|
Light
Millennium #15 Issue, May 2005
From
a farm in Australia to underwater,
Scuba Diving, in Sri Lanka
A
unique profile: Valerie FULLER-EKANAYAKE
Interviewed
by Bircan ÜNVER
February
3, 2005, Colombos, Sri Lanka
| Valerie
Ekanayake was born in 1953 in Australia just after
the depression. Australia was starting to enjoy
life again. Mrs. Ekanayake expresses that she was
fortunate and has never known hardship; she always
had food, lived on a farm down near the Murray River
in South Wales (about 40 miles from the Murray River),
and went to a very small school four and a half
miles away from the farm. She used to ride her bike
or her horse to school. She went to boarding school
50 miles away from her farm, but she attended the
village school until she was 11. She defines those
days as, "I had a beautiful life. I learned
more outside of school, on the way to school than
I learned at school." I've met with Mrs. Ekanayake
when I visited Sir Arthur C. Clarke in Colombo in
December 2002. But then except for a brief meeting
and condense conversation, I didn't know much about
her until I watched a documentary at Sir Arthur's
office in January 2005 titled, "Time Out of
Mind" which profiles Sir
Arthur C. Clarke and his book, "The Fountains
of Paradise" which was produced right after
His book won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1979.
In the documentary, there was a scene where Sir
Arthur, Hector and Valerie Ekanayake and their entire
staff from Scuba Diving are getting ready to go
to Trincomalee from Colombo. The narration of that
chapter of the documentary informs the audience
that Valerie Ekanayake is a high level scuba diving
consultant. This information has led me to know
more about her scuba diving experience, her background
in Australia, as well as her unique life in Sri
Lanka. |
BU:
How do you explain that you had learned outside of school
more than at your school?
VK:
For a farm child,
you learn so much just in everyday life. You're so
involved
with the farm. There is sheep, there is cattle, there
is wheat to be grown, there's oats, and now
there's canola. Canola is an oil seed.Not corn oil, canola.
When I was a child, it was just wheat, oats, and barley
which were the staple foods of a western country. So,
my father was fortunate that he inherited the
farm. He was a volunteer in World War II. He went as a
24 year old farm boy, and fortunately he survived and
wrote his memoirs.
BU:
Were they published?
VE:
No. no. He wrote them for the family because I asked him
to. I didn't know
what he'd done. And I went to Israel in 1973, but my father
knew it as Palestine. After
that I went back to Australia and followed his tracks.
But I didn't
go to New Guinea where he spent a lot of time. There was
a
lot of hardship there during the war. And
I've always had an inquiring mind as to where my father
was. My father
was good to me; he was a silent man and never hurt me
in any day that
I can remember. He was a happy person, but my mother did
tell me that
there were times of difficulty, and I was the one who
took out the lunch
on ANZAC day. ANZAC day is the remembrance of the 2nd
World War. ANZAC
stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corps.
BU:
What is your mom and dad's name?
VE:
My mother's name is Lyla.
BU:
Like Leyla? You might even be Turkish. She might be
from Anatolia.
Goodness
knows?
VE:
My dad's name is Wally, Walter.
BU:
What is your maiden name?
VE:
Fuller. In England Fullers were either brush makers or
weavers I think. All I know is that
one line in our family-the Walter family. There is a line,
one descendent
that lost a lot of money in the London underground. He
was an architect,
he had to go to Australia because he became broke and
was in debt.
BU:
Do you have brothers and sisters?
VE:
I have a brother, and a sister.
BU:
How old are they, and what are they doing?
VE:
My brother must be heading up to be 50 something, maybe
52. They both live on a farm in Australia, my brother
is still on the original farm where my grandfather
worked. And my sister married another farmer about 12
miles away.
She has raised 3 daughters and one son. And one is an
architect, one
is a teacher in a university, the other one is a Bioengineer,
and the fourth
boy, I'm sure will stay on the land. He is still too young
yet.
