The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [42]
He wasn’t at all what we had expected. He turned out not to be funny at all, but rather loud and rude. He raved madly about President Bush, oil wars, child abuse, and suicide rates, while we sat around in a quiet gloom. I ate my meal in silence until I couldn’t hold back anymore. Then I told him that we were all experiencing hardships and asked if he would please talk about something positive. The clown changed his tone and began reciting a highly provocative love poem. It was clear that his painfully awkward performance was directed at me. He moved his lips around like a horse chewing hay and stared with wanton lust into my eyes. I broke his gaze and felt like throwing up. We finished the meal quickly and escaped from the depths of despair. Along the way back to our guesthouse, we agreed that he been the angriest, most depressing clown we had ever met. With that thought, we at last burst into laughter, which saved the day.
I have always believed in good and evil. At least, those were the words I used to wrap my head around what was going on in Sri Lanka. Things were “good” when we were moving forward and all was in harmony with the universe. “Evil” was anything that stopped us from accomplishing our goals, unless there was a good reason for it.
I went further and called the evil obstacles “the snake.” My ideas of the serpent emerged from Bible stories I’d heard during childhood, in which the snake tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. The snake represents many things in different cultures, but for me, it stood for the opponent that I was determined to conquer with love. It was not a physical, slithering snake, but rather the feeling of the presence of evil.
Those days, Peraliya felt to me like the original Garden of Eden, only overrun by snakes. My fellow volunteers—who were atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and from other faiths—all seemed to agree that Sri Lanka held some great magnetic pull that was beyond any earthly being’s control or explanation. Our highs and lows were more extreme than anything we had felt before in our lives. I battled the snake on a daily basis and it reared its head in unexpected places, from threats from former friends to talk of attacks by suicide bombers. I told the other volunteers that showing unconditional love to people who hate you confuses the hell out of them, and in the end they always give up. But that snake wrapped its scales around us at every turn. It seemed sometimes that no matter how hard I tried to show unconditional love and compassion, the snake spat its venom upon me.
Then, about four months into our journey, I experienced a major shift in my attitude. The “snake” stopped affecting me as much, and I was able to direct my focus toward the bigger picture. I realized that the tsunami was not an act of war, and that therefore the villagers had nobody to be angry at or blame for their lives having been ruined. If a woman wanted to scold me because ten of her babies were dead, then so be it. I knew she wasn’t really mad at me and that I shouldn’t take it personally.
It felt like I had reached a new level in my spiritual journey. Once I let go of my ego, the things people said didn’t hurt me anymore. It gave me a new sense of freedom, like I had just reached outer space and was free-falling. At Ground Zero, I had conquered my fear of death. In Peraliya, I conquered my fear of evil.
For example, one day while I was working at the hospital, two villagers raced in with ghost-white faces and said that they had to speak with me at once. They explained that the head gang leader of a nearby village