S@S Summarizing Poem…

So I’m a little behind on my blogs and I’m hoping to finish Japan and an “Summarizing SAS” post while still on board, but time is rushing by and it will just have to come once I’m back in Chi.  So I thought it best to share a poem that a past SAS Student wrote and I altered to fit my experience both this voyage and last. It is a poised reflection on the SAS journey.  Reflection Re-Entry is what we focus on right now on board which is a big part of this process, culture shock happens not only when you visit somewhere else but when you return home from so much and so long away.  It is a conflicting time in the voyage and not easy to wrap your head or heart around.  This poem will kind of demonstrate what this experience is about and what its like to come home after experiencing so much. (I wish I had this poem when I was a student) Enjoy:

I’M NOT THE SAME

(I altered from the original author Natalie Lou Ritter)

Forgive me, Mom, I’m Not the Same

I think you knew that I would change

I couldn’t stay so long at sea

And not come home a different me.

I’ve been to the Mekong; the Amazon, too

The things that I’ve done: if only you knew.

I’ve climbed and scaled the Table Mountain

Shed salty tears at Hiroshima fountains

I’ve jumped off of cliffs in Emerald Gorges

And from the Ganges saw burning corpses

I glimpsed at the future in Singapore

And danced in the Rainforest as it started to pour.

On the Islands of Hong Kong took in towering buildings and colorful lights

At countless street-side stands I have on feasted in delight

I laid under the impermanent Cherry Blossoms in Japan

In each country examined the role of Woman vs. Man

I’ve seen the Taj; Climbed the Great Wall

I’ve Prayed Over Ghanaian Plains; I’ve done it All

Sat next to Elephants under S. African Safari stars

Stood a foot in each Korea , never felt tension that hard

Monasteries, Pagodas, Temples and Shrines

Horseback riding in Stellenbosch; sampling wines

White-water rafting down rivers in Taiwan

Saw nothing but sea and sunrise on the Oceans at dawn

In the Tunnels of CuChi I saw what War forces one to Give

I Forced Myself to Really Live.

Climbed a volcano in Siberia under the Russian Sky

Went inside Townships to witness the system of Apartheid

Sure, All these things can be relayed

In the photo albums that’ll be displayed

But to convey all this will be demanding—

Experience is Nothing Without Understanding.

So Forgive me, Mom, if I Start To Cry

For all of the things I really can’t describe:

Walking next to dead bodies in the road

And being told, NOT to reach out to a child’s hand to hold.

Stood in Tianamen as scripted history was told

Pondered the perspective between the young and the old.

And the people in poverty and those afraid to speak

For fear if they do, they’ll be in jail the next week

Because their government has such a watchful eye.

All the people with AIDs , getting ready to die.

The beggars in Vietnam who walk on their hands

They’re deformed from Orange and unable to stand.

Paralyzed in Killing Field prisons staring into faces of genocide

Feeling in my soul the weight of the question WHY?

Critiqued the ‘New World’ from atop Elmina Slave Castle

Found the depth of breath and stretch with India Yogi Master

And the people in shacks who sleep inches apart

Offer only a smile and it rips out my heart

I’ve seen beauty and devastation

I’ve felt sorrow; I’ve felt elation

I’ve seen birth and I’ve felt death;

Forgive me, Mom, but what is left?

So if you could, Mom, just give me time

When I come home, let me unwind

I need a moment to just… Stand. STILL.

Please understand (I’m sure you will)

I couldn’t stay so long at sea

And not come home a different me

So long as I change, the world changes, too

But be proud, Mom, because I came from you.

Half Bitter, Half Sweet in Shanghai

Docking in Shanghai I was eager to explore a city that I got lost in 8 years ago…no not like lost in elation of exploring…literally lost in.  Our ‘green sheet’, which we receive in every port with important logistic, contact and safety information, had an incorrect translation on the “Please take me to _port address_” in Chinese characters. I thought I was taking a quick cab back to the ship for an evening field program meeting university students, so I left my friends on my own and ended up on a chaotic lost in translation moment that ended up in a cab ride to a commercial shipping port, a cell phone conversation with cabbies friend that kind of speaks English and finally finding my way back to the ship in the dark from the same place the 2 hour cab ride had picked me up.

Regardless of the chaos, unsettling situation of that day 8 years ago, today I can say that China is a place that still today can cause some major translation/logistical/unsettling feeling to a Westerner. Mainly because majority of Chinese do not speak English and the cultural composure that people carry themselves with does not lend to helping/speaking/smiling at strangers.  It is a very assertive Western statement to make but I’m going to say it…its almost like you can feel the elements of Communism as you are forced to feel very much like a foreigner.  (This is not meant to be offensive and it is also very difficult to convey in full depth.) Its not only the language that was difficult, because that happened a lot of places it was more the interaction with the irony of having a clash of cultures that is mirrored in world perceptions, politics and functioning of our opposite power structures and places in the world.   However, this foggy feeling was clarified greatly in the conversation I had with the political powerhouse and the great mediator of C.H. Tung the world expert of US-Sino relations and son of the founder of the Semester at Sea program that spreads/shares the world that I wrote about in my Hong Kong post. So our time in Shanghai is best described as half bitter and half sweet which is exactly the description that our host at the traditional Chinese tea ceremony, which I’ll talk of later, stated about my favorite selection out of the 15 specialized Chinese teas that we tasted.  Here is my story of Shanghai:

So if I had to sum up what I spent the most time doing in Shanghai in one concept I would say….I ate my weight in dumplings (mostly but also much more) ha ha.   In this port it was like the Christy/Terrie show.  Terrie has essentially been my SAS travel soul mate, since we have the same style, interests, ambitions, support and bottomless stomachs looking to savor every taste a country has to offer.  We just constantly found ourselves desiring dumpling during any time in the day and searching them out no matter where we were.  They are just sooooo good. We had soup dumplings, pork dumplings, pork/soup dumplings, shrimp dumplings, shrimp balls, fish balls, squid balls, hot pot soup, bao, noodles, dried fruit, fresh fruit, coconut candies, ice cream, noodles, grass jelly, mochi, some kind of meat on a stick and various other delicacies.  We were on our second to last port and we needed to put down all that it had to offer into our bellies before we headed home.