BU:
You were saying that when you were going back home
from school that you enjoyed
it so much because you were with your brother.
VE:
I had a wonderful brother. I still have a wonderful brother.
And I think
that he was never mean to me. He always wanted to go home
from school so that could
sew the bags up on the wheat. But I always wanted to draw
him on the
sand on the way home and look at the birds and look at
the cows on the
way off. I used to play the games on big paddocks where
they had sheep
or cattle. I used to love to make the calls of the male
bull to the
female cow, so I could make the cow come to the end of
the paddock.
I was learning what I just wanted, I was very close to
nature, I was
very close to all of those animals around me. And I used
to annoy my brother
because he always wanted to go home and do these jobs
on
the farm with my father. I had to go to the house, and
my mother would
give me her jobs and I would become bored, so instead
I played in the sand and made up some excuse.
Then, eventually I had to go home. On the days
where we would play golf, we had so much fun; we would
go all over the place. We would do whatever we wanted
to do. That could include investigating some gold mines
we had on the property-all the things that we weren't
allowed to do when our parents were around.
BU:
How old were you then?
VE:
Oh, I was taken to those mines probably very young. I
don't know what age.I
mean I can remember them from maybe 6 years old. It was
crazy. I used to crawl
down those mines. It was fun and interesting. We didn't
know what was down
there. We would just go.
I used to use a rifle to hunt foxes. I never shot
kangaroo.
I never went kangaroo shooting much because I used to
thrown too hard against the cage that we all stood in
on the back of a vehicle. The vehicles needed to go very
fast over rough terrain to keep up with the kangaroos.
It became quite a rough ride. I would tan the kangaroo hides,
not for profit, just to see if I could, something to do.
BU:
About having your very first own business. Next, I
really would like to hear the rabbit story.
VE:
So as a farmer's daughter, I knew that you weren't allowed
to have rabbits.
My brother had used to track rabbits, so I used to track
rabbits.
I was brought up to kill rabbits; that's what you were
supposed to
do because they're illegal in Australia.
BU:
Why?
VE:
Because your father could go to jail for 6 months.
BU:
Is it still like that?
VE:
Yes.I think so. You can go to jail if you do not get rid
of the rabbits on your property,
because they threaten the existence of humans. You can't
grow crops,
and also kangaroos do the same thing. As a farmer, you're
allowed to
use a rifle. And you shoot the kangaroos when they are
too many. There's
a certain amount, any amount, for a property owner because
otherwise
you won't have a crop. I used to track rabbits or shoot
them because
they were considered harmful=they were eating everything.
BU:
When you killed the rabbits, did you eat them?
VE:
No, I didn't like the taste.
BU:
I mean, as a custom.
VE:
I used to sell them because there was a market for them.
I used to bring
them home, skin them, and sell them.
BU:
What was your first job?
VE:
My first job was a secretary at a real estate agent office.
BU:
After high school?
VE:
Yes. Straight from high school. And then I worked my way
up there, studied
a little bit, went to a technical college--like a night
school, and
eventually got a real estate agent license. They were
very good to me and gave
me opportunities. I had two nice bosses, it was a family
business. And my very
first job was in the village general store. It's a store
where all the farmers
buy their provisions.I worked there between the time of
leaving school and going for a proper job. So my father
set me
up with this job in the village where I learned to write
down what everybody's buying,
how much, and then send the bill. Very boring. But I enjoyed
it all the same
because I knew all these people. And somehow I was looking
at the papers,
and I guess my parents must have directed me for a secretarial
job. And
I started up this job as the secretary of a real estate
agent. I started
saving up money, and I was fortunate enough to be able
to save enough
money to travel. Why? I don't know. Curiosity, I think.
And also I always wanted
to help people.
BU:
You came from a farm. When you came here first (Sri
Lanka), did you have
any idea about diving?
VE:
In Australia I wanted to learn diving, but I didn't have
enough time, and
it was cold in the place where I wanted to learn. So that's
why I wanted
to learn it here.
