When I first arrived in Lanka, I was really struck by the warmth of the place.
No matter what city, big or small, modern or backward, people always look at you with kindness in their eyes. Children’s eyes are even more beautiful, flashing with capital curiosity. You are not shy at this point, just smile and nod at them.
I can’t count the number of people who said “hello” to us on the way in Chinese, and of course in Korean and Japanese, mostly in Korean, probably because we were more like Koreans, so we even got “I love you” mixed in with the “hello”. We even received “I love you” mixed with “hello”.
In hotels, restaurants and even tutu, they are forever trying to talk to you in curry-flavoured English, so let’s just call it a pick-up line.
I often complained about the Indian accented English, which I really couldn’t understand during my first few days here. The most common words spoken every day were “sorry?” and “thank u”.
On the weekend of the first week we travelled six hours by car to a beach in the south. For two days we did nothing but eat and laze on the beach, watching the waves roll up one by one, lapping at the front, rolling up again and lapping at the front. So on and so forth, but unable to take our eyes off it. The sea here is so clean, the azure blue water is easy to be enchanted by, and as I walked along the beach I wondered if I could just stay like this for the rest of my life.
The day before I left, I had a fight with my dad because he jumped on me for going to a “dangerous, unstable, plague-ridden country”, so I wrote him a 1,000-word essay about the simplicity of Sri Lanka, not to mention the lack of plague. It said, “I can get more out of volunteering for a fortnight than I can out of an internship for two months, so instead of forcing me to go to class or work every day, go travel abroad alone and you won’t be disappointed with my growth”.
I wasn’t lying to him, indeed I was. And exactly what I got out of it was too metaphysical. I can’t describe it to you in words yet, so I’ll probably have to wait a while for it to sink in before I can sort out the emotions.
Honestly, before I came, I had a bit of a saviour mentality, even though I had warned myself many times not to have it. If there were angels in this world, they would be brown-skinned, with big eyes and wearing a variety of dresses donated from all over the world.
If there were angels in this world, they would be brown-skinned, with big eyes and wearing all sorts of dresses from all over the world. The emotion was not at all strange.
The youngest girl, Julie, is one of my favourite children here. I don’t understand what she’s saying and she doesn’t understand what I’m saying, so she and I are basically guessing.
So when the first week was over and the last group of volunteers left, no matter how much I explained to her that I would come back next week, she never understood. She kept hugging me, holding me and not letting me go. When I got on the bus that day, the girls from the previous group were crying, the children were crying, and I saw Julie in the middle of them looking at me and crying too, you know, the younger the child the more heartbreaking the cry.
I held her that day and told her so many things that she certainly didn’t understand and wouldn’t remember. But I told her that I would come back here to visit her next year or in a few years, and I hoped she could talk to me then. I asked her if you would still be here then, and she still didn’t understand, but smiled and nodded.
The head of the orphanage said that in six months they would be moving and that renovations were going on there now, for them.
She told us that Julie has a real sister here too, they actually have a mum and dad, they just can’t afford to raise them, they work on a tea plantation in the mountains and probably don’t have a permanent home or the time to raise them. So Julie was found on the side of the road and given to me.
One day I folded a rose for her and I saw her hiding it and then taking it out later, picking up a piece of plastic paper and trying to wrap it before putting it away. But she didn’t know this skill, and her tiny hands held the rose with anxiety written all over her face both for fear of rubbing it and wanting to store it forever. Then I said to her, “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to fold a rose tomorrow, okay. Yes, she still didn’t get it.
Then I noticed that every time I said something she couldn’t understand, she would hug me or smile at me, probably because she was trying to express to me –
I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I really like you so much.
