A morning of contrasts

Our first official day of the tour dawned damp but with a few patches of blue in the sky to inspire hope for a fine day. And so it was.

A fine outlook

Piling onto a minibus, our first destination was to the "Pettah" the other old shopping area  - busy, dirty, smelly but full of life - to see Wolvendaal, the oldest Dutch church in Colombo. It is one of the oldest Protestant churches still in use in Sri Lanka, and conducts services in English, Sinhalese and Tamil. Wolvendaal literally means "dale of wolves" as the swampy marshland that was reclaimed for the site was a hunting ground for jackals. It was built on the highest point of ground so that when ships' crews approached the harbour they cold see it looming, and take refuge in the fact that religion was alive and a protective force in the colony. With Independence and the declaration of Buddhism as the official religion of Sri Lanka, a stupa was constructed to block out the view of the church from the harbour.

Front of the church

Dating from 1749, its interior is in the shape of a cross, and it has a humble rather than grand atmosphere, with simple whitewashed walls and high windows that were originally made with louvred shutters. The only decorative features are the carved font and pulpit, made from calamander, a precious wood indigenous to Sri Lanka. A row of ornate chairs elevated above the pews faces the pulpit and was reserved for government officials and dignitaries. Interestingly when the British took the church over under their own rule they replaced the hard wooden pews with more comfortable rattan seats that still line the interior in serried rows today. They also replaced the window shutters with stained glass in a restrained geometric pattern.

Interior

Chairs for dignitaries 

The font

The floor of the church is flagged with many stone markers elaborately carved to honour the ministers of the church and their families. Coded symbols reveal the nature of their demise, a skull and crossbones for an infectious disease (usually yellow fever), a broken column for an untimely accident.

The surrounding small garden is also a memorial ground with headstones lining the walls of the church and its perimeter. They have a touching quality of resilience in the face of the passage of time.

Headstones in the grounds

We drove back through the Pettah, a riot of sounds and scents not altogether pleasing. Its name is derived from the Tamil word 'pettai' that means village, and the district remains strongly Tamil and Muslim. Through the thronging streets there are glimpses of mosques and colourful Hindu temples covered in grotesqueries. The tiny shops overflow with an amazing array of goods - handbags, every type of clothing, fabrics, hardware and spare car parts - in a jumble of chaotic commerce.

Leaving our bus in a car park we walked through the food market that overflowed with an abundance of produce, mostly displayed on mats on the ground. 

Vegetables and a stall of dried fish