BU:
When you came here you already knew that there was
a Scuba Diving School
here. So you came for a purpose?
VE:
Actually, we just came to see Sri Lanka. I came with three
girlfriends; and
we were traveling all the way from Australia, Singapore,
Malaysia, Thailand,
Burma, India, and Sri Lanka. And I stayed here.
BU:
But you went back!
VE:
Yes, I went back and then I came back again.
BU:
How long later?
VE:
I stayed here for some time and then I met up with the
girls in London again.
BU:
So, you were here for 13 months, then you re-met them
and then you returned to Australia.
VE:
After London, I came back here and I went to Australia
after that. But I
kept corresponding with my husband (Hector Ekanayake).
BU:
How long did it take to make your decision to move permanently
to Sri Lanka?
VE:
We lived together for three years. It's very modern for
that time! I
know, I don't know how I survived because in those days
it was not accepted,
it's still not accepted. People accepted me. They used
to call me
Mrs. Ekanayake when I wasn't Mrs. Ekanayake. I suppose
the diving field was
very different anyway. In those days-in the late 70's,
1976, I was qualified as
an instructor in 1978-79. In those days very few women
were in diving, so I was different
anyway. So I settled here no matter what.
BU:
Hector was your instructor.
VE:
Yes. That's how it happened.
BU:
What did you find the most challenging when you were
first learning Scuba Diving?
VE:
I found the most challenging the European men that were
so different
from Australian, American, and colonial men. On a dive
boat they didn't
like to be told what to do. Because females were not in
diving then, it was
a male domain. But in Australia we had equal opportunities
those days. I was brought
up to be able to do whatever a man could do because I
was brought up in a farm.
So I didn't see why I couldn't do this. And then I realized,
particularly in
the British system that I wasn't really that welcomed.
Valerie
FULLER-EKANAYAKE & Bircan ÜNVER
during the interview in Colomobos on February 3, 2005
BU:
That is very interesting that you say that Asians or
others beside the Australians, English, Americans were
kind of open to accept your teaching them, but not the
English.
VE:
That is right, In those days, the English didn't want
females in their world; they wanted diving to be a male
domain. That's their area. In other words, they didn't
feel that the women had the intelligence, or they could
behave. And in those days, of course it was a bikini,
that's what I wore to work. So maybe they didn't trust
themselves. I don't know. And I remember in Penang in
Malaysia, it was run by the Australian air force. Also,
there were a lot of British people there too, and I was
marked down on my appearance because I did not dress appropriately.
Now for an Australian girl a bikini was appropriate. And
males knew how to behave with a bikini, and I didn't feel
self-conscious in a bikini. So I was very brave. I signed
up and there were 40 men in this course. Only because
I had two Australian males that were complete gentlemen
and helped me also, my navigation wasn't good, and I had
to study at night. But I did not have the pressure of
the male, during the daytime I did, during the classes
I had it because obviously I cannot carry things as heavy
as they can. The equipment in those days were not designed
for a woman, number one; it was all black, heavy, and
they thought that all the equipment should be steel, like
the tanks. That was the best to dive with a steel tank,
then you didn't have to use a weight to dive. For me,
an aluminum tank was just marvelous. Because it was light
to carry, it was 25 pounds, that's all.
BU:
How heavy was the steel one?
VE:
The steel was at least 35 pounds, much heavier. I kind
of remember because I never wanted to have one. I didn't
feel comfortable with the steel, and I did not like the
idea. If had I went down with the steel tank which contained
my air how do I come up? With the aluminum one, you're
brought to the surface. When it was empty, you come to
the surface. My body was very positive, and I had positive
buoyancy in the water, so I had to wear weights at the
start of the dive so at the end I could take off my weight
and I'd float. That's the way we dived in the old days.
We didn't have buoyancy compensators like we do now; it
was completely different. We used to use up our air and
we put rocks in our pockets.
