States of Emergency

As our plane from Colombo descended into Kuala Lumpur airport for our stop over our cabin filled with smoke. The haze was so thick in the air we did not see the ground until about a minute before we actually landed. A state of Emergency had just been declared because the smog was so thick that people could breathe outside - it was hovering around the 550 mark (healthy levels are 50. Unhealthy are 200. Highly hazardous are 500). Everyone working on the tarmac was wearing masks. Smoke penetrated into the shiny world of the KL airport. I felt like I'd landed in some science fiction movie about a future where the pollution is so bad no one can live outside. Except it wasn't the future, it is now and it is fucking DEVASTATING that millions of people are having to live in places where they literally cannot breathe the air. The cause is bush fires in Indonesia, deliberately lit by the government and plantation owners (some of them Malaysian) and then not monitored. I can't understand why this isn't front page news in Australia. It's a disaster.

We landed at 7.30 pm, Australian time, not long before Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, was shot dead in a gun attack in Colombo. A state of emergency has been called.

I need to state the obvious: the planet is in a bad state and I hope being back in pretty, gentle and clean Melbourne doesn't lull me into forgetting.

Posted by Sophie at 05:44 PM

Not the Perahera

The day before I left Sri Lanka these are some of the things I saw: elephants walking along the road, with their minders, on their way to Kandy for Perahera; an elephant on the back of a truck, also heading towards Kandy, trumpeting, with its trunk curled high over it's head; a moslem man with a long beard hanging down, and the perspex visor of his motorcycle helmet pushed up, like a second, plastic, sticky-uppy beard; dozens of school children in their white uniforms descending on a sweet shop, and thereby me; a toilet that had not been flushed for approximately one million years that sprayed water around the room and on to me when I attempted to do the right thing; and the original manuscript of Leonard Woolf's ms, A Village in the Jungle. A friend with whom I had lunch told me that the Perahera was a pain because it meant 12 days with no alcohol and no meat. He'd had to stock up on cans of food for his 4 dogs. I didn't tell him that I was also angry at Perahera because I'd been told it took place in July, and made all my bookings only to be told at the last minute that actually it was in August and began this day, my second last day in Sri Lanka. So, seeing elephants walking to work was going to be as close as I got.

Posted by Sophie at 05:25 PM

Aruveydic anyone?

Yesterday we visited an Aruveydic place near Ella which was very hip to tourists ability to pay, while being less concerned with their squeamishness about old oily towels and being massaged in the nude in front of groups of people. After the very oily, very hard massage which took place on a wooden bench I was put into a 'Herbal Steam Bath' which was like a kind of steamy coffin, with a hole for my head to stick out, guillotine style. It was at this point that a woman I hadn't seen before sat down and held my skull very firmly while saying, 'You are very rich madam, and I am a poor farming girl. Please give me some money.' This place was indeed a tourist trap, and I had been basted, and was now being roasted. When I muttered that I had paid alot already she smiled at me and said I was very beautiful and should she turn the heat up?

Posted by Sophie at 12:28 AM