CATCHING UP ON THE BLOG

CATCH UP BLOGGING

It has been a while since we updated our blog of our adventures in the Middle East.

Our last blog recorded our leaving Nizwa and moving across the border to the UAE where I picked up work with Cognition as an English Adviser in a local Prep School.

I’m still waiting on CfBT to refund me monies they held back for cleaning the apartment and paying for the few utilities we used while there. But, then, I did come to expect that after the hassles we had in getting paid on time and of getting a meaningful pay slip delivered on the day that the pay was meant to go into our account. I don’t know how my replacement in Nizwa fared - I only hope that it was better.

On the housing front in Abu Dhabi, Joy and I moved from our apartment in the Platinum Apartments to an apartment in the Al Nayhan Area near the Al Whada Mall where we’ll be based until the end of our contract in July-August next year. The apartment is pleasant, well lit and airy with access to a swimming pool and, if we need it, a gymnasium that is filled with machinery that would not have gone astray in the catacombs of the inquisition.

Joy is really happy with this arrangement as she is a five minute walk from her Doha friend, Priscilla, so they can head off to go “mall trawling” when ever they wish to escape from the 45C of the UAE summer into the cool of the malls.

We are now back in New Zealand and winter. This trip home has been one of getting paperwork sorted out - new passports required, renewing my drivers license and teacher registration and other bits and pieces before returning to the ME.

When we return in August we will rent a car which will allow us to explore more of the Emirates and visit friends in other parts of the UAE. Getting into the bustle and clash of Abu Dhabi traffic will be fun after six months of using the bus and taxi system.

The School and Work:
At work the semester and a bit at the school proved to be a challenge as the teachers were convinced that the changes the school had experienced over the past few years, from a school using an American system, complete with ready made teaching units, lesson plans and US text books with Arabic names like Faisal & Ali replacing solid US names like Randy and Rudy, to a local Ministry of Education programme that returned to a curriculum that appeared to insist that, like the US programme, all students progressed from page to page with total understanding every day as long as the teachers delivered a lesson, word for word from the teacher’s book, to a standards based curriculum using material from NSW and Queensland that presumed that teachers could create their own unit and lesson plans that provided for the different learning speeds and abilities of the students was nothing to get really inspired by.

Their reluctance to come to grips with the curriculum documents and associated Learning Plans meant that I had to put a great deal of time into building up trust and reasonable working relationships before pushing hard for meaningful change. It also meant doing a good deal of modelling to demonstrate what could be achieved if one was prepared to do a bit of preparation and creative thinking.

The Advisory Team succeeded in creating an English Club that encouraged the boys to play scrabble, engage in an inter-school debate and write and publish a school newspaper. The latter two activities were greeted with some amazement by the teachers who had never seen or taken part in a debate before and were convinced that the boys would not be able to do either activity as they thought the boys did not have enough English to try. I look forward to generating the enthusiasm next academic year when we will have a full three semesters to establish the activities and keep them running.

The drives to get an understanding of the curriculum meant that I spent a great deal of time creating scaffolded work books to guide both staff and students through the inquiry learning focus of the course as well as writing meaningful and curriculum consistent assessment tasks that met the descriptors of the learning plan as well as guiding the teachers towards the content they were meant to teach. Mind you, these efforts, while sound and curriculum directed, were to be limited in delivery because the English Department had none of the resources that were presumed to be available by the Curriculum writers.

We came through the inspection and compliance review with flying colours even though we'd only been in the scheme for six months and the resourses were limited.

We spent several thousand dirhams on buying in a selection of books and references that the teachers could use and adapt to deliver the courses as well as providing some limited reading materials for the boys. While this was greeted with interest by the staff their use of the books was best described as reluctant as, to them, the best resources were ready made ones they could download from the inter-net... especially if they came complete with work sheets and answers.