Our first day we set out to just walk the Bund, a famous area on the water, and capture the sites of Shanghai.  While there was literal smog…yep smog NOT fog…covering the view and somewhat diminished the stunning structures in pictures it was amazing to see how this little city has grown up and the waterfront resembles one of the most unique I have seen.  Soon after enjoying the waterfront design and development of massive metropolitan buildings of this communist capitalist concentrated area of China we began to fumble through the language barrier as we immersed ourselves in the city.  The simple act of trying to find a place to eat, and in turn order food ended up being quite the feat.  We spent literally hours trying to locate a specific destination plotted out by a tour book and then find an alternate after finding prices that were not compatible with our budgets.  We ended up in a small meager lunch counter but lost in translation and frustration.  We could see the food, the cooks making it in an open air kitchen, we knew where to pay at the single cash register, we had the local currency, yet we were helpless as we tried to navigate and do a simple thing such as order a meal.  No English ANYWHERE, not a helpful stranger, not a patient waitstaff, and just people and more people piling up in line.  After 15 minutes of struggles we all ordered the same thing after pointing to a plate that was just brought out.  We couldn’t complain too much as the price was nearly $1 each for a massive mixture of noodles and soup with dumplings. It wasn’t long before our lost in translation moments got us no where but a long walk around Shanghai before I had to return to the ship for an evening of working a recruitment event at Fudan University, which is right in the middles of Shanghai and has 40,000 students!  My difficulties in translation created an admiration for the extreme barriers and dedication that it takes for the 60+ students that came to hear me speak in English as they were finely tuned and bright bilingual students.  The students from Fudan who were currently sailing with us on the Spring 2012 voyage came to support and supplement my presentation with offerings of their own experiences.  It was a phenomenal layering into a presentation that let our program and the opportunity it presented shine in a place where education and world view is starkly different than our US students but equally admirable and connected in the interdependent world in which we live.  The event was one of those “work obligations” that was actually a moment when the passion for the work I do reached a level I never knew before, sharing Semester at Sea through my job as an Outreach Coordinator is pretty much the epitome of professional bliss.  We topped the night off with a legit Chinese Hot Pot meal with Terrie and a faculty friend who came to Fudan to present the professor perspective. Our struggles with translations were still present as we cautiously proceeded a menu that was very complex and just stood by with our attempts to figure out how Hot Pot components works with our friendly Chinese with tiny bits of English competency coach helped us order.  We ended up with massive amounts of food and indulged in it all, random meats, veggies and assorted balls of fish, yep fish in ball form. Of course we threw in some shrimp dumplings because what’s a meal in China without dumplings.  The conclusion of the night came with the cold breeze of the change of seasons underway in China.

Splendor of the second day consisted of feasting at farmers market that we found in the middle of the Yuyuan Garden traditional shopping district, the buildings literally appear as if you are stepping into a old Chinese village and there are people buzzing around everywhere, its like the Chinese version of Michigan Ave, but far more quaint and cultural as opposed to consumer focused. In transit to the Garden district we hopped in a cab that became quite the experience.  The cabbie was a young 20 something who was striving to learn English while strickened with the task of driving a cab.  He literally pulled a huge u-turn in order to pick us up for the ride and deliver us to our destination.  In the process he was conversing with me in the front seat and pulled out a notebook on which he asked me to write the funniest phrases that just came out of my mouth and then we practiced them over and over.  He could not grasp the concept nor the pronunciation of the word “them”…he would repeat it and struggled with the close of the emmmm sound. We practiced over and over and it felt odd saying such a simple word in our language yet I’m certain this is what I sounded like in his. I spotted some wedding photographers on the side walk and when I was telling others in the back seat “Oh my brother is a photographer” he asked me to write it down.  Then after several repeats of seemingly menial words and phrases in English he stated that he wished to move to the United States and concluded our drive with “Will you take me to the United States?”  I giggled and replied at this awkward request (that in some ports this same ambition and questions have come along with a casual yet serious marriage proposal which leads to moments of feeling uncomfortable) and said “I’m sorry but I’m not going home to the United States, I’m on to Japan next” as an casual deflect of the question he was posing.

Regardless of the closing, he was the first warm spirit that wanted to share in the excitement we were having in being western foreigners and try his hand at the broken English as we tried to connect.  We stepped out of the cab thinking “Alright Shanghai let’s see what you got, maybe the people are friendly instead of fearful of breaking the proper social norms of stepping outside of their comfort zone.”  The farmers market was quaint and quite existence of random foods and little translations aside from the sampling of the tastes throughout the stands. Many of the vendors continued the generosity of the culture that we witnessed in the cabbie as they offered up samples and body language translations of what caught our stares of bewilderment trying to define what the objects were.  Then we headed into one of the best meals of my life and the conversations of a close friend as we talked about life back home and the paths that our lives have taken.  We ordered a plentiful amount of food and dug into my new favorite cuisine on the planet.

The xiao long bao, soup dumplings, of Din Tai Fung are a treasure amidst our tired days of traveling as we had just sort of stepped out for a meal and quite day but it led into all the splendor of the shopping district modeled after the traditional architecture of Shanghai. Shopping was a mania of various traditional Chinese goods.  Terrie and I got swept away by the charm of the pearls, the carefully paper cut artwork, the tea pots, as we struggled to navigate and translate our way through the busied avenues with help from an informal guide Linda.  Right when we thought we were exhausted and needed a seat to enjoy some chatting, our new friend Linda led us to a place for a traditional Chinese Tea ceremony.  It was a beautiful ceremony put on for just Terrie and I at a private table set up like a miniature stage.  Our host executed what seemed like a performance with elegance and grace, she was modest/polite/perfect/like a little doll but carried herself with such precision and practice as she made exchanges with us in English and introduced us to all kinds of Chinese customs through a what some deem a small dry substance of tea.  We tried flower tea, herbal tea, black team, and variations in between.  Some were medicinal, some were flavorful and some were just plain bland but we shook our heads in amusement and investment in the careful process that she was explaining with our tiny cups and tons of miniature pitchers  that were set out in front of us to find our favorite.  Mine ended up being the baby Jasmine, whose scent reminds me of what China felt like in my heart.  Another winner was Black Tea with Lychee flowers, which was sweetly romantic with the flowers yet strong and caffeinated like I needed my tea to be. I had a whole new appreciation for this substance of tea and Terrie and I giggled at how much a simple break in our Shanghai day was teaching us.  Oolong was my final favorite and she described it as half bitter and half sweet, you can literally feel the sweet in your throat after you swallow it as you breath in the air, its a sensation that stays with you for a while after you swallow it.  This description of the Oolong tea is exactly what Shanghai and China was like for me…it was a figurative statement that represented how I felt and what it was like to be there from my vantage point.  Of course we walked into our tea ceremony simply wanting a second to sit down and rest from a busy day, but our host made a place for herself in our hearts and packages of my 3 favorite teas with extra Oolong ended up coming home with me.

Finishing our time in Shanghai consisted of time with a phenomenal host David, who Terrie worked at in UCLA and who was also staff on a previous SAS voyage. He is currently working for NYU Shanghai and is proficient in Chinese thus, were about to get our inside scoop on Shanghai and scope out all the best places. We started the day with a brunch in Tian Zi Fang ‘neighborhood’ that felt like Lincoln Park China style, it was like home in a trendy hip boutiquey area of Shanghai at a place ironically titled Kommune.  The SAS connection of sharing that experience as well as the knowledge of the field of Higher Education discussing the trends in China and NYU’s big moves into 10 international markets created conversation that made it feel like the 3 of us had been friends forever.  It was a breath of fresh air of just living a weekend relaxing brunch shopping trip in our luxurious lives half way across the world yet talking about the trends in the field of our work week ahead.  The amazing little alleys of quiet cute boutique shops was a perfect way to drop some shopping in our day and David joked about how all the shopkeepers like to shout out “Lao wai lai le” which means “Foreigner here” when we come in their store.  The repeat that we are leaving as we exit and we say “Xie Xie” (thank you) in our best yet broken pronunciation of their careful patterns of stressing intonations and characters that we would never think of in English. (I’m terrrrrible at Chinese.)  David likes to giggle as he observes his East meets West cultures, as he is a Chinese American from CA and NY who has been living in China for just a few months so far in his contract.

