In Sri Lanka, Contemplating the What-Ifs of Motherhood
Matt and I were in Sri Lanka earlier this year in April. We had just come off an assignment for Washington Post in Ukraine. After this, he was set to lead a whale diving trip for his company, Inertia Network. I had a short break between our next assignment in Afghanistan and had never been to Sri Lanka. Despite my better judgment, I decided to tag along.
As a passing thought, the Italian pregnancy test results still lingered in my brain. I still wasn’t sure what was going on with my body. Every day, I asked myself – do I really want to do this – as I swam in the ocean, sat for long periods on rickety boats, and almost put on diving weights.
To ease my fears, I barely swam and chose some days to stay back at our guesthouse to work.
During one dinner, champagne was served, and I politely declined. I wanted to see a doctor as soon as possible, but we were in more rural areas for the first few weeks in the country. The confirmation would need to wait.
I wanted to go hiking for a weekend in the highlands. I decided to stay an extra week in Sri Lanka as Matt left for the Maldives to run another trip. I thought about what – or who – was conspiring in my stomach and figured this might be my last chance to hike for a while.
Matt and I will travel to different countries, especially when he leads trips. It’s always a little emotional for the first day or so. But this time, when we separated, I felt very emotional and, honestly, a bit scared.
When we hugged goodbye, I clutched him extra hard. Matt knew about the pregnancy test. We both figured something was up, but nothing was confirmed. A baby was in my stomach, or we would be in for another surprise.
Of course, we wouldn’t know that it was Miya until I returned to Colombo a week later.
For a few days, I got lost in a few colourful areas. First, there was Kandy, an inexplicably charming city with a little lake, surrounded by mountains, tea plantations and rainforest. From Kandy, I took a local bus about 3 hours away to a small village called Pitawala, where I would hike for a few days.
The bus leaving Kandy was full of people from front to back. I arrived early and managed to snag a bench with two others. As more people filled the bus, the passengers on the bench would have to carry their luggage on their laps. I felt slightly wary of one woman’s heavy bag sitting atop my stomach. I tried to use my knees and legs to support the weight.
Twice a day, this brightly coloured red government-run bus picks up and drops off villagers and visitors from neighbouring cities like Matale and Kandy. For villagers, this one bus is a lifeline to sell goods and pick up supplies that they cannot produce for themselves.
For me, it was the access point to one of Sri Lanka’s most beautiful hiking areas – the foothills and cloud forests of the misty Knuckles Mountain range or, as known to locals, Dumbara Kanduvetiya in Sinhalese. The range is located in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, around 40 km northeast of Kandy.
It is named after its folds and peaks, which resemble the knuckles of tightened fists when viewed from different angles. Nestled within these remote foothills are traditional villages – Pitawala, Atanwala and Meemure, interconnected by lush, vibrant green rice paddy fields, cardamom and tea plantations, and vast acres of farmland.
For the next two days, I would hike from village to village.
The bus was sweltering. I zoned out for a bit listening to loud, vibrant music playing in the background and the sounds of people chatting away.
I thought about everything that happened in the earlier months – the pregnancy test, the revelation of “something” to Matt, and all the emotions we experienced as we discussed our future.
I imagined for a moment what it would be like to be a mother. I stared out the bus window to busy streets, vibrant markets and eventually, a bucolic countryside, and grew lost in my own thoughts.
At one point, we got off the bus for a tea break. I decided to take a stretch and ended up losing my seat. For the rest of the ride, I had to stand and support myself by holding the back of a bench.
I questioned for a while whether I should say I was pregnant to get a seat. I found a rhythm in my stance and decided I would be okay.
Later, I discovered that Miya loved it when I stood and walked a lot. Even out of the womb, she loves it most when she’s on the move. Little did she know that day that she was bouncing to the rhythm of a Sri Lankan bus.
Eventually, we started curving up the narrow road, climbing into the rainforest until we reached a village. The bus dropped me off 100 metres away from my homestay with Bandara.
Bandara was a tiny woman -- 4”8 with silvery hair tied in a tight bun, kind eyes and a wide smile. She wore a bright-coloured orange dress with an apron. She immediately gestured me into her extra room. It was simple, with two beds covered with mosquito netting. I dropped my bags and surveyed the room as she scurried away to prepare a cup of tea.
I stared for a few seconds at a bucket full of water in the bathroom for the shower. A dead mouse floated casually near the top. I assumed the next few days were going to be a little rustic. I had no expectations. I found a trekking guide for the area – Aravinda -- on a whim at the last minute. He suggested this homestay.
I freshened up and joined my host in the kitchen. “Cooking comes from the heart,” she said as she tossed turmeric, curry powder and roasted chilli, banana flower and purple onions over large slices of bright orange papaya soaking in freshly squeezed coconut milk. She massaged the mixture vigorously with her hands.
The 69-year-old widower bustled around her cosy kitchen, tossing different vegetables and spices into mixing bowls before simmering each mixture in clay pots over a bright wood-burning stove.
She would make different vegetable or fruit curries every night I was there. That evening she made a papaya curry, stewed eggplant, curried daal, and a traditional sambal made from coconut, purple onion, chillies, salt and lemon juice.
Her recipes were generational – from her mother, grandmother, and the women in her family before that. They never had much but knew how to use a simple mix of spices, coconut milk and oils effectively to tease out the textures and flavours of simple vegetables.
Among Bandara’s assortment were turmeric, curry, chilli, cinnamon and mustard. She took a stick of cinnamon and pointed out its many layers. “This is true cinnamon. You can tell by its taste. It’s sweet.”