BU: This is getting much more interesting.
You were the very first woman in scuba diving instruction
in Sri Lanka.
VE: In Sri Lanka, yes, but not in Asia. There was Jenny
Garmendia in Singapore; she was an American girl, and
she was a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors)
then. She was quite a woman; she taught first aid, and
I did too. She was married to a Philippino and was teaching
diving. There was another girl named Mary Lyndeman; she
was also American, and the three of us used to teach lots
of people to dive in Singapore and Malayasia.
BU: How many did you teach in a year?
VE: Difficult to know; sometimes it was 30, sometimes
40, it depends.
BU: What did you find the most difficult
in teaching-men or women?
VE: The most difficult people to teach were people who
were forced to do it by their husbands usually. They were
going against their own nature. Diving is a very relaxing
sport. If they weren't doing it for the right reason,
then of course it was difficult. If they're only doing
it because their husbands wanted them to do, then it was
difficult. And that would happen. So usually I would teach
with the husband and wife apart and teach separately.
Generally, most people enjoyed relaxing. Once you got
a mask on, and you know how to use the mask, then you're
happy because you can see what's under the water. Then
you just have to occupy them.
BU: I assume that mostly your students
were men, and was it any problem with Hector being Asian?
There were so many men around you, admiring you. Wasn't
it difficult as husband and wife being together at home
and work?
VE: You see we were never on the same boat because he
was an instructor and I was an instructor; he took care
of the logistics of diving, the boats, the equipment and
things like that; whereas I took care of the educational
side of it. Where I kept up to date with the standards
that you have to teach people and the way to do it. So
I kept up with those standards. And I looked after our
children, and if I had to be diving, he looked after the
children. Even when I was pregnant, I was teaching. I
almost had my first baby in the swimming pool. I broke
my waters in the swimming pool.
BU: That's so unusual. Which one? Tamara?
VE: Cherene. Even Tamara. I swam all the way with all
of them till the very last day. If I wasn't teaching diving,
I'd be doing twenty, thirty meter lengths in the swimming
pool every day. I get up in the morning and go because
I was always active, so even when I became pregnant I
had to continue. I continued to teach my diving classes
in the pool, then I'd get someone else to take them for
their sea dives because sea diving is dangerous for pregnant
women. But in the old days that was not known; they only
did research on female sheep. In 1979, they were just
starting to get a female group to do research on female
divers, and that Genny was one of the people in Asia who
was gathering information. She was part of the Jacques
Cousteau society, and was very involved in that as was
Mary Lyndeman. May was a pioneer in bringing proper tuition
for recreational diving
Before it was a male domain. With Mary and Genny I taught
in Singapore and Malaysia, Penang.
BU: How many months a year did you
teach?
VE:
In Sri Lanka, I taught all year around almost and took
a month off between seasons. But generally I was teaching
most of the time and then into the water.
BU: What about your children? Did anyone like diving?
VK: Cherene used to carry my camera when I used to do
a lot of photography. She used to carry my camera and
sleep in the bottom of the boat. She is a beautiful swimmer.
She has absolutely a beautiful style. She could've have
been a national swimmer, but she realized when she was
about 14-15 years-old that she was just not good enough
and stopped trying to be the best and concentrated on
her studies. She got her bachelor of science in psychology.
And she was always a very sporty type of person: basketball
and all that sort of things. She used to swim between
the boats and to and from Mommy & Daddy.
She would go out on the boats at night and sleep on the
bottom of the boats sometimes. And the second daughter
, she also learned diving, she loves diving and almost
made it her career. She started to study dive resort management
in Australia, but she got bored with it about the fourth
month. She wasn't learning enough; I guess she'd done
so much here. It was boring and she didn't continue. She
still hasn't decided what she wants to do; she still has
the camera and takes photographs; she's sort of doing
office type jobs but she doesn't know what she wants to
do.
BU: How old is she?