Anyway, we did manage to make some progress with the teachers attempting to focus their teaching and the students’ learning on the skills the curriculum required. This, I thought, would be a reasonable base to build from in the next academic year only to discover that we were to lose six of the nine teachers in the English Department as the Education Council carried through a restaffing programme designed to replace English speaking Arab teachers with native English speakers in the secondary schools and male teachers with female teachers in the Primary schools, with no indication of the quality of the replacements being moved into the Prep Schools from the secondary schools from the rest of the Emirate. So it’s back to square one next school year in developing working relationships, getting staff up to speed on understanding and meeting the demands of the curriculum and planning for the new school year. At least my task won’t be as bad as that facing some other colleagues who discovered that they had lost all or 99% of the English Department.

My other area of responsibility, the Library, was one of minute steps forward with no trained staff, no budget and no facilities to even begin stock taking or restructuring the existing limited resources. With luck and some hard talking about the budgetting necessary we may make more progress next year. I can only live in hope!!

Anyway, the year has proven interesting and challenging which makes the prospect of a new contract exciting as well.

Abu Dhabi update

After our recent blogs that have focussed on the reports from our friends in Oman describing the events in Sohar and Salalah rather than our doings in Abu Dhabi I felt it about time we updated everyone on our situation here.

Mind you, the reports coming out of Oman certainly gave our decision to leave the contract a degree of retrospective wisdom. We noticed a side bar story in the local paper describing the burning of the Wali’s office and other Government offices in Ibri last week which would indicate that the discontent there is not just confined to the coastal centres. This week there were reports of strikes in Muscat and the industrial areas around Muscat that had closed down the airport and many of the businesses there as the workers demanded better employment conditions and pay from the Omani government than they presently get despite the Sultan ceding some responsibilities to a small partly elected part of the central government rather than retaining the concentration of power in the Appointed Council of Ministers around the Sultan.

Abu Dhabi is certainly less tense than Nizwa and certainly a lot quieter than the events, reported on Aljazerra, CNN and BBC world news, in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt,Syria,Saudi and other states in the area would suggest.

Which makes our decision that the Nizwa contract was not working out for us and giving notice to CfBT a wise one.

We were casting around looking for work in the UK, in the ME and, as a last resort, back in NZ so I was relieved to be offered a position with Cognition in Abu Dhabi as an English Advisor in a Preparatory school in central Abu Dhabi.

The position is similar to that which I was doing in Doha although I’m now working with Grades 6-9 rather than Grades 10-12.

The English curriculum here is a Theme driven one based on a marriage between the NSW and Queensland curricula over-written with UAE relevance references unlike the Qatari curriculum that was based on a set of descriptions of language acquisition written by a UK consultancy without the prescribed themes, although the examples demonstrating ways in which the curriculum could be taught often drove the ways the teachers taught their way through the forest of descriptors (standards).

The school is regarded as high achieving with good results in the external examinations and a very supportive administration. It has, however, been through several advisory programmes since the education reforms were implemented in the Emirates. From what I have gathered it was part of an American advisory programme for several years that created a dependency complex among the teachers in which they relied on the US advisors to create the Unit & lesson plans along with the individual lessons for the teachers each week (I haven’t discovered if the advisors did the marking as well even though the teachers assure me that this was a common expectation.) based on a formula that went something like: Sunday-phonetics, Monday - Grammar, Tuesday - paragraph reading, Wednesday - sentence writing and Thursday - testing. After the American’s left the school came back into the MoE system until mid way through the second trimester of this year which meant that the teachers simply taught through the textbook tasks then had to change their approach to meet the demands of the Thematic curriculum taken from the NSW-Queensland programmes.

This means that my job is to convince the teachers that they need to become more proactive in their unit & lesson planning in order to address the demands of the curriculum as well as setting up systems that will be sustainable after we complete the contract.

In many ways it is similar to the situation in Qatar but whereas I came into the school at the beginning of the academic year here I arrived six weeks before the second trimester was to end which has meant the teachers had already attempted to implement the curriculum based on minimal advice from the Company and worksheet raids on other schools and the inter-net. This has meant that doing any advance planning has to be for the third trimester and has to be combined with a search for suitable, accessible resources to address the themes nominated by the Education Council.

My efforts so far have resulted in my locating a few resources (teacher reference only) that may and could be mined to create lessons to fit the themes of “My Imaginary World (Grade 6), Heritage (Grade 7), Our Community (Grade 8) and From School to Work (Grade 9). While the few texts I have found are a beginning the final unit & lesson planning will be extract based as the English Department has no established resource library or store of reading levelled texts to draw on. (Just another challenge.)

