October 15, 2008
Well, things aren’t going exactly according to plan. Today I arrived at the Department of Animal Production and Health (DAPH) in hopes of having a meeting with the person in charge of current animal disease surveillance programs.
Wednesday is the day in Sri Lanka in which all public servants are supposed to be in their offices to receive complaints from members of the public and therefore I was able to track this person down, although they only had a little time to speak with me, and did not provide the warmest of welcomes.
I was specifically interested in discussing how we could tailor the surveillance system we are designing in collaboration with the DAPH to be compatible with current programs. I have since learned that official paper trails are very important to the internal workings of Sri Lankan government departments and that perhaps, in the case of this project, there have been gaps in such communication. The Principle Investigator on the project, Dr. Sam Daniel, is coming tomorrow. I am hoping that we will have this sorted soon.
Yesterday, however, I had a lovely day off. Tuesday was a full moon day and therefore a public holiday in Sri Lanka. I decided to take the opportunity to visit the Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya. Despite the fact that we are in the middle of the rainy season, the sky was clear in the morning and I even had some company, an Australian tourist who’s been staying at the guest house for the past couple of days. We had a great morning wandering around the gardens taking pictures of various plants and the odd monkey. The highlight by far was the Orchid House. It is a sizeable building that is chocked full of, as the name suggests, orchids. Literally hundreds of them and varieties the likes of which I have never seen.