stories, stories, tuk tuks and soldiers

Stories, stories. Here are my stories:

Today I had a tuk tuk driver who was talking to me about some stuff, and Barack Obama came up, as he does these days (ps. Obama sounds a lot like bomb in English and in Sinhala, which has lead to more than one kind of confused but not in a good way conversation with soldiers). This tuk tuk driver asked me if Obama was a Muslim, and I said no. At first he didn't believe me, but then I could tell when he believed me that Obama was a Christian-kenek (Christian-person), because he said "Oh good!" Um, awkward. What can I really say to that?

This is the opposite of a conversation I had with a tuk tuk driver a few months ago about Obama - he also was saying how Obama was a Muslim, and I corrected him, but then when he got sad I realized that he was excited because HE was also a Muslim (duh, Lea, Arabic in the tuk tuk is a dead give-away). And then I felt bad for bursting his bubble, so I told him that Obama's father is a Muslim and that his family is Muslim.

Maybe I should stop correcting people?

Last week I was pulled over at this pretty hard-core checkpoint on the southern border of Colombo - its the border of the city and its going into a Tamil neighborhood, so its staffed by the STF who are more strict about their checking. Anyway, I was pulled over and one soldier was looking at my passport and another one (a female soldier) was going through my bag and she found a tampon. What's this, she asked, in Sinhala. Ummmmm. Lets just say that my Sinhala vocabulary does not extend to words like "period" "mensturation" or "womanly time" (which is my new favorite way to describe my period). My mind momentarily blanked out as I contemplated the hand gestures that could explain to this soldier (and the like six dude soldiers standing around) what a tampon is. Luckily I happened to have a pad in there as well, and so I said "like this" and they sent me on my merry way. Although, like always, I wonder how this interaction would have gone without the white-girl-at-a-checkpoint aspect of my life.

The other story I thought I would share was how I was once in an elevator in Colombo going up to a friend's apartment and this girl - maybe 12 or 13 years old - asked me where I was from. Before I could reply she looked at me and she said, "Africa?" I must have stared for a moment before I said, uh, no, America. Then she got off and I went up to see my friend. I mean, people have guessed that I am from a lot of places (New Zealand, Finland, etc), but never before Africa. She didn't specify more than that, either.

Stories, stories.