  

On our way out of the subway station to the Xia Tian Di area of town.   We marveled at the meticulous presentation of the Mochi counter and since I haven’t seen a boutique cupcake shop since the US we figured this must be the next best thing.  David assured us…it was and we ordered one each to take with and enjoy as it defrosted a bit.  After checking out the free museum about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party that provided interesting perspective and contrast to back home, that we would have never found without our fabulous host.

Finishing our day with, of course, more food.  We found some bao to nibble on and then stopped for another special Asian, of  Xian Chao or in English grass jelly.  Yes it is peculiar as the name proposes it to be.  This was the most fascinating both frozen and hot treat, and looked adventurous but tasted.  It is particularly essentially Taiwan and is used in various desserts and drinks.  (Kind of like a bunch of variations of the little soy ball in bubble tea).  The jelly is heated and melted to be consumed as a thick warm dessert with numerous toppings like tangyuan, taro balls, azuki beans and tapioca.  All of which I would have never known to eat until I sat down to a bowl of this, it had a sweet sticky consistency like liquid oatmeal but the cold kind was served chilled mixed into shaved ice which was equally intriguing and relaxing to enjoy.  Again another trend that would blow the PinkBerry/Starfruit world out of the water if anyone would be bold enough to bring it to Chicago/LP.  It ended our time in Shanghai with a little cold and a little warmth in our hearts.

Our time in Shanghai was slightly sour and slightly sweet as we maneuvered the massive structures of modern day metropolitan.  We spent a day lost in translation and finished with an evening of work in elation.  The next day was soup dumplings, shopping and street-side vendors with more dumplings.  The final day was certainly sweet as we experienced the city with a member of our SAS family, our professional field and a friend I hope to be to anyone that visits me in my city or whatever foreign land I may find myself in.

Shanghai was our second to last stop and was the perfect blend of half bitter and half sweet to begin to bring this trip around the world to a close as we entered the first few days of the last month of our voyage around the world.

Hong Kong, “China” or A World of Its Own?

Docking in Hong Kong was a continuation of that feeling of dejavu, from my time in the same exact port location 8 years prior.  The MV Explorer was even occupying the very same berth, which unlike places like Ghana or India, is attached to a massive shopping mall that rivals even the Mall of America in the US.   To be exact it was, about 3 Mall of America’s conjoined. It was the epitome of consumerism back in 2004 and has reached an unparalleled extravagant level since then.  The main floor consisted of every designer brand you could think of Gucci, Fendi, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, etc. but drum roll please….they were all children’s stores.  Walking out into the city of Hong Kong we were introduced to the city by a new level of luxury and capitalism in this development capital of China.  Terrie and I looked at each other then looked at the tiny mannequins wrapped in $1,000 items and then we looked back at each other confused and then we continued to examine the disturbing phenomenon in one after another of these high end store windows.  Can you imagine dropping $100,000 on a small bag of clothes for your child that grows out of things by month? We continued through the halls of the mall making our way out to the city with a sickened feeling in the pits of our stomachs. That feeling stemmed from the reality that we just came from countries like India and Ghana where the poverty put a similar feeling there deep in our guts which we were just making sense of and now we were in a place that we didn’t know what to do with.  Welcome to what it feels like to have Hong Kong as your next stop on an itinerary taking you around the world…it’s a taste that you don’t know what to do with or how to enjoy.  (Little did I know that I would gain clarity on this after a visit with one of the most notable political leaders of Hong Kong) of this pocket of the Asian continent that as been straddled between China and the West for the last century.  Hong Kong was a British sovereign state for 99 years following The Opium Wars.  It was relinquished back to China in 1998.  This was an example of the unequal treaties that used to preside with the same imperialist mindset of much of the other histories I have spoke about in previous blogs. Some historians even deem this as closure of the “Century of Humiliation” that China experienced through The Opium Wars with the West, The Sino-Japanese wars on their own turf, the Chinese Exclusion Act that was instituted in the US and of course its own internal struggle as the nation was split into the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan.  Regardless of those different periods of history we all know that China has been on the rise for decades and its not stopping anytime soon.  Hong Kong rejoined China in 1998 with its many Western ways due to the British influence and the extreme success of its capitalist models of business. However, only 20% of the people that live in Hong Kong and its 264 total islands consider themselves part of China.  So although Hong Kong is technically part of the P.R.C. the politics of this small but mighty pocket of the world make it extremely unique and unlike anything that most of the world associates with China or anywhere else on the planet after stepping into its extremely dense and developed streets.  So what follow are some special moments from my time in these HK streets, which by the way people pay a 100% to 150% tax on vehicles in order to have the privilege of driving on and gas costs $2.50 USD/liter…4 liters in a gallon people that means $10.00USD/gallon:

So my two big events during my two days in Hong Kong was standing in the shadows of a 112 ft tall Buddha statue on Lantau Island and sitting in the significant presence of a political dignitary of Hong Kong, C.H.Tung.

C. Y. Tung was one of the founders of Semester at Sea, he was a highly educated man that made his wealth in the shipping industry.  His dream was a combination of his two passions, which was to have a classroom that could travel the world on a ship…fast forward 50 years and here I am on the 4^th ship of this programs history, as a staff, an educator and a student of the world.  The Tung family provided the first ship to this program (that is a BIG donation both in $ and in size) and has continuously supported ISE/SAS in a number of ways including our C.Y. Tung scholarship program that funds 8 students this voyage each with a $20,000 scholarship.  The selection of the students is reflective of what C.Y.’s son, C. H. Tung, emulates which is learning across nations and cooperation in the interdependent world in which we live.  He has provided his expertise, political skill and candor into his extremely esteemed successful political career. Mr. Tung Chee Hwa is the Founding Chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation. He previously served as the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“HKSAR”), People’s Republic of China from July 1997 to March 2005. Mr. Tung is currently Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, People’s Republic of China.

