About a month ago, Daman Irby witnessed the most spectacular sight he has ever seen: the Kandy Esala Perahera, an annual Sri Lankan festival with a parade two and a half hours long.\n"There were 65 dressed elephants marching through the town," Irby recalled. "The parade was lit by torchlight and there were very exotic costumes. It was something out of 'Indiana Jones.'"
Irby, who is the University's Center for Politics director of operations, and coworker Margaret Heubeck, spent three weeks in Sri Lanka for three weeks as part of a U.S. State Department sponsored exchange. The Center's Global Perspectives on Democracy program, which was established in March, was the impetus for the exchange program. Irby explained that upon the conclusion of a three-week stay of 18 Sri Lankans in the United States in March, five participants for a return exchange were selected, including himself and Heubeck, the director of instruction for the Center's Youth Leadership Initiative.
Politics Prof. Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics, said the Global Perspectives on Democracy program is aimed at enhancing dialogue among citizens of democracies around the world and exploring avenues for enhancing civic engagement.\n"In partnership with the U.S. State Department and other governmental and non-governmental organizations, the GPD initiative will identify groups of international citizens to participate in either in-country workshops or programmed citizen-exchange trips to the United States," Sabato stated in an e-mail.
The purpose of the exchange was to educate Sri Lankans about successfully engaging in politics to help stabilize their country and promote democracy.
"We gave them ideas on how they could potentially reach out to their legislators," Irby said. "In Sri Lanka, there is no culture of reaching out to your legislators. Legislators and the president do not take tips or advice that often."
The task proved challenging, but Irby was optimistic about the work done through the exchange program. "Sri Lanka has some challenges, challenges that we in America do not have," he said. "But we encouraged them to begin building a culture of engagement."
Such challenges included a previous lack of citizen engagement in politics. Irby noted that although Sri Lankans typically have a high level of voter turnout for national elections, once they vote, there is often no further engagement. "The only democracy is on the day they vote," he said. "All the other days in the year, they don't really have much say in their government, unless they happen to be an active member of the political party and are highly engaged."
Heubeck added that one's freedom is much more curtailed in Sri Lanka than in the United States. "You always have to watch what you say and to whom you're talking," she said. "That's a really hard thing to deal with, being an American."
The exchange began Aug. 2, when Heubeck and Irby arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Irby, who along with Heubeck carefully documented the trip on the pair's blog, http://srilankansupreme.wordpress.com/, said they spent their first week in the city, where they met with many different individuals from organizations representing marginalized communities.
During the second week of the exchange, they traveled across the country, visiting different projects that the 18 Sri Lankans who had come to the United States in March completed upon their return to Sri Lanka. The projects, which were modestly funded, were intended to improve marginalized communities in Sri Lanka, Irby said.
"These were people who were dirt poor and by dirt, I mean many lived in huts with dirt floors where the walls might be mud and palm branches," he said. "It left you with a lump in your throat, seeing the way they lived."
Irby noted that Sri Lanka is not a heavily caste-based country but that the sanitation workers, who hopefully benefited from a project in Hambantota, are at the bottom of the totem pole. "Sanitation workers in Sri Lanka are like the untouchables. These people have to live in a certain community by themselves and they are literally the lowest of the low."
Heubeck and Irby also visited schoolchildren at a school in the village of Mutur. The school had been ravaged during the Sri Lankan war, and electricity was restored only one week before the group arrived. While the sanitation workers in Hambantota have received a significant amount of help from nongovernmental organizations, Irby said the people in Mutur were out of the way and had been forgotten since the end of the war.
"Seeing the state of the school moved us to want to help them, which we did with our financial contributions," he said.
The current political situation in Sri Lanka, however, was the focus of the exchange. After 26 years of fighting, the country's civil war finally came to an end in May 2009, but things remain unstable.The situation is of concern because of the manner in which the government interacts with the Tamil minority, the country's largest ethnic minority group.
"There was optimism in the beginning based on what the Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake said, which is that there would be reconciliation, but the process has stagnated and slowed, so it's questionable whether the reconciliation is going to take place," Irby said.
He noted that there were many checkpoints throughout the country and movements are highly controlled. "If you are a Tamil, you're scrutinized much more than if you're Sinhalese," he added. "The military and police are often not as civil as they could be to the minority, which is part of what's slowing the reconciliation process."
Heubeck also emphasized that the number of the Sri Lankans in the internally displaced people camps is a major concern. "They have 300,000 people in displacement camps in the north. Unless something is going to be done to send them home and include them in this new government, they are going to be angry because their rights have been totally violated. They are not going to have peace," Heubeck said.
But not all of Heubeck and Irby's memories from the exchange were so heart-wrenching. Heubeck recalled going to a game of cricket, Sri Lanka's national sport.
"I was in a crowd of Sri Lankans who were singing, waving their flag and having a really great time," Heubeck said. "It was just a neat feeling of being in that crowd, [with people] who were so proud of being Sri Lankan."
Moreover, Irby noted Sri Lanka's several national parks, beautiful beaches and historic sites. Other promising aspects of the county include a strong family unit, medical system and education system, he said, adding that the country has a 90 percent literacy rate.
Heubeck also noted the hospitality of the Sri Lankans.
"The people are so wonderful and I can't say enough about them. The trip was better than I expected, and I expected it to be pretty good," she said.
Following the exchange, Irby said he feels encouraged about Sri Lanka's future.
"Sri Lanka faces numerous challenges as it turns away from 26 years of war and hopefully toward a new era of peaceful coexistence, but I am optimistic," he said. "The nation is an important trading partner, one of the oldest democracies in Asia, and most importantly, is full of friendly and industrious people who want to live their lives in peace and freedom"
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