"Your Friend Rajah is Missing"

Place: Negombo, Sri Lanka
His name was Rajah. He had extremely dark skin and a bright yellow smile with a chipped front tooth. He worked for the hotel we stayed at in Negombo and was borderline shady. He also seemed to be some kind of Pentecostal pastor in training, based on the loud prayer meetings that went on in the hotel lobby. Rajah greeted us all smiles at 2 am when we checked into our hotel.
"Were you from?" "Your first time in Sri Lanka?" "How you like Sri Lanka?" he asked. Little did we know at that point how many times we would be asked those same three questions. We debated making t-shirts with the answers on the back.
As he led us up the stairs to his room he turned and fingered for us to come closer. "I give you room with air conditioning...no charge" He winked, then burst out laughing. We hi-fived each other for our first Sri Lankan hook-up.
We slept until noon the next day. When I went down to get toilet paper, Rajah handed me the roll, then shoved a cup of overly sweetened tea in my left hand and managed to cram a mandarin orange into the crook of my arm.
"How you like the air conditioning?" I gave him the thumbs up and a double wink. He laughed out loud.
Later, while we were walking on the beach, we ran into some barefoot children playing near a low income neighborhood. They were so cute we could not resist a picture. Within a few minutes, some ladies came out of the tin-roofed homes. Before we could explain why three white girls were taking pictures of their children, they had whisked us into plastic chairs on their dirt floors and chopped off the top of three coconuts and handed them to us with a straw. Their English was rudimentary, but they tried and their questions seemed genuine. Other than the man standing behind them silently modeling a greasy broken chain he assumed we would be interested in buying, there wasn't a scam in sight. One of the ladies, Chamila, who had the best English (and nicest home) invited us over for dinner the next night. Since the only man in her house was her 13 year old son and 6 month old nephew, we agreed and were excited for a home-cooked meal and the chance to converse.



The next day, we asked Rajah at breakfast how to get to the local lagoon we had read about. He agreed to take us there, but we had to meet him at the leather shop in a few minutes. Not knowing why we couldn't just wait and walk with him, we agreed. It wasn't until he made us walk a block ahead of him to catch the bus that we realized he was sneaking out of work to take us. Two buses and a tuk-tuk ride later, he dropped us off at the end of a long dirt road and instructed us that the lagoon was at the end. We walked for an hour in the hot sun before we arrived at a murky green river. We asked the locals in the restaurant where the lagoon was.
"Lagoon? The lagoon is in Negombo." Grrr. "But some people call that the lagoon," he pointed at the slimy river. "It is like lagoon...only differed." Hmmm. The same, but different. I've traveled enough to have heard that expression before. We chalked up our losses by crashing on the cushy beach chairs in a 5-star resort down the road and past the rest of the afternoon reading and sun bathing.
"Your friend Rajah is missing," said the cranky housekeeper when we arrived back at the hotel in Negombo. She swept the steps, angrily pushing the dirt towards us. Apparently she was on to Rajah's moonlighting job of escorting tourist out and about town while on the clock. Smiling and shrugging we escaped to the room before laughing hysterically about this new shady "friend" we had acquired.



Dinner at Chamila's was much more pleasant and renewed our faith in Sri Lankan hospitality. Our appearance at dinner was apparently the talk of the town, as a few blocks from her house random shop owners, taxi drivers, and pedestrians began pointing the way to her house without us even asking directions.
She made the most incredible meal we have yet to eat on this island. Pineapple salsa, string hoppers, fish curry, rice, fruit, and juice. Despite the translation barrier, we were able to show her pictures of our homes and families, listen to Sri Lankan music, fight over who got to hold her nephew next, and try on her traditional Indian Sari's. We left after two hours promising we would come say goodbye before we flew out three weeks later.
We left early the next morning, and never said goodbye to Rajah.