Photo by dabdiputs.

I have somewhat of a musical history. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no pro but I gave it a shot when I was younger, playing in a band that did pretty well considering. Our band opened for some decent acts in trendy art houses in the San Francisco Bay Area, recorded albums (vinyl!), and got some regular radio play. Every once in a while, I’ll still catch a flashback tune of ours on some local US college radio station. We didn’t make the “big time,” or even really make the “small time,” but those days have helped give me perspective into a small portion of the in-and-outs that make the enormous music industry, the RIAA, the independents, and so on.

How might this relate to Sri Lanka? Well, I’ve been slowly considering ways to create an audio compilation of tracks to sell in order to support some of our projects in Sri Lanka. Actually, “considering” recently got a tad more serious and I’ve been lucky enough to receive a couple of track donations to support the project. These donations aren’t from nearby garage bands that put on the occasional open door concert, but from really, really respectable artists. (And I sincerely appreciate their willingness to support Sri Lankan projects at a difficult time.)

An audio CD is a bit like a novel. Although sadly I have a tendency to focus on the music and not the words, music is about the complete package. So I was surprised by the timing of all the action about M.I.A. in the past couple of weeks, because I was looking into whether or not her work would be vital to include. I know about some of the controversy and anger she inspires. I know M.I.A is the daughter of a former LTTE terrorist, but a video by what this blog calls “The First Sinahlese Buddhist Patriotic Rapper” gave me pause.

Here’s the video (NSFW/language), which directly confronts M.I.A on her (potential? alleged? supposed?) support for Tamil Tiger suicide bombings.

But, my Sri Lankan friends, I have some questions (and I am in no way suggesting my own feelings in the process of asking):

–Is M.I.A. really, in your opinion, endorsing typical LTTE violence or is she telling a different kind of story thru her music? Both?

–In light of freedom of press and speech issues currently dominating country news (think Mervin…), where do you think the appropriate line is for artists addressing or even venting their opinions?

–Would her music prove a worthwhile addition to an audio music CD, however controversial?

–Let’s ignore for a moment that non-profit/charity-related CDs have become somewhat of a cliche. Which musicians (no matter their location in the world) would prove vital in your opinion to an audio CD? Which do you listen to? Which has struck you for some of their lyrics or content?

Feel free to comment below or, if you prefer, send a less “public” email to info@p2prescue.org.

Thanks for your opinions–they’ll certainly prove educating.

Sean

I’d like to tell you about Prashadi.

In February of 2006, eight-year-old Prashadi, her mother, and father were traveling together on a motorcycle near where they live in southern Colombo when they were hit head-on by a drunk lorry driver. Mind you, a lorry is a big truck. It’s not often when one crosses a center divide. But when one does and it meets the light, almost insignificant metal of a typical Sri Lanka motorbike, it will always win.

Having been driving immediately behind the motorcycle with some friends and colleagues, we not only witnessed the horrific accident but we also were the first to assist the seriously injured family. The little girl and her father were unconscious–lumps on the street–and appeared very near death, with major lacerations and broken bones. Prashadi, whose head rested awkwardly on the road and twisted over her shoulder, looked to have a broken neck. On her hands and knees, Prashadi’s mother appeared to fare better, but was clearly in shock. After I learned she kept repeating “Where’s my gold chain?”

The scene quickly grew into chaos and violence, when a mob began attacking the lorry driver and his passenger, and swarming the street around the accident. It was soon clear no ambulance could get through the crowd to the injured. The only things I can clearly remember as I was carrying Prashadi to a nearby van was the pure, pearly whiteness of the bones of her shattered shin and her regaining consciousness with a groan as the van’s sliding door slammed shut.

Then she was gone.

During the following two weeks, I hunted for Prashadi with some friends at various hospitals, before knowing her name. I couldn’t get over what may have happened to her and felt connected to her like we sometimes connect to dreams. Some dreams stay with you for a long, long time.

All of us who were there feared this brief life was over. The death of a young girl is not an unusual loss in Sri Lanka to be sure–and that’s hard for me to get my head around too–but it was a new loss for me. Or at least it would have been if we hadn’t found her.

