{"id":1106,"date":"2012-04-25T01:03:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2017-11-05T08:03:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T08:03:44","slug":"a-sri-lankan-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/countries\/asia\/sri-lanka\/1106","title":{"rendered":"A Sri Lankan Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Charley had me up at 5:30 on the 14th of April to attend the festival at Kalutara – the one we’d seen on TV the day before<\/a>. The first event of the day was a marathon and some fifty local runners were lining up to register for the race. Before they could be given approval to participate, each runner underwent a blood pressure and stethoscope test conducted by a local doctor using equipment provided by Projects Abroad.<\/p>\n

I took some photos of the professionals at work, then wandered around the area checking out the greasy pole<\/a> and balancing pole<\/a> games I had seen on TV yesterday. My excitement was less than it would have been with competitors, but I could admire the skill of anyone who managed to complete either task.<\/p>\n

<\/a>As soon as the marathon was underway, the doctors shared their breakfast of string hoppers<\/a> and dhal<\/a> with us and began preparation for the main work of the day – providing a free diabetes clinic for the public. About 20% of Sri Lankans have diabetes<\/a> and anyone found with the condition was passed to a nurse who explained the problem and how to deal with it. The nurse regularly pointed to a large selection of fruit on the table as an example of a healthy diet.<\/p>\n

I asked Charley if he’d been tested. ‘No, no,’ he said with a belly laugh. ‘I don’t want to know.’ Charley does have a decent girth, but he eats as well as I do, mostly partaking of fresh fruit and vegetables grown in his own garden<\/a>, so I can’t imagine he’d have a problem.<\/p>\n

<\/a>While distracted with the medical camp, I missed the finish of the marathon and the entire bike race. The Pillow Fight<\/a> game was still running so I went over to watch boys try to knock each other from where they sat astride a smooth log. In each case the winner lost his seat only seconds after his opponent so I am still unsure how much skill is involved. Nearby, children learnt about tooth decay by throwing darts at germs on a giant tooth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I spied a young man dressed in an amazing silvery outfit<\/a> coming out of a tent beside the medical checks. I asked if I could take a photo and he ran back inside, then brought a fellow dancer outside to practise where I could take pictures of them. Later, they joined their female counterparts and put on a show. I’m sure I missed much more, but the heat of the sun forced me back to the shade of the medical camp to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charley had me up at 5:30 on the 14th of April to attend the festival at Kalutara – the one we’d seen on TV the day before. The first event of the day was a marathon and some fifty local runners were lining up to register for the race. Before they could be given approval… Continue reading A Sri Lankan Festival<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[114],"tags":[121,122,119,123,115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}