I met Nick six years ago, when I moved to a small town in southwest Bulgaria as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He was running the organization he founded–Orphan Sponsorship International. He was American, I was American–we were meant to be friends, meant to come together in the evenings, discuss our work frustrations over Kamentiza beer, catching a little cancer in the smoke-filled cafes. When he moved to Sri Lanka, I took over his work in Bulgaria, his frustrations, orphans ringing the doorbell at 7:00am saying they needed new school shoes immediately. And tampons. And a Ferrari. After I finished my work in Bulgaria, and moved back to America, Nick insisted I come to Sri Lanka, at least to visit–the kids are amazing–he insisted–and they never ask for Ferraris.

Finally, I was here—at Nick’s house in Bandarawela, a town in the lower right half of the Sri Lanka tear. We spent our days in Nayabedde—a small, impoverished tea estate village nearby, where Nick works with social orphans, trying to do the best he can by his motto–you can’t change the world, but you can change the world of a child.

Nick is the only person who has told me that if he dies tomorrow, he’d be happy with what he has done with his life. He doesn’t make a single rupee from his sponsorship work–to survive he builds a website here and there, and thus lives a life as ascetic as the monks at the Sera Je Monastery. He studies books on ancient Greek and Roman politics and philosophy to unwind. He likes to think for thinking’s sake, prefers an isolated life to one where he wakes up every morning to silent emergency sirens blaring in his head–the ones that make Americans jump out of bed and into khakis–that fear of failure, that desperate search for security. Nick, his books, his home for $150.00 a month, children and families whose gratitude he is too humble to fully accept—Nick has determined what defines enough, and he has enough. His life, I could move into.

Almost. For three weeks, it’s idyllic. We spend every day with the kids, play games we make up on the spot, visit homes where we dance and sing, drink milk tea and throw birthday parties. Everything we experience is simultaneously profound and superficial, because we do not speak Tamil. Still—it’s here, in the middle of poverty, where I experience travel’s most addicting feeling—that feeling that I’m in my favorite place in the world, here in the hills, quilted bright tea tree green, the kids sprinting out of the one-room school in a giant dust cloud, beautiful in their white uniforms, bare feet, hundreds of smiles too wide for such small faces. (The moment I smile back, we are no longer strangers.) But our games, the easy laughter and gentle hand holding–these are the best parts I remember about the Peace Corps, condensed, minus the daily challenges of community development and volunteer Chlamydia epidemics. I remember how language opened a door I sometimes wished I could slam shut, and actual working with orphanages and the organizations– trying to change things with my American backpack full of tricks–is as easy as squeezing Type AB negative blood from a potato. But you try because you can’t be human and not try. What we from any-class America don’t comprehend, is that not everyone in the world looks at their neighbor and sees a human being, an equal, a child worth saving.

On one of our last days in Bandarawela, I woke up with one eye swollen shut. The next morning I woke up with the other eye swollen shut. Rather than running down the hall screaming “Metaphor! Metaphor!”–I let Ryan call me the Hunchback. I was suspicious of the culprits, because we were using “Ninja”–a Glade plug-in looking device that filled the room with a constant spray of bug killer. (If it was killing little things, it was probably giving us a little bit of cancer.) We had been talking a lot about cancer, because on our second day here, Nick’s dad was diagnosed with cancer of the pleura–the smooth membrane that surrounds the lungs, a body part that hardly seems worth learning the name of, until you get cancer there. The only cause of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure, which happened to Nick’s dad in the navy during wartime. It was good for Nick that we were here, because he is always alone, which is fine, until dad gets terminal cancer and only has a few months left, and dad’s in Iowa–and who can he talk to about being so far, about always having felt so far, besides the kids, who speak Tamil and Sinhalese. He wouldn’t talk to them about what he is going through, because they’re kids. Kids whose grandmother puts them on the streets to beg, whose dad died and mom works all day in the tea estates for $2.00 a day, who are all Tamil in a country that has killed Tamil people. We will never talk to them about anything that’s hard for us, because there is nothing that can touch what they suffer now and what they might suffer tomorrow. And the amazing thing is they are not suffering. Not as much as we think they should be. So many withouts, that they have no sense of without, each is canceled out by another. Here children laugh hysterically at a funny face, dance joyously, excitedly show you a certificate they won for placing 3rd in a long jump competition 5 years ago. We brought apples to school. In Nayabedde, apples were Ferraris. It’s funny how strongly you begin to miss moments, children, happiness while they’re happening. And that’s life—always being nostalgic for the present, learning to be thankful for what we have before it’s gone.

If you can handle the pulp, you can read all of Jenn's blog, including their visit to Sera Je Monastery in India, here:

http://jennmeleana.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/india-sri-lanka/