A Week of Breakthroughs & Bureaucratic Hurdlejumping

There are so many things I'd like to write about. I could e.g. write about the unseasonal rains in the hill country (but where is there normal weather nowadays?). I could write about the giant shopping complex that's being built in downtown Kandy. I should write about politics as socialist (and Sinhalese nationalist) JVP these days are threatening to withdraw from the government alliance, complaining they have too little influence. There's the issue of the no-construction buffer zone of 100-300 meters from the coastline (not 1 km as I first heard on the radio) - a recurring matter of debate in newspapercolumns. I could contemplate on why locals prefer their food so spicy it leaves my mouth numb when I eat it (I have an idea that heat on the inside perhaps takes people's minds off the heat on the outside). I could write about the Independence Day celebrations on Friday as Sri Lanka celebrated 57 years as a sovereign state (but these days there's really not that much to celebrate). I should definitively write about public transport... how the busses are never too full to pick up another passanger (and yet I never manage to flag them down when I need one). I could go on about all these things and many more. Yet, there one thing that occupies my mind more than anything; the reason I am here, namely the research I'm supposed to be doing. The fieldwork. 3 weeks into it now, I should be making good progress. Yes and no.

As I drafted this text this previous Wednesday (I usually prefer to draft what's on the blog, although I don't always. Most of what's coming isn't drafted.) I was sitting in a waiting room outside the Vice-Chancellors office. The Vice-Chancellor, his deputy and a number of important men (I didn't hear any female voices through the door), including all the deans of the faculties, were having what I assume must have been an important meeting. Two days previously, I had met with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (hereafter DVC) and told him about my research. He told me this would have to be discussed with the Vice-Chancellor himself. There would be a meeting on at 10AM on Wednesday and he told me to be there in case there were questions I needed to answer. I assumed I would be a part of the meeting. I didn't expect to be kept waiting for 2 hours. At noon however, the DVC appeared in the door and sat down next to me. Dr. Arachchi is a friendly looking, well-groomed man, with an important air about him. As he took a seat he started explaining. There is no formal agreement between Peradeniya and NTNU. No MoU. MoU, MoU, MoU. Memorandum of Understanding. He repeated this again and again, as if driving a nail into my brain. Anyway, this MoU seemed to be a requirement in order to accept me as a temporary student at the university, which again seemed to be a requirement to let meg go about with my research. However, he explained, there was another way. NTNU needed to send a letter to Peradeniya, asking for my enrollment, via the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry who would have to accept my presence. The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry! It seemed to me to be a black hole of ungraspable proportions. Any letter going there would surely not return to see the light of day? There was no mercy though. My plea that I had not come to study at the university but to study the university fell dead to the ground. My oh my.

I caught a bus back to the city and the traffic jam struck me as very symbolic of the general mess I was in. The previous days, however, I had been cruising.

Monday I had talked with Prof. Amarisiri de Silva, head of the department of Sociology. He praised my research proposal ("very interesting") and he promised to put in a good word for me as he was to meet with the Dean at the Faculty of Arts. I also went to the dean myself and he seemed a reasonable man. Surely he would talk to the Vice-Chancellor and they would give me the greenlight! To celebrate the progress I'd made I had a 25 rupee rice-and-curry meal in one of the campus canteens. For the first time I felt like an anthropologist. Alright, I hadn't actually talked to any students yet, but I was there with them. It was only a matter of time. As I sat there philosophizing upon spicy food - sure enough - three girls came along and claimed the three vacant chairs at my table with their bags. This would be an opportunity to strike up a conversation. The girls disappeared however, and after a few minutes I realized they were only waiting for me to leave so they could have the table to themselves - this way also effectively hindering anyone else from talking with me. Oh well, you can't win'em all. There would be other opportunities. And there was, a little while later, as the girls, tired of waiting, had picked up their bags and sat down elsewhere. Two other girls showed up out of nowhere and they even sat down. I was amazed at how they managed to do that while completely ignoring me. Not as much as a side-glance was coming my direction. Having nearly finished my curry, bar a miserable-looking fish, I waved the fish at them asking "Hi, ehmm.. can tell me how to eat this?" - probably not a line they hear too often. Uncertain giggles. That was it. Back to their own conversation, still without having uttered a word to me. Must have been good gossip to keep them so completely apathetic about my fish. Either that or they didn't speak a word English. I settled for the latter explanation, smiled to them and left my fish as I said goodbye.

