Colombo Arrival

T.R.S…
Arrived at Colombo, Ceylon, early on Saturday, 23 February, and ship tied up at both ends to buoys anchored 1,000 feet apart. This method lines up all vessels like on parade while small craft ply around between.

After early breakfast went ashore by tender, climbing stairs to Old Fort, Ceylon's business and administration centre. By auto passed through Pettah Bazaar, a hive of seething humanity, some standing in long lines awaiting opening of shops, some sitting on kerbs, many lying asleep on pavements.

Ox carts, midget autos and rickshaws create heavy traffic. Women fully clad in brightly coloured Buwi dresses, men with belted skirts from waists to ankles, some with coats and jackets, some bare-chested. Children naked except for loin cloths.

Our driver is a well-educated and voluble guide with more information than can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. After quick trip through crowded residence section, we took off by open road for city of Kandy, 70 miles inland. Pedestrians and cyclists line both sides of highway for entire distance.

A man halts to “go to the bathroom” on roadside while traffic sails by. Road winds through forests of palm, banana, and rubber trees; terraced gardens on hillsides and rice paddies in low sections. Water buffaloes tethered on ropes graze on dikes and in the muddy rice paddies.

Men, bare except for drop-cloths, tend rice by hand, stooping all day in shin-deep water. Monkeys sit among the tree branches. Fox birds (flying foxes / giant bats) flicker over jungle sections or hang head down from dead trees.

Here is a gypsy camp and when our driver toots his horn they come running with flat baskets. Squatting, they remove basket-tops and cobras with hooded heads appear. The autos following ours line up like a caravan on roadside to see this show and take pictures.

It's All Done by Hand!

T.R.S…
On the many-terraced slopes are acres of tea and coffee bushes and whole plantations of rubber trees tapped for latex to drip into coconut shell cups. Native houses built on rugged crags remind one of eagle nests.

At all waterfalls and pools natives can be seen taking Saturday night baths or laundering clothes. Am told Sinhalese natives and South African conscripts were trained here for jungle warfare against Japs. Locale is perfect training ground.

All labour in Ceylon is done by hand or with crude tools and vehicles pulled by slow beasts. Machinery is virtually unknown. Everybody seems to be doing something useful or constructive the hardest possible way.

Rice is planted, tended and harvested by hand. Strewn on concrete floors, it is threshed by tramping hooves of oxen moving in circles. When straw is removed, grain is swept up by hand brooms.

Likewise, coconuts are hand-husked with heavy machete knives. Husks are then dried and fibre removed for weaving purposes. Coconut meats are also dried and exported as copra and refined for vegetable oil and stock feed. Milk is used for food and drink.

Long palm leaves have many uses - many roofs are thatched with them. When stripped and dried, leaflets are woven by women into baskets, mats, seats and sunshades. Tree trunks are converted into charcoal and used for cooking. Nothing is wasted.

Meat, poultry, eggs and fish are plentiful but all must be consumed while fresh as cooling and storage are unknown. Rural lighting is entirely by kerosene lamps - also true in poorer and scattered sections of larger cities.