There is one person I really must talk about because he is almost surreal. He is our driver, Wasanta. Wasanta is a man in his late forties, not very tall, with oval glasses. He is from the Singhalese community and obviously very proud of it, very proud of his personal achievements and the achievements of the government. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the eradication of the LTTE is something beneficial to Sri Lanka and his people. Most of them are relieved that the LTTE no longer exist. But a lot of the people I talked to were not happy with the government either, qualifying it as a dictatorship sometimes, or at least of self-interested and against Tamils and Muslims interests.
But Wasanta think the government is fantastic and therefore every Sri Lankan should agree with him. “No problem now, everyone lives together and everyone is happy”, he repeats daily.
Would that have stopped there it would have been fine, but Wasanta is also determined to make me write only positive things about Sri Lanka. “No problem now, you can write good things, not bad things”, he told me once. I asked why? Is it not important to discuss problems facing a country so that they can be solved? “What problems? Foreign journalists have made a lot of problems in this country. Write positive things”. Fishermen and tea workers had been more quick at grasping the idea that a good report could help improve their country, but at that point I stopped arguing and started being a bit cautious with him. After all, he could denounce us to the police any moment he would like.
The lines
But Wasanta also decided, curiously, that I was “like his daughter”. He now tries to accompany us everywhere we go and play the translator. He is, of course, not a translator and does not know that when people say something you don’t like, you should not argue with them but merely translate. I don’t know how many interesting quotes I missed before finally telling him to let me do my job.
I must certainly have missed a few things, but I must admit he has also helped us, unwillingly, on a few occasions. A few days ago, I asked him to show us the tea plantations and help us talk to the workers there. What Wasanta understood is that I wanted to write about the tea production itself, when I was actually more interested in knowing how the tea plucker, mainly Tamil, are treated.
Wasanta introduced us to a few people working at a plantation, thinking they would give us a nice little tour in the beautiful green hills of Nuwara ELyia (which we did too anyway, and my god it’s breath-taking). After a few minutes of chit-chat and trivial questions I tested the waters with a simple “How is it to work here? Are you well treated?”. The two me showing us around proved to be more than willing to show us the reality of what makes a good tea: unterminable working hours in the field, plucking each leafs by hand, back pain because of the weight carried on the forehead, sometimes leading to spine injuries and the impossibility to work, which means no income or support, all this for a daily pay of approximately one pound. Tea workers live in “lines”, which are some sort of grim little houses aligned around a gutter from which they take the water to wash, cook and as it appeared, also drink. Each house has about two rooms, with 6 people piled up into them.
Children often sleep with their parents in a room supposed to accommodate only one person. Photo: Frederick Dawson
The “lines” are not slums that emerged around a city because people hoped for a better life. The “lines” are “accomodations” build or at least attributed by the tea company to the workers and their families. On the package of the tea I bought in the plantation shop, one of the side explains how the brand is making sure that the workers in the field are well treated and benefit from decent houses. It’ll probably have a bitter after taste.
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