The land of tea and terror

One of my favorite international business destinations is Sri Lanka. Located just off the southeastern tip of India, the island nation represented my company’s second step in its pursuit of the cheapest labor force in the English-speaking world. (We’ve since set up a third installation in the Philippines, after which I assume we’ll try Zimbabwe followed by Alabama). I’ve been asked three times in the last year or so to help with the training of this outsourcing operation.

Prior to my first trip, I knew very little about the country, other than that it used to be called Ceylon, it was most famous for its tea and rebel insurgencies, and it was way too close to India for my comfort. I had already been to India twice on business and I considered it to be – no offense intended – a spiritually rich but godforsaken hellhole. I had heard that Sri Lanka attracted quite a few European vacationers, so I hoped it might be a little more suitable to my spoiled Western tastes. When I checked out the bookstores for a travel guide and could find plenty about Laos and Myanmar but nothing about my destination, I became a little concerned.

My concern grew when just a few days before my departure, I noticed a small blurb in The New York Times. It reported that the rebels, who previously had been operating only in the opposite end of the island from where I was going, had decided to bomb an oil depot adjacent to the airport I was flying into. Gee, thanks a lot, rebels. I joked nervously with my coworkers that if I were killed in the line of duty, that maybe the company would name a conference room after me (an honor usually reserved only for deposed executives and shut-down sites).

I approached my manager to get a little reassurance, and a little is what I got. The attack was news to her. After a few phone calls, she advised me to visit a special risk assessment website we had contracted with, which advised me to travel only with drivers trained in ambush avoidance. The other advice I got from my manager was good to hear but not exactly sensible: I was to request an upgrade to business class to help ensure my safety. How exactly the insurgents would shoot only the coach class out of the sky was unclear, but I was glad to know I’d be too tanked up on free champagne to care.

The trip itself was largely uneventful, except for the fact that instead of 26 hours it took four days. The corporate travel agent had routed me through Chicago with a half-hour to change planes, which you’re instinctively supposed to know is insane. (“That would’ve jumped out at me right away,” said the agent representative when I called later to complain.) I scrambled to find a grimy airport motel to spend the night, then made it Frankfort, Germany, before discovering I’d again need to rebook, despite assurances to the contrary I had received in Chicago. The new itinerary, featuring a bonus change of planes in Bombay, was going to cost twice what I had originally been quoted.

Now that I had arrived late, neither my host nor the visa attorney I was told I’d need were to be found when I landed in Colombo. I had been given what’s called a “landing visa” by the consulate before I left the U.S., which inexplicably entitles you to land at the airport but not actually leave the airport. As I waited in the immigration line, reading the signs warning against lying about your travel status and the automatic death penalty for drug smugglers, I found myself with no choice but to sidle up close to the nearest Germans and make like a tourist. I had an emergency flower shirt in anticipation of such a screw-up, so I did manage to get waved through.

After making it to the hotel and recovering from my jet lag, I was ready for my first visit to the office. It wasn’t until I gave the address to the cab driver that I realized my office was located in Colombo’s center for international business, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Even worse than this unsettling reminder of terrorism just a few miles from where the airport had been attacked the previous week was the fact that the office was on the thirteenth floor.

The drive from the hotel to the office was a short one. Sri Lanka is a beautiful tropical country and reminded me a lot of my native Miami, with palm trees, natives dressed in colorful attire, and a heavy police presence on every other corner. The decades-long war against the Tamil Tiger insurgents had turned the city into an armed camp packed with security checkpoints. I had to go through no fewer than three metal detectors to get into the Twin Towers, but at least it always reminded me that I had remembered to bring my iPod.

I was treated great by my trainees and coworkers while in the office. Some brought me home-made food (I think it was food), some treated me to local specialties being served in the onsite canteen, some even invited me into their homes. I always felt safe and cared-for while I was in the office, except for one time when a trainee had to suddenly dismiss himself to run into the hall and get sick on the carpet. We later learned he had come down with Dengue Fever, so I had to maneuver past this stain in the rug each day to be sure I didn’t touch any Dengue.

Once I had settled into a regular routine, it wasn’t that hard to get used to the idea that my life was in daily peril. The hotel was within walking distance of the office so, rather than worry about the “ambush avoidance” skills of my drivers, I figured I could handle any incident just as well by running and screaming. And I did have a few incidents, too. One day I was returning to the hotel after work and saw an angry mob being pushed behind police barricades. These weren’t the Tamil Tigers -- who, to hear the government tell it, number about eight -- but instead a group protesting the lack of freedoms they had because of the insurgence suppression. I suddenly thought I had some of that tangy South Asian food repeating on me but soon realized I was whiffing the remnants of a tear gassing. A few evenings later, while having dinner at the hotel, we heard a loud boom. Wanting another story to add to my gas attack, I walked outside and looked down the street to see where a phone booth had just been bombed. Police and soldiers had already roped off the scene, but the next day I was able to stop and pick up a piece of shrapnel. Though I’m still not sure whether the vandalism of the booth was caused by Tamil Tigers or simply Troubled Teens.

I returned to the states after my three-week stint with considerable satisfaction that I’d done a good job as well as some great stories to demonstrate what a travel stud I was. I didn’t get many photos, though. I was dying to get a shot of the machine-gun emplacements just outside the office, but was afraid they’d shoot back. All in all, I had an enjoyable time in the land I now think of as “India Lite”.