Meet me by the tea leaf
Identity. It frames who we are. It speaks to ideas, concepts, experiences that we feel define us. It can limit or increase choice. Identity is a powerful thing.
For many people it is fixed, it is solid, it is immovable – a heritage rooted in their country of birth. They are staunchly and unequivocally, English, Indian, Jamaican, Portuguese. But with populations on the move and love bounding beyond borders, identity becomes a much more fluid concept, straddling culture and continents.
So, what is my identity, how do I define myself? I have an Irish mother and Pakistani father, both from very poor backgrounds. I’m a proud Muslim, born in London ttaaaarrrrnnn – a place that will always be my home, no matter how stupid the politics get, wherever I am. But right now, my identity is an overwhelming migrant. I left the UK 2 years ago to go back and work with the tea plantation community in Sri Lanka, something I first did back in 2009, where I was incredibly fortunate enough to live in a rural tea picking community for 4 years.
So, how did my experience start? A crazy honeymoon trip started my love affair with the island of serendipity. Beautiful beaches, shy smiles and overwhelming hospitality afforded to foreign guests can blind you to the reality of a country that was still in the middle of a war, to a country where the polarisation or wealth is eye wateringly overwhelming outside of the main cities, where the main economic staple, tea, enslaves an uprooted historically migrant population to work to the bone for a country to survive, without recompense, without recognition.
Sound familiar?
But when you challenge this state of affairs with a Sri Lankan hotel manager about the exploitation of the Indian Tamils, to support a country that (until recently) would not recognise them, which ends with ‘you British dragged these people from India over here, to grow your tea, ensured they were isolated and dependent workforce’ it makes you think about your own involvement, your own genealogical responsibility to maybe try and make a start at trying to fix what is broken.
Now, our hotel manager’s argument isn’t as simple as all of that – I mean, he is absolutely right about the brutal treatment by the British, and as much as I would love to, now is not the place to open that can of worms, but the fact remains that as Pakistani, Irish, British Muslim – tea. It’s in my blood. It’s in my genes. It’s a thread that weaves through all of my different identities and his words perforated my conscience.
24 hours after that conversation, we newlyweds decided there and then to use the skill sets that we had to try and help the youth of the tea plantations – to give them skills to elevate them above back-breaking manual labour and for the first time in their lives realise the potential and value to contribute.
In 2008, we set up our charity called Tea Leaf Trust (www.tealeaftrust .com) and in 2009 left the UK to set up our programmes in some of the remotest areas in Sri Lanka and it is here my migrant experience began…
I’m from London. I’m a scarf head. People 15 years ago loved a bold bit of eyeballing. Checking you out with a facial expression like I had shoved a dead rat under their nose. I’ve never had an issue. I was as ‘London’ as they were, I was comfortable under the sneering stare as it was my city just as much as theirs.
But put me in an excruciatingly poor a rural, traditionally Indian Hindu tea picking community. The poorest in the country, where no one comes to visit, no tourist, no grand officials, no anyone and I swear all that London bravado *piff*, *paff*, poof, gone in a cloud of invisible smoke – off the find the nearest plane to get the f@*K home.
An idea of just how conservative this community was - in one of our first classes an 18-year-old boy told us he thought girls wearing jeans should be stoned. Yes. Seriously. He said that.
And the eyes, oh the eyes, those eyes are on you. Everywhere. And what you see in an instant makes you catch your breath.
Confusion.
Contempt.
Fear.
Mistrust.
Suspicion.
What are we after? Why would we be there? We are western, yet obviously Muslim? How does that work? What do we want with our children? Are they going to corrupt our kids? Are they going to turn them away from their traditions?
I was there for the long-term. I wasn’t planning on hot-footing it after a few months and so I understood gaining the trust of this community was going to take a while. We had to show them that our intention was not to corrupt their youngsters but to provide not only them but whole families opportunities afforded to only mainstream Sri Lankan society but in a culturally appropriate and sensitive way. I also wanted to learn more about the community, the cultural nuances, what made it tick. God, such a beautiful blanket of velvety greens tea leaves covering a people consigned to absolute misery. I was hooked.
The first year was the year of hard work, but fun work. A year of working with our new Sri Lankan teachers to establish our programmes. Of promoting our programmes to the community to show them the value. Of talking to parents and students to show them we were committed to helping them in a way they were comfortable with. Of asking them what they needed. Of drinking lots of milk tea. Of eating lots of short eats. Of opening adult programmes and working with some of the business leaders in the community. Of showcasing my terrible Tamil to the giggles of young children. Of explaining that we did not feel we needed to come in and save a community, but that this community had the ability and the strength to give a brighter future to its children. To reassure that we wanted to do was empower the community, provide training so that they could run the programmes we had started themselves and be able to adapt our programmes to the needs of their community. And they did. And it was incredible to see and be a part of. And we’ve been working with them for 10 years now.
One year turned into 2 years, into 3 into 4. We made friends, we went to weddings, we attended funerals of people of all casts and faiths. I got pregnant and had my daughter there. Had alllooooottttt of visitors who took pictures of the only white baby in town! Got claps of delight as we took her to get weighed in a sari on a hook outside the vegetable shop. Maskeliya had become my home. I didn’t want to leave…but the Sri Lankan law says that foreigners can only stay 3 years and we had squeezed in 4. We had to go.
These 4 years are still the best years of my life. I was humbled to be taken in by the community, to not feel like a foreigner, to feel accepted into a community where you are so obviously different. It was such an amazing experience. Once we had broken down barriers by reaching out, they were gone…and it has allowed us to come back for another 2 years (we were able to get visas to come back) to expand projects into other areas of the country, but also expand our focus into ethnic cohesion, peace, and reconciliation. With the rise of nationalism and protectionist policies spreading like wildfire across the globe, we are using the findings from our education projects in the plantations where we purposely mixed students of different ethnicities to help us create programmes that promote cross understanding – arrghh, it will take too long to explain, and I’ve already taken up enough of your time… but I’ll keep you posted!
If you want to know more, please go to www.tealeaftrust.com - I’d love to hear from you if you fancy coming out and working with us