So I’m looking forward to the challenges involved as I try to build up positive relationships with the teachers while resisting their demands for me to write and provide all the unit & lesson plans for all four grades before the end of this trimester!!

Personally, Joy & I have been busy getting ourselves established and settled into Abu Dhabi as we work our way through the system to get residency, bank accounts, drivers licences and ID cards. The process has been reasonably smooth. We have a bank account and my residency close enough for me to start the application to sponsor Joy and for her to get residency.

Joy has joined up with Priscilla Ellis, her friend for Doha, and begun exploring the Malls and sights of the city which has given Joy the inspiration to begin painting again and to explore some different approaches to the themes which she has explored since we came to the Gulf so that our apartment is beginning to get a more colourful look.

I’ll post some photos of her new works on our next blog.

More on Oman - The Sohar situation

At home things are slowly settling down. The Christchurch earthquake was predicted.

This is more on Sohar from a colleague living there.

'An uneasy calm has descended over the town over the last few days a mood heightened by the leadened skies caused by the unpleasant Shamal that has brought along with cooler weather dust shielding us from the growing strength of the returning sun. The town is calm in a way, because many of the shops are closed, the shopkeepers, according to a Pakistani computer salesman I had taken my printer to for repair, afraid to open in case they suffered the same fate as burnt out Lulu. Many long distance trucks and lorries are becalmed in long lines along the highway or on waste ground, unable to pass the still occupied globe roundabout. Some of the more adventurous of the drivers are taking circuitous routes through the town so one encounters these huge juggernauts along the twisting urban roads causing long traffic jams, resulting in crazed car owners performing idiotic acts like driving along the hardshoulder in the wrong direction to try and avoid the snarl ups, but in so doing causing even greater havoc. The police seem to have disappeared and have been replaced by the army who have set up a roadblock about 50 meters from my flat from where they divert the traffic on to the service roads. From where I live it is virtually impossible, unless one is prepared to drive an extra 20 km in traffic to get to the other side of the highway, but anyway as Lulu has gone and Al Fair has not yet reopened there is no point going over there.

The roundabout is still occupied and many tents are pitched around it, so it is permanently occupied at all times, but whether by the same people or whether they rotate occupancy I do not know. In the evening the crowd swells and last night it appeared that there was a particularly large group who were addressed by a loudspeaker that I could hear clearly in my flat a kilometer away. The roundabout is festooned with banner in English and Arabic proclaiming their loyalty to Sultan Qaboos, though according to Omani friends they still have several demands, such as the dismissal of more ministers and higher wages. From the news this morning I gather that these demands have been largely met by a major cabinet reshuffle. The new ministers are all elected members of the Majil Ashure, the fledgling parliament that is voted on by Omani citizens, both men and women.

The access to the roundabout is still blocked for vehicles and policed by Shibabs (youths), who are polite and show no aggression, but wave you away on to the service road. On the Shinas side of the roundabout near the flat, as I mentioned earlier, there is a military armoured car and several armed soldiers who direct the traffic on to the service road.'

FROM NIZWA TO ABU DHABI

From Nizwa to Abu Dhabi- January - February 2011.

We left Nizwa at the end of January to begin work in Abu Dhabi. A decision we consider was well made after the isolation the contract in Oman created for us.

Here we are in Abu Dhabi, back working for Cognition as an Advisor in an Abu Dhabi school. After the isolation we experienced in Oman, both professionally and managerially, it was a relief to be back among friends as well as being assured that the office would respond to requests promptly and efficiently without having to go through several silos and umpteen request forms to get a response.

The school I’m working in is in central Abu Dhabi, close to where we’re living..... walkable now but perhaps not so easily come summer. The Principal and administration are on the ball and very keen to see the school improve although being transferred from a MoE school to the PPP system two weeks before the end of the first trimester and only getting the advisory team five weeks ago was a considerable jolt for the staff as they had to change their curriculum and delivery models overnight with little time for preparation.

