Reality Check Department

I know I keep saying things are way cheaper over here, case in point:
Janaka and I went to buy 160 pairs of boys’ underwear. We traveled to Maharagama on the outskirts of Colombo. This is where there are seemingly endless stalls and storefronts of vendors selling fabric and clothing.

After a few false starts, and one gentleman who tried to convince me I really needed girls underwear, we located a stall that had boys’ briefs in 100% cotton in every color of the rainbow.
We ran into a slight communication problem when I explained that I wanted only white or light grey briefs because the boys need to wear them under the white pants of their school uniforms. Desperate to fill my order from the stock in his stall, the vendor kept holding up richly colored briefs and saying “nice” to me in an interrogative manner. If I acknowledged that they were indeed “nice” but not what I wanted, he started to pile them up with my order anyway. After a few attempts with my broken Sinhalese, I had to resort to making retching and gagging noises every time he tried to include any of the colors. Thanks to crossed arms; emphatic shaking of my head and one serious feint to leave the stall, he found the items I wanted. He had to check with other vendors and buy a bunch from them, but I ended up with 160 pairs of briefs in the sizes I needed, all light grey.
My mom raised four boys and while I know over the course of our childhood, she bought way more than 160 pairs of briefs, she never bought that many at one time. I got 16 large; 84 medium and 60 small. The entire order cost me the equivalent of $37.13 US. You could probably send a three pack of underwear from Wal-mart to Sri Lanka for less, but not by much. This is the long version of the reality check…things are MUCH less expensive to buy over here.

“Hi honey, I’m home! I gotta tell you about this crazy white broad that bought a crapload of boys underwear from me today!”

I did have a nice long chuckle on my way to the orphanage thinking about my sit-down with Chris Trento. He’s my tax guy and it will be amusing to explain some of the receipts I have. “That’s milk for the Montessori; that’s 10 bags of cement for the orphanage; that’s for toys in the piñatas; that’s for the truck we rented to take clothes to the Tissa orphanage; oh yeah, that’s the 160 pairs of boys underwear…” Many are in Sinhalese and all need to be converted from rupees to dollars. I’m sure he can hardly wait.