If I felt like an antrhopologist on Monday, Tuesday gave me the first feeling of doing fieldwork. I had come to campus primarily to talk to Dr. Sivamohan, head of the English department. Unable to find her I went to a canteen (a different one from Monday) to update my fieldnotes. I noticed the place was filling up quickly. It was the lunch time rush hour and I realized I had stumbled upon the perfect way of getting in touch with students. With the number of people and the lack of tables it would be a question of time before someone sat down next to me. I waited with excitement, at the same time trying to spot and decipher any "canteen code of behaviour". To make a long story a little shorter: after an hour, when there was no longer any other option, a boy joined me at my table. He must have broken a spell because 10 minutes later there were 6 og 7 young men there (and a steady stream to and fro), eagerly asking questions about me and my business. Turns out they're a very friendly, although a bit shy, bunch of Indian Tamils (also called Estate Tamils or Up-country Tamils as opposed to the Sri Lanka Tamils of the North and East) and Muslims, all first-year sociology students. I was cordially invited to see their rooms in the Marcus Fernando Hall and was stunned to see each room of about 16 sq.m. occupied by 3 or 4 students. I had already told them I was looking for a place to stay on campus only to be invited to stay on one of their rooms as long as I needed. I politely rejected that Marcus Fernando Hall is probably not a bad place to live, however, despite its congestion. There are common areas and a canteen, a large green lawn, a volleyball pitch and a girls' hostel just down the hill that they can shout lewd remarks to (I have no idea what they would shout but I seriously doubt it would be anything lewd or rude). The Hostel, or "their Palace" as the ironically refer to it, is horse shoe-shaped with rooms in two stories, porches running along both the inner and outer rims of the horse shoe, on both levels. Covering the porch, at any time, will be clothes and towels drying off. The boys certainly seemed happy, joking with eachother constantly, and their curiosoty for me of a genuine and unwanting kind. As I said good bye it was with a sincere wish that I can get to know them and their lives better through the next 7 months.

But that was on Tuesday. On Wednesday the rosy sky seemed to have turned pitch black. On the bus back to Kandy I went through my options. I could:
1) Do everything the "correct" way. It would mean suspending my research on campus until the letter (possibly) found it's way to the Vice-Chancellor and I could obtain a permission. In the mean time I could read background literature.
2) Keep on as before, doing fieldwork without a formal permission, focusing on the areas of campus farthest away from the administrative building.
3) Scrap my research proposal and do something else.
I decided to put off the decission until I had talked the Antrhopologydepartment at NTNU.

An immediate response calmed me down a bit. Both my supervisor, Tord Larsen, and the first secretary, Gunn Kyrkjeeide, were on the case, seeing what could be done. The matter was out of my hands for a while. And come Thursday a draft for the official letter waited in my inbox.

Back on campus I hunted down the DVC, asking if this letter was what he had in mind. He refered me to the Dean of Arts, too busy to deal with such minor matters himself. The Dean of Arts (first attempting to send me back to the DVC), upon seeing the letter, commented on some adjustments that needed to be done. I asked him who to contact in the foreign ministry and he went silent for a while, clearly pondering. When he finally spoke he gave me the answer I had been hoping for all along. There was no need to go through the foreign ministry. The letter could be sent to the university and they would then contact the foreign ministry themselves.

An emailed copy of the final letter is in my bag, the original going by airmail. It is Sunday and tomorrow I'll be showing up at the Dean's desk, begging for my enrollment, hoping the best but expecting more trouble. On the upside of all this enrollmentbusiness is that once I'm a "casual student" as it's called, I'm entitled to campus accomodation. I have heard rumors of a hostel for foreign students. I hope this means I can finally move from Expeditor.

/haakon/in/kandy/