How It Begins
First comes the heat. Burning swirling endless heat. Colors. Deep blues and reds and browns. Movement slows. Moisture builds. The next day there is an ocean.
Then stones, pits, chasms. Land. Then come the palms and the figs. Roots, stems, trunks, fronds, fruit. Caps and sponges. Wings and scales. Spotty flyers and buzzes and creepers.
Branches, bones, flesh, fur. Creatures. Calls, cackles and howls. The next day there is a forest.
Vast murmurs as winds make waves through the leaves, exposing a new shade of green to the sunlight and the moonlight for the first time again and again. Now there is music.
There are two of them now. The small and furry who chitter and chatter, and the taller ones who recently appeared. They knew each other in a previous age but have not forgotten how to listen to each other. They like to keep their children together.
First there is Kande. He sings and brings forth worlds. Then there is Wanniya and Bilindi. They are the Nae-Laetto. There are also Bambara and Pemba and all the others whose names are sung, whose spirits carry on through the people of the forest, the taller ones called the Wanniya-Laetto. And the smaller ones, called the Nittaewo.
The people of the forest sit and reminisce with the palms and the figs and the gum trees, and with the scaled ones and winged ones and furry ones, about all of their long-lost relatives who live across the ocean in lands that are sometimes cooler and drier and sometimes warmer and wetter. They all listen to each other with great interest and pass the information along to their families throughout the forest. The trees tell the people and the creatures of the forest which of their kin will help them grow strong and which will cure sickness and how to prepare meals and medicines.
The people make bows and arrows out of fallen branches. They make ropes and live in carved stone. They sing kingdoms into being and out of being as they travel with the creatures.
The Wanniya-Laeto are the people of Lanka, and their guardian spirits love and protect them forever. This is where my story begins.
Notes
1 The Wanniya-laeto practice ancestor worship (source) and honour great hunters and heroes/heroines who lived earlier. The most important hunting spirit is the spirit of kande Wanniya, a celebrated hunter who lived many generations ago. (source)
2 At Sitala Wanniya and other sites, Kande and Bilindi are known as brothers. Kande is invoked for good luck in hunting deer. Bilindi is a child spirit. Both are considered friendly and helpful spirits. (source)
3 The Nae are the spirits of the dead, they must report themselves to Kande as the chief spirit to obtain permission to help the living and accept their offerings. (source)
4 Bees in Sigiriya are a species known as Rock Bees or Giant Honey Bee scientifically categorized as Apis dorsata. Referred to as ‘Bambara’ in Sinhala, they feed on pollen and nectar of flowers. (source)
Bambara is also a people and a language in West Africa, particularly Mali (although there is no direct link suggested between this group and the Australoid migration). Bambarakanda Falls is the name of the tallest waterfall in Sri Lanka. (source)
5 A creator god of the Bambara people of West Africa. He descended to earth as an acacia seed (Acacia albida) which first grew to a mighty tree and then died. From the wood Pemba generated human souls and a female being whom he impregnated to engender all human and animal life. (source) Plants related to this tree are found in Sri Lanka.
6 Wanniya-Laetto translates to “forest-dwellers”. Their traditional activities were hunting and beekeeping. They did not originally practice chena farming, but were later forced to adopt it. At some point, those who gave up hunting to take up chena cultivation and eventually irrigated cultivation are said to have been called Handuruwa ('who left the hunt') before they became known as Goyigama. (source) Govigama is one of the largests groups in Sri Lanka. Govi, meaning paddy farmer, derives from the root word goyam, meaning paddy plant. (source)
7 The Nittaewo are described as a small, hairy tribe of people living in Sri Lanka. The Nittaewo were small hominids who stood about 3-4 feet tall. They lived in trees, caves and crevices and they are said to have lived in groups of 10 or 20 and their speech was like the twittering of birds. (source) The Wanniya-Laetto are said to have killed the last of the Nittaewo in the 18th century after the Nittaewo started stealing Wanniya-Laetto children. (source)
Excerpted from an unfinished, unpublished collection of myths made new called Near-Sighted Visions: A Collection of Teaching Tales from Around the World
How Sri Lanka Escaped The Cycle of Violence
A War-Monger Subdued and a Humanitarian Crisis Averted: A World Power is Showing that Moral, Economic, and Environmental Leadership are a Winning Combination.
SRI LANKA - In a war that has dragged on for 27 years, more than 80,000 on both sides have died, hundreds of thousands have lost their homes and the future of one of the most idyllic tropical islands in the world has hung in the balance for decades. And now, suddenly, the Sri Lankan civil war is all over, thanks to help from an unexpected quarter: the diplomacy of foreign direct investment.
