10/17/11 India

After 6 wonderful days in India, it's time to catch up on my blog.  India is a land of excitement and possibility, of extreme poverty and tremendous wealth, of ridiculously delicious food and unbelievable hospitality, of smothering heat and scary pollution.  One of our preport lecturers said, "Whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true."  In the few days I was there, I certainly had enough experiences and heard enough stories to support that quote.  I was taken twice by by auto rickshaw drivers to places I did not want to be (because they would get a cut from the store owner if I bought something) and was lied to about why I was there.  Another auto rickshow driver spent 17 hours with a shipmate helping her get through a stressful experience, telling her to "put back her tears," and staying with her until he knew she was ok.  When asked what she owed, he told her to pay whatever she thought was fair, if she felt he had treated her with kindness. I saw the slums with people living in "tents" made of pieced-together plastic bags, and stayed with a wealthy business owner and his family in a beautiful home. It is a land of contrasts.

Jeff and the boys stayed with the above-mentioned host family for 2 days prior to me joining them, because I was on-call those first 2 days.  I joined them the morning of the 3rd day.  The family-hired driver, the son, Madhu, and Jeff picked me up outside the port at about 9 am.  Upon getting to the home, I met Rao, the father, and Malathy, his wife.  Malathy was very busy in the kitchen cooking a feast for breakfast, which she and her son served to my family and her husband.  Since this was my second breakfast of the day, I tried to take it easy with the delicious homemade fried Indian flatbread, curried shrimp, and vegetable side dishes she served.  She refused to sit with us out of need to serve us, and absolutely forbade me to help cook or clean.  This was all translated through her husband, because she and I did not share a common language.

Jeff and I sat and talked with Rao for the next 2-3 hours about family, social issues (such as the place of women in Indian society), and spirituality.  He is Hindu and we asked a lot of questions about that religion.  Because they believe that God is present in everything, practicing Hindus are very kind to their fellow humans and to animals.  Rao told me that when people act poorly it doesn't make him angry, because to him it just means that they have not yet connected with God.  If they knew God, he said, they would be unable to act in a way that was angry or not kind. When I asked him to explain the multiple Gods in the Hindu Faith, he stated, in a nutshell, that he believes there is only one God, and that the different Hindu Gods are all part of that one God.  They are a way for humans to connect with, and explain the various attributes of God, and a way to make something that is totally intangible, more "real."  It was an exciting conversation and I felt very connected to this spiritual human being.

I was then told that their family has a tradition of giving a saree to all the women guests who stay with them for the first time, on the condition that the guest will wear it that day.  Not wanting to upset the apple cart, I gladly picked a beautiful pink and silver saree from a pile of new sarees.  Rao's daugher Sujathe, and her husband Kartic, then arrived at the house to go to lunch with us. Sujathe took me to her old bedroom and began the complicated process of dressing me in the saree.  After twisting, folding, tucking and pinning me in to yards and yards of material, I felt like a princess.  Sujathe and her mother then adorned me with matching jewels; a pink and gray pearl necklace with pink pearl earrings, bright pink bangles for my wrists, anklets, flowers and jewels for my hair, and a pink bindi for my forehead. Now I felt like a queen.  We all piled into cars and went to eat at an Indian restaurant, where an amazing South Indian meal was waiting for us.  Rao refused to let us pay for any of it.  Stuffed full of delicious breads, vegetables and sweets, we got back into the cars and drove to the school where the kids and Jeff were to do their "$100 solution" presentation.