VE: She is 21 now. She has time. And the third daughter,
she learned to dive. It was the first time that I ever
handed over one of my children to an instructor and during
her second dive, she got frightened. And I was there fortunately
and she made-this has never happened in any time that
I've taught a student because I always stay very close
to my students within eye contact. She got frightened
and tried to go to the surface. Fortunately, I was there,
grabbed her leg, kept a regulator in her mouth, and I
in fact rescued her. The reason why I gave her to an instructor
was I thought now mother dear, you're getting already
on age, hand your student over to another instructor.
But he was not looking, and he had not assisted my daughter
Melinda and didn't have his eyes on her. She could have
an air embolism, and she could be dead today.
SCUBA DIVING profile in Sri Lanka. The development,
the interests, the new generation.
BU:
How many women scuba diving instructors are there
in the business? Is it an interesting business for
local people?
VE: Actually there isn't a lot of female diving instructors,
I don't think so. Still, because it's considered a
very low class job. Women really don't seek to go
into this world or they might seek to go into it just
as a hobby but not to study it. It's just not given
the status. Even for males- there are very few males
going into scuba diving. There is no status in diving
here. People strive to do better things than diving.
Diving is not considered a good career. And those
who have been educated in going to the diving field
have done very well. And there are scientists who
learn diving, but not to teach diving. There are very
few people here who are diving instructors who are
Sri Lankans. Also, they don't take it seriously. |
Valerie
FULLER-EKANAYAKE
High
level scuba diving consultant
|
Being a diving
instructor, there's lots of opportunities to accomplish.
There's a few male scuba divers around Sri Lanka now, but
for a long time there's a lot of cowboys, and there's still
cowboys meaning people who have more of a macho attitude.
I can teach everybody this all that, but they really did
not study how to train people and why everything is done
and kept up with the diving industry. So that's what I always
did, and I always was criticized for it, too. As diving
developed, there was different systems, like there was the
decompression sickness, US navy dive tables. Then there
were British navy time tables that you had the limits of
time that you could stay under water so that you didn't
get the decompression sickness. And a lot of the divers
here never used these tables and yet they were still able
to dive until one time they had an accident. But they never
sort of worried about that.
As I was teaching recreational diving, which means that
you don't take risks.
You go out, dive to enjoy it, and you come back and you're
still unharmed. You go for the enjoyment and you expect
to come back alive, happy, have had a lovely experience
under water, and learn about the underwater environment.
You see that attitude has not always been here when you
had people who were trying to make so much money out of
diving, because the equipment is expensive. So you didn't
have the right atmosphere for diving to start. Hector was
fortunate because he is a man, and started years and years
ago back when diving really was known as "self-contained
underwater breathing apparatus " (SCUBA is the abbreviation,
but is now a noun )They were the pioneering days and Hector
actually went to Jacques Cousteau's diving school in America.
BU: Really? When?
VE: In 1954. He has a certificate in his office. He did
maintenance of U.S. Divers Co. equipment; he learned maintenance
and all that; it was totally boring to me. Operating the
compressor and pulling the regulator to pieces was very,
very boring. That was not what I was interested in. That
was the hardest for me to learn, but I enjoyed people, teaching
people, and introducing them to underwater. I liked to learn
about the body, the muscles, the anatomy, and the nature
part. Even today there's so many things about the underwater
that many people don't even know. It's such a complex ecology.
BU: Is there any limits or restrictions
that who can or cannot learn diving?
VE: There's no restrictions. Restrictions come within that
person. Within the person who wants to dive or doesn't want
to dive. So you make your own restrictions, and that's what
it's all about. You can't push anybody. When you teach someone
to dive, they must want to do it and that's why you tell
them how to do it, and we're going to do it, but you don't
have to do it.
BU: Isn't there any age or weight limits?
VE: There are now age limits. In the old days, there were
no age limits; you have to be 12 years old to learn now,
which is very young. There is no maximum. No weight restrictions.
