So here it is. As promised the first view of the book I spent three months working on.
Around the Galle Fort in 80 Lives.
Writing a book
in three months is nothing like you’d think it would be. There’s no time for
relaxing, no time to compare notes and deliberate over whether you may or may
not have made the right decision. Every second, every hour is precious and must
be used wisely. Conversations are had on the go, yelled above the noise of a
tuk tuk weaving around huge buses and old men on spindly bikes or hurriedly
discussed over a sandwich as you fuel up ready for the next task. And because
the people you are writing about have their own lives to live, they are not
always as accommodating as you might wish. Children have to be picked up from
school, the vegetable man pushing his cart of rainbow goodies has to be caught
before he rounds the corner or a sudden impromptu trip to Colombo occurs,
pushing your interview back by several days.
Around the Galle Fort in 80 Lives is a
book that was written on the back of unpredictability. We never really knew,
even up until printing, whether we had everything we needed or who was to go
where or even if we had the right photos. But over the three months, there
became a level of organisation that hovered above all this chaos. Somehow,
although no day ever stuck to plan and no interview actually happened when we
wanted it to, we remained calm and, to a certain extent anyway, under control,
though it certainly didn’t look that way at the time. People have the capacity
to both amaze and irritate you in the same moment. When one interviewee was not
answering their phone for the tenth time in a row, another would appear round a
corner, a friendly smile inviting you in for a cup of tea and a chat. In fact
some of the most special moments I experienced over the course of the time I
spent in Sri Lanka were totally unscripted. They just happened.
When I first held the book in my hands, when I flicked through
the pages seeing stories that we’d worked on for months and photos that we’d
captured in a second laid up on shiny, thick paper, it didn’t really feel real.
Even now it still doesn’t. But knowing that our work and our stories are going
to reach people around the world is the most incredible feeling. Around the Galle Fort in 80 Lives is not
a guide on how to live life to the full, a self-help tome that ultimately
spouts out every cliché imaginable. It is a book of stories, a compilation of a
variety of lives, which have come together to form a community stronger than
most you will find across the world.
It is important
to remember that you have a choice. No one can tell you what to do with your
life, most definitely not me, most definitely not any book. But I think that
the world today offers so many opportunities that need to be seized upon. Sri
Lanka is only just realising its full potential and I think it is vital that
the generations who are helping to rebuild this magical country, first address
their own lives before tackling the future of their country. Maybe that means
stepping outside of a comfort zone, away from all that is familiar and
reassuring and into the terrifying unknown. Maybe it doesn’t. But I know that
is what I did and I’d have to say it turned out to be a pretty incredible
decision in the end.
Thanks for listening to my ramble.
I hope it may inspire you to take a gamble in 2015.
Go on, I dare you.
Pics c/o Juliet Coombe
