Niwella, Sri Lanka Mar. 11th-May 25th

I found myself at White Peacock Hostel will the world was shutting down becasue of Covid. I was surfing almost everyday at HIriketiya beach and enjoying the sun. Towards the end of March we started having weekend long lockdowns which eventually turned into everyday. During the lockdowns we decided to build a mud oven, as we only had a two burner stove, to start baking bread, roasting chicken, and making pizzas. To create the oven we first had to break down a abandoned termite hill. We then broke that into a fine dust to mix it with sand. We added water to create a clay which we used to create the inside layer of the oven. After a few days of drying we added an outer layer made of dirt, sand, and grass. After a week of drying we removed the inner filler and fired the oven dry. Next we needed some wood for a cooking fire. We had a axe head but no handle. I shaped an old table leg until the axe head fit it porperly. There was one dead tree on the porperty which we cut down, sawed into logs, and split very pain stakingly. Finally we were able to start cooking some great food. Towards the middle of April things started to open up a little but it was not until the end of May when they decided to allow you to move to other districts. At that point I decided I was ready to return to the U.S. I took a manadatory private shuttle to the Colombo International Airport. Then a flight to London where Heathrow was a ghost town. Then a 747 to Waashington D.C. with only 9 people aboard.Read more