Saturday 16th November 2019

Today was the voting day across Sri Lanka for the Presidential Election, which is a VERY big deal over here. Although a huge number of candidates put their names forward, it looks like it will be a close run thing between Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Sajith Premadasa, and even though the former is a completely unsuitable candidate (for reasons that I haven’t time to go into here), he is, sadly, very likely to win. In this area of Sri Lanka, Sajith Premadasa is very popular with Tamil voters, but across the country, Tamils are hugely outnumbered by Singhalese, who may well favour Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for all the wrong reasons. That is a huge over-simplification of the scenario, but it does have some interesting parallels with the battle in the UK between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

I went out this morning, but I was back mid-afternoon, as Presidential Elections are dangerous things here and can erupt in violence, so there is an official curfew today, where nobody is allowed out on the streets after dark. I was more than happy to stay out of the way this evening and just relax at home, although we were subjected to the biggest downfall of rain we have had for a little while now!

The other day I posted a few photos of the outside of the house in Nuwara Eliya, where I have stayed during my time here and today there are a few of the inside of the house, which has been a very pleasant place to stay during my time here. The upstairs lounge is on a sort of mezzanine level, with a very sloped roof, so I can only stand up in it where the roof is at its highest and it is also why I have windows in my bedroom that look up to the lounge!












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