The next stop was Ceylon — Sri Lanka — where the Mauritania berthed for over and week and the men had four days shore leave in Colombo. “Sights rarely seen” indeed, and a very different culture.
In the Colombo Post Office Cliff added this note to the letter he’d been writing, and tore the printed headers off the pages to reduce the weight before posting it. ~ Ian
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We had a swim in the salon swimming club bath yesterday and it was beautiful. The water was lukewarm, the baths surrounded by beautiful lawns and shaded places where you can sit and be served with anything you require.
The white people don’t seem to work here. The black fellows do everything. They even wrung out our togs for us. Only white people are allowed in the baths. It is so hot that the concrete around the sides has to be kept wet as it would burn your feet off. The natives are all barefooted but no doubt hardened.
We had a couple of rickshaw rides and it was great fun. The natives are begging from you wherever you go and imploring you to buy something. We usually beat them down to a quarter price… They are real robbers. If they had the chance I’m sure they would knock you down for a couple of rupees. Some of them are very intelligent and real gentleman though. The upper class.
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The Great Depression… The War… The British Empire still spanning the globe. New Zealand a distant outpost with a fifth the population of London, isolated beyond our own imagining.
When the Hikurangi miners left Lancashire they never expected to see Home again, let alone Ceylon. Whereas Heather and I could fly there for a holiday and Ayurvedic spa treatments alongside Sri Lankan businessmen, their wives and their mobile phones. When we got home we could go to a Sri Lankan shop on Sandringham Road to buy spices and so on.
It’s hard to imagine places more unalike than 1930s New Zealand and Ceylon — or North Africa, where the 2NZEF boys were headed next. Unlike us they’d had no experience with these peoples back home either. They and their ways were completely foreign.
Trying to read Cliff’s letters through other people’s eyes — not just my own — I remember my own sense of overwhelm in Thailand, in 1980 — the heat and humidity, the press of people, the strange sights and the foreign smells in the Bangkok markets — and I can empathise with his culture shock.
Back at sea he wrote at length to Dorothy about Ceylon. I do wish I could change one word — swap “natives” for what we would have called Solomon Islanders on my foreign aid assignment — the “locals” — but that word and those concepts are doubtless outmoded now too. ~ Ian
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Ray and I had an afternoon walk through the slum area one day. If the natives there aren’t begging for money or cigarettes they’re begging you to buy something, and the prices are usually ridiculously high. A resident white person would strike a low class native who touched him or her, but, as the newcomers aren’t used to them, they take advantage of it. They grab hold of your arms and run after you tearing at your clothes. By the time you have been amongst them for half an hour you are sticky and stink with filth.
Yelling and threatening them doesn’t always frighten them so we bought ourselves a police club. After that they kept their distance, and you didn’t have to use it. Police clubs were a common sight amongst the troops but I only met one chap who’d had to use one. I’d say it would be very dangerous in that quarter at night and for that reason we weren’t given night leave.
Ray and I visited the native police barracks on the Monday and the native police made a great fuss of us. They are higher class natives, well educated, they speak good English and are very intelligent. I made one good friend in particular — Jimmy, Detective Corporal James Silva of the local CID. Quite an important fellow indeed. We had a good time there. They persuaded us to have a cold shower in the bathroom, and they helped the shower along by pouring buckets of cold water over us. It was great after the heat and sweat. They treated us to King Coconuts, bananas etc. King Coconuts are different to the ones we see in New Zealand. You only drink the juice and don’t touch the flesh. They are yellow and don’t have fibre casings on them like the ones we know.
One day, when I went there alone, Jimmy took me to a native restaurant and shouted me bananas and soft drinks and cigarettes. It was a fairly dirty place, as such places usually are, and every table was screened off with panelling and swinging doors. The natives displayed great curiosity as they are undoubtedly not used to white customers. I didn’t like the idea of sampling their drinks very much but I thought I had better be sociable, and the restaurant was one frequented by the higher class.
