Fraser’s Experiences

Here Endth the Marathon Blog Update

After a day or so there I flew back to Colombo on the red-eye and got in at 8.30 in the morning. I went to the office to check in and say hi, with the intention of leaving earlyish and heading for a nap. But of course that didnA?a??a??t happen, and I ended up in the office until dark. Joe was having a barbie that night, and as a there were a few guys going away I went up to his place and had a few beers, which stretched on a bit, as they do. So the drive back to the east the next day was a) later than planned; and b) much longer than planned (well it seemed that way anyway). Fergus was out here with the boss and some of the donors so we had dinner and then I crashed out for the night.

Since then itA?a??a??s been back to the grind, with lots to do including getting the office renovated, finding a suitable site for guesthouses (I found one next to the beach with a lovely coconut grove but the houses need a fair bit of work, but they do everywhere anyway). Christmas and New Year I spent in Arugam Bay, we worked through Christmas but had days off over New Year as it was Eid as well so I decided that would be a good time to shut down the site. Christmas and New Year were a blast, there were a few people around, mostly at a place just up the road called Beach Hut, so had a pretty good night both nights. Consequently I have placed myself on the wagon for a week or 2 although I am going to Colombo this weekend for a course, and Fergus, Mick etc are back so there could be 1 or 2 New Year beers next week too.

Christmas Tree, Tamil style…

Christmas Dinner prep

Order parietal cells Eating Christmas dinner

Dawn and Chandra giving Ranga (Beach Hut owner) his pressies

Christmas Sparklers

NYE Refreshments

A mad Irishman spinning a blazing coconut frond on NYE

I got back into some of the heaviest rain seen here in a while; 2 days after I arrived it absolutely pissed down for 2 or 3 days, and turned a lot of the roads in the area into rivers. There is a pretty serious drainage problem in Pottuvil as it turns out, and we might be able to line up another project to come up with some sort of master plan to fix it. The drainage from the last project mostly worked, with some issues, but then I donA?a??a??t think anyone was expecting the volume of water that came. One night we were coming back from the office when we had to cross an area with water above the hubs of the Patrol, and just after that there was a crocodile crossing the road in front of us! I was too slow on the camera to get it and Fergus wouldnA?a??a??t let me get out of the car to chase it down Steve Irwin stylezA?a??A?I found out that monsoon is actually just like anywhere else it rains a lot A?a??a?? wet and muddy A?a??a?? and really wasnA?a??a??t that exciting at all, more of a pain in the arse. However it has brought a lot of the wildlife out with heaps of birds and other animals coming back into view. We even passed some deer on the side of the road the other night too, and the elephants are on the move which makes night driving a bit more excitingA?a??A?But hopefully it has stopped now (for my sake, although the area needs more water) as our worksite was getting a bit inundated until the lagoon broke through the sand bar and drained some of itself into the sea. Pottuvil got it bad, but not as bad as some other areas in the south where there were landslide that killed 15 people or so and made around 60,000 leave their houses.

The main road out of Pottuvil

The main road north of Pottuvil

One of the culverts we built on the last project – we know it works!

IA?a??a??ve moved out of my almost-beach side house to the place down the road for a month or two, the lease was up on the house, we werenA?a??a??t sure if we wanted to keep it and the guys that are building the bridge here wanted it for office space so I decided to let it go. Bit of a bummer but the hotel is nice (if a little on the pricy side) but hopefully weA?a??a??ll get the guesthouses up and running before too long. IA?a??a??ve got a bit better internet now so you might be able to catch me on Skype once in a while to have a chat or even a bit of web-cam action if the connection is playing the game. So thatA?a??a??s it, well done if you made it to the end and now that IA?a??a??ve bought a small camera which is much more functional in terms of carriability (thatA?a??a??s not even a word) than my old one I might be able to bash out more photos tooA?a??A?Merry Christmas (belatedly) and Happy New Year to one and all, including Aza and Li who got married just before the new year in Sweden. Congrats.

Casting blocks

Blocks curing

The view from my balcony

I’ll post more on the recent happenings in Sri Lanka shortly – there has been a big upsurge in fighting (mainly on the east coast north of where I am) but also in the jungle in the area not too far from here. It hasn’t really affected me at all as I’m not working into those areas, but there have been reports of around 70,000 people leaving their homes to get away from the fighting.