The "$100 Solution" is a project that encourages small donations of $100 to communities to help fund projects that will become part of sustainable solutions to issues of concern for those communities.  Reade, Tate and Jeff are leading the Semester at Sea pilot program to see how the concept works with school-age children.  If successful, Semester at Sea hopes to make it part of the school age children "curriculum" while at sea. After making their presentation to the school kids, ideas for how best to use that $100 were discussed, and it was decided that they would use it to help fund a "green" project to reduce plastic bag usage by replacing them with reusable canvas bags.  Part of the proceeds from each bag sale will go back into the project to fund more bags, thus making it sustainable. The kids and Jeff did a wonderful presentation in a stuffy, VERY hot classroom while I sat proudly and suffered with rivers of sweat running down my saree-clad body.  After the presentation, the school fed us again - sweet rice, vegetable filled pockets, and sweet, milky tea.  The plan was to go out to dinner a few hours later, but the Warner family was so stuffed full of Indian deliciousness, that we decided to skip that idea, and went back to the host home.  Forever the hostess, Malathy and her two servants cooked us an amazing dinner anyway.  When it was time to leave, I took off my jewerly to return it to it's rightful owner, and was flatly refused.  In fact, the jewerly was taken upstairs, packed up carefully, and given back to me as a gift I "must" take. Then we were given a wood-inlaid "picture" of Ganesh, one of the Hindu Gods. With this gift, Rao said they were hoping we would think of them every day, whenever we saw the picture.  Their driver took us back to the ship late that night.  We hope they will come visit us in Colorado some day.

From this experience, I was forced to think hard about generosity and hospitality.  The small gestures I've made to my guests in the past now seem embarrassingly little, and I hope I will do better in the future.  India felt like a very spiritual, hospitable country, and the USA could certainly learn from some of India's cultural attributes.

10/11/11 Mauritius

It's been a week since we left Mauritius, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. 

I was on-call the one day we were in Mauritius, so I had a different experience than many others.  I spent the day walking around the port area and seeing the market where the locals shop.  That was lots of fun and I ate one of the best veggie samosas I've ever had.  Most of the population here is Indian and the food reflects that with lots of curries and naan bread readily available.

The most interesting thing that happened to me in Mauritius was that I ran into an Indian man who wants to imigrate to the USA.  He had all kinds of questions for me, many which I couldn't answer.  Before we parted ways he insisted I give him my email address so that he could send me a copy of his resume to forward to someone who would hire him.  Somehow, I don't think it will be that easy for him.  I did email him back with information on how to apply for a job with V-ships, the company that staffs Semester at Sea with it's crew.

As previously mentioned, I was on-call this day.  I got back to the ship early for the clinic we hold prior to leaving each port.  I was warned that alcohol is a problem in this port because many of the students go out on snorkeling trips that include lots of alcohol along with the lunch barbeque. It didn't take long until some of them started staggering into the clinic, having failed the sobriety test at the gangplank.  There were actually only a few very drunk students, which is a big improvement from previous journeys, I'm told.  Those that got drunk enough to need babysitting in the medical clinic will start accruing bad-boy (or girl) points that can ultimately get them kicked off the ship.  It only takes 10 points to get booted, and a couple kids came quite close to that number for behaving poorly in addition to being drunk enough to require medical attention.  We sat there with them for hours until they were able to blow a number that allowed them to leave.  Despite that experience, I must say that I haven't seen nearly as many alcohol-related issues as I had expected, and have been VERY impressed with this group of students overall.  For the most part, they seem to be a thoughtful, hard-working, friendly group of kids that hope to make a difference in the world.

9/30/11 The Piano Bar, M.V. Explorer

I'm sitting here in the piano lounge listening to the spouse of one of the professors brilliantly play the piano (he used to be a professional musician).  Other people are playing chess, writing in their journals, studying, or chatting with their friends.  It is really lovely, to quote one of my new South African friends.  I must leave in a few minutes to meet a patient in the clinic who fractured his proximal humerus and dislocated his shoulder in a bicycling accident in South Africa.  He was treated by an orthopedist at the hospital in Cape Town, but needs a little help managing the pain, as expected.  The clinic has been quite busy recently, mostly with viral upper respiratory illnesses, but a good variety of other minor stuff.  The clinic is interesting because it's small, and therefore, we are on top of each other all the time.  There is only one room with meds in it, and a different room with the strep tests, etc.  If I need something in the room that Dr. Sloane is in, I have to interrupt, and vise versa.  Somehow, we manage to make it work.  It's been a fun job so far, and I pray it stays that way.

9/29/11 South Africa

We are back on the ship after spending 6 wonderful days in South Africa.  Cape Town is a beautiful city that you can't wait to explore once you set eyes on it. 

