Nogen in de Keuken

Sweet Sweeet Sweeeet internet. Feels soo good to be back! For the past few weeks I have been ill-communicado whilst travelling all around this 'little' island. So whilst I have a heap of anecdotes in my noggin, unfortunately you are only going to get to read about bestiality and Kandy (I can assure you, the story of a drinking on an isolated beach until the wee hours of the morning with a busload of Norwegian students is not as cool as it sounds). But let me fill you in on the rest of my life really quickly: sleep, eat, work, drink, sleep; repeat.

After the “Lesbian Penguin Party”, I guess it is only appropriate to begin with bestiality gone wrong. This one’s for you Chris – not because you’re into bestiality, not that there is anything wrong with it, but because as a dog breeder of sorts you could probably relate to this a lot better. Over the last weekend, Emma who’s been based in Colombo for nigh on a month now and myself decided it would be a good idea to hook up in Kandy. Fine for her, she gets a 2 hour train ride; for me, it’s a mere 6 hour detour on a public bus – but more on that gripe in my next blog. Kandy is a beautiful city, perched in the hill country in the centre of the island, built around a lake that some old leader decided would be cool so that he could make an island in the middle to call his home with all the ladies he desired – they came in on a barge, then when he had had enough, he would send one wife back to do tag team with his next wife who returned on the barge. Not a bad little set up, til those riskily colonialists came and took over the place, turning the island into – yep, you guessed it – an armoury.

But anyhoot, the colonial flare of Kandy mixed with the Buddhists temples (one even has Buddha’s tooth!) and tea plantations and South-Asian chaos makes it an interesting place to visit. One of these Buddhists temples is perched atop of a hill that looks over Kandy, so Emma and I thought it would be a cool place to walk up to. I must admit, I feel a bit jibbed; I thought all temples would be old, but this one was built in 1993 for a measly AUD$100,000. I mean honestly, do they REALLY love their God? Or are they just trying to hide their sins behind an 80 foot Buddha that looks over them? I leave it up to you to decide (damn heathens).

While waiting for Sarah and Maddy (2 fellow volunteers in Emma’s program, living in Colombo and Kandy respectively; we were visiting Maddy for her Birthday), we were keeping ourselves entertained by watching two street dogs do the dirty. Bestiality-voyeurism is just one of those fringe benefits you can’t escape from when living in a developing country. And let me just add, that he was going for it hammer and tongs!! Seriously, he was shunting her up against the wall and giving it a real hard go, when he kind of fell off, but not out. And after much wrangling, he could not get back on her to finish the job nor could he get out of there to do the runner on this “one night stand” street hussy. In the end, they were like a two-headed eight-legged rabies-filled bag of hormones with the most embarrassed look on their faces, sort of “walking” through traffic while pulling as hard as possible in the opposite directions. And this is why we could never integrate into society: while the Sri Lankans were just walking past as if nothing is going on, there were four Australian’s pissin’ themselves while watching this free show produced by Gaia herself.

After amusing ourselves for a good fifteen minutes with Nature’s Funniest Voyeuristic Movies, we slowly huffed and puffed our way up the hill to the big Buddha… then even slower rolled our way down (only stopping for a warm coke). Here’s a nice touristy picture of Emma letting the devil into her life by admiring craven images of other Gods on a Sunday (I think I have been hanging around people from World Vision for too long).

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.And finally, before I nick off and do some work, here are some funky photos from the Kandy Market. Unlike other markets around the world, and I aint talking about Safeway the SUPERMarket but rather chaotic congregations of people hawking their wares in random developing countries, this one was pretty well organised. The spruikers couldn’t leave their direct shop front to try and rape and pillage you of all your money, so it was lots of fun standing in other peoples shop front and watching them squirm from a distance while they wave items from children’s clothing to beautiful pash-minas to dead fish with flies on them.

PS. Nogen in de Keuken is dutch for Sex in the Kitchen. If you're wondering why I have named the blog this, it is a long story, and as you can tell by the length of this blog, I am extremely averse to long stories.

Peace, Love and Cuddly 80 Foot Buddhas,

Byron.

Lesbians Penguin Party... now that i have your attention

You know when you don't expect things, and then *WHAM*, something unexpected happens? Well, I had that today. With and email. It's quite easy to become quite blasé about the whole poor people stuff when you live and work in a developing country that was devastated by the tsunami. Every day I work on these issues, and become quite desensitised to the whole thing. Except this email I received today had nothing to do with the tsunami… but it was from a friend who set up this awesome program that has children on the streets of Dhaka running around taking photos of their daily life (www.visibleworld.org). Visible enables you to see what they see.. and the photos are darn amazing. Check out the link, and find out more about it, because this may just be that *WHAM* you were not expecting – or it could be that link that wastes another 5 minutes of your work day, either way it is a win win!

This also inspired me to put up some photos of my field visits, to try and give you guys a better idea of what I am doing. Now, my photos are nowhere near as good as poor uneducated Bangladeshi kids can do; but what do you expect, they are small and can get the better angles. This photo is of a “beneficiary” (slowly but surely, I am going to introduce both readers of this blog to the development industries terms) in the soon to be constructed “low cost housing”/”permanent housing” program house thing. I would go into more detail, but

.. and on the way to checking out that soon to be constructed house, we had to drive through Bundala National Park (a RAMSAR wetland). There were lots of cool birds as hundreds and thousands of migratory birds are wading there. But alas, I was too tall to take any good photos of them – I think I might hire those Bangladeshi street kids for my next field visit. Though I did manage to catch a dude going to have a bath. Don’t worry neo-cons, he can do it without taking his Lungi/Sarong off, and still EVERYTHING will be clean!! Fun to watch if you got a spare seven seconds, and are a voyeur, and don’t have a girlfriend, and don’t mind being watched while watching, and .. well maybe you shouldn’t watch, but all in the name of science!

Finally, before this blog becomes a blook, some people are out there spreading rumours that we don’t have friends. Now I want to put that to rest by saying Emma has plenty of friends here!! Here are some photos of a house party at Bill’s place (god damn he’s a funky son of a gun.. check out his moves!), complete with Zhera, Clody and Zofia. Check out the link to Zhera’s blog.. she fell out of a tree and bruised/fractured six ribs. Whilst I am sure she would love to believe she was in the tree in the name of development; she was pissed as a fart at 3am in Colombo.

Peace, Love, and Lesbian Penguin Parties.

Byron