8.22.10 Kandy, Sri Lanka
"Ruminations on the Africa/Asia Divide"
The difference between Africa and Asia is that in Africa, if you walk into a tea shop and they are finished with their batch of tea, they will tell you, "Sorry, the tea is finished." Then you leave, and look elsewhere for tea. In Asia, if the batch of tea is finished, they will eagerly make you another pot of tea, and make sure that you do not leave the shop until finished, and have hopefully bought 5 more items. As I wait on the train platform from Kandy to Colombo, surrounded by grunting steel beasts filled to capacity with cargo, both human and industrial, I think of the rail service that I encountered in Kenya, one of the "leading lights" of Africa. The government of Kenya has not added one inch of steel to the tracks since independence 50 years ago; the lines are slowly breaking down, the system turning into the living museum that I encountered. In Sri Lanka, and Asia major, where there is equal measures of poverty and destitution, as well as the same huge disparities in wealth, the tracks are in constant use, the engines well maintained after decades of use, and the cargo that feeds an advancing nation runs on the arteries of steel crisscrossing the land, upgraded, advanced, and improved upon over the years. In both lands, extreme need is not hard to find; however, the symptoms of poverty can be seen in drastically different lights; lights of progress and advancement, and shadows of decay and neglect.
8.22.10 Sri Lanka
In the space of one hour in the quieted, still shuttered Sunday morning city streets of Kandy, I was subject to two acts of spontaneous kindness so common to this land. A stranger, to whom i spoke only a few words and shared a brief smile, took it upon himself to pay for my breakfast in the small restaurant that we shared, asking nothing in return. Upon entering a computer shop afterward, I fell into the warm embrace of an elderly teacher, his small typing studio, windowless and dank, at the back of the store, his old typewriter displayed with pride. We had a chat about life, education, and after introducing me to his student, invited me to his home for a dinner when I return back to the town. THe night before, the three wheeler driver taking me home from town gave the same offer after 5 minutes of talk about life in America; he requested that I come to his home and share a meal with his family; what are the chances, i thought, of this occurring in New York with a cab driver? Simple kindness, asking nothing in return; I felt unworthy of such warm attention, warm embrace.