Our first day there, we went on a sunset hike up Lion's Head, a mountain in Cape Town.  Our guide warned us that this was a true mountain climbing experience (and may not be a good idea for children under age 12), but I wasn't prepared for the ladders, foot- and hand-holds, and chains we had to use to get up the last part of the climb.  The kids scampered up like little mountain goats, making friends with all the college kids and guides on the trip, and proving that kids can not only do this hike, but can beat all the adults and college students up, no problem.  The dinner on top was simple, but nice, and the views were spectacular.  After sunset, we headed back down in the dark (with headlamps). I was certain that there must be a safer way down, since we were descending in the dark, but that was not the case. I did wonder what kind of a mother I was, exposing my children to possible dangers like falling off cliffs in the dark.  All of us made it back to the ship in one piece, I'm happy to report, my motherly reputation intact.

We had lots of memorable experiences in South Africa, including a wonderful, one-day safari, a scenic cable-car trip up to the top of Table Mountain to see the panoramic views, and a fancy dinner in a treehouse.  The most memorable day for me though, was the last.  We went on an FDP (faculty-directed practicum) to the Amy Biehl Foundation, which provides supplemental and after-school opportunities for children that would never have such opportunities.  It also provides a well-balanced meal once per day for the kids in it's program.  Amy Biehl was an activist against apartheid, who was stoned to death by 4 kids in a political rally.  Her parents, rather than looking for revenge, started a foundation to continue her work and help disadvantaged kids.  Two of the young men who killed Amy Biehl now work for her foundation.  It is a story of absolute forgiveness and generosity that can't help but amaze anyone who hears it. 

We spent a couple of hours driving through the townships that these disadvantaged children come from.  Picture hundreds and hundreds of corrugated steel and plywood shacks, all connected to each other, with narrow aisles between them and occasional concrete rectangular boxes that house the toilets.  Many of the people leave their doors open, so we could see inside some of the shacks as we drove by.  Some were tiny, with a small bed and table and not much else.  Others seemed to be bigger, with several connected shacks and a few separate rooms, and some seemed to have some modern appliances and TV's in them.  Some were in shambles, and others looked very neat inside. We were told that typically, when one person in the area gets a job and can pay for power, they let their neighbors splice into their power lines, and thus share resources.  Unemployment in some of these township is as high as 40%, and HIV rates are as high as 30%! 

I was just blown away by the mess that the founders of apartheid made of things.  They took housed black people from locations near work opportunities, and pushed them out of their housing without any compensation, away from sources of work, and made them start over with nothing -  thus the shanty-towns.  The vast consequences of this act were clearly not anticipated, and when apartheid was finally outlawed, the blacks had been reduced to poverty-sticken, uneducated populations.  Now the govenment must try to compensate the displaced blacks by providing them with proper housing, which it can only accomplish painfully slowly and with revenue from only 9.1% of the population that makes enough money to be taxed.  Public education, although provided by the government, is bare-bones, and many parents still can not pay the school and book fees required.  Therefore, many of the children still do not get educated.  Of note, I did not see one single white face in the townships we drove through.

Afterwards, our last evening in Cape Town, the staff, faculty and their families got the honor of getting to personally meet Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. If you check out my facebook "wall," you can see a picture of Tate giving a high-five to Desmond Tutu, with the rest of us looking on, behind him.  The reception for him was nice, but the speech that he gave to the entire shipboard community afterward was amazing.  He is clearly a deeply spiritual man, who recognizes the absurdity in distinctions between humans being based on physical attributes.  He made the point that you can not tell anything about a person's generosity of spirit, capacity for forgiveness, or anything else that matters at all, by looking at the color of their skin or size of their nose (yes, Phillips family, he did imply that our large noses do not necessarily make us superior beings :).  He was appalled that populations (such as the USA) have spent MILLIONS of dollars in a few seconds, testing nuclear warheads.  His words, and I paraphrase,  "Do you have ANY IDEA what we could have done with that amount of money to improve the lives of our people????"  He then spoke of how none of us (Semester at Sea participants) would come home the same people.  We would never again be able to ignore injustice, and we would fight for those less fortunate than us. He used very formative, compelling, inspiring language, and I had to fight back the tears.  You can just feel when you are in the presence of someone great.