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kazlifeadventures · 5 years ago

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Trinidad & Tobago - Carribean dreams...

I am so ‘vex’ that I won't be ‘liming’ in this beautiful place any more. I have been one lucky person to have been able to come here and hang with a local for almost a week. Jasmine has shown me her Trinidad and for that I am truly grateful. I have eaten so many local foods and they have all been fantastic. I have impressed the locals no end with my love of pepper sauce. The food here is tasty, spicy, and pretty much specific to this island. ‘Nah boy’, I am so very much enamoured with this country! One of my friends asked me if I had posted photos of the food. Truth be told, I don’t have a lot of pics, its not the most photogenic, and I seriously just wanted to eat it! I have partaken in the local speciality of doubles, with ‘plenty’ I might add - for those unaware that is with extra hot sauce and/or the mango bone that is infused with more pepper. Doubles is made with 2 baras filled with a curry channa (chick peas), it originally started as a breakfast food, progressing to be an anytime of the day food. It’s nutritious, tasty, and sold at street side vendors everywhere. Apparently even pizza and KFC taste better over here. This I can now say I agree with. Not sure if the food tastes better, or if its adding the ketchup, mustard, and pepper sauce that assists with the taste upgrade.....

Jas took me to the home of street food a little town called St James, and made sure I got to have saheena, (seriously amazing spicy little deep fried spinachy deliciousness ) as well as alloo pie...amongst other things. The locals only really eat out at restaurants on special occasions so that meant Jas cooked for me a lot of the time, and wow, just wow. I loved the chicken curry (brown), smoked herring, baigan choka, salt fish, home made roti, the fabulous goat curry.... I could rave on, but google Trinidadian food and you’ll understand. Jas lives out in the ‘country’ to the South of Port of Spain, the capital. We spent one evening heading around to some of the local rum bars. Rum bars are everywhere here. Beer is cold and cheap (and made here - love the Stag and the Carib!). I got to meet a few of the locals. Over here they will buy you a drink even for something as simple as the fact that they had to order over you slightly. At the bar. They loved to meet the ‘white girl from Austalia’, as out here they dont see a lot like me... The good thing is none of it was them just trying it on with the foreigner. These are genuinely lovely, polite, caring people. I had a dance off with some girls from Venezuela, and ended up drinking way more drinks then I paid for, eating (they sell bar snacks and’cutters’ only at the rum shops) some tasty wontons at one place, and some really tasty fried chicken at another. We then got some free food from another lovely local who bought us a drink, and also then brought us across some Souse and Corn soup from his food stall (across the road from the rum shop). Anyway I can now say I have tried Souse, not sure I’d eat it again, it was flavourful, but pigs trotters in broth with onion and cucumber is not on my list of things to eat again! I think I have decided that I need to come back to Aus and start my own Trini food store, I think it’d be a huge hit. Love the local beers. Love the rum here. Jas made sure I tasted the Puncheon rum - 75 % and you never get a hangover or upset stomach... I wanted to bring some home, but alas no room in the suitcase! One of the biggest things, I was not aware that this is the home where Angostura bitters is bottled. It was first created in the town called Angostura in Venezuela by a German surgeon stationed in Venezuela, originally produced there between 1824 - 1830. In 1875, the plant was moved to Trinidad and that’s where it’s secret recipe is still produced today.

One of the main religions here is Hindu, they have a giant (85 feet - 26m) statue of Lord Hanuman Murti located in the grounds of Dattatreya Yoga. The statue is the second tallest in the world, and the tallest one in the western hemisphere. When we pulled up onsite there was one man looking after the bookstore who allowed us to enter the grounds and take photos. We weren't allowed to enter the temple/yoga centre as we weren't appropriately dressed. The gentleman then showed us the book explaining how the statue had been built and answered all my gazillion questions. It was like having our own private tour! Jas then took me down the road a little further to show me the temple in the sea. This temple was originally constructed by hand 1947 -52 by Sewdass Sadhu an immigrant from India. It has since been added to, and tidied up, but it's an amazing place, and a site of pilgrimage for Hindus. It's also one of the designated locations for Hindus to perform the funeral pyre. Hindu religion requires that the dead are burned near water and a holy place.

