SRI LANKA 1986 TO 1987.
A new airport called Bandaranaike was built. I was responsible with a team of engineers for the installation of a Stratus controlled voice switching system, 7 Air Traffic Control consoles and 3 Radar displays. Also in a separate building a multiplex system for the Military.
When I arrived I was given a car and driver. It didn’t take me long he drove so slowly I dispensed with his services. I stayed in Negombo 35 kms to Colombo and 6 kms to the Airport and stayed in a house in the grounds of big hotel Also there were ex BOAC pilots working for Air Sri Lanka staying there. It was a very lonely existence, the only time you met other people was at meal times and when you had heavy rain which it often did you got very wet. I found just down the road a small hotel called Star beach and moved in. The owner was very nice and helpful. The food was also good. I told my BOAC mates and they changed hotels. I was paid in Rupees the local currency which I found difficult to spend. The Pilots obliged by buying these off me at a good rate for UK pounds. When flying back to UK I would sit in the cockpit. What amazed me during the whole flight unless there was any emergency it was hands off, the plane would fly itself by a computer that had been programmed in before the flight started. They told me many books had been read during a flight but there was always one keeping an eye out. It was a very big aircraft and when it had landed and taxiing on the tarmac it was steered by a very small lever to the left of the pilot. I also found out by experience that when it was raining the pilot would deliberately bang the wheels on the runway to get them turning.
The first hotel had a squash and volleyball court. Volleyball was very popular with the young Sri Lanka ladies wearing very short skirts. A pleasure to watch which I often did when making squash bookings at the hotel. I met up with Peter who was working on a British Aid Program. He was a very good player and we played almost every day. When I left the country I was a very fit person. He rented a room in a Sri Lanka couples house opposite the road not really just well trodden grass which flooded in the monsoon season requiring Wellington boots. They also had a Tamil Tiger friend living with them which was quite normal in those days. They were a very nice couple and interesting to talk to and often invited me over for a meal.
Danie came out for a holiday in April and we visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth which is a Buddhist Temple in the city of Kandy and houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. We watched the monks conducting a Ritual in the inner chambers of the temple in the afternoon .This is also performed in the morning and evening. This ritual goes back to the reign of King Kirthi Sri Meghavarna in the 3rd century when the tooth was given to him. It was said that as long as the king has it in his custody he has the rite to rule .
In the town there is a man made 2 mile wide lake created in 1807 by last Sinhalese King of Kandy using forced labour Before it had been a paddy field for the people. When a 100 of his advisors went against this building he had them all impaled on the embankment. (what a nice fellow) In the middle he built a Royal Summer house and used it as his Harem. We also visited the Botanical Gardens the origins of which go back to 1371. A temple was built on this location by King Wimala Dharma but was destroyed by the British when they controlled Kandy. The Botanical garden was first established in 1821 by an English man Alexander Moon. Plants from Kew Gardens were planted in 1843. In the gardens is the classical Avenue of Palm trees. One tree of significant history is the Cannonball tree which is still there planted by King George V and Queen Mary in 1901.The tree is bent with its fruit, During the second World War the gardens were used by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in the South Asia , as the headquarters of the South East Asia Command. I had the honor when I was in the Royal Navy attending a very interesting speech which he made. A wonderful man and a tragic loss.
Sri Lanka is well known for its tea. Its first plantation was started in the Loolecondera Kandy by James Tayler in 1867.The first shipment of tea which weighed only 23lb to UK was in1873. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarked upon this saying the tea fields of Ceylon are as true a monument to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. Sinhalese people were reluctant to work in the plantations so Indian Tamils were brought in and by 1855 there were 55,000. In 1983 they were granted citizenship.
Today they number a million mostly women who start work aged 13.Their living conditions are squalid with poor housing provided by the owners and very low wages the men earning around £2 a day and the women £1.50. The workers are all Tamils but no way associated with the Tigers otherwise they would lose their jobs.
We visited Nuwara Eliya which is considered the most important location for tea production. There were many women on the hill sides bending up and down putting the leafs in a wicker baskets on their backs. From the town we had a splendid view of the Pidurutalagala mountains the tallest in Sri Lanka. The city was founded by Samuel Baker who previously had explored the river Nile in 1845. Its climate led to it being called Little England and many British Colonialists lived there playing cricket, golf and polo together with fox, deer and elephant hunting. We saw many old buildings including the town post office We were lucky coming in April because it was the Sinhalese and Tamil new year and we saw 2 local school bands marching and an amazing car hill race which were told was first run in 1934. On one of our trips we visited the Yala National park on the east coast. It had one of the largest groups of leopards, and elephants, crocodiles, mongoose and monkeys. In a secure area we had never seen so many different snakes. A member of the zoo staff handed one to Danie. (see photo) I refrained. On our final trip we visited a game park in the north Minneriya. Not as big as Yala but it had hundreds of elephants (see picture) and we were very lucky to see Sloth bears, Leaf Faced monkeys and a Toque.
To celebrate the completion of the new the Air Traffic Consuls and Radar displays there was a televised opening ceremony. To mark the occasion the first aircraft to land was the Concorde. I was asked if I could speak about the new installation and had made up notes for this. In the Control Tower there were local dignitaries when the British Ambassador John Durham arrived.. We both stood there in amazement and he said what are you doing here and I repeated the same. What a small world. Previously back in 1973 we shared a tent in Somalia with him and his wife and 2 children spending many enjoyable weekends on the beach. We still keep in touch. Since their retirement they have traveled all over the world and every Christmas we get the latest written update.
As is the norm overseas I always catch out of the ordinary diseases. This time just before I left I came down with a fever and a very high temperature. Luckily I had met an English Lady Doctor from Colombo who had treated one of the pilots. I gave her a call and she arrived in the afternoon. She told me I had Typhoid. And gave me antibiotics. The hotel brought my meals to the room. My friends across the road visited me as did the pilot mob and within a week I was given the OK and back to work.