Most recently, Mr. Tung’s professional and personal interests and energies have been focused on US-Sino Relations.   Therefore, the scholarships are awarded to SAS students who demonstrate a keen interest in China History, Chinese Language or American Studies for our international Chinese students.  It was my task to take these 8 outstanding students to meet a mentor whom they have read about in textbooks and studied in their coursework.  Mr. Tung has an amazing calm sweet dignified spirit that you feel inspired by merely by sitting in his presence.  We were gathered in a lovely stately room near the entrance of the building that was so formal pristine and official that it felt like we were in the West wing of the White House.  This was the center for Former Executive Political Members.  And while the Chatham House rules of confidentiality, which we were require to read and abide by, prevent me from using specific quotations from Mr. Tung.  I want to share the experience of the meeting. He distinguished me as the leader of the meeting and all of the sudden felt that I was filling a role far above pay grade but took a deep breath that helped me rise to the meet the expectations.  However it was aided by the fact that our time with him was to mainly say ‘Thank You”, delivering this message was easy and something I had been hired to do as the person deemed responsible for representing the SAS program to those we meet all over the world.   So by sharing with him how the program his father built has formed my life I set the scene adding how I found myself back as staff and then prompted each of the students to disclose the details of their journey.  The students shared similar stories with their emotions and appreciation reaching fresh and new heights, as many of them would not have had this opportunity to study with SAS if it weren’t for the scholarship.  His message in return was of much thanks stating that people in his position are often afforded the opportunity to support many programs and it is always significant when that support can be articulated in the actual voices, experiences and emotions of those benefiting.  He was clear as he spoke with such eloquence, grace, and empathy for all perspectives. He transitioned between Chinese and English, apologizing to me when he unknowingly transitioned into Chinese while responding to a question posed by our students from China.  In present day politics China is feeling constrained by the US policies at the same time the US is misinformed about the intent of the Chinese in their economic, political and development plans.  Most influential was that Mr. Tung stated that he did not want the focus of the conversation to be about his biography, accomplishments, esteemed positions but rather what the students had on their mind and what they were experiencing in their studies of Sino-US relations and the world through SAS.  He gave a short brief recollection of his positions/background but he said that he was getting old and it was time to pass these efforts on to the young people of the world like those sitting in the room. Hong Kong is in the running to lead Asia in being the New York of the Americas, the London of Europe.  It is a stepping stone to connect the East to the West in terms of the professional trends of doing business, which carries a Western tone due to the British rule, and in transportation time it’s a short flight between Jakarta, Singapore, Beijing, New Dehli, Tapai, Busan, etc. for any business to combine their international efforts.  Another point discussed, was how when Hong Kong succeeds when China succeeds, and China succeeds when Hong Kong succeeds.  One nation, two systems (to be discussed later in my China blog these two systems could actually be FELT in terms of lived experience in visiting the two countries). This was one of the more censored comments I felt was made during the course of our free flowing introductions and open Q&A session with Mr. Tung.

Of course the rise of China was up for discussion.  Something significant that was spoken on was that while considering China’s economic development and rapid growth one must understand that 60 years ago they had $0 in the bank, literally they were in rubble from their war with Japan and from the results of WWII.  One thing China has that we don’t in the US is that they will not let their national debt go over 3% of GDP, in the US we have let that number rise so high that we have no more weapons to use as leverage against some of the economic struggles we have had.  However, one thing that the US has that China does not is the quality of life and its people.  China has a long way to go in order to catch up with the quality of life across all levels of the population in the US, i.e. educational capital, ability to feed our people, and the access to goods (which most in America would state is still severely lacking in all of the above).  However, he framed it that the US has 20% of the population of China and we are living off of 7% of the agricultural land.  It was an interesting argument to take in as I believe there are still many shortfalls in our society.  With so much captivating conversation it was difficult to make mental notes of everything that was discussed.  And while the words that were spoken may fade, I will forever remember this spirit of the teachings that took place during our time with Mr. Tung.  And it added a new context to the extreme levels of dense consumer business development that was hard to swallow in our first steps off the ship.

Lantau Island: My previous visit to Hong Kong had consisted entirely of time in the main part of the city on Kowloon Island.  I decided that on this trip to Hong Kong I wanted to get outside the city and experience another side of the 10 main islands that make up this little pocket of the world. So I signed up for a partial day trip to see the Buddha atop Lantau Island.   We were whisked away from our materialistic setting of the mall and began to fade into the outskirts of the metropolitan island to the more spiritual and sacred island of the countries 30% Buddhist population.  We stopped at a viewing bridge that gave a great perspective of the island make up of the city and the scenery of Hong Kong. As we continued on our drive we viewed the commercial shipping industry that runs 24/7 in one of the largest hubs of imports and exports in all of Asia. We passed by many large apartment complexes that were built on the outskirts of the city to encourage development outside of the highly dense core of Kowloon Island.  These living environments include huge disounts and accommodations for the tenants in an effort to encourage spreading out of the population, although the average size of most family homes, which are apartments, is 500 sq ft for a family of 5.  Many of these large structures have an occupancy rate of 40%.  As we moved further along to Lantau Island, a small fishing village was our next stop.  It was very traditional, simplistic and had a quaint charm to it.  We were there to see one of the oldest temples in all of China.  It was small almost secret location and smelled strongly of incense, which would be the quiet version of the Buddhist faith compared to the massive scope of the big Buddha that was to come.

Of course Terrie and I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat while in a village, it may in fact be one of the last opportunities we have to eat fresh fruit.  Snatching up an Asian Pear, Mango and some small fresh handmade almond cookies we were intrigued by flat meat that was being slowly roasted/cured nearby.  Our noses drew us to the smell and after samples that were offered up, as the owners knew tourists were trying to make sense of this local favorite.  Sooooo we left with a quarter pound of the most deliciously fresh Chinese sweet & spicy pork jerky and at it alongside our fresh fruit in the remaining bus ride to big Buddha.  We rationalized devouring of ¼ lb of meat mid morning by knowing that we were headed to a vegetarian lunch while at Lantau, as the Buddhist monks mandate that certain rules regulate all visitors to their sacred site.

As we disembarked the buses and started to walk toward the buzzing area with tourists from all over the world we got to the base of the mountain and looked up into the shadows of Tian Tan, the big Buddha. We started at the base of the mountain walking through the monastery. All around the ground level of the monastery there are Buddhists making offerings of faith as they bow 3 times in a row and pray over their offerings of incense in batches of 3 sticks at a time, they believe the smoke takes their prayers and their wishes to the heavens.  Then standing at the base of the stairs with flags waving all around a quick picture with Tian Tan at the top.  This sacred character is 112 ft tall, weighs 280 tons and consists of 202 pieces of bronze. Visitors have to climb 240 steps in order to reach the big Buddha, who is situated on top of a mountain poised upon a throne on top of a three-platform altar. It is surrounded by six smaller bronze statues known as “The Offering of the Six Devas” who are posed offering flowers, incense, lamp, ointment, fruit, and music to the Buddha. These offerings symbolize charity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation, and wisdom, all of which are necessary to enter into nirvana.  Looking down the mountain and standing in the presence of such a significant representation of a predominant faith in all of Asia was a significant experience one that brought a sense of sacred solitude representing another side of Hong Kong.

Most of our time in Hong Kong consisted of eating, we had several dim sum-like meals at little restaurants that looked like diners.   We headed to the night market to see what the other side of shopping in Hong Kong was like, which was the stalls where we executed our carefully learned and garnered bargaining skills.  We found a tiny little street market with bright and fresh flower bouquets next to a meat stall with a dead goat that was strung up from its hind legs with its stomach stripped open.  We navigated ourselves across from the island of Kowlooon to the Hong Kong Island where we got lost in more shopping malls and joked often about how “I think we took a right here because I remember that Dolce and Gabbana”,  to which she replied “Are you sure it’s the same one?”, she says “No” (because there are like 18 in the city), to which I reply “Same, Same….but different”.  And we both laugh deep in our bellies with exhaustion of being lost in shopping malls and trapped in this consumer metropolis.  You see the phrase Same Same, but Different is a joke/context/play on words/phrase that is dear to our hearts through Asia.  It sort of has a similar context as “More or Less” to us in America but it comes to mind and into conversation with far more wit and clever ways.  Sometimes it would be sales people at the markets that would be trying to get you to buy something and you would be asking for a specific color to match another purchase and they would say “yeah same same”…but no its not the same and I need it for a wedding I’m in.  