I spent the first three weeks simply reading through the curriculum documents and the assessment models that are required to assess what the teachers were expected to cope with. So how they coped without seeing or reading the material I’m not too sure.

Fortunately I found the curriculum statements familiar as they are modelled on the Queensland & NSW curricula that were developed about the same time as the NZ one was that underpinned the NCEA from 1990-2010. The assessment methodology is very similar to that we’ve been using in NZ and developing in Qatar so, for me, getting on top of the material has been relatively quick. For the teachers, however, it is a different matter.

For some there is a vague understanding coming from their conversations with colleagues in other schools already on the scheme while for others, the majority, there is a sense of confusion and frustration as they have few immediate resources to use to develop units of work from or, for that matter, any idea about assessment methodology apart from short answer tests that give a numerical mark.

The teachers with a vague understanding of the curriculum and assessment processes are confident that they have it together and are absolutely right so I am going to have to start right from the basics and step them through the theory, with some practical exercises to get them aware of the demands, before we can really get into the process of proper unit and lesson planning complete with annual and trimester plans that link into a school syllabus and then back into the curriculum.

Difficult when the expectation is that they should be able to sprint before they pass the toddling stage!!!!

I’m pleased with progress on other fronts at work as we have begun planning to redevelop the school library and to set up an English Club to get the boys involved in improving their skills in English. The response to each of these has been great with buy in from the Administration which will mean we will have support when we need it.

The turmoil in the Arab states, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain,Yemen, and now, Oman has not affected us directly in the UAE but has certainly made our decision to quit the contract in Nizwa a wise one as I think the tensions and worries that the isolation of the contract gave would have been exacerbated as time went on.

The news out of Oman has been confined to brief reports on the TV news and paragraphs in the papers. The following, from our friend, Donald, in Sohar, gives an idea of the events across the border.

FROM SOHAR:
All seems quiet now. It is like a Friday, with little traffic, the schools shut, the shops shut, the training center empty of all trainees and the cleaner has disappeared. I sit here in front of my computer wondering what to do. Should I prepare for a possible Intermediate English Language session tomorrow, where I will probably find myself sitting in an empty classroom, or should I take this opportunity to finish cataloguing the books in our library? Or should I for the moment just record my observations and feelings about the events of the last few days?

Last night, against the embassy advice notice, I drove past the Globe Roundabout, the epicentre of the protests in Sohar, to find roadblocks manned by unarmed youths who politely waved me on so I drove past the burnt out remains of Lulu, noticing that all the shops around the blackened hypermarket, seemed to be untouched, though now locked up. From conversations with Omani friends I have been given to understand that Lulu was targeted because it is owned by an unpopular minister. I drove on and passed Sohar palace, surprised to see it appeared to be unguarded at least from an outside view. Whether it has soldiers on guard on the inside I could not see through the partially opened main gate. The absence of guards here I think indicates that opposition is not towards the Sultan himself but rather to ministers and some of the policies.

It is not only around the palace that there are no signs of police or army. I haven't seen a policeman or police-car for two days. The main police station was torched, as was the home of the wali, the governor of the area, and the office of the ministry of manpower. At the present time Sohar appears to be a town without any obvious government control, it is almost as if they had lost interest in what is happening here. In the absence of the authorities it is surprising that there hasn't been more trouble, which shows, I believe, that the looters of Lulu were opportunistic rather than seasoned criminals. However, the boarded up shops,even the little laundry I use, may be an indication that their owners are afraid of more trouble. Some garages are closed and I wouldn't be surprised if we were soon facing a petrol shortage, so no unnecessary driving. I got a full tank the night before last, fearing that we might have problems here. Yesterday morning I also transferred the bulk of my money back to the UK; I hadn't made any transfers for six months because I believed that my money was almost safer here that in an almost bankrupt British bank.