Parents should beware if they send their 12 year old child
for diving because they should have a responsible adult
with them. When you're giving them a license to go out and
dive independently that license can be a little shaky because
you have a child of 12 who still has a lot of learning to
do and character building. So at 12 years old, the feeling
you get underwater, if it goes to their head, then they
can get into trouble. As long as they go with responsible
people, that is fine.
BU: Is there a university on scuba diving
in Sri Lanka?
VE: No, but the courses that you can convert, you can learn
diving as you go along, gathering your experience, you can
accumulate courses, and then you can go to university. And
even the course-I don't teach anymore for the last four
years.
BU: Really? But you've been always part
of it.
VE: Yes, I am always part of it. But why should I work so
hard? I'm 52 years old and I have to keep eating like an
athlete, drinking like an athlete, and sleeping like an
athlete. It's very rigorous; you have to be very well organized
with your meals, with your food, everything. And you have
to have checklists for this and checklists for that. I used
to even have a checklist for my children. You have to plan
so far ahead. And I was really doing all sorts of different
divings, so you have to plan other people's dives and have
to teach that also.
BU: The last four years what have you been doing?
VE: During some of my diving experiences, I used to be always
coming across poor people who were being used by more affluent
people as divers, and they were never given the knowledge
of how to dive. So, in the end they would end up paralyzed
or half paralyzed which is called decompression sickness.
Because of that and always the thought of I didn't have
an accident, I started to get interested in people with
disabilities. So I started studying disabled people who
were divers. I used to take Arthur* when he had no
power in his legs, so I would be his legs.
BU: How?
VE: When he was younger, he was still able to go diving.
The last time with him I think it was in 1991 and at that
stage he still could walk, but he had weakness in his legs
with post-polio syndrome. He slowly lost the strength in
his legs and in all his muscles. He had still strength in
his arms then, so when you go underwater, you don't actually
need your legs. Someone else could pull you along, and you
have a buoyancy compensator, and you can use your arms.
You can maneuver yourself around like a little bubble. Arthur
was used to the old equipment. I used to adjust his BCD
(buoyancy compensator) because he hadn't used that in the
old days. He wasn't that happy using it underwater, and
I wasn't happy because I knew he'd put too much air in it
and send himself to the surface. I used to control his BCD
and would hold him as he would go down. I would adjust his
buoyancy and he 'd swim a little bit because it's very easy
to swim when you're weightless. Then, I controlled the whole
dive. Afterwards, I take him back to the anchor and take
him up slowly. When we got to the surface, I had the boys
there to help me when he was heaviest. The biggest problem
was taking him from the ladder up onto the boat. That was
very difficult because we had to push him up physically
because we didn't have a hoist.
BU: I think Hector designed one for him?
VE: He designed one for the swimming pool here to pull him
out. For the boat it was very difficult. Disabled divers
were really enjoy going back into the water. Arthur had
wonderful legs. I used to go cycling with him. He was a
very fit man. And probably that's why he's still able to
be... He got polio in his 30's; that's why he has post-polio
syndrome. He got polio as an adult, not as a child. He was
paralyzed for one year.
BU: What causes that?
VE: Polio comes like a cold-like symptoms, and it gives
huge pain all throughout your body. It's transferred through
water and body fluids. It has a paralyzing effect and becomes
epidemic in certain areas of the world. During that time,
they were just developing immunization for polio. But in
swimming pools, and that sort of thing it was thought you
could get polio.
BU: So He got it from diving?
VE: He doesn't know; I don't think so.
BU: Does it take long to develop?
VE: It's just like a cold. In the 18th century, children
died like flies from polio; terrible deaths.
BU: After the Tsunami, how will you activate?
What are you planning? What is your damage?
VE: Now that tsunami has arrived, it's like nature has reclaimed
its own. Sri Lanka had done coral mining for over a hundred
years. Coral mining is where they burn the coral in kilns
and the by produce lime which they use for paint here. They
do it along the coast. So these coastal areas received a
lot of impact and now a lot of the tourist industry has
gone, including our business. Thousands and thousands of
lives that could've been saved. If they would have had education
in those areas on what to expect, it would have been different.
