When my friend and fellow volunteer Mark (or Mr Mark as our colleagues called him) left Sri Lanka in April, I thought that I wouldn’t be seeing him again soon. But last week Mr Mark re-appeared to pay me a little visit at work... in the form of Mr.Mark.exe a computer virus! The file had copied itself from some of his work on another computer and found its way onto mine.
As I waved goodbye to Mr Mark for a second time from my work, with some help from Norton Antivirus, I thought generally about how in the UK we protect ourselves – whether it is our computers, our homes or our person – from numerous threats, real and imagined.
Often leading a life free of threats is great – it frees you up to enjoy life without the hassle of computer viruses, health and safety problems or more serious threats. But I have realised coming to Sri Lanka, where there simply is not the infrastructure to protect you from all these potential dangers, back home we end up worrying about more and more elaborate threats and risks as we eliminate the more obvious ones. We eliminate malnutrition and worry about obesity. We eliminate state conflict and worry about “the enemy within”. We eliminate tuberculosis and worry about the “millennium bug”.
Before I came to Sri Lanka I was scared that I was turning into one of those people that made up things to worry because there wasn’t anything big left to worry about. I’d get all annoyed if I forgot my umbrella if it was raining, if I left a bill unpaid or if I thought I’d left my hair straighteners switched on at home. Now I am here, and every day new risks come at me, from going in a Sri Lankan bus with 100 other people, or exposing my computer to a multitude of viruses, I am much more relaxed about it all!
Of course, I am not advocating the chaos and uncertainty that plagues many poor Sri Lankan families, whose main breadwinner fell from a tree with no safety harness and became disabled, or whose businesses are plagued by the frequent power cuts that occur here. And nor am I going to be happy if, or when, my computer finally gives in to the millions of viruses on other computers here.
But I think that we should strive for a happy medium. Because we will worry about our safety no matter how safe we make our world. And it was quite fun to be visited by a slightly evil Mr Mark as I worked away at my computer last week.