Who knows what today will bring. The British ambassador is supposed to be coming to Sohar this evening and we have been invited to meet him at the Sohar Beach Hotel. I will go along out of interest, apart from anything else it may be an opportunity to meet other expats and here about their experiences. Last night I had a chat with Indian neighbours in my building and we were just saying how quiet it appeared to be then when there was a small burst of firing. Again this morning we had some very short bursts which appeared to come from the area of the Globe. My Omani colleague, who has just arrived in the office, tells me that local people have formed committees of public safety to prevent further looting. She said last night, the looters tried to burn down some schools, but were chased away my members of these local vigilantees, perhaps that was the cause of the firing I heard when chatting to the neighbours. Her opinion is that the looters come from outside Sohar. She believes they have been chased away, but is afraid they may be back. I have also received three Arabic texts which claim that the troubles have been caused by Emirates and according to my colleague they claim some have been captured and confessed. She thinks that this is just another example of people trying to cause more trouble.

The ambassador rode into town last night or rather he hitched a ride in a helicopter with the army general who was coming to command the troops, over 1,500 of them, who are now I believe encamped somewhere between here and Sohar port. The ambassador told us that the army was taking over the powers of the police, who many felt had been discredited over the last few days. A small section of the resident British community turned up to meet his excellency and his vice consul at the Sohar Beach Hotel and hear what the embassy can, can't, will and won't do for us. Much of what he told us we already knew, because of course we have been here at ground zero. One common thread that united all of us, embassy staff and Sohar residents, was surprise that this could happen in Oman and in Sohar in particular. Though there was some apprehension expressed by some residents, all reported that they had not been threatened in any way and that their Omani colleagues and friends had provided help and reassurance where needed. There was some disquiet at the number of rumours flying round and this was heightened by the lack of information from official sources, especially the local TV and radio. Some rumours that were quickly discounted were that the Sohar Crown Plaza was on fire and that the border had been closed. Our lack of Arabic language skills, including my own, was painfully exposed when no one reported being able to read the many Arabic text messages that have been floating round, but some reported that Arabic speaking friends had told them that some were from the authorities and some from people accusing Emiratis of fomenting the trouble. My colleague in the office told me of these and she discounted them saying that it was people trying to create more trouble.

Though people were naturally worried no one said that they had started packing their bags, but one person said that the French, on the advice of their embassy, had already left town, and that the Dutch had been advised to stay indoors. The British issued no such edicts but advised that we should keep a low profile and avoid public areas, though as some residents pointed out that this was hard to do when the Globe roundabout was occupied as this was the main communication highway between the coastal area and the country to the landward side of the highway. The embassy pointed out that in the worst possible scenario, which they were confident would not happen, they had plans to evacuate people and that any British person would be accepted together with spouses, and children of any nationality. Having only a cat to care for I wondered about her, but felt it was probably not wise to bring this up.

On reaching home I sent out a text message to all my Wednesday language course teachers telling them that it was business as usual. This morning 7 out of 18 turned up, all ladies; the three gents were no shows.

While we cope with the political turmoil in the Middle East we are also torn as we listen to the news coming from New Zealand, especially Christchurch, where Jocelyn and Caroline have been coping with the after effects of the two earthquakes that have devastated the city.

Thankfully, Jocelyn & Caroline and all our friends in Christchurch have survived the quakes with little more than broken crockery and windows and repairable damage to their homes which is a personal relief to us. On the other hand the fatalities and the ruin of the CBD with its historic buildings are events that will remain as horrors for a long, long time.

The pictures of the old Christchurch Teachers Colleges, once turned into up-market apartments, reduced to rubble and the destruction of the Cathedral and other iconic buildings are stark reminders of the power the earth can exert on our efforts to show that we have been here.

The text messages from home telling of quakes in Wellington that we’ve received from Rebecca at all hours of the night keep us alert to the ever present knowledge that New Zealand sits along the fault lines of the Pacific rim and that the events of Christchurch could be repeated elsewhere in the country.
It is, however, disappointing to read that the present government is preparing to use the earthquake as an excuse to sell state assets and to slash the social support mechanisms that have been built up over the years. To consider such actions when the country needs the assurance that the support will be there is, to me, unthinkable and unacceptable but, then, when the PM declares that the best other way to raise money to rebuild the economy is to ask Oprah Winfrey & Letterman to run appeals on US TV one is driven to wonder at the quality of leadership New Zealand has elected????

Video Record- Our Sri Lankan Trip

A video record of our trip to Sri Lanka.

