The bus station is lined with tiny shops.
Orange king coconuts, tied in giant bunches,
Fill the doorways.
Hot pink and turquoise foil bags of chips
Are tied in clusters, and hang above.
Glass cases, filled with fiery samosas
And packages of cookies,
Are the go to food for bus travel.
Plastic pop crates are everywhere.
The red Coke crates vie with the blue Pepsi ones.
Buses blast in,
Sounding horns,
Crowds spill out.
Little girls, with smooth black braids,
Look dressed for parties
In their colourful silks
and gold earrings and chains.
Old men, in small round white hats,
Wear white dress shirts,
Faded sarongs and sandals.
Younger men,
Hair closely cropped on the sides,
Have a big cushion of waving hair on top.
They wear golf shirts in pink and purple
And faded blue jeans.
Old women, in beautiful silk saris,
Have small breasts
That hang like old fruits in their short tops.
A peddles, selling tiny bags of nuts
and some bunches of little sticks,
Sits against a pillar in the shade.
It is so hot.
Sweat drips off my nose.
The song-like Tamil language
Bubbles around me.
A small girl in pink and gold
and her grandmother sit beside me.
Her mother covered in black
Stands next to me.
The child watches me intently.
I give her my card “ Singing in the Rain”
With my three kids on it.
I ask her mother,
In sign language, if I can paint the child.
The angle is a tough one.
In my preliminary pencil sketch,
She is eighteen not eight.
With my pen,
I enlarge and lower her eyes.
By the time, I open my tiny paint box,
And fill my water container,
I have a huge crowd watching.
When I give her the sketch,
The little girl offers me
A handful of soy nuts.
I munch down the gift.
Our bus is finally ready to load.
It is decorated with a golden Hindu shrine,
A huge poster of Ganesh,
A ceiling of seagulls flying,
And tassels and dodads
Hanging everywhere.
Some seats are reserved for the disabled,
Some for mothers of young children,
Some for the clergy.
The head rests are covered in
Torn golden plastic lace.
When the bus won’t start,
Some passengers get off
And push us backwards
Until we are jump started.
Then we are off.
Window wide open,
We are blasted with warm air.
This deadens the Bollywood sound track.
For hours we creep slowly along,
Or race a high speed.
The land is very low
There are many forges.
This area was devastated by the 2004 tsunami
A subsequent cholera outbreak
And the thirty year war,
That ended in 2008.
Rice is grown along our route,
And is being dried on the road sides
Before being shoveled into sacks.
Brahman cattle and their Ibis friends,
Dot the road sides and the highway.
Vigorous horn honking,
Seems to clear the road.
Fisherman have small thatch huts
Along the coast.
Their colourful fishing boats
Are pulled up on the shore in front.
We see several large brown eagles with white heads
Sitting in the top of trees.
Hindu temples and mosques
Have replaced the Buddhist shrines.
Finally, after four hours,
We arrive in Mullaitivu.
We cram ourselves and our luggage
Into a tuk tuk and find our guest house.
The beautiful ocean has large no swimming signs.
Our hotel does not provide toilet paper,
( or milk or knives)
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