With astonishment I see the bulldozer come over to our little bit of paradise. I look over to the neighbours and see that they knocked down the wall that separates the two properties already as they plundge through the garden and knock down the two entry pillars that separate the beach from the land. They have come to knock down all the properties that are closer then 10 meters from the natural tree line. Meaning that they have come to knock down the brick building right infront of our treehouse hut. It has survived the Tsunami, but won't survive the greed of the goverment as they want to build a road in front of the beach, as the son of the president has bought land here. The bulldozer drives straight over the plants that Kandy had been watering everyday and knocks down the building with disregard of any building regulations as we are still in our tree hut which is build partly over the brick building. Kandy comes running out of his 'office' and looks like he will burst out in tears as he obviously wasn't informed about them coming over. So we go out for our breakfast.
When we walk on the beach to go and look at the boys surfing in the evening, Marlies and I notice a big crowd surounding the bulldozer working on another building on the end of the beach. They have left a trail of destruction along the beach and it all seems pretty random to me as some places are still standing and definitly within the 10 m zone, where others are a lot further away and still taking down. There are many police men around as they expect problems with the locals and by the look of it they are right in fearing that. You can just feel the tensions in the air as they continue knocking down the result of hard labour by family buisnesses, sometimes leaving them with nothing. I guess this is the other side of beautiful Sri Lanka, It's also very corrupt and unfair.
We talk a bit more with Kandy, who happens to know a lot about the history of Sri Lanka and knows a thing or so about Ayuvedic medicine as he makes a lemon ginger steam bath for Marlies who got a bit of a cold. See seems a lot better after it. He tells us that he works here for 100 days straight, day and night and then gets 6 days off. In which he will travel back to Kandy and hopefully meet the women his sister found for him and might become his future wife. it's amazing the amount of days he works, but then again, if you see what he really does, you can't excaclty call that productive. Which sums up the Sri Lankan way of working really.