As very few people understand the ocean here. They are not
informed of earthquakes or tsunami arrivals. They aren't
educated in what to do and no emergency procedures are practiced
here, even fire drills, let alone tsunamis. Many safety
features in Sri Lanka are neglected. So expecting Sri Lanka
to have an emergency procedure for the tsunami, well it
didn't. It used to have bomb drills for when they were putting
bombs in Colombo during the war and suicide bombers. They
taught what to do if someone stops you with a bomb-you have
to move away from the bomb. In this case, everybody went
to look at the tsunami, and those who went to look died.
A lot of people didn't even know what would happen to them.
Anyway, it's a very, very sad situation and we're all trying
to develop programs that would be environmentally good for
Sri Lanka and for the world. And hopefully Sri Lankans would
be wise with the aid that is given to them because it's
being given from the heart from every country in the world.
Very deep in their heart and they're hoping that the Sri
Lankan people will not throw away the money and use it wisely
to allow their minds to expand to take in advice on how
to use the money to protect their island. They must look
after the ocean too because they have never ever thought
about that. They have always fished from the ocean, but
they never farmed the ocean or managed the ocean; and that
is what I would like to see. I've always said that I want
to see them farming the ocean and putting back to the ocean
more than what they take out.
BU: For scuba diving, for Hector, for
existing company, what is the alternatives or plans to revise?
VE: We have to get back to diving again and hopefully it'll
be including more nature diving, more teaching-not just
training of divers, but teaching people more about the underwater.
I've always wanted to see snorkeling parks, areas where
they have signs that tell people so we don't have to tell
people what they're looking at. A lot of people don't realize
what they are looking at when they are diving, so I always
wanted to see an area put aside so that you can have a snorkeling
trail underwater. You teach people to snorkel, then you
teach them to go down, and then you mark underwater a little
trail that indicates what these things are, and who lives
where. So what that they can see there is an octopus here
or there is fish.
BU: Underwater photography.
VE: I've done still photography and I have done video. I
started with the small Super-8 camera, and we went out for
videos from there. Those days you had to edit it yourself
on a reel by hand. I used to have 3 minutes. Then, it developed
into hours. You can have hours and hours underwater, it's
such pleasure.
BU: What have you done with them?
VE: I just stacked them away. I never turned professional
because I was always teaching. I taught people to use cameras,
I sold a few things, and I gave a lot photographs away in
Sri Lanka. They've never considered the underwater as wild
life. I always considered it as wild life. I was very happy
when in 1990 they asked me to put a photograph on the cover
of the wildlife magazine in the year of the ocean. That
was something I was very happy about. Although they write
about sharks in the wildlife magazine, the ocean and its
inhabitates don't have the same prominence as the terrain
animals. In fact, the ocean is more important because it
gives us every bit of air to breathe, water, and it covers
the majority of the planet. So I was very pleased that Sri
Lanka started to focus a little bit on their oceans, but
they've only thought of fishing and exploiting their ocean.
Sri Lankan have not thought about really putting back into
the ocean and the majority of the population don't behave
as being responsible to nature on land or in water (fresh
or salt). The waterways of Sri Lanka are still considered
the garbage dumps. Nurturing nature makes things go around
in balance.
BU: Do you still have videos, photographs?
You didn't use them?
VE: Maybe they're full of fungus now, I don't know. I wasn't
careful enough in keeping them.
Transcribed
by Figen Bingül
Edited by Ayça Bahçe
- . -
*
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 87, has lived in Sri Lanka since
1956 and became the first Resident Guest in 1975. Now
completely wheel-chaired by Post Polio, he has no plans
to leave Sri Lanka again.
Light Millennium #15 Issue, May 2005
- http://www.lightmillennium.org
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