Brian Lara is still HUGE here. He is a home town Trini boy so I completely understand. Cricket is massive, and the new Brian Lara stadium is a huge landmark. They had a cricket game on when I was here (Trinidad vs Jamaica) but they had sold out the tickets otherwise we would have gone.

I spent a day at the beautiful Maracas beach, located on the northern part of Trini. On the way there we stopped at the lookout and had a quick look at the food stalls. I got to try some ‘Chow’, a garlicky spicy way of preserving such things as Pineapple, apple, mango, cucumber... its yummy and not too spicy and I really appreciated the stall holder giving me a taste ( and Jas’s friend Isabelle for buying some of the pineapple one). Maracas beach is a favourite with the locals and its a thing to do to have a ‘bake and shark’ when you go to the beach. Betcha cant guess what I had... Can I say amazing (again!!) You not only get your bake (which is a deep fried Roti) You get beautiful fresh deep fried shark fillet inside it, then you go to a buffet like area and add as many of the additions as you want . Yep, of course I added a bit of EVERYTHING . I had to taste it all. Seriously that thing was amazing. BTW I do taste everything first before adding pepper sauce... pepper sauce heightens the flavours. Jas’s friend Isabelle got her son in law to give us a shout out on the radio station he worked at ( they had it playing at the beach), so ‘Karen from Australia’ is now Trini Famous... love it!!

Jasmine took me out to the Pitch lake, in La Brea, and I’ll admit, I had no idea what it was ( I thought it was a lake!!) Anyway, some how we ended up with a colourful local as our personal guide, he was You tube famous and has apparently featured on David Attenboroughs visit to the lake. I have to sit and edit my ‘documentary’ when I’m back in Australia, it’ll be awesome.. I promise. Suffice to say the lake is the most amazing tar pit. Seriously amazing tar pit. The roads leading into the area are all like travelling over mini crazy hills due to the impact of the tar movements in the area. You have to use an authorised guide on the site, which is fair enough as a wrong step could see you disappear forever into the tar... literally... Trinidads pitch lake is the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world (estimated to hold about 10 million tonnes) Its covers about 100 acres and is about 250 feet deep. There is a cool legend involving the origin of the lake the involves a hummingbird (I like the story), Historically Walter Raleigh re-discovered the lake on his expedition there in 1595. It has that charming rotten egg smell, and the mud and sulphur water apparently have healing properties. Locals were there immersing themselves in some of the pools while we were there. As we didnt have swim suits we had to settle with getting coated in the mud on our legs, and for me, also my face...lol!!! I didnt get a chance to put it on myself, out guide was very keen to smear it all over my face... (and shirt and hair.. etc...). Rinsing it, after it had set, was a whole other process involving splashing what looked Iike green water all over my face (and legs), all I wanted to do was rinse my face with some fresh water afterwards - and it took over an hour or so until I finally got somewhere to do it. Let’s not talk about how much scrubbing it required later that night to get the last bits of our skin! A great fun day though, made all the better for our colourful guide! I have had a crash course in some of the Trinidadian slang/words and between that and their accents I am sometimes lost in a conversation... (definitely accents particularly when you are trying to enter the country and the border control guy is talking to you and you have to continually say, sorry what??? ) I’m a lot better now!!

