NEGOMBO NEWS … IN BRIEF! July
2003
The
journalists and editors are both extraordinarily busy at present so the news
is in brief. Sorry about that
folks.
What Have We
Been Up To?
v
The Bible Truth Study Day on Sunday 13th July. Again we think it was quite a successful day though the fact
that Poya Day fell on a Sunday this month seems to have had a detrimental
impact on the numbers attending. There
were only four contacts attending this time.
Most of those who normally attend already go to their own church and
may have not wanted to miss. It
also meant that it wasn’t an extra day off as it is when it occurs
mid-week, so people would have still had to make time for all their normal
activities and being away from home for the whole day may have presented
some difficulties for some. The
working week here includes Saturday until about 3.00 pm so people’s spare
time is pretty limited.
The program included the following topics:
§
Signs
of Christ’s second coming
§
The
Bible devil exposed
§
What
God’s Kingdom will be like
§
Family
life in the Lord
We are thinking that for the next BTSD we may change
the approach a little. One
option is to do something like look at the life of a particular character
(e.g. Joseph, David, Daniel, Abraham) and draw lessons which focus on both
principles of Christian living and Bible Truths as to what God either
revealed to these individuals and/or what they believed.
v
Responding to requests for Bible literature
as a result of our last literature offer.
The people who respond receive both the booklet they have requested
and a personalised letter.
v
Our regular reporting to the committee in Perth
who are responsible for the co-ordination of preaching here in SL.
These reports include a monthly financial statement, a quarterly
report on our activities, issues we have dealt with, matters which need
committee discussion and or direction, etc.
For those of you who have not been involved with Mission work as a
long term fieldworker – be warned – there’s heaps of administrative
things that must be done in order to keep the place ticking over.
Bills to be paid, reports to be prepared, letters, data base input,
etc. Then on top of the
administration there’s life’s never ending domestic duties; cooking,
washing, changing of light bulbs, fridges to defrost, shopping, ironing,
etc.
v
A number of visits to contacts in the Colombo and surrounding suburbs the majority
being people whom we haven’t met before although we’ve had ongoing
contact through letters and requests for Bible booklets etc. Two of these families are people who are dissatisfied with
the churches they’ve attended and are now enjoying reading their Bibles
for themselves and discovering passages and messages that they previously
were not conversant with. So we
are looking forward to ongoing involvement with them and they have given us
a warm welcome and invited us to visit again.
v
Hiring a car again for these suburban visits and another trip to the
hill country
from Monday 21st July through to Sunday 27th July.
One of the new photos on the website is of one of the many beautiful
waterfalls we see when in the hill country.
Ř
We
again visited Raja and Pathma in Nuwara Eliya and enjoyed their company for
several days. We also drove out
to Badulla again with Raja to visit Ranjan.
Ranjan is the chappie with the cats that wanted to share our dinner
when we were last there. The drive
takes us through some quite spectacular scenery although this time we took a
different route. Thankfully
Raja was with us and noticed the Sinhala sign advising that one of the
bridges on the road we usually take is currently under reconstruction and
the road is closed. Without Raja we could have travelled an awfully long way
to only have to turn around again and back track.
We only hope the 60 plus year old European couple we saw about 15
minutes earlier on their bicycle were also advised of the closed road. It would have been annoying for us in the car to have to
back track but on a bike – phew. It
is mountainous country and they would have been facing enough challenges
without having to retrace their steps.
Ř
In
addition to the trip to Badulla Ken and Raja also drove to Kandapola, a
place about 1˝ hours drive from Nuwara Eliya in response to a Tamil
gentleman’s request that someone visit him to discuss the scriptures.
Dorothy thought she was coming down with the flu at that stage so
stayed at the guest-house for the day; the one we usually stay at – a
grubby run-down over priced one. The
management always promises we’ll have hot water and rarely delivers.
This is not funny in the hill country in the “winter”.
It’s cold and the water is freezing.
Ken and Raja’s trip was eventful in that it occurred over
treacherous roads through tea plantations which are in extraordinarily poor
condition. But after fording a
stream and avoiding most of the potholes, we arrived.
Our contact was a Tamil man who spoke little English (or at least
said he did) and so Raja became the conversation leader.
He did a great job and it was good to sit back and see him do the
work. He talked to him about
the promises and their importance. For
someone like Raja the opportunity to preach to someone else is quite
important. We hope to make
further contact with this man on our next visit, God willing.
Ř
On
Friday 25th July we left Nuwara Eliya and headed for Kandy and
then on the usual route to Kurunegala on the Saturday where we supposed to
visit four contacts/families but only managed to see two as our trip from
Kandy was painfully slow. When we left Kandy we were caught in an
inexplicable traffic jam and it took us over an hour to travel 5 kms –
this part of the trip usually only takes 10 minutes.
