Planning a trip to Adam's Peak this weekend, so called because it is claimed that the footprint on the top was left when Adam paused and looked back into Eden for the last time. And it's true Sri Lanka is beautiful and being a tourist I get to see all the best parts and have been having a chill time, but sometimes I get these little reminders that I don't live here and that if I did my life would be extremely different and so would my experience of this country, this paradise.
Today it was the way all the locals gazed impassively at the the ak-47's sported by the 100+ soldiers at the roadblocks and on the buildings around town, posted there for a visit by the presidents wife, and the way those same people didn't cringe away from the snub-nosed stares of the machine guns in the windows of suv after suv full of additional soldiers. My fear was the fear of the unknown and their calm was born of familiarity. I've never had a machine gun pointed at me before and certainly not one that was loaded and manned, the thing is it wasn't even pointed at me it was just pointed in my direction, I felt insubstantial and powerless and realized in that moment my own frailty in the face of thing that doesn't judge right or wrong but is just an action. Shoot.
Got online and discovered that 15 people were killed in a bombing in the north yesterday.
Leaving next week but have a lot to think about.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment