day. Not an intermittent sprinkle but steady, gushing rain, a constant drumming, percussion, on the roofs of the lodges. For hours we read, rested, napped, drank wine. The kids listened to music. I gazed out at the rain, emptying my mind. Toward the end of the day, Elise wondered if there was any water left in the clouds. How long until they were empty?

George Floyd 1973 - 2020

I don’t know what to say but know, too, something needs to be said. I am learning and being told it is okay to say the wrong thing. Even saying the wrong thing is better than silence. In saying the wrong thing, one can make a mistake. But making mistakes is how we learn. And that is what is most needed now. To learn. To listen. To not expect to be taught but to seek out knowledge and understanding ourselves. 

Elise and I live and travel to other countries, seeking to understand other languages and cultures, try different foods, listen to different music, but know, too there is still so much in our own country we have to learn and understand.  Black Lives Matter. 

Labor Day

I don’t usually think about Labor Day. But this year — for many, obvious reasons — I think this Labor Day is more special then most. 

We are living through a global pandemic. I often refer to the Wikipedia article about the Spanish flu seeking some common frame of reference, some guide (for lack of a better word) to what will come next. History in this instance, I feel, is the best roadmap. The pandemic will be history one day. We will read about ourselves in a Wikipedia article. 

One result of the pandemic is — if not an appreciation — than at least recognition our economy, our ecology, our livelihoods are built upon a foundation of labor, stock boys, cashiers, waiters and waitresses, chefs, baristas, nurses and doctors, truck drivers, mailwomen and men, and countless other professions under different circumstances we may take for granted. Labor that is deemed essential. 

Another obvious result of the pandemic is staggering unemployment and a shattered economy. As we withdraw, seeking safety in isolation, either by choice or government mandate, avoiding restaurants and bars, theaters and the cinema. An entire economy built around supporting white collar desks jobs with a value equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small nation has been erased with many questioning if it will ever return. The two martini business lunch is now a Zoom call. 

For a large part of my young adult life (Elise’s, too) I was part of the restaurant industry. I spent a few years waiting tables and managing the front of the house of Zolo Grill while I went to grad school in Boulder, Colorado. It was one of my favorite jobs and is still one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Dave Query has owned Zolo Grill for the last 25 years and is one of the best bosses I ever had, a leader who put people first and had an enthusiasm and positivity that infused everything he did. 

He closed Zolo (and the other restaurants he owned) every Labor Day and threw a giant picnic for his employees on the banks of the Boulder Reservoir. There was even a salmon throwing contest. A holiday most think of as just a random day off when the post office is inconveniently closed was a celebration of labor. 

I still receive his newsletter and wanted to share the message he wrote for this, particularly special Labor Day:

“I personally can't speak to any other industry other than the one I'm immersed in — hospitality. There are a lot of hard stories coming out in this industry, and more on the way. For restaurants, bars, hotels and tourist destinations and every business on the peripheral of those, there is a long, and in some cases cold, winter ahead. Losing patio seats, losing sunlight, a possible resurgence of Covid in certain areas — all things to keep a fella up at night. But I also don't know of a single restaurant owner or operator that I'm talking to (and that list is long) that isn't tackling some level of learning and changing and positivity towards the future. This is what we do, and if we wanna continue doing it, we gotta learn some new dance moves and put on some new shoes. Lots and lots of opportunities, just need to figure out what those are and how to add them to what we already know and do. We ain't the first American workers and business owners to go through incredibly challenging times and we most certainly won't be the last. So, here we are and here we go, time to get to work.”

Messages like this resonate. People are sick and dying. Social and racial injustices have reared their ugly head like Medusa, poisoning and killing with a stare. The negligence of some states have blown apart — in some cases, very literally — entire cities, burying the populace in rubble. And yet we work. In many cases because we have to, for our very survival. We persevere. We’ll emerge from the pandemic a better world. We innovate, plow forward, learn new dance moves.