Jas couldn’t make it over to Tobago as she had work scheduled at her house that she needed to be around for. So I decided to head over for a night, hire a car, and see what I could see. Its literally a 20 min flight over (only costs about 50 US return) FYI 24 hrs isn’t really enough to see everything. I didnt get to the water fall or national park. I had headed down to Store bay beach when I first arrived with instructions to try the curry crab, conch and dumplings in Tobago (its their local specialty, amongst a few other things). Have to say I liked the conch, crab was over cooked and dry, and dumplings were kind of chewy. The ‘provisions’ that I got with it were really nice though - Plantain, Potato, green banana, avocado ..I would have liked to have tried another outlet to give a second opinion, but didnt have the time. I did get to the beautiful Pigeon Park, a natural reserve area, filled with some shops, water sports hire, beautiful beaches and glorious spot to watch the sunset. I also got out to the Fort of King George in Scarborough hiking up the giant hill to take in the glorious views. Hilariously there was a traffic hold up on my way there due to some goats being herded along the road. Island time boy. I would have to say, as much as its a part of the one country, Tobago island is completely different to Trinidad. Its a lot more touristy for a start, it has more servicible beaches. The roads are not as pot holed as Trinidad. The people are still lovely, but you get the tourist scouters who are looking to sell you on anything they can. Its a beautiful place and I’m so glad I got to go across and visit. As always, I can always go back!

My time in the Caribbean has come to a close. (9-16 Oct). What an adventure. I have had a fabulous time, and recommend to anyone to come here and see this place, taste the food and meet the people for themselves. The country has their own issues with government corruption which impacts the improvement of infrastructure like roads etc. And there are warnings around safety as there are elements involved in crime that impact locals and tourists alike. This just makes Trinidad Tobago, not unlike a lot of other countries that I have visited on my adventures. It just means the more prepared you are to be open to new things, different ways of doing things, different cultures. The more you are aware of your own safety, and that of your belongings , the more you can avoid crime. Crime can impact you anywhere in the world, countries like this dont have it any more or less than others, it just seems to be in the media more....

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claudeng80 · 7 years ago

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Ooh one more, but you can ignore it if you like: Shirayuki and Cajun Obi. location: tree. Prop: rain.

In the spring, about the time of The Fais Do-do

She should have listened to the crickets.

It was hard to get a good look at the sky without getting a faceful of water, but Shirayuki held out hope that the downpour was slowing, the clouds starting to clear. She’d been barely out of sight of the town when the deluge started, and the only shelter in sight was the big live oak tree.

The lower branches were nearly as wide as she was tall, arching gracefully over the road and into the forest. No taller trees challenged it, very little grew beneath it. She settled her skirt and sat on a floor of shattered acorn shells, Spanish moss curtains above her lashed by the wind. To either side, cup-shaped leaves danced in the falling raindrops, but where she sat against the trunk was dry enough.

The plants need the rain, she reminded herself, distracting herself with the thoughts of watermelons and blackberries later in the summer, plump with the water falling now. The mosquitoes would be earlier, though. That would be a shame. She’d need bay and comfrey leaves, maybe she should start trading for them.

Drops pattered from the brim of her garde-soleil onto the breast of her apron, and she frowned. She hooked her finger in the bow, slipping it off and shaking the rain off the bonnet away from her skirts.

“Mm, before you go any further, I feel like I should inform you that you are not alone.”

She’d heard stories of dangerous creatures in trees, giant cats that leaped on you silently and dragged you up into the branches to feed. Obi moved like one of those, moving sure-footed as a squirrel along the branches and dropping into the same island of dry ground.

“Obi,” she gasped. “Did you get caught in the rain too?” She averted her eyes from where his fingers still worked at the neck of his shirt, closing it. It wasn’t her place to ask about the scar across his chest, no matter how much it concerned her. If there was one thing she knew about Obi, it was that he didn’t like questions. Answering them, at least. He asked plenty and listened to the answers.

“In one sense, yes, it did take me by surprise. I was just having a nice nap before the thunder woke me.”

Her dress was cold against her skin, clammy where it was still damp. “In the tree?”

He laughed, that friendly chuckle that somehow made him so much more approachable. “It is where I sleep.” She looked where he pointed, and through the leaves and moss she could see some ropes. “I’m used to hammocks, hard to go back to sleeping on the ground. Rain is my only complaint.”

