Sri Lanka Woes

Each morning my friend Soojie comes by and we go through a ritual that only two people from totally different worlds can go through without getting really annoyed with one another. It goes a little something like:

Soojie pops his head in with a big smile and say “Good morning sir”

I smile and tell him “Good morning”

He asks me how I’m doing

I reply with either “Nadaley Soo Home” or “Kadiy Welly” which are the only two tamil phrases I know. The first means I’m doing well and the second means I’m really busy.

I’ll then say “Paper” and he’ll say yes

I’ll then go to the most recent Tamil website he’s provided me and print off the news for today.



Every couple of weeks he will bring me a new scrap of paper with another URL on it. I have no idea what I’m actually printing out but based on the English papers I imagine it has something to do with potential of civil war breaking out on their peaceful island. I had no idea if he really appreciated this until when we had Emma. He actually found my number and gave me a call in broken English to congratulate me on my new girl. For a guy who makes $110 a month and knows about 10 words of English I was touched.



So what prompted me to write about Soojie? Today when I printed off his paper it had some vivid images of a family that was murdered. It included the mom, dad and several small children but they let the damn dog live. He tells me that it was by the government army. There is a long history of conflict between the government and Tamil people. It’s not black and white by any means either. I should have known something was wrong when his smile wasn’t as big as it usually is. I imagine he had gotten word from some of his friends that this had happened and he wanted to read first hand what had really happened. What this meant in my world was a gut check on what I have and how much it really meant to me. I have several pictures of Emma up in my office and it was a gut wrenching contrast between the two lives of the families in the different pictures. Both of us holding our children. Just my thoughts for the day.