Just another WordPress.com site

FEBRUARY 1, THURSDAY

By billybaba / February 1, 2024 / Uncategorized / Leave a comment

RATHNA‘S GUEST HOUSE

Today I made a trip down memory lane with a visit to Rathna‘s Guest House a couple of kilometers down from Nooit Gedacht. In about 1992 my son joined me and Susie when we took a student group to Sri Lanka, India and Nepal and on the way home he and I traveled home together and spent a couple of nights in Una Watuna. We were on a crowded bus from Colombo together headed to the Una Watuna Beach Resort in Una Watuna. When the bus got to Galle and we were getting he got off ahead of me and for some reason I was blocked from getting off the crowded bus. When I did push my way off we had gone maybe 100 yards. I went back to connect with Tom and couldn‘t find him. I searched all around and finally gave up and took a rickshaw to the Una Watuna Beach Resort where we both knew we were going. It was late afternoon and he didn‘t show up. He was twenty and capable but hadn‘t been to Sri Lanka before and I was worried about him. So I decided to walk the long walk back to Galle so that if was finding his way by rickshaw or walking he would see me. But I got back to Galle and didn‘t see him. I didn‘t know what to do so went back to the Una Watuna Beach Resort to wait for him. By bedtime he hadn‘t shown up. I slept and then in the morning had breakfast, worried sick that he had gotten into some kind of trouble, perhaps an accident. And then he walked up.

He had gotten a rickshaw immediately and been persuaded by the driver‘s claim to go to a much better place than the Una Watuna Beach Resort. He had been taken to Rathna‘s Guest House where he rented a room for the night in a cabana right on the water with the waves washing up beneath him. He had had a good meal and slept well and then the next morning had come looking for me. My relief was enormous.

He seemed so delighted with Rathna‘s Guest House that he persuaded me to collect my things and to come with him. For a couple of nights we stayed in the cabana with the waves crashing around us.

I think Susie and I stayed there on later trips, but it was that first visit, my fear and relief, that has stuck with me. In 2004 the huge tsunami wall of water twenty feet high swept over Una Watuna three weeks after our student group had stayed there. I knew that Rathna‘s Guest House right on the water must have been swept away and everyone drowned. When I went back with a group bringing $15,000 in relief money we had raised I went to see Rathna and her guest house, fearing that it would be gone and everyone dead. But the family had survived. On that Sunday morning when the sea suddenly pulled back and they could see the ocean floor they had sensed something was terribly wrong and had climbed a nearby hill and survived. The house also survived but our cabana was washed away. But through help from the Clinton/Bush fundraising effort she had gotten support and was back in business. Now, 18 years later, I visited again.

Rathna‘s business is great. Her two sons, who were in their early teens in 1995 when their father died, are now in their late 40‘s. The father was sick on my first visit with Tom and his grave was in the front yard on my next visit. Family members are running the place. The room where Tom and I stayed next to a leaning palm tree had been rebuilt and is now a double decker. A beach room like ours, that had been about $10 a night, is now $50. I ate a grilled calamari lunch at their crowded restaurant and took photographs of the place and the family. The food wasn‘t as good as at Nooit Gedacht for the same price and the rooms more expensive. But Rathna‘s Guest House is crowded and thriving. I left feeling both sad and happy.