All this time she’d thought he lived at Wistal, or in town, she’d never thought to ask- “Crickets,” Shirayuki blurted, no idea how else to respond to that. She wanted to give Zen a piece of her mind, but again, what little she knew of Obi implied it was probably all his doing. “Listen for the crickets. They’ll tell you when it’s going to rain.”

A bullfrog hopped across her foot, somehow making her feel wetter than she already did. It’d serve it right if she caught it and took it home for dinner, but it was a skinny thing and she already had plans. She shook her toe and it hopped off into the bush, and only then did she dare to look up at Obi’s face. Every time she stopped Zen from killing a spider or spit on her bait before fishing, he made a concerned face that made her feel very provincial. Maybe things didn’t work the same where he came from, but they were what she’d been raised to do. She didn’t even know where Obi was from, and he’d probably feel the same.

But his eyes weren’t judging, when she finally met them, just curious. “Crickets anytime, or sometime specific?”

#cajun au #century prompts #this one gave me such a block #here it is #vivianwisteria

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joannoble0 · 5 years ago

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brianrines0 · 5 years ago

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Pest Control Exterminator Service for Ants Canyon Crest CA

Ant Control

Mouse Control

Silverfish Control

Cricket Control

Crickets can cause harm and a lot of hassle, especially if you have just bought new clothing or if you have just had your household furniture restored or replaced.

Call the pest control specialists that have the competent experience and expertise needed to eradicate crickets infestations successfully in your house or workplace. Pest Control For Silverfish

Wasp Removal

Cockroach Control

Spider Control

Pantry Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control Riverside 9880 Indiana Ave STE 23, Riverside, CA 92503

Home

951-977-8183

Find us on Google

Find us on Maps

Google My Business Gopher The Kill Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control

Gopher The Kill Pest Control Location

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from https://www.pestcontrolcanyoncrestca.com/pest-control-exterminator-service-for-ants-canyon-crest-ca/

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pestctrlcanyonca · 5 years ago

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Pest Control Exterminator Service for Ants Canyon Crest CA

Ant Control

Mouse Control

Silverfish Control

Cricket Control

Crickets can cause harm and a lot of hassle, especially if you have just bought new clothing or if you have just had your household furniture restored or replaced.

Call the pest control specialists that have the competent experience and expertise needed to eradicate crickets infestations successfully in your house or workplace. Pest Control For Silverfish

Wasp Removal

Cockroach Control

Spider Control

Pantry Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control Riverside 9880 Indiana Ave STE 23, Riverside, CA 92503

Home

951-977-8183

Find us on Google

Find us on Maps

Google My Business Gopher The Kill Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control

Gopher The Kill Pest Control Location

canyon crest pest control

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Pest Control Exterminator Service for Ants Canyon Crest CA

from https://www.pestcontrolcanyoncrestca.com/pest-control-exterminator-service-for-ants-canyon-crest-ca/

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pestcontrolcan · 5 years ago

Text

Pest Control Exterminator Service for Ants Canyon Crest CA

Ant Control

Mouse Control

Silverfish Control

Cricket Control

Crickets can cause harm and a lot of hassle, especially if you have just bought new clothing or if you have just had your household furniture restored or replaced.

Call the pest control specialists that have the competent experience and expertise needed to eradicate crickets infestations successfully in your house or workplace. Pest Control For Silverfish

Wasp Removal

Cockroach Control

Spider Control

Pantry Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control Riverside 9880 Indiana Ave STE 23, Riverside, CA 92503

Home

951-977-8183

Find us on Google

Find us on Maps

Google My Business Gopher The Kill Pest Control

Go-Pher The Kill Pest Control

Gopher The Kill Pest Control Location

canyon crest pest control

Canyon Crest Pest Control Services

Canyon Crest Exterminator

Pest Control Canyon Crest CA – Trello

Pest Control Canyon Crest CA Facebook Page

Exterminator For Rats Near Me Canyon Crest CA 92507

33.98057 -117.32893

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from https://www.pestcontrolcanyoncrestca.com/pest-control-exterminator-service-for-ants-canyon-crest-ca/

from https://pestcontrolcanyoncrestca0.wordpress.com/2019/12/24/pest-control-exterminator-service-for-ants-canyon-crest-ca/ from https://pestcontrolcanyoncrest.blogspot.com/2019/12/pest-control-exterminator-service-for_81.html

