Forty Miles From Paradise.

“On top of the mountain, God sits on Adam's peak
Throwing his heavenly blessings to our nation
Blessed our country known to the
world as the Garden of Eden.”

 “I Love My Country, Sri Lanka.” -Ravi Sathasivam.

“Right now I am writing from the balcony of a guest house.  It is dark except for the light above me and the lights from the four other homes or guest houses hidden in the trees planted in the rich soil of the steep sloping mountains.  The sound of the river directly below rushing down from tall peaks, swooshing over rocks and low hanging branches chimes in amongst the whistling song of chirping crickets like some iambic poem, all stanzas in nature’s own ode to herself.  I am at the base of a sacred mountain in Sri Lanka, called Adam’s Peak.  In a few hours I will begin the holy pilgrimage to the top.  It is a holy mountain for billions of people.  It is believed that it is where the Prophet Adam first stepped after being cast down from paradise, and also believed to be where the Buddha stood on his visit to the Island before transcending in to Nirvana, with a large footprint on the mountain bearing his mark.  To the Hindus though, the foot print comes from Lord Shiva, where he stepped as he created the world.  Thousands on thousands of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims all make the sacred trek in a pilgrimage to the top, and tonight, I join the journey, to pray on holy mountains and watch the sun rise and slowly light and warm the mountainous jungles of this tear drop island.”

- Excerpt from my journal.

After the drive over the storming mountain we arrived at our guest house, nestled amongst the mountains, sitting above a rushing rivers and overlooking that sacred mountain, Adam’s Peak.  Here too we had a private balcony, looking directly to the scenery of mountain gardens and tall peaks.  The air was that perfect mountain air after a hard rain, a cool and calm breeze, the smell of damp earth and trees, rustling of leaves, clouds, and the gushing of a river descending down a holy mountain, carving through an island onward to the ocean. We met two other teachers living in the UAE, and two German gals out traveling Asia.  We stayed up and talked and it all reminded me of some of why I love to travel.  I love meeting and talking with people the world over.  I am a very shy person in my own personal life, and make few acquaintances, and fewer friends.  It is difficult for me to meet people, despite any wish for it, but out traveling, out alone in foreign places, I meet so many, and I love it.  I got only a couple short hours of sleep and woke at half past two to being the journey up the mountain.  The two teachers living in the U.A.E. and the two German gals climbed with me, and the five us headed up the dark mountain.  We went up steep and muddy hills through brush and trees and mud in search of the path.  It seemed we were lost and traipsing through the brush of a wet mountain jungle brought us presents of small leeches sucking the blood from under our pant legs and letting the blood trickle down our legs.  We did make it to the trail and we all began the climb up in the dark of the night guided by the dim flashlight on my cell phone. 

  It was a hard hike up, thousands of steps reaching up the steep mountain and even in the cold of darkness, the hard journey and humidity brought a labored sweat.  The hike was fun though, with great conversations the whole way up.  One of the German galls seemed to think her friend and I paired up well and jokingly said I could have her friend for ten camels.  That’s a hefty price, as camels are very expensive and prized animals.  Throughout the night she kept dropping the number of camels and at the end of the hike she offered her friend for only two camels.  I never bartered at all, as her friend was worth the price of ten camels, but she said we seemed too much alike and it was fate, so she couldn’t stand in the way.  They were awesome girls.

  Adam’s Peak is also called “Butterfly Mountain” because of the numerous butterflies fluttering about the island that come to die upon the sacred mountain.  We did make it to the top, no longer protected from the winds that swooped coldly across the high mountain, everyone bundling in jackets and wind breakers and watching the sun rise up above the clouds.  It was amazing to see.  Adam’s Peak rose so much higher than the mountains around that it cast a large triangle shadow out across the clouds, and oh, those clouds!  They lay in thick white carpets that made it seem the vastness of mountains peering through them were but countless islands rising tall from white waters of a foggy sea.  I wondered to myself that if this were the place Adam was cast down to as punishment for his transgression, then what must Paradise have looked like?  There was a saying that from Ceylon, or Sri Lanka, it was only 40 miles from  Paradise, and Adam had been cast to this place as punishment so as not to be too overwhelmed.  This place was the place closest to and most like paradise. It is strange to think that a place so fittingly called serendipity, and a mountain peak with such amazing views could be considered punishment for any person.  What glories must lied ahead for us then.  I loved it all.

