My memories of Sri Lanka are from a seven year-old’s perspective, when we returned, and I ‘met’ my sisters for the first time.
I remember a country filled with vibrant colour and cheek-squeezing relatives, generous despite their lack of ’stuff’. A cousin sharing with me a biscuit taken from a hidden tin, not knowing that I would later help myself to her secret stash. Being amazed that there was no chocolate or jam or any of the niceties I took for granted, not knowing that these things were available, but only at a price, a price which most people couldn’t afford to pay.

I was allowed sole use of my grandfather’s derelict (and long-forgotten) ‘western’ toilet , because I couldn’t bring myself to use the ’squatee’ toilet, like everyone else. My grandmother’s house, where she lived with her daughter and grand-children, and where we stayed for much of our holiday, didn’t have running water and everyone washed and bathed at the well at the back of the house. The water was ice-cold and I remember being chased around the garden, screaming as I ran away from whoever had the pleasant task of making sure I washed, that day. One of my aunts had indoor plumbing but still no hot water, so even washing in her tiled bathroom, involved much chasing and struggling to wash a sweaty, grimey, seven year-old.

We hired a bus, a proper bus, and we all went on a pilgrimage with a load of my dad’s family, who are Hindus. On the way we stopped to bathe in a river, and the women tied sarongs around their bust to preserve their modesty - not a bikini or thong in sight, you’ll be pleased to hear I remember one of my sisters squealing as a fish swam up her sarong, and the commotion it caused as it tried to get out!

We visited a tea plantation in the north, the hills were lush and green, and the climate was cool. I weighed myself on the giant scales used for weighing huge bags and boxes of tea leaves. I had lost some weight after being ill for a few days but I doubt I weighed the 2 stone that at the time I believed I did.

Ants, there were ants everwhere, some black some red. The red ones were ferocious. They seemed to smell sugar a mile away and would follow me everwhere, greedily licking up the trail of melted ice-lollies that soon became my signature.

Innocent times.

I haven’t been back to Sri Lanka since that time, I guess the war breaking out in 1983, my lack of skill with either of the two spoken languages, and more recently, the fact that disabled access doesn’t figure in the vocabulary there, are all reasons for staying away. Part of me thinks that if I did go back, I would be terribley disappointed, because my memories, as a seven year-old are almost thirty years old, and were probably seen through rose-tinted spectacles.

While travelling in 1999, I ended up in Bali on my way to surrounding islands. I was amazed at how at home I felt on there, it is the only Hindu island in Indonesia. It reminded me so much of Sri Lanka that I felt homesick for it, and made plans in my head to visit soon, but never did.

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We are about to start a new AB round robin on Express Yourself! called ‘Around the World’, each player chooses a country for his or her book, and so far we have Tibet, Spain, Italy, India, Japan and Sri Lanka. Yep, you guessed right, mine is Sri Lanka. For one of the pages, Miles has urged me to to use some of my own thoughts and memories of Sri Lanka, and this has been quite difficult to put on paper.

I left Sri Lanka as a two-year old, together with my Mother and Father, leaving behind me four sisters aged between eleven and sixteen. I don’t have any memories of when I lived there, only false memories inspired by years of listening to stories of what life was like. My first story would be about the journey to England where on the plane I threw up on my Mother’s sari, now you know how small air-craft toilets are, right? Did you know that a sari consists of 6 yards of fabric? Well you do the maths and you will see that getting changed must have been lots of fun for my Mother
One of our stops on the way here was in Moscow, where we had a few hours to kill. As I understand it, I screamed and screamed and screamed the whole time we were there, do you want to know why? Well imagine your horror when as a two-year old, having lived your short life in a country where every person you’d ever seen had a warm brown skin tone, you suddenly see lots and lots and lots of people who must have looked terribly frightening - white people! The things that nightmares are made of in a young mind!
My other Moscovian story involves a couple with a small child, and flight announcements made in a foreign language. My parents spoke good English, but their Russian just didn’t make the mark. No, they didn’t miss the connecting flight, but I understand that flight-attendants were running around the airport like head-less chickens, trying to find them and hurry them along to their flight, which was being held until their arrival.

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There’s nothing ‘brave’ or ‘commendable’ about just getting on with life, after all, what are the options? A few years ago I was given an award by my local MS group, as their ‘Achiever of the Year’, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand what I was supposed to have achieved. I discovered during the presentation that I was being awarded the title because I had started University (at the grand old age of 26!) and was about to go travelling for 3 months. At the time I was really embarassed because I didn’t think that anything I was doing was a ‘Big Deal’, and to me, I was just getting on with my life.
Now that my circumstances have changed, I can understand the decision a bit better, because now it’s a big deal if I leave home once a week, never mind go to Uni and work and go travelling around the world on my own! The less I can do, the less I think I can do.
I heard something recently that I think sums up my attitude “Life throws a whole lot of stuff at you, some of it you might not like, but I just say, Bring It On!” Of course this is my attitude, on a good day, on a bad day I feel sorry for myself and the frown lines deepen as I try not to cry. On days like this I think that maybe I’m fresh out of tears, but maybe it just means that tears won’t achieve anything, so I neeed to straighten my shoulders, push out my chest, and Get On With It. After all, you can’t smile and frown at the same time

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