Heartshaken, Fieldbroken
- but the show must go on...

She came, she kissed through tears, and then swept through my parallell Srilankan universe in a haze of fever, sunburns and snake phobia. Sure, it may have had all the ingredients of the holiday from hell but our two-week fieldbreak was a huge success. I am sure you all know that empty feeling of the return to everyday life after a holiday spent with loved ones. I can assure you that the very same sad emptiness awaits you even if you're an anthropologist and your everyday life takes place in an exotic place like Sri Lanka.

Silje and I met last fall at an introductory seminar for the 1st year batch of the social anthropological M.A. program at NTNU. We celebrated our 6th month anniversary the day she arrived in Sri Lank. Being away from one another at this early stage is of course no fun, but anthropologists gotta do what anthropologists gotta do. Her enthusiasm is with the conflict in Northern Ireland - mine is with this troubled island. So we decided not to let romantic interest interfere with academical interest at this point and in January took up residence in each our global hot spot. Her original intention was to study protestant-catholic marriages from the inside, but trust is a rare commodity in Northern Ireland and mixed marriage couples are particularly exposed to pressures from paramilitary factions and therefore understandably cautious of who they allow into their spheres of intimacy. In other words: she couldn't find a couple to live with. She ended up scrapping her research proposal, looking for alternatives. After having made some contacts among young republicans she settled for spending her time with Ogra - Sinn Feins youth movement. Often dubbed the political wing of the IRA, Sinn Fein and Ogra Sinn Fein claim legitimacy for their struggle and the way it is carried out. Silje, an ardent socialist, is furthermore intrigued by their socialist stand. But are they socialists in a true sense?

Well, this entry wasn't supposed to be about Siljes research, nor about mine, but about our two weeks together in Sri Lanka. At first this felt a bit like two worlds colliding. I recall that when I was working for EF Foundation's high school exchange program, we would warn exchange students-to-be of the dangers of accepting visits from family and friends at an early point of the stay. That this meeting of the old and the new will mess with your mind. Meeting Silje, tears flowing, at Bandarnaike Int'l Airport, outside Colombo, I did have some problems fitting it all together, but my mind switched to holiday mode soon enough. Being with each other after two long months was the only thing that mattered. Well, of course Silje was going on about the nice temperature and the beach in Negombo (where we spent our first day at the Icebear Hotel) and the general exotic flavour to it all - things that were completely lost on me.

After a day in tsunami-untouched Negombo, where the beaches are quite allright but nothing by Lankan standards, and a day of shopping in some of Colombo's trendier places, we headed for the hill country. This was when the fever kicked in and Silje barely had the energy to get out of bed for a week, while I nursed the best I could. It was perhaps a flu triggered by the change of climate - nothing too serious - but it meant the scrapping of the holiday plans I had surpassed myself in making (normally I'm incapable of planning past a 3-day horizon). The climbing of Adam's Peak would have to go and so would the day-trip to Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage - not to mention the grande finale I had planned at the southern beaches. But Silje did muster the energy to get out of bed every now and then. We did make it out to campus one day and another day we attended a charity concert for tsunami victims, staged by and with performances by local students. We even got to see one of the 80 or so species of snakes in the wild, or at least semi-wild of the Royal Botanical Gardens. When I say "we" that is a blatant lie. I never saw it, but Silje who has the worst snake phobia did, and had nightmares of snakes for nights to come.
Halfway through the holiday, upon recovery from the flu (let's not get into the digestive problems at all) we decided to celebrate by the pool of nearby Hotel Suisse. We did use sun lotion and we were only in the midday sun for a couple of hours, but this fatal sunbathing was enough to immobilize us for two more days, each of us being equally scolded (two weeks later we were both still peeling). There was something incredibly comical about this however, that kept our spirits up, and when we finally left Kandy, heavy backpacks on sore shoulders, it was without the feeling of having wasted precious time there.

The last few days we did a blitz on the ancient cultural sites of Dambulla (cave temples filled with Buddha images), Sigirya (the ruins of a capital fortress perched on a giant rock) and Polonnaruwa (ruins dating to the time the city was capital for 250 years or so at the beginning of the second millennium), before returning to Negombo, preparing for and dreading the goodbye scene at the airport. This would be the second of three difficult airport goodbyes, the first one took place in January at Oslo Int'l Airport, the third one will take place in Belfast in the end of June, less than three months from now. Yes, the ticket is bought and paid for, and now that she's gone I catch myself peaking at the calendar, counting the days. Readjusting to fieldwork mode was more difficult than I anticipated (why would the advice I lavishly unloaded on future exchange students also apply to me?). On returning to Johns house (which we had avoided due to Siljes fear of snakes) I found my toilet was invaded by ants and to giant spiders had taken up residence behind it. At the same time I had rats fighting behind closets and inside cupboards. Now why would I feel lonely?

I am very fortunate to have made several good friends at the university - friends who this week took me along for a 4-day trip that I hope to write more of later. That snapped me back to this reality and I realize I am thorougly enjoying myself her, even if I have to fight red tape at the university and still don't know what I am really looking for. And when Silje and I move in together in Trondheim this fall, it will be knowing we have made the right decissions. Meanwhile the show must go on.

/haakon/in/kandy/