And then from there on we passed ongoing roadworks which also slowed
us down. Once we arrived there
it seemed that about 50% of the town’s main roads were also under
reconstruction and closed as a result.
We spent quite a bit of time touring the town and then taking the
same route again and again! Aaugh!!
At Kurunegala it took us about an hour to find accommodation that
looked semi-clean and was not too over-priced.
We booked ourselves in and took our bags in from the car.
Five minutes later we were checking out as we discovered that some of
the windows did not have screens or shutters on them and the potential
mozzie factor was more than we were prepared to face.
Kurunegala is in a malaria zone so, even though we take appropriate
tablets etc, we are fairly fussy about the presence of mozzies.
The room also only had one pathetic little light on one wall and Ken
wanted to be able to put some time into his looming Isaiah studies so we
also wanted a well lit room. Having
made a speedy retreat we spent another half-hour looking for accommodation.
At last we found what appeared to be much better
accommodation – a little more expensive but still at a semi-reasonable
price. Guess what we discovered
later ------ the bathroom windows weren’t screened and there was also a
hole in the ceiling through which the mozzies were free to come and go as
they pleased.L Oh
yes, one other thing; we didn’t notice when checking the room but it also
only had one puny little light on the wall, certainly not good enough to
read by! So much for a well
lit, mozzie free zone!
Ř
On
Sunday 26th we drove onto Alawwa (a one hour trip from Kurunegala)
to Bro Tissa’s home and enjoyed a lovely day with him and his family and
had a breaking of bread meeting with him.
We then headed home (home with a small “h” i.e. Negombo rather
than Home with a capital “H” i.e. – good old Melbourne) and arrived
here at about 6.00 p.m. glad to be back and to unpack the bags, do the
washing and sleep in our own bed again.
The
trip was just a treacherous as all the other trips we do on the roads.
We cannot begin to list the things we have to watch out for as we
travel to and fro. If the
Aussie police were put on the roads for a week to blitz poor driving and the
same penalties were applied as those applied at home there would hardly be a
car in sight; most people would have lost their licence.
Alternatively they could blitz unroadworthy vehicles – it would
have much the same effect. We
are acutely conscious of the need for God’s care every time we hop
in the car or a bus and head off.
The Sights
We’ve Seen
Two Legged and Four Legged Pedestrians!
Two
of the new photos on the website are of the pedestrian traffic we passed on
the way from Nuwara Eliya to Kandy; they are quite a familiar sight almost
where-ever we go. A buffalo
grazing on the side of the road (this one has particularly large horns).
And a chappie with a bundle of grass on his head to give to his cow;
the bundle is so big his head and face are almost hidden.
On a previous trip Raja explained that some of the cows don’t have
access to the particular grasses they need so their owners collect the right
grasses and take it home for their cow.
And More Pedestrians – Eight Legged!
The
other sight we commented on and one that we see relatively often was a woman
picking through someone else’s hair looking for gnats (hands-up anyone who
just scratched their head!). We thought
checking out Ken’s hair for gnats may be made easier if we paint a
pedestrian crossing on the top of his head.
The gnats would then be quite visible as they cross from one side to
the other in an orderly manner!
Birds
There
are lots and lots of beautiful birds here in SL and of course many of the
birds we see in the hill country are different to those here on the coast.
There is a particularly beautiful kingfisher which we see fairly
often that is only about the size of a starling but has the most brilliant
blue on its wings which even stands out against the bluest of skies when it
flies past. We also saw another
type of kingfisher on this trip. This
one didn’t have the brilliant colouring and was about half the size of our
Aussie kookaburras. The SL
kingfishers don’t have the laugh that their Ozzie cousins have, but they
do have quite a distinct cry which we regularly hear most mornings.
We’ve
also spotted a woodpecker from the balcony of our house.
We’ve only seen it a couple of times and watched it commence a
drilling exercise on one of the nearby coconut palms.
More Creepy Crawlies
We
often see lizards both in Negombo and elsewhere. The Negombo ones are a green/brown colour and vary in size up
to about 10 cms in body length with a tail of 10 cms. In Nuwara Eliya they come in the same size range but are a
bright, bright lime green. We
call all of them “push-up” lizards as they constantly sit around
appearing to do push-ups; they must have very strong front legs. There is a photo of a NE push-up lizard posing for us on the
bushes outside the dive of a guesthouse we stay at.
About
two weeks ago Ken saw a monitor lizard in our lane. We described them in NN about three months ago – we’d
seen them in the lake at Kandy and a little boy had thrown a rock at it.
Well the Negombo monitor lizard was about 1.5m long.
