ignorance

    
     This week coming up may or may not be exciting.  I got permission, when I was in Colombo last week, to hire a translator for sessions I want to have with the staff.  I sort of got permission, it's not quite as easy as that, I have to find one, get prices and then in two weeks when I am back in Colombo I present what I have found out etc. etc.  I choose to try to find a translator, pay for her or him and risk being reimbursed by VSO.  Of course finding a translator is not easy, if however I do find one, I am going to start a weekly session with the support staff, most of whom are totally new and have no experience, and a bimonthly meeting with the nursing staff.  It is a beginning and I am keeping my fingers crossed. 
     I have continued to feel disturbed by the lack of knowledge the Sri Lankan have.  I was sharing with one of the doctors the other day about the Tajikistan group that was here visiting VSO.  He asked me where Tajikistan was; OK, lot's of people wouldn't know that.  I explained about how when the USSR broke up all these countries reemerged and so forth.  He asked me about the USSR and why they broke up!  I keep trying to ask about Hitler, 2nd world War, Jews, no one knows.  I asked a 19 year old studying for A level exams to get into University.  He said they had some world history and social studies in school but very little.  Mostly they study only about Sri Lanka.  I asked someone about the Dalai Lama (this is a very Buddhist country), he said he had heard of him but knew nothing about him.  Now I would have more understanding of this if we were in the hinterlands of Africa where it is still quite tribal and there is very little access to the outside world.  This country makes a choice to not know.  Perhaps as more people get computers, more will know more.  The newspapers here have very, very little about anything besides Sri Lanka.  There is joy, dancing, yelling, firecracker lighting etc. for every event including the nominations yesterday for Parliament, the excitement was over the nominations of people who are aligned with the president who had disbanded the Parliament that existed a week or two ago.  Now please, I have no desire to be unfair, oh no. I read the Sunday NY Times editorials each week.  No the ignorance of the the Americans certainly rivals that of the SLs.  Two articles jumped out at me today, Al Gore's on climate change and how we are heading for disaster, it get's worse and worse because we know more and more and everyone, the government, individuals just keep buying anything they want without a care about the future of the planet or their own future kin for that matter.  The other article by Frank Rich about the  guy who killed himself and someone else in an IRS office in Texas, the Tea Party Party and where that is all headed really made ignorance  neck and neck in the two countries. So here I am, feeling upset about the state of the worlds I live in so what to do?  I set up the ironing board, put in my ipod ear plugs, listened first to one of my favorite musicals "Dear World" which hardly anyone remembers but is filled with wonderful music sung by Angela Lansbury and is about fighting the big bad guys to save the world from ecological destruction!! (I cannot figure out why this show has not been revived, it is so timely).   I sang my heart out and then, still not finished ironing!!! I put on Essential Women in Blues and danced my heart out..then I decided to write this although I am sure anyone reading this would have been happier if I just kept dancing and didn't sit down at my computer!
     I am pretty sure I have referred to my landlady and her husband as Charlotte and Caru.  Ancy has repeatedly asked where I got the names.  When I arrived those were the names I heard.  Well their names are Salgadu and Rajapasksa.  No wonder they never turn around when I call to them as Charlotte or Caru!  Speaking of Sal as I now refer to her, yesterday she gave me a present of an oven..yes an oven.  The picture is next to this.  It was actually the oven of Hannie who is the person I took over from here.  It looks bizarre but actually it works.  You put it on one of your two gas grills and it bakes.  I haven't mastered getting the temperature right but I did make chicken last night with my own concoction of SL spices and no oil and it was great.
     Some of you have been concerned  that I have given up my collecting of beautiful things like chickens and folk art paintings.  Be assured, I have not.  Last week I bought a rooster plate and at an outdoor art show a folk art painting by an 89 year old who sold it to me..he was amazing.
     I have not been wallowing in rumination on the state of the world this week. I have actually been much too busy since  discovering a green algae type substance was growing all over the two filters in my water purifier.  It was a great decision for me whether to find out how to get rid of it and if the water would again be pure or keeping the pretty green stuff and adding the fish I have been wanting for a fishtank!