  We stayed at top gazing out to the 360 degree views with the sun climbing higher and the mountains and jungle below us.  It was fascinating, and the cold wind blew hard in a whistling slither across our faces.  We waited and waited up top, continuing to look outward, not ready or wanting to descend the many steps, tired from the climb up, and far too restful, far too amazed at the views, the wind, the smell of crisp air, to want to leave, but we did, and made the descent down the mountain through jungle green mountains.  Back at the guest house, we all ate breakfast together, and Ruth woke up and joined us.  Soon, I said farewell to new friends and set off with Ruth for another destination. 

  Most of that day we spent driving, though, in a place like Sri Lanka, a drive makes its own memorable holiday.  We drove through Sri Lanka’s famed tea plantations, spread out over mountains that swooned with pictures lakes.  Each sight was a paradise.  Crafted rows of green bushes rolled up and down and across in curved lines of amazing artistry.  What craftsman created such garden wonders?  It was a symmetry of lines, perfectly filtering the hillsides of dark green, rich brown soil, and blue and clear air, and clean, wonderful waters. 

  We drove through miles, hours of such spectacular scenery, oohing and aweing at every bend.  Women old and young tied large cloth bags to their heads and picked tea leaves from the plantations hills, smiling widely and wildly as we drove past or stopped for views.  Were they as happy as their smiles to us presented?  I wondered at their thoughts, they who live in paradise, but perhaps numbed of the constant beauty and tired of long and monotonous labor. 

  We walked around a plantation, through the rows of Ceylon tea bushes, baskets on our heads as we walked the aisles.  We toured the factory and tasted the tea with a lovely young guide who explained she was happy she spoke English because that meant she did not have to pick leaves in the fields but got to work as a guide, and that all the women there worked the plantations as an only option, an inheritance and birthright passed down to each little girl.  Although near the entire day was spent in a car, it was a fantastic day.  We stopped when we wished for quick snapshots or a breath of that wonderful air.  We were invited in to a small Christian church made of stone that stood atop a hill with a lake below.  We were invited in to walk the small chapel, the old hand carved wooden pews and podium, the colorful stain glassed windows that leaked in light, and outside a small cemetery in the shade of trees.  Yes, sometimes a drive is all you need, and writing this, remembering this, calls to memory the many Sunday drives with my mother up over the mountain pass back home to the green valley surrounded by manly mountains, or family vacations where we would use a day simply to drive about the country surrounding us.  Sometimes, a drive is exactly what you need.

“In vain. Let doubts assail the weak;
Unmoved and calm as ‘Adam's Peak,’”

   “Outward Bound” –Austin Dobson.

Tear Drop Island.

I think the next couple posts will be more pictures than words, but I’ll still say a few things.  I’m still in Asia, but at least I have moved a bit more westward, and this next country was an incredible place.  I took a trip down to Sri Lanka.  Sri Lanka, or Ceylon, means serendipity, an amazing blend of paradises.  It is called Tear Drop Island, looking on a map like a tear fallen down from India landing softly on the waters of the Indian Ocean. My friend Ruth joined me on this trip, and although I do prefer to travel alone and keep to my own entirely unplanned and happenstance agenda, the trip was fine with the two of us.  She is quite the opposite type of traveler, wanting plans and reservations and all of that, but we made a happy compromise and we both got we wanted out of the trip, and she did make for pleasant company.  See, I can compromise when I need to.  I just prefer not needing to. 

  We flew in to Colombo, but headed out immediately.  We found a bus to the bus station.  At the bus station we found another bus to the train station, and at the train station we grabbed a train heading down toward Kandy.  We spent a good part of the day in transit, rolling out past the impoverished slums and green farms, the shacks and fields.  The train was crowded, dark, and dusty, with half the passengers standing for the 4 hour journey. 

  We got off before Kandy and met a driver who he hired for the duration of the trip.  He proved to be rather convenient.  We first visited the main elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka.  It was one of the things Ruth most wanted to do in Sri Lanka, so I joined her for the visit.  I love animals, but I find it hard to be excited at animals in captivity and places like orphanages, shelters, and zoos.  There were a LOT of elephants at this particular orphanage, and played down in the river gulping the water in before tromping up through the streets of the town to a green pasture with shrubs and trees to graze on.  While I was not all too impressed with the orphanage, the setting was spectacularly beautiful.  The river ran thick and wide below an open field of grass and trees with mountains looming in the back drop.  It was an ideal setting, and I gazed and gazed at the place and thought I would almost not mind so much to be an elephant, to have such a place to stare upon each day.  Nature is my lover, each of her schizophrenic personalities.