Road scenes,The Kandyan Dancers and elephants bathing with photos of scenes of trips to different sites in the region.

Sri Lankan Holiday 4

Final Days in Kandy

28th December- Kandy:

Joy and I decided to take the day quietly so walked down from the hostel, past the President’s residence, the Municipal Chambers and local school, into town. We ambled our way around the lake admiring the bird life and, as we got nearer the Shrine of the Sacred Tooth, dodging beggars and touts advertising the Kandyan dance troupe until we came back into the bustling noise of town and air heavy with exhaust smoke and damp.

Joy managed to find a piece of local batik that suited her taste at a stall along the Queen’s Hotel arcade as a souvnier of Sri Lanka before we headed back to Forest Glen to prepare for our train trip back to Colombo in the morning.

29-30 December: Kandy to Colombo and on to Muscat:

Today was the time to try the Sri Lankan rail system so we headed down to the rail station and booked our 2nd class tickets to Colombo Fort.

The ticket office gave off an air of a tired Nineteenth century English station with the cardboard tickets plucked from little station labelled pigeon holes and punched with the date on a hand operated punch mounted on the issue desk but despite this all passengers were issued tickets quickly and allowed to hustle along the platform to find their seats on the battered carriages that made up the 2nd & 3rd class Kandy to Colombo train. The sign stencilled on the wall of the rail carriage confirmed the impression that the 19th century had been preserved.

The mid morning trip was reputed to be not so popular as the 6.30am rapid transit trip so we were expecting to have some space on the train as we rattled down from the hills to the coast. However, the rumours of an uncrowded train proved to be false as, within minutes, our carriage filled up with travellers heading to stations along the line. There were those, like us, going all the way through, other tourists doing the trip as a photographic expedition and families of Sri Lankans ready to be dropped off at any one of the little stations dotted along the line. At one stage, according to a Dutch back-packer we’d met at the booking office, the four seats behind us held 30 travellers perched on one another’s knees, squatting in the space between the seats, squeezed onto the edges of the seats and standing pressed against the window frame or seat back. We were, at least, fortunate to have only seven passengers seated in our four seat space.

The train rattled out of Kandy, past over grown abandoned rail carriages and squatter huts of tired concrete blocks, rusted roofing iron, battered boards and sacking that hugged the hillsides beside the tracks along a rail line that snaked through cuttings carved through rocks and hammered through tunnels that oozed water and then appeared to cling to the hillsides more by good fortune and the protection of any number of gods as at times the red clay looked as though it could easily slide off the hillside and take the track down onto the valley floor several metres below.

Occasionally the track burst into a clearing where, among banana and coconut palms, cows and water buffalo were tied to graze the hillsides while locals washed their clothes in the streams that cascaded into the clearing and then left the washing to dry draped across the rocks and sleepers alongside the track.

Inside the carriage passengers stared into space, drifted into fitful sleep or gazed through their camera lenses at the mist shrouded hills and jungle until the train jolted to a brief stop to pick up more passengers or drop sugar sack wrapped packages off to porters who stacked them at random in the middle of the platform.

As we got nearer to Colombo the water in the streams and rivers changed from churning brown to slow oily black, the number of rubbish shrouded shacks increased in density, and the number of rail carriages being jungle reclaimed grew until we drew to a halt in the chaos of the Colombo Fort Station


Colombo Fort Station was as crowded and noisy as any station in India as passengers headed for the narrow exit gate where two guards collected and checked the tickets before throwing them into a large cardboard box balanced on a concrete column between them. No doubt some railway apprentice would be given the job of sorting and counting them to satisfy some Lankan Rail accountant after the final passenger had been disgorged onto the Colombo streets.

Spare Parts Stall - Colombo

We emerged from the station to a road that reminded us of Dehli without the control that a few strolling cows, a bullock drawn cart, a few hazard braving cyclists and squad of rickshaws gives to a melee of tuk-tuks, thundering trucks, bellowing buses and hurrying pedestrians. Joy and I decided that there was no sense in us attempting to do any sight seeing in such a scrum, especially while towing our suitcases, so took a taxi, through the tangle of vehicles and shouting, whistling police fighting to impose order of drivers who appear to follow only one rule - “If it’s bigger than me I can squeeze in front if my horn is loud enough” - when they head in any direction on the roads, out to the airport in search of lunch and calm while we waited for our midnight check in and the overnight flight to Muscat.