Alive. Badly injured, but alive.

To be continued…

Photo by Txd.

Dear friends and colleagues in Sri Lanka—

It is with great pleasure for me to announce that P2P Rescue has developed a new partnership with a U.S.-based organization called Girls Helping Girls. Together, we have agreed cooperate to create international teams of girls (age 10 to 21), who will work together on a year-long social change program designed to assist girls in Sri Lanka.

P2P (People to People) Rescue has aimed to bring people from diverse backgrounds and broad skill sets together to find creative solutions to problems such as poverty, education, homelessness, and more. The organization has been working on variety of projects that aim to improve the lives of Sri Lankans in need for more than three years.

Similarly, Girls Helping Girls (GHG), has created a program that focuses on cultural exchange, global education, social change projects, and investment in girls’ development, all in line with Millennium Development Goals. Founded in 2007 by Sejal Hathi, a 15-year-old teen based in California, the ambitious organization is run entirely by girls under age 18. Don’t let the age fool you, however. In the first year, GHG delivered social change and empowerment programs to approximately 500 girls in India.

While GHG has created a sophisticated model for delivering education, awareness, and action to girls worldwide, P2P Rescue has developed relationships in the U.S. and Sri Lanka that will be critical for identifying and creating youth teams in both countries. Together we will work to raise funds, send books and other supplies to Sri Lanka, and ensure the 2008-2009 programs run smoothly and effectively.

If you would like to help us identify qualifying communities of girls in Sri Lanka–or if you would like to be a team leader yourself–please review the comprehensive application materials in the PDF file here.

The application (last two pages) is due by the 11th of August for the program starting mid-September. If you have any questions or wish to suggest other ways you can support the program—time, fundraising, materials collection?–please email my Sri Lanka-based research assistant and project coordinator, Nalinka, by clicking here: nalinka@p2prescue.org.

If you live outside of Sri Lanka but wish to support the program by creating a team or collecting materials to send girls in Sri Lanka, please contact me via email.

If you wish to make a donation to help us support the project, please use the donation button on any page of the site to donate via PayPal or credit card and specify you wish to support “Girls Helping Girls.” Donations will help us hire necessary translators, ship materials, acquire school supplies, and more.

As Girls Helping Girls says, “If we empower a girl, then we also empower her nation.” I am excited to see what we can do .

I read this story and, while I’m sure this happens more than anyone knows, I found it shocking. What are these people going to do? Really–where are these people going to go? I guess this is really and truly still Slave Island. I know the area and its problems, but is this the solution?

While I’m at it, does anyone have any comments about the source (Colombo Page)? Legit? Sketchy? Let me know.

Maybe I’m not so well informed, which is why I’m relying on you. What am I missing here?

From the editor: I am working with a virtual assistant in Sri Lanka called “Nalinka” who I have been rather impressed with for the substantial effort she gives to her projects. Because of plans I have to flesh out something of a real blog (more on that later), I gave her an assignment to write about the Tuk-Tuk (three wheeler). Frankly, I love these things and when I’m in the U.S. I always wonder why cities such as New York or San Francisco don’t have them. Yes, they’re dirty and loud, but it seems to me an engineer could make a few modifications to turn this into a quieter, cleaner ride for tight spaces. I’d love to see it.

In any case, following is the contribution from my VA. Although I might have made some edits, I thought I’d submit it as is, unedited, because I thought she made a great start for her first-ever English-language writing assignment.

Taking Foreigners for a Ride: The Trishaw/Tuk-Tuk
By Nalinka

Three wheelers (Tuk Tuks) have a long history in Asia as extremely durable and reliable passenger and delivery vehicles. With new high torque, clean burning, 4 stroke engines, these machines have the low operating costs of a scooter with the toughness of a truck. With a top speed of 40 MPH, they are obviously not intended for highway use, but are ideally suited to local and inner-city transportation and delivery.