Bandara chatted up a storm as I watched her cook. She told me she received foreigners for the past five years as part of her homestay – a 20-year-old original white and green painted mud house. The house belonged to her husband, who passed away from sickness a few years prior.
The older woman’s property was surrounded by papaya and avocado trees and overlooked a vast paddy field. The stems of her rice leaves blew gently in the wind, and except for cicadas and birds calling lightly from the surrounding forests or high above the mountains, nothing else could be heard. It was the peaceful serenity I was looking for.
Even though her husband passed away many years ago, Bandara told me she never felt alone. The mother usually lived with her son, a cardamom planter. But he recently journeyed to Colombo to seek treatment for his wife, who had a brain tumour.
She finds a support structure in her community. The doors are rarely locked here. Anyone drops into any house whenever they feel like it – for food, tea or conversation. Each house does not have a number. Colours distinguish them. Bandara lives in the green and white house.
These villages felt quiet to me for the most part. I understood that they mostly avoided the direct struggles of the civil war, the pandemic, and the most recent economic and political challenges.
But indirectly, they still face their own struggles with poverty, diseases like dengue fever, and malnourishment. While they have access to nearby hospitals, they are sometimes too far out of the way. Bandara’s son died at 25 of heart issues because he couldn’t get to the hospital on time.
Villages like Pitawala were formed over centuries, a result of Singhalese families fleeing into the mountains to retreat from historical British and South Indian invasions.
There are around 60 families left in this rural village -- agrarian families who farm rice for consumption and trade. Many families jointly share these paddy fields.
Community-based tourism – and visitors like myself - help to supplement these ageing families with additional income. Tourism in Sri Lanka only started to evolve after the country emerged from the civil war in 2009.
Bandara explained that because of tourism, villagers could keep their rice supply. “We get to show our village and earn income to continue building our house and fields.” Without the supplemental income, they would need to sell more rice to make the same income. At times, this would leave them with no rice to eat.
The grandmotherly woman smiled at me kindly often. When dinner time rolled around, she encouraged me to eat more. To show appreciation, I tried to eat as much as possible. This worked out perfectly since I needed the energy for hiking over the next few days. I also wondered if I was eating for two these days.
There was no cell signal, so I broke away from reality at night and, once again, became lost in my thoughts. Because this trip was so spontaneous, I didn’t bring books or download movies.
Instead, I stared at old messages from Matt. I thought back to the origins of our relationship and became very emotional. I rubbed my stomach and wondered again if I would become a mother. I ended up writing Matt a series of messages he wouldn’t receive until I was back in the city with a signal.
I wrote him paragraphs about our life together and what was to come. I wrote until my eyes naturally felt heavy with fatigue and fell asleep to the soft sounds of trees and rice leaves blowing in the wind.
Over the next few days, I hiked with Aravinda from Pitawala to the neighbouring villages. We passed through paddy fields and up steep, winding roads through the surrounding forests.
As we moved from village to village, Aravinda introduced me to the different communities. Most of the guesthouses are managed by the family's matriarch. Tourism is powered by women in the community – female nature guides, small restaurant owners, and hosts like Bandara.
The network itself is facilitated through one villager named Wasantha. Originally a forest ranger, he started working with local tour agents six years ago to bring domestic tourists to the area. Now, he connects foreigners and local visitors to the family homestays for trekking and nature programs.
This is not the only area of the Knuckles region engaged in tourism. Other parts of Knuckles have more established tourism infrastructures. According to Wasantha, however, this is one of the few parts retaining some authenticity.
“When there is too much infrastructure, people change. They become greedier.” He is worried about mass tourism around one key landmark, a waterfall nearby named Wedda Peni Ella. Property developers from Colombo are buying up this land for larger hotels. Some of these developments have already been built over some of the villagers’ traditional walking routes.
He tells me that I visited the area at the right time because “it could all become large hotels soon.” I did, for the most part, see minimal infrastructure in the areas I hiked in, but I saw the opportunities for that to change.
During the hike, Aravinda joked that I appeared very slow and cautious. At one point, he tested my patience by asking how often I hike at home. He further tested me again by asking how often I walk.
I didn’t want to reveal that I might be pregnant. I wanted to be extra cautious because there was one time I was hiking with Matt when I fell flat on my face and bruised the left side of my stomach. I couldn’t put myself at risk knowing that I might be pregnant. So, I ignored my companion’s comments and continued to walk like a senior on crutches.
Aravinda was a fast walker, though. He wanted us to walk quicker to avoid leeches. For the most part, he was right. I saw blood-sucking leeches crawl up and down my shoes every time I sauntered. So, after kicking them off, I would attempt to walk faster. But I retained as much concentration as possible to ensure I didn’t trip.
But, when we approached muddy downhills and steep rocks, I would inch like a turtle and accept the leeches.
For me, hiking and visiting these quieter areas were to clear my brain. I suspected changes were coming up ahead. And at the very least, I knew Matt and I would work on a challenging assignment in Afghanistan shortly.
I wanted this last chance to run away from reality. I achieved that perfect quiet state for a brief half hour on the final day after we reached a magnificent viewpoint overlooking Pitawala and its surrounding mountains.
I sat there, soaked everything in – all the green, the pin-drop silence- and let my brain shut off. After a few days of hiking – that night, I had no problem sleeping. I think I slept at 7:30 and didn’t wake up until the sun started peeking through my window.
The next day as I was leaving to head back to Kandy and onwards to Colombo, Bandara wrapped some biscuits for me. “You’re going to need to eat. “ It could just be because of the journey, but the way she stared at me intensely, it was almost as if she knew.
And, just a few days later, the confirmation came. It was a girl. It was our Miya.
RELATED STORIES