It was wandering down our lane and made its way onto the front porch
of the neighbour’s house. The last
Ken saw of it was its rear end as it wandered into their house!
He waited for the screams of the mother and daughter who live there
but none of the residents even saw it, so we’re unsure what happened to it
or where it went!
We
also spotted a snake crossing the road not far in front of us when heading
home from Alawwa. In fact if it
hadn’t been for us approaching the crow which was swooping for it probably
would have caught it and had quite a feast for tea; the snake was about 1.5m
long.
The Local Fisherman and the Village
We
did a bit of detour on our way to the Post Office a week or so ago and took
some local shots. Check out the
small fish laid out on mats to dry, there are endless mats of fish on some
parts of the Negombo beaches all covered with fish drying in the sun.
There are so many fish that the fisherfolk don’t appear to be
bothered by the sight of the crows enjoying a feed at their expense.
Surprisingly there are no seagulls here in SL, or none that we’ve
seen! There is also a shot of a
man repairing his nets and another of several men sorting their net with the
little silver fish being flicked off as they haul it out of the boat.
The fishing boats are moored in either the canal or the lagoon and
there are pictures of both. The
canal is almost exclusively occupied by small colourful boats with out board
motors moored almost “bumper to bumper”.
The traditional fishing crafts with their twin hulls and sails are
usually moored in the lagoon.
And
finally there is a street scene with lots of house fronts visible.
This photo was taken in an area mostly occupied by the fishing
families. However not all
fishing families, or indeed others, live in accommodation as comfortable as
this. Some of the fishing
families appear to live in shacks on the beach.
The
houses in the laneway our house is in are not as tightly packed as those in
this street and the homes are a bit bigger.
However it’s hard to get a photo of our laneway as it’s straight
and when looking through the camera lens all you see is the lane itself and
the property fences. The laneway
in the photo conveniently curves and provides for the needs of
photographers. J
Roof Travel
Many
of the lorries here have timber sides and roof built over the tray; the
surfaces are varnished and also have eleborate decorations painted along the
sides and rear. The rooves are
gently domed and have a shallow railing running along the edge of the
roofline. Until this week
Dorothy had never seen people travelling on the rooves of buses, trucks or
trains either here in SL or in India. That
all changed when we spotted a dome roofed lorry packed to the hilt inside
(the rear doors were open so we could see all the goods and the six or so
people packed inside) and the roof was loaded with bicycles and three men
sitting on the roof at the rear. It
is a common sight to see people travelling the in tray of a truck, or on top
of its load, or in a trailer or similar but sight of people on the roof was
a first for Dorothy.
Swinging CDs
The
locals seem to love the hologram effect on the recorded side of CDs.
Where ever we go we see CDs dangling in the windows of cars, trucks
and buses catching the light as the swing and turn.
A Problem Solved
Ages
ago we commented on the fact that despite others’ best attempts to rig up
the kitchen with sufficient power points we had been left powerless because
using the various power boards kept blowing the fuses. Eventually the one and only power point (apart from the inaccessible power points to which the fridge
and washing machine are connected) had also burnt out so we were forever
running from room to room for the toaster, kettle etc.
Well you’ll be pleased to know the problem has been solved.
We still only have one accessible power point in the kitchen (the one
that burnt out – it has now been fixed) however given that neither the
toaster nor the kettle work any more we have almost no need for it!
As we said; problem solved J
What’s
Next?
Our
current SL visas are about to expire so we are heading off to India for
about three weeks, leaving here on 2nd August and returning to
Sri Lanka on 26th August when we will be issued with a further
one month visa. We will be
spending all of our time in the state of Kerala (south west) and moving
around a bit visiting various brothers and sisters and Ken will be leading
three studies in three different locations.
One study will be on Isaiah, one on David and one on the Epistle of
James. We are also planning on
taking about three short breaks (of two or three days each) while we are
there.
One of
the villages we’ll be going to is Adamali where we were in January, yep,
the one with the hardest beds and pillows in the world and NO toilet paper.
However forewarned is certainly a case of forearmed and we’ll be
carrying a plentiful supply. We’ll only be there for about 3 or 4 days this time around
though. On the last visit we
spent about 10 days there. Hopefully
we’ll have better health this time and that will certainly make it a much
easier visit (last time we both had a bug of some sort that wouldn’t clear
up).
We’ll
have to travel fairly lightly for this three week visit to India as the
doctor has told Dorothy not to lift or carry anything heavy because of the
problem with her shoulder; so we’ll have to fit all our stuff in one bag
plus perhaps two small light bags. And
yes, poor Ken will of course have to carry the heavy one. J
Once
we return from India we are of course then only four weeks away from home,
beautiful home J
and we are so looking forward to seeing everyone again.
Love
K
& D
Negombo
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