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Sleeping In The Back Of A Van

   

    For the rest of the year after my last trip to Sri Lanka  I continued to work part time at the art center, had the odd photography job and when the season came I taught kite surfing in Lebanon. It was fine, I was making a decent living and the kiting season was amazing. I was the only instructor at the school and reaping in the profits.  At the same time I was planning and arranging to go back to Sri Lanka to work with the man I had met on the last day of my previous trip. I had always wanted to leave Lebanon and I saw this as an opportunity to do just that. 

    Before I went to Sri Lanka I had no real idea of what to expect, I knew I would be living in a new camp that was still being built in basically the middle of nowhere but I had no idea of what was really in store for me. I saw photos of the spot, the camp and tents. My first stop was Negombo where I stayed at my bosses hotel and got familiar with him and the staff. While enjoying the comforts of the hotel I started working on creating the schools website, Facebook page and also searched online for a couple of instructors to join the team. I was still wondering what the camp would be like although my boss told me not to expect too much, a friend of his told me "expect nothing". I didn't think he meant that literally.  After about a week or so we finally made our first trip to Talaimannar and the kite camp. We filled the minivan up with tools, kitchen items, boards, kites and a cooler full of food, drinks and ice.

 

George : Food and drinks in a cooler? Dude ,where are we going?

Boss: Yea there's no electricity at the camp so we have to take all our food and drinks with us in a cooler. We can only stay there for 4 days until our supplies and the ice run out then we have to come back to the city to rest and resupply.

George: What about a supermarket?

Boss: Oh that's about 35km away from the camp but without any electricity we can only get the basics.

George: the words "expect nothing" coming to mind.

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    We jumped in the loaded van and headed North to the very end of the Mannar peninsula. And yes for the record we were the first people to start a kite school/camp there. We left early, the ride from Negombo to Mannar takes about 5 hours through villages, swampland, lagoons, forests and elephant country. It's a beautiful drive; at least the first time but the van wasn't the most comfortable thing to ride in. I was lucky to get the front seat right above the engine compartment which had long lost its heat sealing and for sure no air conditioning. My behind was baking not to mention my ..... 5 hours later and we finally reached Talaimannar and the camp. Driving through the gates and into the camp area we were greeted by trees everywhere and as we drove into a clearing I saw what was to be our base, a green container.  Where were the tents I saw in the photos? Nothing. Toilet, nope. Shower, nope.  Just that green container baking under the Sri Lankan sun with everything piled up inside. Bed frames, building materials, wood, all sorts of tools, paint buckets, fishing nets, a gas cooking stove, a cabinet and the pride of the camp, a jeep with a happy family of rats living in the engine compartment. 

    Some places might be paradise to some people, but to others they could be hell.  I felt like a big city boy dumped in the middle of nowhere with non of the luxuries I used to take for granted available. And so started my first experience as a gypsy kite surf instructor. We would spend 4-5 days at the camp preparing and deciding on where we would build and erect the wooden cabanas, toilets, showers and planning the basic infrastructure of the place. We'd then drive back to Negombo for a few days to resupply, bring more materials and tools that we needed not to mention have a decent shower and meal. Yes 10 hours of driving every 4-5 days, oh yes my behind was feeling the heat. 

 

 

Without any toilets we had to go back to the basics,                                Public showers at it's best.

               at least there was toilet paper.

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    Sleeping was really hard the first couple of months. It was way too hot to sleep inside the container so I had tried to put one of the bed frames outside with a mosquito net. That didn't work, I couldn't handle sleeping out in the open although I had done so many times back in Lebanon up in the mountains when I used to go camping with friends. But this wasn't high in the Lebanese mountains with the cool refreshing air, this was the tropics with hot, sticky, humid air and mosquitoes as big as your neighbors cat. Have part of your body touching the mosquito net and that was it, fuel station. I eventually found a "better" option and that was to sleep inside our van, not ideal but better than outdoors. 

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The famous van. Dirty, oily, smelly and a kite surf instructors refuge in hard times.

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    After about a month this situation had started getting to me. I waited until the arrival of one of the other instructors and decided to leave the camp and travel around Sri Lanka. I told my boss I would go for two weeks, and if by the time I got back there were still no showers, toilets and a decent place to sleep I was leaving.  So I left, and on my first stop in my favorite place "Sigiriya", I met another traveller and visited other parts of the country with her. We loved it and enjoyed our time together. As sad as I was to go back to the kite camp, I was delightfully surprised when I saw showers, a toilet, tent, electricity and internet connection. Now all we needed was running water nd a hot tub! 

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To make a long story short it still was not easy living in the camp. Most of the time it was just the three of us instructors, there was only a handful of guests and the isolation got to us more than once with arguments and bad feelings towards each other. The kiting was great and we had the whole locatio to ourselves. 

After another five months I had enough and with my mom being sick back home, I decided it was time to leave. I learnt a lot about myself from this experience, the many hours I had to myself made me think about my life and  where I wanted it to go. I knew that although the past months had not been that good, they were just a first step amongst many to where I wanted to get. For now I was heading home, to take care of my sick mother and think about the next steps.

    

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                    One of our instructors fighting boredom                           Looking for gold in all the wrong places.

                                    by fooling around.

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                                       Nature always has a way of making us and our problems seem miniscule.

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