Adam Cui was the financial manager of the consulting and supervision project of the Sri Lanka Southern Expressway Extension Line. He enjoyed the lifestyle in Sri Lanka and has made lots of friends. Here I record a few of the island stories he shared with me.
Cricket is not that popular in China, so I wasn‘t familiar with it before my arrival in Sri Lanka. As a happy islander, now I gradually started to have a whole new understanding of this sport.
Cricket is to Sri Lankans what table tennis is to Chinese. If you want to be friends with Sri Lankans, then play cricket with them! The Sri Lankans’ love of cricket has reached an obsession. Sri Lankan cricket team has continued to be a force in international cricket and currently holds several world records! Cricket makes it easy for you to find topics of common interest. If you can name three or four cricket superstars, such as Kumar Sangakkara or Lasith Malinga, they would be even more surprised.
Friendship
When our consulting engineering team first arrived in Sri Lanka, the team’s internal collaboration was still in a running-in period; at the same time, the trust with the owner and contractors also needed to be strengthened. Under these circumstances, a timely cricket match deepened our friendship.
You can hardly imagine the enthusiasm for the competition registration and the seriousness of training. Everyone wanted to participate. We had to select the best to play for the team. All teams were ambitious to win, but the construction period was tight and the spare time was so limited. So everyone volunteered to use the only Sunday rest time to train. Our consulting engineering team even invited well-known local coaches for guidance.
Similarly, if we were not on the scene, you couldn’t imagine the fierceness of the competition. A goal could make the players on the field firmly hug each other and cheerleaders hailing.
Especially when our team and the contractor team won the championship with a key goal, there was endless applause, cheers, and the sound of the traditional Lankan tambourine. Many local employees even improvised the Sri Lankan traditional dance with drums... The scene was very exciting.
For this cricket match, winning or losing is not the most important thing but friendship. A small cricket match not only strengthened the cohesion of our team, but also shortened the distance between us.
“After You”
In the morning, when I was walking alone on the country road near the camp, I would occasionally encounter passers-by riding a motorcycle. They always slow down and slowly stop in front of me, using English, or simply Sinhala that I don’t understand, and ask me (smiling and making gestures to make themself understood).“Do you need help?” “Let me take you for a ride?” If you happen to pass by a banana plantation, the owner might also pick up a bunch of bananas and hand it over: Come to have a taste?
The locals are also very friendly to animals. Whether it is on the country road or the main road, you can always see lizards walking leisurely and the local pedestrians waiting patiently: After You!
A gift to the Elephant Patrol Team
There are a few banana gardens near our camp, and an elephant sanctuary is on the opposite side of the path next to the banana forest. Although there is a fence, elephants break out of the fence from time to time at night to steal bananas from the banana forest. As a result, the local villagers formed a night patrol team and built a watching hut on a big tree for night watching and rest.
Each time the elephants appear, the patrol team would make noise to warn the elephants and remind the villagers to take precautions.
Uncle K is one of the patrol members. Uncle K’s flashlight was broken and there was no proper accessory available in the local area. So he asked me for help: “Can you buy a flashlight from China? I need a strong and long range light.”
I made the promise. But because of the COVID situation, my vacation had been postponed again and again. By the time I came back from China and completed my quarantine according to Sri Lanka regulation, waiting until the curfew finally ended, five months passed! When uncle K received the gift, he was as happy as a child. He said: “Thank you good friend!”
I replied with a big smile: “We should thank you for ensuring our safety.”
The winning team