In defiance of all predictions, the war was brought to a swift and bloodless end. The plight of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians caught in the middle prompted a creative Chinese intervention that prevented the UN Security Council from needing to debate the issue, let alone sending monitors to investigate.
When the US ended direct military aid in 2007 over Sri Lanka's deteriorating human rights record, China leapt into the breach, increasing aid to nearly $1bn (£690m) to become the island's biggest donor, giving tens of millions of dollars' worth of educational materials and scientific equipment, and making a free gift of six mobile education units to Sri Lanka’s higher education system.
Crucially, China prevented the Sri Lankan government from murdering civilians at the cost of ending the civil conflict by including in its investment terms that no military action could be taken that would harm the civilians caught in the middle between the capital Colombo in the West and the LTTE stronghold in the East, and no educational policies could be drafted that favored one ethnic group over another, nor could proxies such as language or geography be used to promote de facto discrimination.
Suddenly, thanks to China's investment terms, the ethnic tensions that had wreaked havoc on the island nation — tensions that had been introduced during a nearly 500-year history of colonial exploitation — were neutralized, and the immensely vibrant little island in the Indian Ocean had a new future to look forward to. China encouraged its new ally to use the donated mobile education units to train a new generation of Sri Lankans to specialize in marine biology, life sciences, and indigenous culture as well as to develop innovative climate change interventions. Most notably, these solutions include the state of the art tectonic monitoring and early warning system that has averted humanitarian disasters throughout the region since its launch in 2014.
Money, arms and diplomatic cover are necessary preconditions for taking a war to its logical conclusion, but they are not enough. Also required is ideological and political cover: a casus belli that must go beyond the thirst for revenge, communal hatred or the urge of the majority to impose its will permanently on the minority. It must be possible to sell it as a just war.
This is what China, through its humane approach to diplomacy, was able to avert. Of course, China’s efforts were not rooted in altruism. In return for helping Sri Lanka unravel the knotty tensions of a complicated colonial history and jumpstart a new area where Sri Lanka’s natural resources could enable them to lead in scientific innovation, the Chinese got to build a new port at Hambantota on the south coast, a vital link in the "string of pearls" they are constructing across the Indian Ocean, from Burma to Pakistan.
The “maritime silk road” concept first emerged during President Xi Jinping’s first trip to Southeast Asia last October. Yang Baoyun, a professor of Southeast Asian studies at Peking University told China Daily that “the new maritime silk road will bring tangible benefits to neighbors along the route, and will be a new driving force for the prosperity of the entire East Asian region.”
And as we’ve seen Sri Lanka race to the head of the pack in the ASEAN region in GDP gains, it’s clear that China’s insistence that its investment in regional maritime infrastructure is economically motivated is no hollow boast. Announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (also known as One Belt, One Road or OBOR) aims to strengthen China’s connectivity with the world. It combines new and old projects, covers an expansive geographic scope, and includes efforts to strengthen hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure, and cultural ties.
Last month, Sri Lanka officially cut the ribbon on the Colombo Port City project, a $1.4 billion Sri Lankan-Chinese partnered initiative to construct a “mini-academy” atop reclaimed land at the country’s capital. The project is the largest in Sri Lanka’s history and falls under Beijing’s One Belt, One Road and New Silk Road initiatives, which are designed in part to expand and secure China’s trade routes throughout Asia.
The Port City project, newly rechristened the Colombo International Marine Culture Academy, is the first of its kind: a research university with a teaching faculty drawn from scientific experts, cultural and humanities experts, and local experts including subsistence fishers, craftspeople, and indigenous elders. An equally global student population is being recruited from around the world for its first incoming class, with 10 percent of available slots reserved for Sri Lankan natives.
The buzz and excitement over the academy city offers a taste of the potential benefits the One Belt initiative could bring: it has helped Sri Lanka repay $1 billion in loans to both Chinese investors and the World Bank in record time, rekindled a Chinese-Indian cross-cultural partnership, and gained praise for Beijing’s use of economic statecraft to increase regional stability while reaping significant economic gains for all involved.
A new term has been coined by the press in talking about other countries eager to take part in China’s One Belt initiative: Sri Lanka’s Virtuous Debt Cycle.
A note about this piece: By presenting the utopian view of the potential outcomes of an investment relationship like the one in Sri Lanka by China, foreign investors engaged in efforts like the One Belt One Road initiative are encouraged to see how their investments can be actively steered to become a tool for peace building.