At the airport we were ushered through a security check point before the terminal where our driver’s ID and licence was checked and then into the terminal where we were frisked and our baggage x rayed before being allowed into the waiting area before customs and the check-in counters.

Here, there was yet another check point, this time checking passports and tickets and then we were allowed access to the check -in and yet another baggage x-ray before the transit lounge and the wait till the 3.00am flight.

Our Sri Lankan experience at an end... and now the count down till the end of January and our leaving Muscat and the isolation of Nizwa to another adventure once CfBT get around to making decisions about when I end the contract and letting me know flights and exit provisions as we’ve had no effective contact with the Muscat office since I gave notice back in November.

Sri Lanka Holiday 3

Tea Factories & Holy Sites

26th December.

With many of our dinner companions having drifted off to explore other parts of Sri Lanka Joy and I decided that we should learn a little about the history of the tea industry in the island so we booked a car and driver and headed off to a local tea factory to see how the various teas are created from the tea leaves and to sample one of the local brews.

The Embilmeegama tea factory was an unpretentious building on the outskirts of Kandy with a narrow store frontage displaying teas to tables of imbibers all of whom had been ushered through the two floors of workers, machinery and boxes that was the factory. Here we learnt that there are eight different classes of tea decided on by a combination of type of bush, type of leaf and fineness of the crushed, dried leaf - from the fine dust that ends up in the tea bag through to the coarse leaf of Joy’s favourite - Green tea.

Our curiousity pricked we decided to visit the Kandy Tea museum at Hantane high on the Uduwela hill above the city. Here, in an old tea factory the Sri Lankan Tea Board and Planters’ Association have set up a “monument to the pioneers of Ceylon’s tea industry.” The buildings contain examples of the machinery that was used to create the many blends of tea that Victorian England demanded and from which the fortunes of Lipton and others like him had come.

The museum has not yet become an established place on the local tourist map despite it being operating since 2001 so it had that dim shadowy feel to it as the huge floors echoed to our solitary footsteps. We were shown 100 year old machines like the “Little Giant” hand operated tea roller, the first tea drier using a venetian heating system, a 56 year old packet of Ceylon tea, and copies of old reference books used by the plantation owners in their quest for the “perfect” blend of tea.

The history display on the second floor did give us some of the information our visit to the tea factory hadn’t such as that the industry had grown from the collapse, from a “coffee blight”, of an earlier coffee industry in 1869 and owed much to the activity of a James Taylor who had planted tea in the country in 1867 and the entrepuenerial skills of Thomas Lipton whose marketing moved tea from the realm of the affluent to that of the working class in Britain.

After scanning the hills of the Knuckle range, the site of yet more tea plantations, through the mist we headed back into town to plan our activities for the next day.

27th December: Day trip to Sigiriya and Dambulla.

After some searching we discovered a travel agency that offered day trips from Kandy as well as more extensive trips across central Sri Lanka. We took the advice of our fellow travellers from the hostel and opted to visit Dambulla and Sigiriya which are archeologically sacred sites for Buddhism.

We were told that the trip to Dambulla would take about two hours and that to Sigiriya about 30 minutes with the return journey taking maybe three hours as driving in Sri Lanka is not to be conducted at speed as, apart from the numerous stalls, villages and townships to be navigated through there are the additional road hazards of pedestrians ambling along, lines of tuk-tuks laden with passengers and merchandise, cars, vans and trucks laden with logs or gravel and the battered buses with their diesel spewing exhausts either stopping at random to pick up passengers or deciding to race each other to the next township along the few straight lengths of road, so a distance that on the map would indicate a 30 minute drive takes at least three times as long.

Our driver arrived at 8.15 and we headed off, in the company of Nicole, our Dutch photographer acquaintance, to Dambulla. The trip took us through villages that straggled along the river bank and huddled over the roadway and through paddy fields cut from the jungle to the shrines of Dambulla.