Sometimes it would be when you were asking for chicken at a restaurant but the language gap would get you chicken gizzard or chicken liver or chicken cartilage instead, “ same, same”… ummmm ok I guess I’ll just eat it and I didn’t specify what part of the chicken I wanted because my list of translations don’t go that in depth. Or sometimes it would be when you ask for directions to get somewhere like to the ship but instead you end up in the driver’s friend’s tourist shop on the way back to the ship “same same”, you’re still getting to the ship right.   The but different portion is not always verbalized but mostly implied or goes off in your head when you realize you disappointingly/humorously/frustratingly have not got the same thing that you intended.

One of my favorite pictures of my previous voyage was taken with the entire urban harbor view shining bring with city lights just after the light show near the Star Ferry Terminal with Anna, Kara and Jenn.  We were out for a girls night and my memories from that night are something I drawn on often and these girls have remained my lifelong friends.  It was the memories not the perfection of the photo but it was good to be back now with more friends that I will have for life.  So in present day I panicked that I hadn’t gotten an updated photo with my new girls, rushing back to the ship, cutting it the closest in terms of “on ship time” that I have in all 9 previous ports.  (strict time designated to be on ship through security in order not to be left behind and fly to the next country) Terrie and I snapped another quick picture of us in the harbor with the MV Explorer lit up alongside the entire skyline in the darkness of our last night in Hong Kong but lit up in all its metropolitan mixture of multiple islands glory.  The picture again was not perfect in skill compared to some we have taken on this voyage, but again it was the memories of the magnificent moments with the people in my life that make it special and that is certainly what made this port for me, both in 2004 and in 2012!

As we left Hong Kong I realized that this was the stepping stone between the West and the East, the developed and the undeveloped, our industrial period of the past and the hyper development that China has had to accelerate.  The sickening feeling of consumerism was replaced with an appreciation for a culture and a country that is constantly misunderstood in terms of their Communist roots.  While I still consider and classify Hong Kong quite separate from China, it is the barrier/the bridge/and the bond that exists between China and the world and it is doing an phenomenal job at its role.

On another note, it was Easter while I was in Hong Kong! Here is my Happy Easter Card/Pic posing on a Chocolate Bunny Bench located outside the Gucci for Kids that was in the mall 3 times the size of the Mall America!

Conceptualizing History in Cambodia

A snapshot of Cambodia: 21% of the population was murdered from 1975-1979 under the Khmer Rouge, there were 158 prisons under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, 309 mass grave sites from the Killing Fields that carried out the mass genocide, there is 1 amputee for every 290 people from the landmines/bombs that were dropped in the 70′s (mostly by the US during Vietnam-American war), 30% of the population today lives under Cambodia’s national poverty line (45 cents per day for an individual, $2.25 per day for a family of five). The average salary per household is $677, 16.4% enrollment in grades 10 to 12 with only 20.58% completion rate, and 50% of the population is under the age of 20.  Sex trafficking is a pervasive problem with 50,000 sex slaves and prostitutes.  In 2005 the country had 1.4 million tourists visit that number rose to 2.1 million tourists in 2009.  Some stark stats to start this blog off, and its a long one but its worth reading if you are invested in understanding our world.

While the ship was docked in Vietnam,  I pursued a side trip to Cambodia.  I was excited that this opportunity would allow that process of perspective on history, that Vietnam started for me, to continue at a new level and a broader spectrum.  It is the only country that SAS passengers are permitted to travel while the ship is docked in another country.  (Trying to keep track of 800 passengers in one country is difficult enough, allowing students especially to roam continents would be too complicated logistically and safety wise.)  So Cambodia caught my eye the second I scanned the list of Field Programs and it was one of the big trip “splurges” of my budget because it included multiple airfares, hotels, transport. My trip would take me to both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap for a whirlwind of 3 flights in 3 days.

These two countries were not only close geographically but also intimately related in terms of history. When the French took over Vietnam they decided that the area of Cambodia that now makes up the Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City would be part of Vietnam.  Our guide explained that the French did 3 main things 1) Discovered and preserved a lot of ancient collections of art/structures/temples, 2) introduced rubber trees, 3) when they were busy fighting in WWII and the war ended they returned 6 provinces back to Cambodia of which Siem Reap was a part.  I found it odd that his language included the announcement that “we are very grateful to the French”, this was another interesting juxtaposition of the ideology of imperialism. I find it odd that he presented this concept of being thankful for your country being taken away from you in the first place, as the Western powers did over and over again during the era of imperialism.

The history gets much more complex and integral to me as an American…in the process of “trying to win” in Vietnam, we incessantly bombed both Cambodia and Laos in an attempt to squash the North Vietnamese supply line as well as their military operations that swelled into Cambodia.  Originally we (the US) admitted to  dropping a half million TONS of bombs on the area, however during the Clinton presidency we admitted the real figure was  2,756,941 TONS of bombs were dropped on Cambodia alone (not to mention what we did to Laos and Vietnam), making it the most heavily bombed country in the world.  Many of those who lost family were driven into supporting the revolution against the Khmer Republican gov’t, which in turn put the Khmer Rouge into power.  This is one example of how the US involvement in Vietnam combined with the placement of individuals into positions of power had a role in a history that was dark and incomprehensible. And yet for Americans we tend to ignore this involvement in what led to a genocide and death of 2-4 million people in the 1970’s! (More on where I’m going with this later…)

Upon landing in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, we boarded our tour bus for only a brief 10 minutes as it took us to our first stop, our first glimpse at the country would be a stop at the Palm Tree Orphanage.  This center was established 9 years ago and currently is home to 64 children as well as 30 additional children who are enlisted in training programs.  Two SAS alums found this organization just as it was losing funding and proceeded to form a USA charitable organization.  The program has since had a strong relationship with SAS receiving many alums as volunteers, including an alum as a full time employee.  We walked down tiny side streets past the buzz of city life as people were transitioning from their day into their evening, whether that was work or school or selling of goods.  Our little parade of majority white Westerners was as much of an attraction for the local people we were passing by as was the new country that our eyes were busily capturing.  We had constant and continuous glances all around us, trying to assess our new environment. Its an exciting phenomenon that will never lose its thrill, nor something I will forget of my first moment in each country…to embrace a new country/culture/piece of the world through ones senses.  Walking up to the orphanage there were children of all ages clamoring with excitement ready to claim their visitor.  It was cute and clever to see each of them sizing us up, looking at us with bright inquisitive eyes as they observed our differences, our ages, our appearances and what would make each of them drawn to each of us.  As I was gazing around to figuring out this phenomenon I felt a small hand grab my right hand, I looked over to find that Thyda, a quiet 14 yr old girl, had just claimed me as her guest and wrapped her other arm closely around mine.  As we practiced pronouncing each other’s names she gazed up and seemed to be examining my face, my clothes and my hair as she smiled with a curious joy.   Right away she pulled me along, she was guiding me around to show me her home.  The simple completely concrete 3-story structure, consisted of tiny dark passage-ways with each outdoor corridor/balcony opened to the common space down below.  Looking down over the balcony the laughter and excitement that the children emitted from having visitors overpowered the impressions of the simplistic nature of the run down and dirty concrete slab that was used as a playground, for meals and for school.  We continued around on my tour exchanging questions with Thyda as she was executing her carefully learned and still growing English abilities and I my pitiful pronunciations of the Khmer language.  We talked about her 2 brothers, 1 sister and her home at Palm Tree for the last 10 years. Although my heart was longing to understand what happened to her parents and what her dreams were for her life, we stuck to chatting about the basics and the most important connections of smiles and giggles. (it was explained that many of the children’s parents were victims of landmines, of which the US during the conflict in Vietnam were responsible for the scattering throughout Cambodia and Laos, I will get to some of the history later).

