Conquering the Wild: In the Land of the Elephant God.

In the mid 1960s, the Sri Lankan government initiated the Mahaweli Development Project with the aim of using the water of the Mahaweli river for irrigation and hydraulic power generation. As part of the project, farmers were given lands for cultivation in the North Central province of the country. This is their story who went up north to conquer the wild.

It was the end of August, 1985. The August sky was clear and blue, and faded at the outline of a long range of mountains. The patches of land stripped naked by the big bull dozers cracked under the feet when walked over because the sun was not easy on the freshly upturned earth. Newly made sandy roads ran through the plains in one straight line towards the far north like one big white snake. Those patches were meant to be paddy fields in the near future. If not for the plots of bare land, the whole plains would be an infinite mesh of thorny bushes and tall big trees. Kohomba, Diwul, Palu and Weera trees stood like tall, skinny lads, among the thorny bushes of Weniwel and Eraminiya. Sometimes, one could see a woman cutting a piece of wood from a Weniwal bush to make a concoction to cure mild fever caused by frequent mosquito bites.

The buzz of the mosquitos could be heard all through the night. It was a fine kingdom for mosquitos. With the sunset, swirls and swirls of mosquitos came out of the wild shrubs to feed on the tired farmers' blood. Every night young farmers went to sleep after a long day while smacking the annoying little insects. Some nights were unbearably hot. They would go to the stream and dampen a piece of cloth they used as a blanket, and wrap it around the body to beat the heat. Some nights were cold, and they would gather around an open fire. Hot or cold, every night they lit a big camp fire in the clearing where their small huts stood, to chase away wild animals. However, mornings and evenings in the hopeful land were quite pleasant. Dawn was short and the sun was up earlier. Every morning men would go to harrow the earth and remove roots and rocks from the newly tilled earth. Their women who were as hardworking, would go to the woods with a curved knife to cut sticks to build or add another room to their small mud houses. Most of the farming families lived inside small temporary huts and tents until they make themselves a nice mud house.

Building her own kitchen was the priority of a young farmer's wife. She dug-up earth with a hoe and poured water fetched from the stream on top of a pile of fresh soil. It was an absolute bliss for her to knead the mud with her feet. The mud mixture was cool and smooth. Well knead mud was made into balls, and walls are built for her new kitchen, which was usually separated from the farm house. Walls of the kitchen were only as tall as her. Anyone who would enter the kitchen had to keep their heads bent. There was only a low countertop made of mud and small pieces of rock in a corner of the small kitchen into which two fire stoves were built. A fine paste of cow dung and mud were painted over the mud countertop and the kitchen floor. Yet, cow dung was not easy to find since no one had started farming and no one raised cows. One had to go into the wild to find droppings of notorious wild cows who roamed in the woods in large herds. The kitchen had only room for the farmer's wife. There was a small rack made of twigs, hanging with two strong twisted vines from the high end of the spear grass (locally known as Iluk) thatched roofing of the kitchen, right above the fire stoves. The woman stored all her dry ingredients there and used the space to smoke fish, meat, long yard beans and cone. Once entered into the newly build kitchen, it smelled of fresh earth, smoke and dried tank fish.

The earth was rich. There were water melon and squash vines climbing the short fences built around the small farm houses, huts and tents. Once bloomed, yellow and white flowers decorated those fences, and every morning bees, butterflies and wasps could be seen spiraling around the tiny flowers. Pumpkin creepers sprawled across the ground and bore big yellow horn like flowers. Sometimes, vines of ash gourd climbed the mud walls and invaded the Iluk roofs, which were slanted until they touched the hard earth. It was not uncommon to see big fat ash pumpkins beaming on the roof of small mud houses. However, none of these plants were cultivated. The sandy soil of the plains were perfect for growing such plants. They grew by themselves in the rich soil from the seeds thrown away by farmers' wives.

The woods were a fine home for wild animals. Elephants, leopards, wild bears and wild bores frequently roamed in the jungle. Tortoises, snakes and various other reptiles could be seen silently crossing routes and gliding into the wild. Flocks and flocks of birds flew in the sky all through the day. One could see thousands of weaver bird's nests hanging from Maila trees in the jungles close to a small body of water.

Every morning, farmers woke up to the clucking of peacocks and jungle fowls. It was quite a pleasant scene to see one proud peacock dancing on the banks of a tank, with its magnificent plumage spread open to impress the peahens. Rabbits and porcupines were usually hunted for meat. A small gang of two or three men who had guns would go after a wild bore once in a while, and everyone would get a share of the hunt. Bush meat was not scarce, but dry rations such as rice, lentils and flour were meagre. They depended on food rations or the small salaka malla distributed among the farmers by the government. Two salmon tins, 2 kilos of rice, half a kilo of lentils and some flour were not enough to satiate the hunger of those who struggled with stubborn earth from morning till night everyday. Since the virgin lands were not quite ready for growing crops, bush meat filled their hungry stomachs and one could catch a fish or two in the small tanks scattered across the plains. The farmers were never hungry, and those days, one had to sweat to fill their stomachs. Yet, they smiled in the sun, in the rain, in the wind and in the wild, all through the day and night, among the elephants, bears, leopards and mosquitos, hoping for a better future in the land of the Elephant God. -Devindani Devage-