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shannonmw · 6 years ago

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I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with. My goal for this project is to use this form to tell you a story. This paper will be multimodal, because it is a blog, and because it contains personal stories and actual photographs. It will also be accessible to all, because I will actively share it on social media, allowing a community of people to read and share it.

I have been asked to tell a story. A story about my family, my community and my nation. My subjectivity is conditioned by my awareness of the constructed nature of the story I am telling. Smith and Watson, in ‘Reading Autobiography’, write that “personal memories are the primary archival source” for a life narrator despite her access to other sources such as letters, journals, photographs and conversations (2001, p.6). My archival sources are my memory, conversations with my mother and a few friends, and photographs.

An awareness of the situational and interactional features of autobiographical acts, as mentioned by Smith and Watson (2001, p. 50) gives me a sense of agency in the tale I narrate. While I am the producer, or teller, of my story, I am aware that my coaxer is the question given to me as part of the final assignment for a course at the University of Colombo’s MA in English Studies Programme; you are the consumer, reader or audience who will interpret my tale. I would like to imagine I am as revolutionary as Roland Barthes in his text, ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes’, where I (the critic) turn to myself, and critique myself as a text. However the limitations of time and space quell my revolutionary fancies. Yet, while writing this I couldn’t help feel like Scout, in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ simply because I am recalling childhood memories and retelling them – I found myself writing in a more childish manner and literally channeling Scout. To the reader who does notice the similarity, I apologise.

Life Writing, I have realized in retrospect, is easy to critique. It is harder to write. It is hard to dig deep, dredge memories and emotional experiences you’d rather forget. No, not because they’re traumatic or potentially scaring. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that these memories would rather be forgotten. Memories are shady, and in the process of recollection I have questioned my memories, and constantly asked myself ‘did I really do this?’ or ‘did I really think this?? Or do I think I thought this?!” Stanley Fish answered my questions, “[a]utobiographers cannot lie because anything they say, however mendacious, is the truth about themselves, whether they know it or not” (cited in Smith and Watson, 2001, p.12).

I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you about something that happened to my mother when I was 10 years old. This story affected me and my perspective of history and Sri Lanka as a teenager, it continues to affect how I’ve viewed the LTTE and other terrorist organisations. My retelling of this story comes from my family; it involves a community of people who stepped up in a time of need; right now my story actively involves a community of readers who will engage with it via the world wide web. The relationship of my story to the larger narrative of our nation is too blatant to ignore.