Soon we were all gathered in the open space of their multipurpose outdoor area and as the sun was setting around us the laughter and smiles lit up the night. We played sing along games like the ones I played growing up on the playground singing a tune while clapping hands together in various patterns with a partner or a group.  At one point we had a group of about 12 including some of the youngest girls and myself, our students and one Life Long Learner just trying to keep up with the Khmer words and make sense of the object of the game. At the end of the tune you were supposed to stop and completely freeze, of course I cracked a smile when I was supposed to be frozen which made me the first to “lose” the game.  They all pointed at me and I had to get in the middle of the circle to begin the next round, it was a continuous game to see how quickly they could get the American girls to burst into laughter while we were supposed to be frozen and we often found ourselves in the middle having to sing out the beginning of the next round.  To me my time in Cambodia and the country as a whole is about its young people, about the start of something new and the new direction as a nation.   It was such a special start to my time in Cambodia and I find myself imagining being back in that atmosphere often, both throughout our time in Cambodia and since we have left.  Just something about that little hand grabbing mine and having someone so focused on smiling back at me.  Hugging Thyda goodbye was a difficult emotion and more difficult is the wondering I do about if her dreams would match up with what her life will entail, it is something I pray about often.

The next day was packed the morning was about the beauty and the afternoon would be about a very dark side of history.   We set out to see the beauty of the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace, this most stately and majestic buildings in the capital city of the country, Phnom Penh.  There are 2 million people that live in the city of the 15 million total people in entire country of Cambodia.  Our guide mentioned that it is difficult to determine numbers because people move around a lot, in May through September they will move to the villages to harvest and in the off season they have been coming to the cities to be used in the vast construction efforts of the city. The dynamic of the country is continuing to change as development continues.  Average number of children in a family in the city is 2-3 but in the village its 4-7 thus the flow of people and the family size keeps the population difficult to track.  The school days of the children are split from 7-11 or 11-5 in order to allow children to contribute to work that needs to be done to provide for the families.   As we entered the Royal Palace gates we were removed from both city and village mindset because of the magnitude of the buildings and grounds.

Stepping inside the main gate would be like the US allowing visitors into the lawn of the White House, we could literally view the front door of the Kings home, which is part of the palace and the blue flag waving out front indicated that he was in country.   The opulence of the ornate buildings were so detailed that we snapped many photos and were intrigued by the stark differences in the structures from previous ports and the norm in the US. Our guide explained that the King is the figurehead of the country much like England or Denmark.  The political system is set up such that parties are voted into office NOT individuals, like the US.  Currently the Cambodian’s Peoples Party is in power with 91 of the 121 seats in the Royal Constitutional Gov’t. As I contemplated these facts and structure I had a chill within me that was concentrated on how political structures (different from the current structure in Cambodia) allowed the genocide to occur only 30 years ago. The entire compound held vast amounts of little statues of praying figures that were scattered about, the tour guide guessed that there were about 1,000 of them.  He also informed us that the countries largest collections of Buddha statues were housed within the walls of the Silver Pagoda.  Including one that weighed 90 kilograms and was comprised of 2,063 diamonds. We took our shoes off and entered the temple, standing in the presence of many Buddhists worshipping felt sacred, through the many temples, churches, mosques and holy places I have visited on this trip I have felt this intimate admiration and respect for those I witnessed practicing their faith.  Just like all the previous encounters, I decided to take value in the visit of their holy space with a silent practice of my faith as I prayed to my God being thankful for giving me the opportunity to witness difference and the spiritual nature of people all over the globe.  As we exited the Royal Palace we knew that the next up on our itinerary would be a bleak contrast to the opulence we just witnessed, in the remnants of another political force that ripped through this country.  Again, the history of conflicts in Cambodia are often brushed aside by the American explanation of the Vietnam War, which as discussed in my previous blog is skewed.  Well in Cambodia the Western mirage continues as we try to ignore the history in which we had a hand. Approximately 2 to 4 MILLION people died under the Khmer Rouge government of which our involvement in bombing campaigns and positioning of their political figures drove people to support Pol Pot and his officials that were the mastermind behind killing innocent people.

Our first stop was Choeng Ek, which was just one of about 120 Killing Field locations that were spread throughout the country.  The trip description actually states If you choose to participate in these visits, be prepared for some gruesome and depressing sites.  Traveling to the Killing Fields, which was only about 10 minutes away from the city, felt oddly placed in proximity to the city growing up not far away.  However, in further consideration any place in which mass amounts of people lost their life at the hand of another had no proper place in the world.  It consisted of a large monument building built by the Chinese, for the descendants of the Chinese-Siam that perished.  Inside the structure there were 17 layers of skulls that stood for the 17^th day of April that Pol Pot took over power and began the genocide in 1975.  The building stood tall and signified an area where visitors could pay their respects and continue to walk around the bleak fields that made up the rest of the site.  Small signs were posted throughout that noted different details of the mass graves. The victims brought here were informed that they were being relocated to the countryside so the country as a whole could be further developed.  Imagine being exhumed from jail to believe that you had a new livelihood ahead of you and as you stepped off the bus you were walking toward your fate instead of a new life. The majority of the sacred space was quiet and the guide gave a brief explanation of what occurred before setting us free to have time on our own.   His explanation included the shuttling of the people from a prison (which we would visit later) and immediately upon arrival marching them to the edges of a mass grave, instructed to stand close to the edge of a mass whole that was dug, to lean down making the body into a closely tucked ball with their arms behind their backs and then their necks were broken from behind by their oppressors, which in process would lend to their bodies falling in lifeless anguish into the earth below. That was the reality of this place. These fields full of now covered ground where one after another individuals were marched to perish in this way.  We were their to wander around this space and become witnesses of what had occurred. I did so in a kind of solace and tried to feel what the space, the people, the history was teaching me about standing in such a place.

It was with sorrow and joy, despair and hope in consummation that I sank to the the ground sat in a small corner of the monument staring at the skulls through the glass.  The feeling inside me was indescribable this deep, dark, sunken, sad, angry, desperate, anguish.  The only thing I knew to do was to pray…I found myself reciting the Lord’s Prayer and interpreting how each line related to this sacred space, asking forgiveness for those whose hands took these lives and for everlasting peace for those who perished. The power in that moment cannot be matched.

