

Music: Beach Boys: I Can Hear Music
Home to a breakfast of thin vanilla crepes, small omelettes of shallot and bird chilli and a fruit plate of midget bananas, pineapple and papaya spiked with lime.






We visit a hardware store for chicken wire and accompany one of the house staff to a modest covered market, a shaft of sunlight between corrugated scrap highlighting a sack of dried red chilies. We wander down the road, careful to avoid speeding buses and doubled cyclists.
Sri Lanka has no deficit of smiling faces, but before I give too rosy an impression, things are rough in this rural area for most of the people I have seen, and the contrast of absolute luxury in the frame of third world life is weighing uneasily on me at times. The small streets are full of rough-looking street dogs with pockmarked fur and visible ribs, scratching at fleas and lapping from stagnant puddles. Skeletons of rusty bikes line alleys edged with plastic trash and ruddy open ditches brim with things not fun to smell. This area of the coast suffered the worst of the tsunami, and the rubble of clobbered schools and homes and boats pushed kilometers inland accompany hard stories from AT's family of the tragedy. Renate and AT's father Bob converted a ruined post office into a village relief centre, offering aid to workers and tradespeople looking to rebuild their businesses. It is now a non-profit computer centre, giving volunteer training to people in the surrounding area. It's hard to absorb the nature of a place in a short time, and I don't feel equipped to make any conclusions, but the warm energy and easy smiles of everyone here feel sincere. Errands complete, we shuttle back to the house to eat.
Two bluefin tuna caught that morning are cut into thin sashimi which disappear on my palette without chewing, they are seriously that fresh. AT and I assemble some simple maki with the rest of the fish, avocado and sesame. Steamed okra with tomatoes and herbs complete the light meal. We stay at the table late and empty a couple of bottles of wine, talking animatedly about everything from happiness to the battle of the sexes to driving 150km an hour in a disintegrating car with no seatbelts in Thailand.
A projector is set up and we are knocked out one by one watching The Scent of Green Papaya, the ambient soundtrack of jungle birds and insects continuing seamlessly long after the movie is shut off.
Music: Eric Satie: Trois Gymnopedie
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