Vday in the Temple

We had such a great day today. In the morning we learned about economics and then had a doctor come in to talk about health. It was funny because he was coming from a fairly new private hospital so he was trying to recruit us- either to get sick or, you know- get some plastic surgery! It was craziness, haha. We could see the ploy behind his charisma but he was really great and I guess there is no problem in him thinking we are rich and egocentric. It was funny though because he told us we had about a 1/35 chance in getting "the denque" and 1/100 of getting rabies from a dog and he was saying it all with a smile! We went to the hospital to register in case anything does happen to us and to check it out. It was REALLY nice- even by NA standards, but it was also up to $100 a room. It's good to know a doctor because they seem to be have a lot of power/respect here.
After this, Keith took us around the city to see the main streets and the markets. The markets were crazy- it was really a lot to take in. Although it was tempting to jump out of the car to grab some garmets & such because they are so cheap we are not allowed to be spending any time in crowded areas and it doesn't get much more crowded than these markets. There was so much to look at and absorb.
Next, Keith dropped us off at a Temple. It was so fantastic - the monks are so intriguing - you just want to reach out and touch them but as a woman you cannot. They were very gracious though and we seemed to come in just at the time of some kind of ceremony. This was the highlight of my trip so far. It was spectacular. I did not want to take too many pics as I didn't know if it was offensive but it didn't matter anyway because it was the energy that was so great and that can't be captured- at least with my photographic skills.

We got home and in our remembered that our friend from the restaurant told us about a valentine's dinner the hotel was putting on. It was so cute- they had heart decorations all over and had a huge buffet set up but there was barely anyone dining. It is sad because the country now relies a lot of the service sector since the agriculture has faced so many problems since the Tsunami hit, but now the tourism rate has dropped so much in the last few months because of the war that you can already see the affects on the economy.
Although everything seems so cheap to us, SL has one of the highest inflation rates in the world, so when 50% of the population is making less than a dollar an hour, 5 dollars for a shirt or 100 a month rent doesn't seem that cheap anymore. Hopefully the war really will end in April as the gov't claims but most people can't see how it would be possible and the economist guessed that if continues to borrow money for this war for another few years, the SL economy is going to be in major trouble. You can really feel how glad the people are when they see foreigners are here to spend money and keep the hotels & restaurants open.
Generally the people here are so happy that we are here saying "thank-you for helping our people." However, in our case, we have to be careful when we say we are from an NGO because right now there is a lot of suspicion among aid workers. The media spreads rumours like if there is a Unicef van going North with food rations for the humanitarian wokers they will say they are bringing rations to the LTTE. This has set of a series of court cases and the gov't does not side with NGO's since they want the money to be streamed through them. There was also 17 humanitarian workers in the North murdered a while back. We basically just have to be clear that we are development workers not humanitarian so that people see that we are here to help rather than to get involved in the politics.