{"id":103475,"date":"2022-11-06T16:06:58","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T16:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=103475"},"modified":"2022-11-06T16:07:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T16:07:25","slug":"the-retreat-by-michael-patrick-oleary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/the-retreat-by-michael-patrick-oleary\/","title":{"rendered":"The Retreat-By Michael Patrick O\u2019Leary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Retreat-By Michael Patrick O\u2019Leary<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Tobacco<\/p>\n

Source:<\/span><\/strong>Island<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, we moved from a land without snakes to a place where snakes abound. St Patrick (allegedly) drove all the snakes out of Ireland. There is a job for him in Sri Lanka (if only he exists). I heard my wife\u00a0scream from the bathroom. She had trodden on a snake which looked about ten feet long. Distinctly displeased, it slithered sullenly out of the house.\u00a0I am told the\u00a0garandiya\u00a0is not dangerous \u2013 unless you happen to be a rodent. It is not venomous\u00a0\u2013\u00a0but you wouldn\u2019t welcome a bite from it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deadly serpents\u00a0were spotted in our Garden of Eden. We suspected that Pipistrelle, one of our dogs, died after being bitten on the snout by a Russel\u2019s viper. The\u00a0krait\u00a0is a particularly unpleasant fellow, who has a habit of hiding its head under its\u00a0flattened\u00a0body and concealing itself under piles of leaves.\u00a0It has been known to indulge in cannibalism.\u00a0You stop breathing if you don\u2019t get rapid treatment for a bite.\u00a0One night we were sleeping soundly when our cat alerted us at 3 a.m. to the presence of a krait on our bedroom floor. We calmly swept it into a bucket and disposed of it outside.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Another night we saw six baby serpents emerging from a hole in the wall near the kitchen door. One day,\u00a0I heard a susurration in the tea bushes two feet to my left and a spectacled cobra\u00a0came towards me, fanning out its hood and staring. I stared back. We both made our excuses and left. My philosophy is, \u201cif you leave them alone, they will leave you alone\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone asked me if I missed the Cork rain. I said that I missed its moderation.\u00a0Despite occasional droughts, in Uva, it sometimes felt as if the rain persisted for 25 hours a day, 13 months a year.\u00a0Even indoors, it felt as though we were living underwater.\u00a0After heavy rains, our\u00a0river roared like an angry god and during calmer times it sounded like human voices murmuring or a radio on low volume.\u00a0The rain flushed out scorpions\u00a0like prehistoric Humvees, centipedes\u00a0like malevolent moustaches\u00a0and swarms of suicidal meroos emerging from holes in the wall and heading for the lights to provide fodder for frogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we lived in Bandarawela, our water supply was metered, paid for and rationed. There\u00a0were\u00a0often periods when no water at all was available. After moving to Gonagala\u00a0in 2003, we were never short of water in our house but the\u00a0nearby villages sometimes needed bowsers\u00a0to bring\u00a0water in.\u00a0At Gonagala, a tributary of the\u202fMenik Ganga\u202f(Gemstone River) formed the boundary of one side of our acre.<\/span><\/p>\n

We live in a place of water.<\/span>
\nOur house rests in the embrace<\/span>
\nOf streams gushing<\/span>
\nFrom the heights of Namunukula.<\/span>
\nSpouts feed the fruit.<\/span>
\nRivulets plash into tarns<\/span>
\nCollecting down in the paddy,<\/span>
\nBirthing pools for mosquitoes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0All night, rain surrounded our senses<\/span>
\nAs if we were underwater.<\/span>
\nThe susurrating storm flushed<\/span>
\nScorpions from the dank undergrowth.<\/span>
\nGiant black beetles battered<\/span>
\nDoors and windows for admittance<\/span>
\nTo the light.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0In the morning, sharp light focuses<\/span>
\nLunugala, free of its customary<\/span>
\nWisps of cloud.<\/span>
\nAll around the house,<\/span>
\nMass suicide of meroos \u2013 ants<\/span>
\nConscientiously eat the cadavers.<\/span>
\nA black robin, its blackness so profound<\/span>
\nThat it strains the boundaries of black,<\/span>
\nTransgressing into iridescent blue,<\/span>
\nFramed against the azure,<\/span>
\nCalls us out to the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our household water came straight from the Namunukula Mountains. It is difficult to stomach Colombo or London water after this because it reeks of chlorine. The frequent and lengthy heavy downpours could make\u00a0Namunukula water\u00a0muddy, and there were numerous cattle, goats and monkeys\u00a0to shit and piss in it before it reached our house, but we got it to a clear state by filtering it through a series of tanks and pumps and boiling it. The garden was always lush because we set up a series of pipes and taps on all the terraces. Any surplus\u00a0water\u00a0flowed back into the river.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too much water from the skies sometimes meant our water supply was threatened. Incessant heavy rain for over a month in the October monsoon brought down about a kilometre of road above our property. The landslide rearranged the water courses and the crashing boulders irreparably broke the channels that customarily brought water into our land. We soon got together a rapid reaction force to assemble a system of pipes to pump up water from the river.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there was much rain and wind, sometimes the sun was intense. This combination gives Uva tea its unique flavour. There was plenty of shade from the many trees in the terraced garden. The house was built of black stone (like our Irish cottage, The Sanctuary) and had good ventilation so there was no need of AC and we rarely used fans. In Ireland, we built fences to stop rabbits eating the lettuce. Here fencing will not stop the monkeys from the jungle eating our guavas. Our cousins the monkeys show typically human selfishness and wastefulness.\u00a0 I watched a monkey sitting in\u00a0our\u00a0peach tree, fruit in each hand, both of which will be discarded half-eaten.<\/span><\/p>\n

