renewal of the high security zone permit

Today is the day our three month high security zone permit expires and I sent Amila to renew it to the Pettah police station with what we were earlier informed was the required information.When Amile arrived there, he was told they need an additional letter from me the registered owner of the vehicle in Sinhala requesting an extension of the permit, in addition to a formal letter as the owner of the enterprise which is requesting this extension. So Amila takes the bus to my sisters to get the letter which I had already prepared. I drove him as far as Slave Island from where he took the bus as my vehicle is not permitted to go any further. Apparently he got there at 4pm but they said they don't accept requests after 4pm implying per their clock it was a minute past and we have to come tomorrow to give it. I have to go to Kitulgala tomorrow so we can't do it and the permit expires today.I don't live in Colombo so it is even more difficult to conform to their requests. It is amazing how cussed law enforcement is in Sri Lanka as they feel we have to be beholden to their behaviour, only they can exercise!!

We in Sri Lanka suffer a lot at the hands of law enforcement irrespective of race, as they have become a law unto themselves and are no longer servants of the state. I was checked by an army soldier at a checkpoint when I was bringing produce a few days ago and he went so far as to go through my clothes bag and take out my binoculars and check the sights to see if it in deed was one and opened the battery chamber of my flashlight to see if there were batteries and in the process broke the spring. He probably had never seen a flashlight like that!!

Such is life in the battle zone where the battle is really for the rights of the innocent not that of the terrorist who still gets their way.

still working on my kitchen

the saga of my kitchen continues as I am still waiting for the finished product before the heavy rains come. It is looking good but not yet finished. Here are photos of Rohitha and Ranga hauling clay bricks to the work site. I hope to begin cooking in the new kitchen on November 6th by throwing a candlelight dinner to all who helped construct it.It is all fire wood cooking and I am looking for some one with knowledge of how to build an oven which will run on firewood where I can bake.Something that is not done in the villages except in bakeries.

produce I brought from Polonnaruwa yesterday

Some may wonder what I do in Polonnaruwa. Sadly it is mostly work growing and foraging for good produce to satisfy my very fussy customers.I returned by myself late last night from Polonnaruwa as Amila was off for three days. So I had the added task of doing the work he also does on top of mine.

I managed to sell some excess corn in the Hingurakgoda pola, on Sunday morning. This was the first time I had sold produce in the pola.

My list in my vehicle I brought down and some of which I brought into Colombo today for sale were: 5kg Bitter Gourd. 4kg Lime, 150 Corn on the cob.15 Cucumber,1kg Aubergine,1kg Capsicum Chillies, 5kg Ma Karal,5kg Watakolu,20 bottles of coconut oil from my coconuts and poonac residue for my cows, 120 Oranges, 12kg Kolikuttu Banana, 34kg Woodapple, 25kg Manioc, 156 Coconuts, 30 Free range eggs, 350 Villard Mangoes,9kg Amberalla, 20kg Onion, 93kg of my own Red Parboiled Samba Rice, 96kg of White Kekulu Nadu rice, 53kg of home parboiled White Nadu, 15kg of rice bran for the cows, and about 150 Corn Plants after the cob was removed, to be given to the cows in the farm in Godagama. In addition this morning I purchased 30 Pineapple and 10kg Papaya from a neighbouring farm.

This is an example of my product list I bring down weekly from Polonnaruwa, surprising you as to the range of my products.

rain rain

It rained all day in Colombo today. What it did to my business was shattering. It was difficult to transport in the rain and worse still was that I could hardly sell my King coconuts, my main product in the market and people in Sri Lanka dont drink thambili when it rains.

So I return to the farm with a lot of unsold King Coconuts. All my well heeled friends tell me to make King Coconut wine. Will I then fall foul of the authorities accusing me of making moonshine!!! Now you know what people do in desperation when they try to make an honest living and acts of God and sometimes man prevents them from doing so!!!

Well I will make an attempt again on Wednesday to sell King Coconuts and hope by then the sun will shine. As I noted in an earlier comment, the weather has played havoc this year with my King Coconut sales as Colombo has been very wet. I have been at this business now for three years and this year I have experienced the worst weather.

siblings

Due to the recent family wedding my brother and sisters were together for a fleeting moment from their busy and separate lives. Here is a photo of all of us and another of Harin and myself taken on October 20th 2007

my kitchen floor where no woman dare tread!!

It just took me half a day, and the help of about 10 local lads and the mason to lay my concrete kitchen floor, complete with putting the polythene on the ground and laying the cement, sand and rock mixture on top and then cementing the surface to get an even texture. I was amazed at how quickly a task like this can be done especially when one puts one's mind to it and have a willing workforce who did this more as a favor than for reward, as a pay back for my helping them. I also bought them lunch and they had plenty of king coconuts to sustain them and a lot of banter to keep everyone amused. I expect all the kitchen work to be complete by the time I next go on Wednesday, including the kitchen sink with running water and the firewood stove for our cooking. I will take a kitchen table and chairs I have in a store room to finish it off and we can finally cook a proper meal and eat in a civilized manner instead of finding a bed to sit on to have our dinner. We can all now actually sit in a dinning table in the kitchen and have the food served direct from stove to table. What luxury for us who have hitherto been cooking in the open for over a year. The rains having just arrived means this is a timely move for our general well being and peace of mind.

See below the section of putting up the cadjan roof, for info about the collective effort in finishing the roof. This now sounds very much like the village kitchen and looks like I will have to host a weekly luncheon for all comers in my spacious and for locals the most amazing style of kitchen they have seen in their lives.

What is funnier still is that there is a distinct separation of the sexes in Sri Lankan villagers and in this case the kitchen, the purview of the woman is now all male and for males only or put it another way the only kitchen in the village where males are allowed or actually only males cook and where only they gather!!! What am I saying?

In the context of the village. any woman who comes to the kitchen alone will be considered a loose woman!! such are the subtleties of life.

Images of this week's produce from Minneriya