  At night we saw some traditional Sri Lankan dancers, beating on drums, singing and chanting, dancing, breathing and swallowing fire, and walking on hot coals.  It had been a long day with a an airplane flight, two bus rides, a train, and a long trip in a van, so after the show, we went to a guesthouse in Kandy high on the top of a hill peering down on the ancient city of culture.  At night, I sat out on the balcony alone, half hanging over the balcony that steeped down the hill with soft pellets of rain and lights from the temples and Buddha statues and the total sound of pleasantry.  It was a fantastic feeling, the solitude of the air, the darkness broken through with the glow of temple lights, the outline of mountains in the dark, and the city below us.  I love such moments, and the more of them I have, the more I crave them, the more I love and need them. 

  In morning I woke and stared from on high to the city, dark replaced by sun, and the soft sounds of night traded in for honking cars and busy streets.  We drove and walked around the city, visiting statues and shops and then began our van journey with our driver, Laal, through the countryside, first stopping at the beautiful Botanical Gardens where Sri Lankan couples walked hand in hand and hid out in the shade of drooping trees stealing kisses in some secret space.  We walked around through corridors of tall trees and open fields of green grass and hallways of ivy with fragrant flowers hanging from trellises and vines.  It was a park of romance, like many I have seen and wandered, and though I was not alone, the potential of the park was kept from me, like some subtle fragrance.  I did not walk hand in hand, or fight the urge to steel a kiss.  I had my moments there, and I had great moments with a friend, but a such a place is a place for lovers, or a place for solitude and meditation.  It covered acres and acres of trees and fields with gardens of all kinds and flowers from across continents that bloomed in bright colors with the buzz of bees.  How I do love flowers, and the memories of them, memories of planting flowers with my mother, deadheading roses and daisies, and bouquets of fresh cut flowers from my backyard garden as a gift to my girlfriend.  All of those things are fantastic memories to me, and I will never look at a flower with the remembrance of such things. 

  After hours peacefully strolling the gardens, we continued onward through such green and glorious countryside.  We climbed tall mountains and winded down steep dirt roads with an island storm of heavy rain with waterfalls and streams and rivers crashing down muddy hillsides.  As we carved our way down sharp curves winding through trees and cliffs with pouring rain, pounding on the roof as the van splashed through brown and dirty puddles of scenic mountains.  It was such a fantastic storm, violent and maddening, the smashing of heavy drops battling the mountainside, torrents of rivers dragging the dirt and the soil and tearing steeply down with deep puddles that we splashed through on bumpy, winding roads that dropped down deep to canyons far below.   We swerved quickly around sharp corners splashing through water and mud, dodging cars and trucks that poked out from behind the blind corners of a spectacular mountain road.  It was a great drive, all the rain, the water, the pounding on the roof, the puddles and water splashing up against the windows, the fear and thought of sliding off the mountain side.  Sometimes I think I am excited about the possibility of the worst thing happening, a part of me my mother wishes I would grow out of, but seem instead to grow further in to. 

I had only been in the country a couple days and already it seemed I had traveled through and seen so much of it, but the best of the memories were still to come, as is my recounting of them.

“Sri Lanka.” – Jack Jersey.

Sri-Lanka

you are my Shangri-La

Hidden in the sun

Recalling the land of my roots

When my life began.

Sri-Lanka

you are my Shangri-La

From this moment on

Take me away in dreams to the

Place I've been born

Recall all my memories

That nearly have been gone

I say hey

This place I wanna stay

Me and my baby

I'm sure I don't mean maybe today.

I say oh

Wish all my old friens would know

I'm almost in heaven

Sri-Lanka so don't let me go

oh no.

Sri-Lanka you are my Shangri-La

A golden memory.

Paradise

regained in the sun

Where I've found my key

Sri-Lanka I'll spek your sinala

From this moment on and let me keep

Pretending you're the isle where I've been born

Secret paradise

For dreamers like me on the run.

Bedouin Bad

  I may have finished with Southeast Asia, but I certainly have not finished with Asia as a whole, and I am still far from behind caught up.  I have gone back to my slacking ways, but my goal is that before I leave this country I am now living in for my summer holiday, I will be caught up to the present date, which means I still have several countries to write about.