My mum’s friend, Nishani, worked for the World Bank in Washington DC. She had come down to Sri Lanka for work. She is an Economist and was writing a report (on what I don’t remember, but it was something really important). She was staying at The Galadari Hotel. Ammi and Aunty Nishani were very close. While Aunty Nishani was here, they met a few times but didn’t gossip as much as they liked to. A few days before Aunty Nishani left Sri Lanka, an ideal opportunity presented itself: a midweek poya where my dad (who is a member of the Sri Lankan Airlines Cabin Crew) had an early morning flight, my brother and I didn’t have school. Aunty Nishani invited Ammi to come for dinner and stay over. On Tuesday night Ammi dropped Mallie and me at Achchi’s place. We were happy to stay, though I really wished I could’ve gone with Ammi – I loved staying in hotels! I was grumpy and wrote a long letter to my mother, berating her for not letting me join her and Aunty Nishani. I had promised to be good and not interfere, but Ammi had just cast me aside. I was heartbroken! My grandmother went to great lengths to repair my broken heart. I went to sleep determined not to talk to Ammi when she picked us up the next day. The next morning I was awoken by the constant ringing of the phone. I don’t remember what time it was, except that the phone was in the room and my Achchi was very agitated; she didn’t talk to us; she was always speaking in Sinhalese (as if we didn’t understand!) and kept giving us the classic, “no, nothing is wrong” answer that all grown ups give children when there really is something wrong. I can’t remember what I thought the matter could be. Achchi didn’t allow us to put the TV on, but was very keen that we read or go outside to play. I had just finished an entire collection of Enid Blyton’s ‘Five Find Outers’, and I also had my favourite book by Enid Blyton ‘The Secret Island’ with me – I was in sleuth mode. It was inevitable. I hid behind curtains, eavesdropped and gathered that there had been a bomb blast somewhere in Colombo. Ok…so what? My sleuthing got me no where, my Seeya found me hiding and sent me outside. Mallie, who in my opinion had never been a particularly suspect child, was not interested in anything I had to say because it did not involve Romesh Kaluwitharana or cricket. By 10am there was a call, and that call changed my grandmother. It was my mother. Apparently she was alright. There had been a bomb blast near the Galadari Hotel. Ammi was caught in it, but she was alright now. She was safe. I remember feeling really really bad. I regretted my decision to never speak to Ammi again. “Please Jesus, let my Ammi be ok. Please don’t let anything happen to her”. I think Achchi made us kneel in front of the altar in her Hall and we recited the Rosary. I was fervent, and promised to be a really good girl, if only Ammi was ok. I recalled the Central Bank Bombing the previous year when Ammi had appeared in school, miraculously, to pick me up (If you knew my mum at that point, you’d know why this was miraculous – she avoided picking us up from school because she was always really busy and school vans were very very convenient). I remembered her telling me then, that I had nothing to worry about because Ammi would always be there. While reciting the rosary, I remember feeling like an orphan. I literally didn’t know where in the world Thathi was, and I felt very lost without Ammi. I cried. Achchi promised me that she would take care of me and to pray. So I prayed.

The next day I was taken to Nawaloka Hospital to visit Ammi and Aunty Nishani. Ammi had a small head injury, and both Aunty Nishani and her had lots of cuts, bruises and shrapnel wounds. Ammi cried when she saw us. I refused to leave the hospital room. I stayed the night with her and Thathi. She had to be given medicine to sleep because she was too scared to sleep. I was scared too.

I’ve heard Ammi’s story many times. Whenever she recalls her story, she adds more details. It’s not that she’s exaggerating, but I realise she’s adding more details because I am older. When I was 10, the story was quite basic. At 17, when she told it to me again, there were more details. At 31, she related it to me again, for the purpose of this assignment; she was more free and unrestrained. I learned more about her experience at 31, than I did at 17. It is interesting how stories can be conditioned, or condensed, based on the age of the audience despite it being the same story.

Smith and Watson have noted that the memories invoked in “autobigraphical narrative is specific to the time of writing and the context of telling…it is never isolatable fact, but situated association” (2001, p.18). I guess this is true of my story. Right now I am recalling this narrative for a specific purpose; I examine it with a fine comb to dissect and identify specific sections that are relevant to my question (the coax) and the theories of Life Writing that I’ve been taught. Likewise my Ammi’s memories were fleshed out, with more details, because she was more comfortable sharing this experience she had at 31, with her daughter who’s now 31.