Dambulla, which houses the oldest and largest religious painting in South Asia, sits on the top of a hill, some 600 feet above the roadway, and consists of a series of caves filled with representations of Buddha in the different sacred positions carved from the sandstone of the caves. The site has had some sort of monastic and sacred activity going on since about the 3rd century AD and had been patronised by Sri Lankan rulers till the 18th century. The construction of the images of Buddha were credited to a 12th Century ruler, King Nissanka Malla of Polonnaruwa while the 25,000 square feet of religious paintings that cover the walls and ceiling of the cave are the work of generations of artists.

Joy took one look at the climb and joined Nicole to wander around the visitors’ centre taking photographs while leaving the expedition to me. The steps to the summit were flanked by preening monkeys and hucksters selling moonstones and plastic baubles to the pilgrims clambering up the stairs. Once at the top admission is granted only on production of the ticket and receipt purchased at the bottom of the hill and I, as I had given Joy her ticket and the receipt to attempt to get a refund on her unused ticket, had only the ticket was told to descend the stairs, find Joy, collect the original receipt, climb back up, present both ticket and receipt and then I could be admitted. Fortunately this diplomatic impasse was averted when an American couple offered me their father’s ticket and receipt as he, like Joy, had baulked at the long climb.

Inside the complex the lines of over a 120 statues of Buddha and his supporters along with occasional representations of Vishnu, a Hindu god, fill the caves showing devotees the life of Buddha and the spiritual journey towards nirvana. The journey being indicated by the positions of the Buddha’s hands and the spacing of the toes on the reclining body. ... with the toes together Buddha is asleep but with the gap between the toes being open Buddha is reaching nirvana.
Back at the car-park the reception committee interrogated me about the time I took to reach the top, check out the site and head back down again as they had seen others, after me, go up and come down again at a far more rapid pace that me so, therefore, I was dawdling!!!???

We left the car-park with its bus loads of orange clad monks and headed to Sigiriya. Our driver dropped Nicole off at the local bus station for her to continue her journeying while Joy and I lunched at small Hotel restaurant to gather our energies for Sigiriya.

The 1500 year old citadel of Sigiriya was yet another 600 foot climb. This time not as “gentle” as the gradient to Dambulla as the site is at the top of a vertically sided rock in the middle of the rainforest. Joy, once again, took the option of waiting at ground level in the full expectation that I’d only be gone an hour or ninety minutes at the most. So vertigo severely kept in hand I headed off from the car-park, through the remains of the gardens that had surrounded the citadel city and 20 minutes later began the climb up the stairs and steps that led to the summit.

The citadel, which has been likened to a French Chateau dropped on top of Ayers Rock, had been built as a defensive position by King Kassapa who had deposed his father and then had to resist his brother’s, Moggallana, attempts to regain the throne between 447 and 495 AD and, after the decline of his kingdom, had become a refuge for forest dwelling monks until it had been rediscovered by a couple of English explorers who had climbed the rock in 1853.

The rock is famous for its frescoed wall half way up the climb to the top. Here, along the walkway, artists had painted pairs of women engaged in various activities from admiring flowers to applying make up. The women, presumed to be royalty with their maids, are depicted, bare breasted, in seductive poses waiting to worship at the feet of Buddha or the King Kassapa. The walkway above the frescoes runs along the cliff face with the climbers sheltered from the drop by a wall that, in the past had been polished to present a mirror, along this earlier passers by had recorded, in sanskrit, their impressions of the images below.

Once past the mirror wall one climbs along the cliff face to the plateau of the Lion’s Paws before venturing up along a spindly series of steps and open walk ways to the summit. At this point, after ninety minutes of climbing and admiring the drawings and remaining buildings, I heeded the advice of the guide book which said “vertigo suffers are advised not to look down on this climb” and decided that the summit could do without my admiring presence and began the climb down.

Fifty minutes later, back in the car park I was met by Joy and the driver with a barrage of “what took you so long” questions and we headed back, through the melee of buses, tuk-tuks, wandering dogs and cows, pedestrians and beckoning stall holders, to Kandy.