Jimmy doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages, but when we returned to the barracks his cobber would have me sample “Toddy”, the native beer, made from the juice that pours from the stem of the young King Coconut flower and the bark of certain trees. I had some great fun trying to drink it and persuade them that I liked it, which I didn’t. I managed to get rid of half of it.
Last Sunday when I went to look Jimmy up, I was told that he was at a Buddhist service being held behind the barracks. They were holding it in a tent, which was draped with all the colours of the rainbow. I was invited to go inside and watch the proceedings but declined, and watched what I could from outside. They were making offerings of flowers and fruit to their god as they always do, and saying their prayers. They were kneeling down, and the priest was babbling away, and now and again they would bow and touch the ground with their heads. It would’ve been interesting to know what their prayers were.
Jimmy didn’t tell me much about the service, but quite a bit about the lives and habits of the priests. They isolate themselves from all earthly things, they don’t marry and eat only one meal a day. They are not allowed to satisfy any desire for more food, or anything carnal, and spend their time in study and meditation.
There were dozens of lovely souvenirs I would’ve liked to buy but our 14 rupees wouldn’t stand it. We’ve had two pays, one of 14 and one of 7 rupees. Most of that was used to pay for meals, rickshaws, bus trips and entertainment. It costs us one rupee for a swim for instance, and about one rupee for a meal, depending upon your appetite.
We’ve had most meals at the Fleet Club, which is quite a nice place. It is a wartime concern run for the benefit of seamen principally, and you can buy without fear of being robbed. The lady there showed us a great assortment of beautiful gems, all local stuff and very cheap too. There seemed to be dozens of different kinds of every colour. I would like to have plenty of of money and call in here on the way back.
I bought you and Evelyn an ivory brooch each and posted them. I hope you get them alright. They aren’t very wonderful really, but I thought it would be nice to send you some small things from there at least.
We went on two bus trips out into the country. There are without exaggeration hundreds, perhaps thousands of buses, and fares are very cheap. We saw paddy fields, rubber plantations, mangoes, banana trees and coconut palms by the thousands, and also a kapok tree, a sample from which I have posted you. We visited many native markets. Filthy places. We bought quite a lot of pineapples, coconuts, mangoes etc. Meat and fish they have on display is so dirty at times that it would make you sick to look at it and it looks weeks old.
The house vary from filthy hovels to beautiful homes, and there are many beautiful homes and lovely parks in the residential areas where the white people live.
There doesn’t seem to be any waste land at all. Where there aren’t houses, shops and parks there are paddy fields and plantations.
We went for a route march one afternoon and oh boy, was it hot! Even friend Jimmy won’t stir from his siesta in the afternoons. I asked him to show me around the museum, but no, he said we would have to get a car as it was too hot to walk. The place was only a quarter of a mile away, but you know the saying, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
We saw a snake charmer too on our travels and he was a real character. His best feat was to make a mango tree grow from a seed in about two minutes. Truly astonishing, but he did it somehow. He planted the seed in the soil and sprinkled water on it. He had a cloth covering that he let you examine, which he placed over the ground where the seed was planted.
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We’ve had plenty of time to meditate on this trip, and I’ve lived over our experiences together in my thoughts many times. We’ve had some great times together, haven’t we? And we have been very lucky considering. Everything seems to have turned out right for us and I hope they keep on doing so.
Remember the night I drove to Whangaruru with one hand? No you don’t. You were asleep.
But you remember how long we parked on the hill.
Do you know that it isn’t yet 12 months since I first met you? And it seems like years. On June 14th it will be 12 months exactly since I first set eyes on you at the Patriotic Dance in Paparoa. It was a Friday night. Do you remember?
I had known you by phone for some time before that though. I liked you from the first time I heard your voice but I didn’t imagine then that I was going to fall in love with you. It was a gradual process but very short and delightful.
I’m afraid I may have tried to flirt with you a bit but you put me in my place right from the start. Now I’m yours heart and soul and thriving in captivity.
I’ve only have one letter of yours, received at Trentham. I’ve read it through so many times that it is almost worn out. It is almost bedtime now, so I had better get up on deck while there is still some space available.
We won’t be on board much longer.