The locus of my story is my mother. It is her story that I want to add, because without her, I wouldn’t be where I am. Without her, I wouldn’t be telling you this story. Her story helped me at 17 when I was selected as a member of a Delegation to participate in the Initiative for Peace program at the United World College of South East Asia. Here, during the ceasefire of 2004, group of Sri Lankan teens from all over the island were selected, based on a story narrating our personal encounters with the Civil Conflict. I wrote about my mother. To a 17 year old, the trauma of losing my mother was exaggerated because though I remembered what had happened, I was blissfully ignorant of the finer details. Unfortunately I cannot locate the original story I wrote, but this is that tale, and then some told by me, as it was narrated to me:

(Ammi’s story) After dropping Mallie and I at Achchi’s, Ammi had gone to the Galadari. They’d had a nice dinner together, and gone back to Aunty Nishani’s room for some gossip. Ammi says it was late when they got to bed. Habitually an early riser, Ammi woke up before 7am. She noticed Aunty Nishani wasn’t in bed, she’d said ‘Nishani?’ and Aunty Nishani had replied saying was in the bathroom working on her report because she didn’t want to disturb Ammi, and that Ammi should sleep. Deciding to snooze for a little longer, Ammi had closed her eyes and begun to drift off when she heard a continuous “tak-a-tak-a-tak-tak-a” noise. Getting out of bed, she opened the curtains and looked down. They were on the 12th or 14th floor (she can’t remember exactly) and the room overlooked the car park. Ammi says there were about 6 or 7 men, wearing black with bandanas or “something like turbans” on their heads. One thing stood out – they were barefoot. They had ammunition draped over their shoulders and were attempting to maneuver a very large lorry into the Galadari Hotel’s car park. Ammi had thought this was a robbery and rushed to bathroom to tell Aunty Nishani. As they came to the window they saw a large black shape, heading towards the WTC Building. It was then that they realized, this was an attack. An attack by the LTTE. Aunty Nishani’s father happened to be former UNP MP Festus Perera, whom she called immediately. He advised both of them to leave Galadari at once. (Ammi laughingly recalls how the most important thing at that time for both of them was to brush their teeth!) The sound of gunfire continued as they changed into streetwear. Ammi had just stepped out of the room when the first blast occurred. The door of the room fell on her, because of the impact and she fell face first onto the carpeted corridor. She blacked out. When she came to, Aunty Nishani and a large African American man were hauling her up, towards the staircase. Then the second blast hit. During the first blast Ammi had misplaced her shoe, and the second blast had scattered glass on the floor. She couldn’t walk barefoot so she had to run back to the room for her other shoe. When she returned to the stairwell, the third blast hit. After descending 12 or 14 flights of stairs Ammi says the Lobby was like a ghost town. She said it was like in the movies – you recognized it, but you couldn’t believe your eyes. Aunty Nishani, Ammi, a few American Green Berets (who’d also been on the same floor) rushed out of the hotel and towards the beach. They were joined by hotel employees fleeing for their lives. Ammi says she had to jump 12 feet onto the Galle Face Beach – to date she doesn’t know how she did it. She says her head was throbbing and she could hear a ringing noise in her ears, but she kept going. In every version of this story, she emphasizes that it was the thought of Mallie and I that kept her going. They’d run along the beach to the Galle Face Hotel, while shooting sounds permeated their environment. They were sitting ducks, obvious and visible, running along the beach. Upon reaching the Galle Face Hotel, Aunty Nishani’s dad had sent a Police Jeep to escort them to the hospital. En route to Nawaloka the vehicle was stopped. The Army didn’t believe the Police escorts; they didn’t believe that my mother and Aunty Nishani had escaped so soon. They assumed they might be LTTE Cadres in disguise. Ammi says she was more afraid at that point than she was on the beach. Here, they were trapped. Literally. And if something happened, the state of emergency and ensuing chaos would mean that their deaths would become collateral damage. Eventually they were released and both of them were admitted to Nawaloka. That’s when Ammi called Achchi.

Thathi had boarded the aircraft, and the doors had just closed when he heard about the bomb blast. He couldn’t leave and he didn’t know what had happened. He says it was the longest flight he’d ever worked on.

Aunty Nishani returned to the hotel within a matter of hours. The shooting hadn’t subsided but moved to Lake House, where the LTTE held hostages. Aunty Nishani needed her laptop and her report. My Loku Maama and our driver had accompanied Aunty Nishani. They’d taken a few pictures. The bed closest to the window is where Ammi slept. If she hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.