Tuk-tuks, also called three-wheelers in Sri Lanka, are a convenient way to get around and can be found almost anywhere; they are much more common than taxis. If you’ve never seen one, it’s basically a motorcycle with a covered seat attached to the back, big enough for three people to ride in, plus the driver up front. Prices seem to vary quite a bit from place to place, and many drivers will try to overcharge foreigners so you may have to bargain hard.

General

Tuk-Tuks are used mainly by the lower-middle-class, since it is a popular mode of transport for short routes within cities. One of the major brands of 3 wheelers in Sri Lanka is Bajaj (Indian). Many other brands are also available but 90% are Bajaj.

A three wheeler typically have no doors or seatbelts. They are different in colour and have a black or green canopy on the top. A three wheeler is generally characterized by a tin/iron body resting on three small wheels (one in front, two on the rear), a small cabin for the driver in the front and seating for three in the rear. They are very fuel efficient. Only Three passengers are allowed legally but they usually take as many as five adults. These are with two stroke or 4 stroke engines, with a handlebar for control (like scooters) instead of a steering wheel, effectively making them a three-wheeler scooter carrying passengers on the rear seat.

Three wheelers are extremely light vehicles considering their capacity. When they break down, only two or three drivers are required to fully lift them off the ground and they can be easily pushed by one driver. However, the construction and characteristics of Tuk Tuk make extremely unsafe class of vehicle. Accidents can result in serious chassis damage, and can easily be fatal to the commuters. Also since the Tuk Tuk incorporates a handlebar for control, this gives an extremely small turning radius to the Tuk Tuk, to operate even in very small roads.

Three wheelers have a top-speed of around 60 km and a cruising speed of around 40 km/h.

Technical Details

Engine: 140 -175 cc, 8.2 HP, 4 stroke and two Stroke,
Transmission: 4 speed forward, 1 reverse
Chassis: welded steel with electro deposited anti-rust base coat
Suspension: Independent trailing arm, coil springs, hydraulic shocks
Curb Weight: 330 - 400 kgs
Carrying capacity: 300 - 400 kgs
Max. Speed: 40 mph

General Transport

As a mode of transport, the Tuk Tuk is turning out to be a major employer in Sri Lanka. It is commonly available in all the cities and villages of Sri Lanka. It has become very popular mainly due to the fuel efficiency and the low operating cost.

There is an initial charge at the beginning of a ride then the price normally increases in proportion to the distance . Very rarely u can find 3 whelers fixed with meters. Therefore it is important to ask the price before getting into the 3 wheeler. However, it is rather common to find 3 wheeler drivers charging higher rates when getting down from the three wheeler. Always Hiring involves bargaining.

Sri Lanka government has made a restriction for importing two stroke 3 wheelers due to air pollution and pushing for four stroke engines instead of the current two-stroke versions. Typical mileage for an Indian-made 3 wheeler is around 35 km per litre of petrol(about 2.9 L per 100 km, or 82 miles per gallon).
But this has become a major source of noise pollution on most the city roads. The noise levels produced by Tuk-Tuk often exceed 10 times that of a car.

Do you have any interesting stories about Tuk-Tuks? Post them in the comments below.

Photo by Aidan Jones

I feel now is as good a time as any to mention that I had my appendix removed last week. I had been feeling pain in the area since last September, but it was only just recently, near midnight, that it was ready to burst.

I drove myself to the hospital emergency ward and within hours a surgeon had plucked the little infected worm from the end of my large intestine. Aside from the usual dangers involving general anesthesia and potential bleeding issues, the procedure is pretty straightforward. There is some risk of post-operative infection and/or complications from pneumonia involved so I was hospitalized for a few days after to ensure everything was A-OK. I’m still feeling a bit of pain and I’m required to take it easy for another few weeks, but mostly it’s behnd me.

During the procedure my doc even took a nice portrait of my gangrened appendix (click only if you can handle graphic pics of innards).

My Sorry Appendix

Should I feel naked? For some reason I do.

Anyway, it’s really not too big a deal but some cultures may not handle it so well, either from an emergency medical standpoint or from a mythological or spiritual position that says your body must stay intact.

