The foreign lady with yellow hair

But if thongs are called ‘slippers’ then what do you call slippers? Slippers? You know, shoes you wear at night, inside, when it’s cold... On average 33 degrees, I didn’t once stop sweating, so RR suggested a facial––booking me in, not for the relaxing kind mind, rather one where they attack your face in what’s known as a ‘clean-up’.

After a month of trailing her around and steering Ari Kujo’s chariot, I’ve become a mythical character in Colombo social circles, a point of discussion among car park attendants and baristas. ADSW would hear it from some alert G-Pa––his wife was seen today with ‘the foreign lady with yellow hair’ or with ‘Australia lady’.

One morning, preferring anonymity, RR and I went to the port area of Pettah where traders own the streets, where the frenzy is indifferent to me, the barbers of the Oriental Saloon cut hair, and mosques bow proud under pre-Eid sprucing.

With the general election set for August, campaigning commenced with the nearby soccer-field transforming into a platform for rallies where––after some speech or other, Sri Lankan baila played into the night. Opposition attack ads picture lines of cocaine, shout: ‘A drug free country needs a drug free parliament’ and RR confirms, some electoral candidates do have drug convictions, but yes, still manage to find or buy loopholes through which to throw their hat.

Said goodbye to my little Ari Kujo and after two heavy films (Leviathan and Two Days, One Night), and a grilling from border control, I waited tired and heavy-hearted for my luggage alongside other lethargic passengers. Amid the bulky, black cases a lone pair of women’s knickers scroll past, once, twice around on the conveyer belt. Then they’re gone. Everyone giggles, this will end.

Then suddenly you’re in AB’s Queens Park flat watching the Wimbledon final with ADSW’s seven spice Colombo Gin and manioc crisps and you’re not sweating and you smile because you think of Maya saying ‘very taste madam’. And you couldn’t agree more. I haven’t achieved much since I arrived in London, which I’m reminded is fine. The gang have had their work cut out just assuring me I haven’t made a monumentally big mistake. But come on, can you lot back in Oz dig some more stuff out of the ground or something? The dollar’s tanking and given I’m about to pay the bulk of my Masters course fees the timing couldn’t be worse!

What to do? Baila baby...

Lunghi prints loom large in Pettah.

One metre above sea level

So if it’s an orange––it looks like an orange, it tastes like an orange––but it’s green... is it an orange? Dodunduwa, the small town on the South West coast, which translates in a way to orange-island, or green-orange-island, gave us plenty of time to debate the terms with its 97-year-old procession creating a three hour tail of trucks, buses, tuks and tractors. Stuck on the single lane old Galle Road we were witness to the snaking parade of feverish dancing, drumming and whipping; children, adults, ceremonial transvestism; ghouls, fairies, butterflies.

Then, at a point along the coast came a clearing with a gleaming, looming likeness of Buddha––a young, lean, gender non-specific representation, arm poised in something between a stop sign and scout’s honour. ADSW tells me its impressive height is to mark the crest of the 2004 Tsunami. It’s so damn tall it's difficult to fathom and I question what the metre-high sea walls built along parts of the coast could have done to stop it. Strange. I’ve always hoped nature will win. But not like this. Here my fantasy was pitted against the wrong people. The sea now is rough on shore, but there’s little swell. The land lies flat. The humidity is heavy. Out near the horizon the ocean looks to be levitating. I’m hot and the sweating might be making me crazy.

Back in the city, it’s a head-spin of a different kind. Every second person in Silk is smoking. The DJ plays bad EDM. A bottle of Moet comes in a bucket with a live firework. I shuffle away from the Russian prostitutes for fear of being blonde by association. We’ve come from ‘ladies night’ at Café Francais to find positive discrimination also in effect at Silk. Men’s entry: 2000 rupees. ‘Ladies enter free.’

Less than a week left in SL and somehow the list is still long, though revolves mainly around cake. Thankfully my chauffeur has an extensive knowledge of Colombo's cakeries, so provided I can keep Ari Kujo entertained in the backseat, she will oblige and take on the insanity of the traffic in pursuit of our sugar hit. Tuk-Tuks spar and constantly set off all four-corner sensors of this European car, mahoots hang from open bus doors directing their maddening drivers to disregard police instruction, despite their incredibly funky oversized white vinyl gloves with large red 'stop' circle in the palm. I mutter Hey-Zeus under my breath a thousand times a day and desperately try and avoid being the person who teaches our cutey Kujo the 'F' word.

