Today I welcomed the chance to rest. I stayed at home and watched the coconuts in the trees, petted the silly family dog, and typed this. In the afternoon, Jay and his younger sister did go to visit their mother’s sister and her granddaughter. Things get complicated in relationships here as it’s rather important in social interaction. Family members seldom refer to each other by given name; rather, it’s always the name of the relationship. For example, Jay calls for small sister or big sister when around the house. A more obvious example is the lady who came to help during the long illness of Jay’s mother. She had once left a drunken husband and had no kids. She isn’t really a direct family member. She has stayed on in the house and is now surely part of the family. Jay’s dad refers to her as sister and the Jay and siblings call her auntie. Relationship names are so important that the Sinhalese language has more names for them than English, I think. What is one’s mother’s sister’s granddaughter? Is that what we’d call a second cousin?
I was going to write more, but this is enough for today. It still seems weird that these are just sitting on my local disk rather than at my eJournal and images. I rest assured that eventually these keystrokes will end up there. Maybe I can create a list of possible future topics over the next few weeks. That is, if Jay gives us some more days off. I hear tell of plans to do an upcountry trip for three days next week.
In my remaining days here, I can write about:
The changes I can see in Sri Lanka during visits over twenty years.
Describe why Sri Lanka is similar to Canada in the way both live near a huge neighbour with well-developed media industry.
Examine how prices for various products differ.
The fact the Middle East creates wealth above many developed country’s standards, yet they are able to tap the labour pool of Sri Lanka to get workers for $3 per day.