Wandering around the back of the site there was a fence immediately outside of the fence there was a family in a very small shack set up with a mother preparing dinner, two small children playing, a baby napping on a board, and a cow about 5 feet away grazing.  This family was living 100 yards away from one of the mass graves.  I dwelled on the fact that this drew a memory of a movie I watched called “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” regarding the concentration camps in WWII (rent it if you haven’t seen it!).  If this family existed in this place in 1975-1979, even if they were a mere mile futher away, the ruling politics of Pol Pot were so strong and filled with fear that they may have knowingly lived their lives alongside of a place where thousands were killed and obey a twisted rule of law that included standing by as people were put to death while you lived your life in fear moments away.  It was likely that families did live in extremely close proximity to where I stood and these grounds where so many perished.  In fact, the Killing Fields included loudspeakers that began to blast music in order to drown out the screams of the victims, whether for help or in anguish.  After the numbers of those executed and being buried rose, the administrators at the sites began using DDT and other chemicals to break down the bodies into the soil, both removing the evidence of the magnitude and the smell that was emitted as not to draw attention from nearby villagers.

The killing began on April 17, 1975. The end of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s reign was a result of enough of the Cambodian people fleeing to Vietnam and during in 1979 as the Vietnam-American War had concluding the Vietnamese NOT the Americans came to the aid of the Cambodian people.  Once the Vietnamese entered into military contact with the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot and his political machine fell in 3 weeks.  THREE WEEKS, can you imagines the lives that would have been saved if the US, the French, the UK, the name any Western power in the world could have come to their aid sooner.  Could we have done it in ONE WEEK? Could we have ended it a year prior? How many people would still be alive?  This is the struggle that my mind tangled itself in as I slowly stepped back onto the bus trying to figure out the politics of our world and Americas role in it all.

The next stop was the Toul Sleng Museum , a prison used to hold those that were political enemies of the Khmer Rouge before they were sent to the Killing Fields. This site was equally influential; I walked in and out of the cells considering the feeling and the life that took place there.  This structure was a school! A place of education, which I deem to be an essential part of life, was turned into a place as dark as death.  I spent an hour walking through the rooms that had large bulletin boards displaying pictures of prisoners.  It was faces and faces and faces of people who stood in that very place and then were put to death as punishment for being educated, being involved in leadership, or even simply knowing/being connected another accused victim of the regime. Such a sick juxtaposition of ideology, I literally just kept looking at each picture head on, interpreting what it meant for their face to be in front of mine.  Children, men, women, 10 year olds, 70 years olds, likely some 28 years old women just like me staring back at me in the photo as they were forced to pose for their prison picture.  The pure fact that there was as much documentation of the prisoners bothered me, like a twisted collection of evidence of those that Pol Pots Khmer Rouge regime would take as their badge of honor.  It stands here for the world to judge and to learn from, how do we prevent this from happening again?  Moving through the museum the faces turned into photos of bodies that perished in the prison, starved, beaten, hung, victims of suicide, some with their eyes still open, which made you feel the moment of their death…the moment their eyes would not see anymore but were left open and still.  A harsh thing to encounter that some say may be too much to be on display, photos that intimately uncover the moment and condition of death.

The people who made this decision to post them and include it in the display have done so intentionally, the reality of showing the most startling evidence of the death of millions is a right that they have to push the limits of comfort in those that visit. To make them feel the reality that is genocide, that happened not 100 years ago, not 50 years ago but just a few decades, right on the cusp of my lifetime…many associate such atrocities with something long ago…these faces are here to inform you that it was not…it happened alongside of a war that our parents fought. The feeling of seeing the pictures of death still brings chills from within and I write it here in such detail so that you too may understand the reality of such an event, a people, a political power, a concept that existed as reality in the world.  In order to understand the world and prevent these things we must see/hear/learn/know/experience it…so I bring my experience to you.

Moving past this part of our itinerary was impossible, this deep dark experience stuck with me and still dwells inside my understanding of the world and this country, and yet there was a whole alternate side of Cambodia to see.

Our itinerary continued to the other side of Cambodia as we flew to Siem Reap, another major city that highlighted a BOOM of tourism.  The main attraction was Angkor Wat and as our bus took us from the airport to our hotel I was completely bewildered by the perception that I could easily be driving down the main strip in Vegas. The scope, density and extravagant nature of the resort-like hotels that lined the simple street sprinkled with shops and signs abject poverty in the shadows of this massive undergoing of development toward the tourism industry.  I am still confused as to how so many luxury hotels could exist amongst poverty and how many people it must take to fill them all.  How does this growth sustain itself?  This was mirrored in the nightlife scene that felt like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, my students were thrilled and amidst my trying to have an evening out with them as a pseudo chaperone, I could not get past how this hyper-capitalist Westernized world could have found its place in a third world country that was still regaining its footing from complete annihilation of bombing and genocide.  This is the footing they started with, development for the use of Western tourists?, I was confused.  What about the orphans? what about the family of those who perished? what about the farmers? what about the spiritual core?  As I shook my head to figure out where I was and how I was supposed to conceptualize all of this, we found our fancy hotel we readied ourselves for the main attraction of what all this tourism buzz is about which is Angkor Wat.

Angkor is an incomparable temple complex built between seven and eleven centuries ago at the height of the Khmer civilization. Angkor’s one hundred or so temples constitute the sacred skeleton of a spectacular administrative and religious center covering 200 square kilometers. The ruins represent successive capitals constructed by a dozen Khmer kings, which included massive stone temples, majestic causeways and imposing towers. The entire surface of all the temples consisted of extraordinary bas-reliefs.  The intricacy and detail of the etchings in every last brick that was laid is beyond comprehensible and rivals some of the most famous sites of which I have stood in the shadows such as the Taj Mahal, The Eiffel Tower, and even the Great Wall of China despite stretching the entire length of China.  Literally you could lump all three of those world landmarks together and still have a strong rival in Angkor Wat. I’m not the only one who feels this way.  Many consider Angkor Wat to be one of the most inspired and spectacular monuments ever conceived by the human mind.  The main temple is the largest religious building in the world, it was built by Suryavarman II, who reigned from 1112 to 1152, to honor Vishnu and for later use as his funerary temple. We literally went from temple to temple for the most part in silent observance and constantly a breathtaking sigh and gasp from one stunning structure to the next.  We viewed 6 of the several hundred temples that exist in this “lost city”. Including the aforementioned Suryavarman II, Ta Prohm Temple South Gate, East Gate, Bayon, Baphtuon, Terrace of Leper King & Elephant Terrace. It was hard to pick a favorite between the main attraction of Suryavarman II, to the tree entangled temple of Byon and the faces of Baphtuon.  Exploring the temples all day provided a cherished examination of another side history in a country that holds the roots to so many religions and early civilizations.  Appreciating the beauty and the ancient relics allowed me to connect with an alternate side of Cambodia that truly challenges how one is to consider the complex history of a place and a country.