In what is a sign of the times, we picked from the 'posh' options, ending up at Silk.

A type of hyphen

There have been other departures, but none probably quite like this. There have been other arrivals too, but here, squinting at 8ish in the a.m. alighting directly onto sunbaked tarmac, it was amazing how quickly ridiculous my all black everything seemed.

Sweating, stripping, juggling luggage, my taxi man––holding ‘that’ sign synonymous with celebrity and sophistication (of which I was neither)––says ‘very hot madam’. I am a puddle. It was then out onto the freeway where there was ‘very traffic madam’. And into Colombo proper where the very traffic continued/s; except for a window after around 11pm each night where there’s mass animal anarchy, the dogs (strays), the cows (liberated), haunting the strangely empty streets.

It was some time after this one night, hopping between Colombo nightspots, that our Tuk is pulled over by the police, a torch shone in our faces. The examination––to ascertain whether we’re prostitutes or not. The assessment––so brief I was almost offended.

Other than dinners, cake, coffee, drinks... the usual punctuation of holiday life, it’s been mainly Ari K S, with his big adorable eyes, an exact replica of R’s, and his chubby comestible cheeks. I’ve excelled myself at ‘playpen time’ arranging all the animals (plastic and stuffed) in evolutionary order and upturning everything to create an enviable percussion section, which Amma might well rue later on.

Having first visited Sri Lanka while the civil war dragged on, conversation has been centred on comparisons––political/societal/economic. Fundamentally, the new chaos seems backed by a positive energy and is far more heartening than the tumbleweed and trepidation of six years ago. But corruption and economic disparity are still key issues for the country. ‘What to do?’ needs a work over, and Sirisena––the newly elected President has built optimistic anticipation in the people that he's the person to stamp out the fait accompli in that very rhetorical question. But as we know, politicians have promised less and failed.

This weekend we’re getting away from the Colombo Street Hustle and pushing off early down to Galle on the South Coast. So there’ll no doubt be more reporting from SL before the holiday morphs into the next life chapter in olde London town.

Colombo street hustle

Blue sky biohazard

Australia: blue skies, big open brown spaces, lots and lots of minerals and one particularly nasty one. 

Chrysotile was once mined to make asbestos – a popular, cheap housing material used in Australia in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It's now widely known that asbestos is highly toxic and leads to nasty lung related diseases, including cancer.

 The mine site was in Wittenoom; a town by the same name servicing the workers of what was a booming industry. But since discovering the hazardous effects of asbestos, Wittenoom has been deserted. Situated in the Pilbara region in northern Western Australia the area still appeals to many travellers – and quite rightly. The gorges and waterfalls of nearby Karijini National Park are naturally spectacular. Iconic 80s Australian rock band, Midnight Oil released the album Blue Sky Mining in 1987, featuring a track, Blue Sky Mine which cut to the core of the mining industry and made Wittenoom infamous. Its lyrics still resonate with miners and their families who've lobbied their incredibly wealthy ex-employers for justice and compensation to cover medical costs and damages.

"So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
 - The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
 - Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night...

 And the company takes what the company wants
 - And nothing's as precious
 - As a hole in the ground..."

Where as once curiosity may have seen you risk a side trip to Wittenoom it's no longer possible. It doesn't exist. It has been decommissioned, taken off the maps, the electricity – switched off.

 As an interesting aside, if the Labor party (currently in opposition) wins government at the Australian election this weekend, then ex-Oils frontman, Peter Garrett (member for Kingsford Smith) will be the new Minister for the Environment. It will be interesting to see if he stays true to his activist roots.

My relationship to Wittenoom has to do with another hazard entirely. Age 9, on the round-Australia trip in our Toyota Hiace, we stopped at Hamersley Gorge in the Kimberley with hopes of a pleasing swim. Eager, my brother and I set off, in thongs, on a goat track to descend into the gorge - overlooking an official walking track further along the ridge. I took a tumble and sliced open an 8cm wound on my leg. Blood everywhere, I scrambled back to the top where aghast, Mum and Dad strapped up my leg and fanged it the 50 minute drive to the nearest town – then Wittenoom. When we arrived at the medical centre/hospital, it was closed, so we buzzed for nurse who drove in from around an hour away. She used butterfly clips to secure the wound and disinfected it, but it was only arriving in Port Hedland days later I could have it stitched. I hobbled around what was left of the North West of Western Australia, hotter and bothered than ever before.

Hot. Damn hot. And hazardous indeed.