Figure 4: Aunty Nishani with her Police escorts retrieving her files

Figure 1: My parents in Aunty Nishani’s room a few days before the blast, when they’d visited her

Figure 3: The view of the car park from the room

Figure 2: The bed Ammi slept in, after the blast

Nawaloka Hospital was teeming with victims of the accident. There were also many security personnel. Ammi was interviewed by many intelligence officers. I think it got tiresome after a while. She’d been telling her story so many times. She says she had to take sleeping pills and attend psychiatric sessions to move on from this experience. These tidbits were news to me. Until recently I didn’t know the extent she’d been affected by this experience.

This story helped me join a larger community; one I encountered during my participation at the IfP Conference in Singapore. Initially participants were split up and we had many team-building and trust exercises, but later we had a few sessions which were harrowing, eye-opening and jarring. I remember more than once I went to my room, crying. I met a former child soldier, who gave us a different perspective of the war. I helped write a massive Time Line, where all participants attempted to pinpoint the exact incident that triggered the civil conflict; no one could. The only consensus was that the war was a culmination of events, and bad decisions. Now, in retrospect I realize that what we experienced was a miniature of a reconciliation discussion. We were students from Colombo, Jaffna, Batticaloa, Kandy and Galle, and Matara. Our community taught me a lot of important lessons about conflict: that this conflict was the culmination of many events; there is no ‘us’ versus ‘them’; that suffering is universal and it doesn’t matter where you’re from – if the conflict affected you, that affect had a forever kind of effect. This community we created is still in touch, but not as active as we should be. Sadly, being teenagers got in the way of us engaging in any large scale social movement.

In terms of a communal narrative, this experience has affected me in two ways: firstly because of how my extended family rallied around my parents and helped care for us while my mother recovered. Secondly, because through this experience I met members of my IfP community, some of them still continue to work towards reconciliation and the rebuilding of the North. I have written to a few friends, asking for permission to share their stories but they are yet to reply, once they do I plan on updating the blog post to include their stories as well. In terms of the nation, there is no need for me to present a history of our country’s civil conflict. That’s a topic that’s been hashed and rehashed. Even the WTC or Galadari Bombing (as this attack is referred to by the media), is an event in our nation’s narrative that has been criticised. In any social situation, if one person brings up the topic of the civil conflict, this topic is guaranteed to trigger memories of everyone in that social group. I believe this is because the conflict has affected every Sri Lankan in some way. Also because as a community and as a nation we are all subjects within these larger narrative frameworks – we want our stories to be heard, we want to say ‘I too have been affected, here’s what happened to me’. I hope that this blog post will address another extended community and encourage the sharing of stories.

[T]he story of my life is always embedded in those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide . . . What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognise it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition (MacIntyre as cited in Freeman, 2002, p.202) (emphasis mine).

MacIntyre’s lines struck home because I believe that the true meaning of a self-referential writer is embodied within a larger narrative. This is why I have chosen to tell you my mother’s story through my own. I believe that the memorable stories within my family, which are related to communities and the nation, are told by every person in my family. He/She will just have a different take on the same expereince, or he/she may pick a different experience. We are all story tellers, and as the digital era evolves I believe that we will have more spaces to tell our stories, we are all auto biographers/life writers in this sense.

References

Athas, I. (1997, October 19). Operation Twin Towers: How and why LTTE did it [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971019/sitrep.html

Freeman, M. (2002). Chartering The Narrative Unconscious: Cultural Memory and The Challenge of Autobiography. Narrative Inquiry, 12(1), 193–211.

SecureHotel: A Specialized Muir Analytics Threat Report. (2016, October). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://securehotel.us/features/15-october-1997-bombing-of-the-galadari-hotel-colombo-sri-lanka

Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2001). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. University of Minnesota.

Vittachi, I. (1997, November 2). Green Berets unlikely target of Tigers, says US [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971102/news2.html

Telling a Story: The Personal, The Communal and The National I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with.

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