  My visit back home with family and friends in the US last summer was amazing.  It really was a fantastic time in my life.  Where my parents live is a small agricultural town without a whole lot for a young single man to do.  I have often felt before I would be too bored there for any extended visit beyond a couple days, but last summer, I have to say I loved every minute of it.  I genuinely enjoyed mending fences, chasing cows back in to the pasture, hauling hay, climbing and chopping trees, and mowing acres of lawn.  I loved lounging around in my parents’ comfortable living room chairs, talks with my mama, wrestling with my old man, playing with their dog Pogo, riding four wheelers and motorcycles, and taking our bicycles out for long strolls through miles of farm and country.  I was perfectly content.  I have an extraordinary relationship with my parents.  Of course, I have extraordinary parents, and I only get closer to them as time edges slowly on.  Even with my distance and rare visits, still our bond grows, and I talk with my mama typically several times a week.

  I also loved visiting the rest of my family.  My brother Dallin, who was out of town working when I arrived back in the US, made it home a week or two later and the family was all complete.  Unfortunately, he did not stay in town long, as his job calls him away frequently. 

  While back in my home town of North Ogden, I split time between my brother Dustin’s house and my sister Chandi’s house with her family.  I have already mentioned the special relationship I have with my sister, and it is far understated.  She was my best friend growing up, and we still share a closeness rarely rivaled.  Perhaps I was not as close with my brothers growing up, but no one in my life have I ever looked up to more.  Someday, I will write a blog about each member of my family and what they are to me.  They deserve it, and the guarded man that I am, and perhaps because I am a man, I do not ever truly tell them the things they most deserve to know.  In writing though, I can be any man but me, and most importantly, I can be more of me than I otherwise am.

  While in Utah I visited a few friends, mainly Jeremy, my friend, business mentor, former boss, and old traveling partner.  I also hung out with my best friend Jason.  There are certain people in your life who perhaps you may lose contact with and rarely if ever speak to, but they will always remain your best friend.  Jason is that person.  I have known him since I was one year old and his mom has a photo of the two of us out in the front yard in our diapers playing swords.  He has always been my best friend.  He always will be.  We went kayaking down the Weber River and swimming up at Pineview Damn, jumping and swinging off the rope swings hung from tall cottonwood trees.  That summer was what every summer should be, and I packed all the things I wanted in to my short visit home.  Then, I was off again to a new country, a new adventure, and here I am now.

  I moved here to the United Arab Emirates the first of September in 2010.  I took a job teaching at a public school in Al Gharbia, or the Western Region.  I am a 4 hour bus ride from Dubai and a 2 ½ hour ride from Abu Dhabi.  I knew that I would be living out in the desert in a small community, but I did not expect things to be as they are. 

  I don’t live in any town at all.  I live about 30 kilometers from the closest town, which is small with only a few thousand people in it, no mall, no movie theatre, and only a few small shapes for basic items.  I am surrounded by miles and miles of sand, with telephone and electrical poles and lines swaying through the blank desert.  The sea is about 20 minutes from where I live with clear blue water and soft white sand, but the beach is only accessible at the one hotel in the area.  I go there several times a week to work out and get away from where I live.  This is not a pretty place.  In fact, I would undoubtedly consider this the ugliest place I have yet seen, and I have seen a lot of places.  It is flat, dirty, polluted sand with only those obtrusive electrical lines and the grimy air filled with dust and smog that comes from one of the world’s larger industrial complexes.  I have heard that where I live has some of the worst air quality in the world, and while it is bad, I find it hard to believe it is among the worst, though with the plastic plant, rubber plant, natural gas and oil refineries and dredging stations, there certainly is a lot of ick and blah spewn in to the air. 

  I live in a labor camp with about 600 day laborers.  Living in a labor camp is a unique experience.  It is exactly like what it seems it would be, living in a labor camp.  I have a private room and bathroom with basic furnishings.  It isn’t much, but I do not need much and I find the room comfortable enough.  I have a TV, a small table, a pitifully dull lamp, and a mattress that lets out loud groans and creaks with every move I make and has, I fear, given me permanent harm to my back.  I have not had a good night sleep since I have been here. 

