Running on Empty

"We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food,” Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said, speaking in Sinhala, mere days ago. “Our economy has faced a complete collapse.”

Every morning, we wake to a restless stirring.  If not the thump of bass. The line of tuk-tuks stretches in both directions, on both sides of the street, for as far as the eye can see. As a result, traffic must navigate a single lane, dodging the tuk-tuk drivers meandering aimlessly across the lane, seeking shade under the mango trees.

The crowd, so far, remains calm and accommodating, even smiling. When we open the gate or the garage door, they nod at their tuk in such a way as to ask if we want them to move it. We don't. We won't drive anywhere either, so no need to back the car out. The drivers cluster, doubtlessly exchanging gossip. When will the next bowser come? When it does arrive -- usually around 2:00 in the afternoon -- the news run does the line like an electric current. You know they're pumping when you see the drivers pushing their tuks down the street. 

Until it comes, they doze fitfully in the back of the tuk, folded in upon themselves in the back seat like origami, resting their head on a rolled up t-shirt, or the rough soles of feet sticking out from the vehicle at anatomically impossible angles. If awake, they listen to the incomprehensible babble of Sinhalese news or, more likely, the metronomic clip of a cricket match. You could walk down the line of tuks and hear the match the entire way, carrying from one phone to the next. 

In the next day or so the island will run out of fuel. What happens then? Supposedly, there is a tanker bobbing in the waves off shore but the government doesn't have enough money to pay for its contents.  There are no other shipments lined up behind it. An entire island, an entire nation, out of gas? Does anyone know? Or even care?

Elise and I walked to get a coffee this afternoon.  One of the few luxuries still afforded to us. On the way home we stopped at the store and filled our basket with tea cookies and crackers, dozens of packets we will distribute to those in line. It's nothing, a drop in the bucket, but it's all we can do and better than nothing. Make sure no one goes hungry or thirsty at least in those few meters of the queue outside our front door we can be responsible for. 

I wish I could add photos, to give some visual magnitude to the breadth and width of what is happening.  At the same time, it seems dehumanizing to do so.