School of Life

You know those moments when you think to yourself "wow, I really know absolutely nothing about the world?"

I feel like that every day here.

I came to Sri Lanka mostly because it was the cheapest plane ticket I could find and I had a month (now two months) with nothing to do before hitting up India. I knew next to nothing about the country - it was close to India and there was some sort of war there that had recently ended. The End.

Umm...yeah there's a bit more to it than that.

First lesson on Sri Lankan history I recieved via a tourist brochure: Portugese colony, then Dutch colony in the sixteen hundreds, then Britlish colony until independence in 1948.

Lovely. They're a newly independent nation. That's sweet.

Second lesson on Sri Lankan history was given on the train from Colombo to Akurala by my newly aquired friend Ishok. As we cruised down the raliway tracks, waves crashing on my right, endless jungle on my left, I started to notice lots of ruins of homes. And lots of graves.

"What happened to these houses?" I asked.
"Tsunami".

Remember that tsunami that hit Thailand at Christmas time? Turns out it hit a lot more than Thailand, and Sri Lanka got rocked. 33000 people dead. Everyone knows someone who died (for most it's a close relative), all the young guys on the beach helped dig mass graves and rebuild homes. 250 villages destroyed, one train derailed killing more than 1200 people.

Not so cheerful.

Third lesson on Sri Lankan history aquired in bits and pieces through conversations with shop owners and friends. The war here was to do with Tamils seeking an independent state for themselves in the north. Ethnic cleansing, child soldiers and civilian human shields were all products of the civil strife that lasted 30 years. Aka half of this country's independent life.

Again, everyone here has a story about the war: friends killed, family members fighting...you know how at home we have videos on our cell phones of people smiling and laughing? Here, people show you cell phone videos of bullet ridden bodies strewen in the streets. I'm not kidding, that's what someone showed me the other day.

Heavvvy.

And then today, I learned my fourth lesson on Sri Lanka. Sitting outside the house with my housemate Rikas, the sky bright blue overhead and palm trees swaying in the breeze, he told me about the 1983 communist riots, incited as a result of the Tamil Tigers killing 13 Sri Lankan army soldiers. Taking to the streets under red banners, homes were looted, police and army members and their families killed. Rikas talked about walking down the street and seeing dead bodies stuffed inside burning rubber tires.

"And not just one or two. Hundreds". He said.
"Not just in one village. Everywhere"


Intense.

So while this country is a paradise, a teardrop jewel in the Indian Ocean, and while the people are incredible and the culture fascinating, that doesn't stop it from sometimes feeling like the most tragic place I have ever visited.