They picked avocadoes when they were still hard and then cast them on the ground in frustration. They also ate clothes pegs.\u00a0I have seen the tiny intricate nests woven by tailor birds thrown to the ground by the monkeys,\u00a0the\u00a0eggs smashed\u00a0to shards. The dogs went berserk when the monkeys arrived, emitting a particular piercing howl dedicated to monkeys. The monkeys responded by derisively throwing their shit at the dogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The borderline between man and nature is porous.\u00a0Even in Ireland, it was not easy to impose order in our garden newly hewn from meadow. There rested and rusted a gate bought from a traveller, a barrier to deter errant sheep, a boundary to mark what we had bought from nature, human purpose stamped on wild fecundity. The gate disappeared in a tangle of thistles tall enough to look me in the eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our vegetable production was not as successful in Uva as it had been in County Cork. Apart from beans, we had little success in growing \u201cEnglish\u201d vegetables. The soil was sandy and was eroded by heavy wind and rain. We did our best to rearrange the flow of the water and to enrich the soil with compost and manure from our neighbors\u2019 cattle. In County Cork, we were surrounded by farmland and all of the farmers were called Barry. John, James, and Dan (who had a finger missing) and a non-Barry called Walter. Perhaps that was why it was called the Barony of Barrymore. More Barrys than you could shake a shillelagh at. John Barry had sheep, cows and elegant racehorses. All our neighbouring farmers were generous in their donations of shit. We got a fine concoction of manure from the fragrant horseshit, mixed with sheep, cow and kitchen waste with a special ingredient of seaweed fresh from the strand. Plus a dash of citrus from the lemons we had with our gin and tonic. Our compost was a potent concoction which smelt good enough to eat.<\/span><\/p>\n

We were fortunate that there were many good things that Mother Nature provided without any effort on our part, jak, billing, avocado, lemon, lime, grapefruit, pomelo, loquat, oranges, guavas, pomegranates, coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

We lived in the middle of a tea estate. Sun and rain brought lush abundance in myriad shades of green. Plants\u00a0familiar in the west as tame houseplants \u2013 bromeliads, anthuriums, money plant, and amaryllis \u2013 were rampant in the wild. \u00a0The plant sold in small pots in the west as cheese plant, monstera deliciosa, grows wild to a height of 100 feet with leaves big enough to shelter a family of monkeys.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mother Nature invaded the house itself. One evening a gecko landed in my eye.\u00a0On another occasion a baby rat landed on my head. It was rather disconcerting to observe that the sugar was on the move\u00a0as huge red ants\u00a0tried\u00a0to escape from the jar.\u00a0I prefer my food to be immobile. I did not much like the way, in another\u00a0jar,\u00a0evil little weevils reduced the chick peas to gram flour.\u00a0In the bathroom,\u00a0mosquitoes the\u00a0sizes of small helicopters emerged\u00a0from the toilet bowl and swarms of wasps landed on my head.\u00a0In the shower, a small frog, the size of a\u00a0mung bean, with big bulging eyes like Ray Bans, glared at me. A larger frog, warty as Robert Redford, leapt around the tiles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking an improving tome\u00a0from the shelf, I discovered that I was holding only the spine in my hand and a pile of dust; armies of white ants hurtled about the shelves carrying their eggs.\u202fThe library ate my books.\u00a0There are 67 accepted species of booklice in Sri Lanka. The scientific name for this order of insects is Psocoptera.\u00a0They first appeared in the\u00a0Permian\u00a0period, 295\u2013248\u00a0million years ago. Were there any books to devour then? They are often regarded as the most primitive of the\u00a0hemipteroids. \u00a0Many species live\u00a0gregariously. Mating behaviour can be elaborate but I will not go into detail in a family newspaper.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes\u00a0hooligan elements of the rodent domain set up home as squatters\u00a0in the car\u00a0and\u00a0ate\u00a0various bits of foam and plastic. No doubt, they will soon set to work on something important like the brake cables.\u00a0Small, but probably rabid, bats flew dangerously close to my face as we relaxed in the evening with a glass or two on the porch. Much larger sinister bats, hung like innumerable Christopher Lees from the\u00a0Sapus. In an Irish summer it was sometimes still light at midnight. It gets dark early in the Sri Lankan mountains (\u201cIt gets late early\u201d, as my father used to say.) However, true darkness never descended on the bedroom. Fireflies blazoned the night, roosting in my hair like stars. It was like trying to get to sleep inside a fully lit Christmas tree.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the day a serpent eagle rode the thermals looking for snakes full of frogs which were full of ants and flies. I think it may have had its eye on the cat, which was full of\u00a0geckoes. Huge\u00a0skrawking\u00a0crows circled\u00a0doomily\u00a0around the Muslim slaughterhouse next\u00a0door. Large\u00a0frogs hopped about eating the flying ants.\u00a0Coucals\u00a0(of the subfamily\u00a0Centropodinae\u00a0and the genus\u00a0Centropus) and snakes carried away the frogs for supper.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Retreat-By Michael Patrick O\u2019Leary Source:Island Twenty years ago, we moved from a land without snakes to a place where snakes abound. St Patrick (allegedly) drove all the snakes out of Ireland. There is a job for him in Sri Lanka (if only he exists). I heard my wife\u00a0scream from the bathroom. She had trodden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[38822,49204],"class_list":{"0":"post-103475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-menik-ganga","9":"tag-namunukula-mountains","10":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nThe Retreat-By Michael Patrick O\u2019Leary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Twenty years ago, we moved from a land without snakes to a place where snakes abound. 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