  I have no kitchen, but there is a cafeteria with free food at scheduled meal times.  The food gets old and tiresome, but I eat more than I would if I were cooking and shopping for myself.  It is a bland and boring place to live, but a good place to save money and use my paid vacation time to travel around in the region.  I work in a primary school teaching Math, English, and Science to first grade boys.  I admit I had the misconception that kids in the Middle East would be well disciplined and behaved.   Wow!!!! I could not have been more wrong on that.  It is a 90 minute bus ride each way to work, waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day to ride out through a long and bland stretch of desert, no towns to pass through, just 150 km of sand.  I have two separate classes, and I could never have imagined children could behave the way they do out here.  The first few months of school were particularly bad.  My students are only six years old.  They speak no English at all, except to tell me to F**K myself and flip me off.  I have been bitten, kicked, hit, slapped, spat on, had desks and chairs thrown at me, had my stuff constantly being stolen from out of my bag, and the kids would take their off and show me the soles of their shoes or throw their shoes at me, which in the Arab world is considered one of the greatest insults you can give to a person.  The first two months were a nightmare.  From bell to bell the kids would scream and shout and run around the classroom getting in fights, and I would spend my whole class time breaking up fights, screaming at kids to sit down and trying to teach a lesson during all of it.  Teaching out here is like turning on a television show of a bunch of young kids on speed out on the playground, and then trying to teach to the kids on the TV show.  They don’t seem to even recognize that you exist at all.  After about two months, I did begin to gain control of the class, though they still can act out of control.  In most countries, I would think that half of my students would have been permanently expelled for violent behavior.  Teaching here is enough to frighten anyone away from ever wanting children.  Still though, I do. 

  I have had huge piles of blood on my class room floor, kids with permanent teeth marks in their arms, knocked out teeth, and constant crying.  The classrooms are filthy.  The kids are filthy, and there seems to be no respect or discipline instilled in these kids from anyone.  They always get what they want, and the only form of discipline they ever get is when they are beaten by adults.  The Arabic teachers beat the kids and constantly hit and kick them, but it doesn’t phase the kids at all.  They are out of control and crazy with lots of psychological problems and most are years behind academically, but they are tough. 

  Teaching here is difficult, not only due to behavior and the complete lack of attention, but the kids here are definitely far behind where they are expected to be.  Out where I live it is a Bedouin community, an area where for thousands of years people lived in the desert with their camels and sheep and small desert farms or fishing boats.  They ran wild, did what they wanted to, and never even thought of education, and all that still persists.  They have that Bedouin mentality still in them, a lifestyle that has been handed down to them through generations, and this is the first year this school has had a native English speaking teacher.  It is difficult, and I do feel like enduring this will act as penance for future sins I may commit.  Surely God must forgive me for things when I have proven myself with the patience that this place requires. 

  In fairness, the kids have calmed down some, and I do have some very bright kids, kids who I only feel sorry that they attend this school.  I have a few students who I do think could do a lot with their life if they went to a proper school and were not stuck with classmates as wild as most of the kids here are, and many of the students have learned a lot and progressed incredibly since I have been here.  It has been hard work though.   About sixty percent of my kids are expats from countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, etc.  The U.A.E. nationals are definitely the worst behaved and the furthest behind academically.  They are also the ones most stuck in tribe mentality and the Bedouin mentality.  In the future, when I think of or see people truly misbehaved or disrespectful, I will laugh and smile and think to myself that they are Bedouin bad.  It is unfortunate, but it is the reality of this place.  I have heard that my school is one of the worst in the region, and I have heard there are two others even worse.  I feel really bad for teachers at those schools.  If you have never taught at a place like this, you cannot imagine what it is really like. Sixty percent of the teachers in my area have quit, several in the first two weeks.  The rest of us have often wanted to.  I wish I could say it was something less than awful.  It certainly isn’t teaching.

  As impossible as it is to try and teach the kids collectively, and as horrible as they are as a whole, many of the kids can be fun and adorable individually, but pack mentality, or rather tribe mentality, takes over.  The kids LOVE attention, and many love to try and answer questions, even when they have no idea what the answer is, or even were listening to what the question was.  They love to play, and crave for attention, and violently fight over it.  Throughout the year, I have developed my favorites and become attached to a few specifically.  It is common here to greet each other by rubbing noses, like an Eskimo kiss, and some of the kids will come and nuzzle their nose against mine or kiss my arm or stomach, or put their arms up in a plea for me to pick them up and hold them.  They fight to hold my hand or sit on my lap, and some come and rest against me and try to sleep with their head on my chest or shoulders and wrap my arm around them.  It is those moments that I love here, those moments that helps me to remember how much I want to be a father and have kids of my own someday.  ‘Nsha’Allah, as they say here, God Willing. 

  I only have 5 ½ weeks of teaching left, and we expect the kids to stop showing up a week or two before the end of the school year.  I hope they stop coming before that.  I will miss some of my kids, but the classes and the job, I won’t miss at all.  It has taught me a lot, and I am ready to learn new lessons now.  I leave for summer holiday in two months, and next year will come back, but to a different school and to a different city with my own apartment.  I’ll write more about the country and my life here in general before leaving.  Next though, we’ll begin with more travels and trek our way through whatever we can.