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| The lake in our little hill-town, not precisely the view from home |
Me: Mmmf. ‘kay.
In and out of the shower, dressed, quick bite, and on the road. As
American Ex-patriates living in Sri Lanka, we had to renew our residency visas
annually. Thing is, we lived up in the mountains. All the government agencies
were in the capitol city of Colombo. It was a four-hour drive.
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| That square formation in the distance is called "Bible Rock". |
Dad would collect everyone’s passports during our school vacations (we
went to boarding school, so he could only renew our visas while we were home),
take a day to drive down the mountain, spend hours in numerous offices, and
drive home. Sometimes visiting our colleagues in the city, depending on time.
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| You can tell we're down in the plains because everyone is dressed for heat. |
At some point in Junior High, I started going with him. Just a random
daddy-daughter road-trip. There was this massive, non-air-conditioned tropical
office, where we’d stand in a monster long line for one or two hours, relishing
the moments we were in the pathway of whatever fans they had running, turn in
the passports (and paperwork? I don’t recall), wait a while longer, and go back to
the desk to collect the updated legal documents.
The [POUND-pound, POUND-pound,
POUND-pound] of the employee slamming his rubber stamper into ink and then onto
the page in the passport booklet is embedded in my mind.
Finally we’d leave,
dripping with sweat. Then on to the next office. Presumably all the stops
weren’t visa related, and we were just taking advantage of being in the city to
get things done.
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| Their old logo |
We always got ice-cream on the way out of the city. At this place
called “Elephant House” which had nothing to do with elephants except the logo.
That’s where I first saw a giant, two-inch cockroach crawling along the floor. In
non-air-conditioned, open-air, tropical buildings, bugs could come and go at
will. No big deal.
...It made the tiny cockroach I found cooked into my pancake at school
seem inconsequential.
The ice-cream stop became a lifelong tradition with my dad. If we were ever out together by ourselves, there would be ice-cream. Period.
What a gift to see this experience through someone's eyes. It's completely foreign, but I felt I was there. I grew up in a place where -32F was complained about, but not all that rare. No cockroaches. No crazy heat.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jerimi. I'm trying to keep these posts story-like.
DeleteI am surprised they would stamp the passports without the owner of the passport being present. Nice story! Love the ice cream shop sign.
ReplyDeleteI think they did stamp them after we came back up to the counter. Perhaps they just had to do a security check before calling us up. Eventually our family was denied visas and had to move, but that's a whole different story.
DeleteMundane to you, fascinating for us! Thank you for sharing that story, it's a little glimpse of a life in another corner of the world I never would have seen. I love those kinds of moments. One of the reasons the A to Z Challenge is so much fun!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm trying to make these each individual stories for A-to-Z. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteNice post. Love the beach picture!
ReplyDeleteThanks. We lived in the mountains, around 6,600 feet, so I didn't spend a lot of time on the beach. ...until I moved to Delaware (my D post).
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWell, now I want to go. I want to ride an elephant through the Elephant House drive thru.
ReplyDeleteHa! I wonder if they have one.
ReplyDelete