Do any of you in Sri Lanka have a view on this, or personal experience? How well, for example, is the emergency system set-up to accept and accommodate emergency appendectomy surgery? And is there any other stigma around removing an organ, even if it is poisoning you?

I look forward to hearing from you.

(For those outside of Sri Lanka, Kottu is a central repository of blogs in, around, and about Sri Lanka.)

Dear Kottu bloggers and readers–

I fit a somewhat unusual profile and so my presence here at Kottu and elsewhere online can be a little difficult to understand. I am an American (mostly Irish), who was so struck by the tsunami tragedy, I literally changed my life and decided to head your direction to provide whatever help I could.

As things progressed, I decided somewhere down the line that Sri Lanka is not a place many people are aware of in the United States, so I decide to occasionally blog in order to introduce your country as a place with more beauty and depth than simply “that country at war” or “a country that suffered from the tsunami.” Clearly those are things that have had or are having a major impact in your lives. But there’s so much more to the country, bad and good.

As a result I would like to explore some of those things. I am not from your country, but I have fallen in love with pieces of it over these last few years and hope I can deliver some of its magic to an American audience. Not just Sri Lankans in America, but also to Americans who might want to visit or who simply have a curious bent.

I could really use your help in bringing some measure of Sri Lanka online to America. Providing me insights via the comments section into your lives and what pleases you or what frightens you, your favorite foods or some unusual cultural anecdote could be extremely educating. I invite you to become involved and encourage anyone interested in initiating or maintaining an active discussion to visit often.

I’d also like to invite those of you who have something interesting to contribute to let me know your thoughts by email. I hope to feature blogs and guest contributions from quite a few of you who have shown yourselves via your own blogs to be excellent writers, thinkers, and informal representatives of your country.

Sri Lanka is an unusual, extremely interesting place. Please help me share it with others in the United States.

I look forward to hearing from you (even if you’re the notorious Sittingnut)!

Many of you who have become aware of my efforts in Sri Lanka know I have become fascinated by birds. I originally started working with Sri Lanka by gathering tsunami remains (from the wreckage) and teaching people how to make birdhouses from the material. It was an odd idea, for sure. Interesting? That’s for you to decide.

In any case, birds are on my radar. My ear is becoming more experienced and tuned to my surroundings, and I can literally hear new families arrive or the absence of chirps of seasonal birds who I had come to know but have since left. I’ve also been tuned to bird stories in the news. Sri Lanka is an amazing place for the casual or professional birder. Here’re some pieces about birds from other places in the world:

From National Gographic News: “A fossil of a new species of dinosaur-era bird found in China is one of the oldest ever discovered, experts say in a new study.” Full story

From Wired Science: “…ornithologists from the University of Oxford tracked the egg-laying times of great tits in Wytham, England. Since the mid-1970s, temperatures in Wytham have risen steadily, hastening the start of spring by two weeks. The birds have followed suit, timing their breeding to coincide with earlier hatches of their favorite food source, a species of moth caterpillar.” Full story

From AP Science, via Yahoo! News: “A little strategically placed makeup quickly turns the wimpiest of male barn swallows into chick magnets, amping up their testosterone and even trimming their weight, new research shows.” Full story

From the Daily Galaxy blog: “…now it seems that the avian autopilot is of interest to science, and possibly the X-Men - because the birds might have QUANTUM MAGNO-VISION.” Full story

From AP via MSNBC Science: “Baby birds babble away before mastering their adult song, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.”
Full story

Birds are all around us. When you’re bored or troubled, take a break and tune in. You’ll be amazed at what you hear. And if you tune in enough, you’ll be even more amazed at the subtle changes you begin to learn.

Do you have any personal stories about birds you are willing to share? Do so in the comments.

Read the full story here.

Journalists in Sri Lanka are without question, some of the bravest in the profession. Despite the proliferation of attacks against them, I hope they stay strong and continue to strive for the truths that will help create intelligent discourse and ultimately improve society.