June 15
Destination: Sri Lanka
The Neutral Zone
By Beau Flemister

As a traveler, whether traveling for surf or other motives, sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between what you choose to see in a place and what that place actually reveals of itself to you. As travelers we are tourists and observers. As observers, recognizing the duality of some places can be a sobering and surreal experience.

 

Currently, I am on one side of an island at war. Coincidentally, it is paradise. It’s peaceful in this town. I surf a right pointbreak, one of five in the area, two to three times a day. The setup is like a combination between the ‘Ehukai/Pupukea sandbar on a north swell and that right (you know the one) from the Rip Curl Search contest in Mexico a couple years back. I live in a treehouse overlooking the sea and eat fresh fish everyday. Barely a few miles from this town, you can watch herds of wild elephants grazing in emerald fields at dusk. The trees here are teeming with exotic birds, monkeys, lizards and tropical squirrels. I like the people, the Muslims are gentle; I sleep well at night.

Less than four years ago, the restaurant at which I’m writing from was obliterated by the same tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in South/Southeast Asia the day after Christmas, 2004. This place was wiped out and bodies were swept away by the huge tidal surge as far as a mile inland. If you weren’t so busy staring at deliciously seared ono, glowing red on a clean plate and handed to you by Ranga, the owner and chef, you might see how his hand trembles a little. He’s still a bit shaken from hanging onto a tree while seeing his neighbors perish below him in the flood.

While I punt airs serenely off an oncoming section down a speedy right, two bombs have exploded in the capital’s business district. Both were planted on public buses and killed innocent Sinhalese and Tamils, the two main ethnic groups of Sri Lanka. They are at war with each other for reasons dating and lost a thousand years past. There are constant airstrikes in the north of the island targeting Tamil “rebels.” And on this part of the island I’m supposed to be safe?

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here. Sometimes I feel like a war profiteer, taking my vacation in a struggling, yet lush and idyllic destination devoid of tourists. I enjoy this privilege of travel while somewhere over a mountain range, people (my hosts of this country) are killing each other. Tit for tat.

Ironically, a few days ago I was getting a ride with some off-duty United Nations workers to a secret right point. These U.N. peacekeepers have been to the world’s worst settings. Previously in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia, and now here, they, with me tagging along, are making a small escape. They don’t talk about the tragic situation in the North or about the child-soldiers and suicide bombers. This day, they were anticipating the surf, wondering if the swell was going to fill into the curve of the coastline correctly. Though at times I myself don’t quite understand my place or purpose on this unstable turf, I shut my mouth and followed them into the water. Maybe, as surfers, we’re on to something. Some form of neutral sanctuary? I hope so.

Beyond just “a place with good surf” are countries with cultures, catastrophes, histories and complexities that do not require our judgment (for how can some things be judged?), but just our attention. Our eyes open, observing along the walk back from the point to the hotel, through the countless military checkpoints. Of course, we’re no United Nations; we’re not qualified, we spend too much time surfing. But when, minus aid-workers in pickup trucks, you’re the only ones left coming to a country, and you’re an Ozzie or a Brit or a Yank or Israeli, then I guess you do become ambassadors of a sort. And then the best thing you can do is just represent your people as well as you can. That, and get shacked.