 One really cool observation of my time in Cambodia in Phnom Penh was that all over the city flags of ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations donned the street light posts. Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia.  Their motto is “One Vision, One Identity and One Community” and that was emulated by this city being wrapped in the flags of the ASEAN nations. The tour guide explained the region is binding together to further their place and impact in the world economy and politics and the yearly conference was about to take place in Cambodia.

Obviously this post is delayed as my time in Cambodia was nearly 3 weeks ago now.  However, it was incredibly difficult to put into words what it meant to stand in a place where millions lost their life.  Tears come to my eyes even now just remembering the emotions inside me walking through that sacred place of the Killing Fields, and those emotions that remain as I sat down to write.  It is with this raw emotion that I urge anyone who reads this to strive to take a stronger understanding of the struggles that fall largely on deaf ears because of at times our American Western framing of media, history, issues and how confined they are to our place in the world.  Cambodia is just one of many, take time to notice international news that is not in plain sight and be sure to critique what is presented.  It was a place of beauty and heartbreak, despair and hope, challenge and joy, opulence and poverty, and it will take awhile to figure out how my heart feels but I know that my heart has been influenced by what I experienced in Cambodia.

Watching the World Prosper in Vietnam

Getting to return to Vietnam was an opportunity that I had been looking forward to, after learning of this job opportunity I set my eyes on the Spring 2012 itinerary and quickly searched to make sure it was there. It was the country that changed everything for me on my student voyage.  It changed what I thought I knew, how I thought I had learned, how I read what is written/presented in text/media, the education I thought I had and essentially how I would continue learning as a life long academic.   It began cracking the mirror of Western thinking that I had been taught to so carefully admire as an American in and as a student reading from the typical textbook ideology.  It changed the way that I was taught to think about war (any war!), an event, a period of time in history, a people, a country and a legacy,…as I said it changed everything.  I’m certain that this shattering in perspective and ideology can occur in many places in our world but for me it started a lot of places and truly sunk into my soul in Vietnam.  Since then I have carefully cracked and peeled away the layers of Western thinking and continue to be challenged in thought and presence of my privileged/confined/advanced/highly educated/blessed/sheltered life as a Westerner but in context of the world. We had the most wonderful academic and personal discussions on this and much more relating to Vietnam as we approached. There are various means of preparation academically, culturally and logistically for every port but this was far more in depth and special.  Between the panel of personal experiences with a student of the voyage who is from Vietnam but studying in Oregon, to one who is Vietnamese but raised entirely in America and a staff who was born and lived in Vietnam until she was 6 but has since grown up in America the perspectives were split and a perfect prep for what it means to share the culture with a ship full of majority Americans with our history there.  Further we had several staff, faculty and life long learners who were involved in the various scenarios of the mandatory conscription of our country.  And finally, we had Lynda Johnson Rob (daughter of former president LBJ) who lived in the White House and was alongside of her father during the Vietnam-American War as well as fell in love, was married and had her first child with her husband Fmr Senator Charles Rob all during the lead up and occurrence of the war.  Senator Rob who was extremely high up in the military and involved heavily in the war.  Their intimate discussion of their unique experiences relating to and layered upon what we know and our Vietnamese community members made for an impactful examination of the part of the world we were heading to explore.

My time in this country back in 2004 provided me a great opportunity to see a lot of the famous sites as well as focuses of the war and the history of a country Americans are taught to think of in terms of the war.  I had 5 days in 3 cities last time around and found myself recollecting a lot of tiny details about some of the “must-do” trips.   I saw the beauty of Halong Bay, I witnessed the calm of the countryside rice fields, the spirit of Hanoi, and the budding metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City  (Saigon).  I squeezed and squirmed both literally and intellectually in the Cu Chi Tunnels, I read and was riled up by the display of American belongings in the War Remnants Museum, I was stared in the face by the lasting effects of Agent Orange in the deformed faces and bodies of small children who smiled back at me, I witnessed perspective in the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, I stood in history at the Presidential Palace where the South/US fell, I soaked in the images in the photos of the UPI Photo Museum, I laughed in the Karaoke bars, I indulged in the food with the prawn heads looking back at me, and perhaps the most ridiculous I took a whirlwind tour of the city on a motorbike with my friend Brad as the driver while it started to rain.  I did all the “big American tourist things” and a few of the fun the last time and they were each important to witness and consider as a Westerner.

This time around I only had 2.5 days (as I was setting out to Cambodia while the ship was docked in Vietnam) and decided I would break from persistently running around with little rest or sleep like all the other ports and just soak it all in through spontaneous experience. It was perfect timing in the voyage and the perfect port to choose this as the itinerary.  Another special part about this visit to Vietnam is that my new dear friend and colleague, Terrie, was born in Vietnam (just after the war concluded) and lived there until she was 6.  She had told me stories of her family’s experiences in Vietnam both before, during and following the war and actually shared them with the entire ship through some of our Vietnam Preparation sessions.  I was in awe of her proficiency of the Vietnamese language and her ability to catch people by surprise as she executed it and reconnected with her country.  I was also excited to share my previous experience with her and help make meaning on why all of it was so stirring for a Westerner.  We actually had some of these conversations in previous ports and had already arranged finding her old family home and recollecting some things when we got to Vietnam.  So seeing Vietnam along her side was really special and of course it allowed us to have many good meals and good times as we made our way around.

One of our students, Chi Chi, is from Vietnam and her family actually lives blocks away from where our ship docked.  Stepping off the ship many of our passengers were greeted by her and her parents reuniting and as soon as they connected with Terrie they immediately included us in the group to go back to their home and invite us in for a meal and much more.  Walking through the streets (literally we walked in the streets over a major bridge) Chi Chi was leading about 25 of us home As I gazed up at the skyline and walked through the streets I immediately started feeling a sense of something different about this city and was anxious to figure out what it was.  Walking through the alley back to the carefully clustered grouping of traditional Ho Chi Minh City 3-level apartment where her mom had quickly gone home and was preparing to feed us.   Eating Pho that was home made prepared in our new Vietnam ‘home’ and just hanging out with Chi Chi and the fam.  Her parents literally took us in and treated us like family, it was refreshing to have a real place that felt like home after being away and being travelers in so many countries.  The food and the company was amazing, and upon leaving we were told to stop by anytime we wanted to for the next 5 days.  (Taisha and I actually dropped by the last day to give a small gift and we were immediately swept in for a meal that her mom had literally just sitting there waiting for anyone that had stopped by.  As we slurped our noodles and shared only a few words, as Chi Chi’s parents speak nearly no English at all. We communicated in body language and smiles as they filled both our bellies and our hearts with our time in their home.)

I ended up trying to retrace my steps in the area that I knew we stayed when I was a student.  After locating the hotel I walked the streets around it and could barely recognize the area, not because of the inability to remember but rather because this country had experienced an exuberant amount of growth and an economic boom since I had walked these streets last.  What was once a run down stall was now a perfectly polished and just as retail as what you would find in the States.  Vietnam had even upped their game on the knock off goods, going from just LV and Gucci to every designer brand you could think of, some of which I didn’t even know about from my ambition to trying to living a less label filled lifestyle back home.  While this seems like a frivolous topic to cover it is actually a significant theme throughout many of the countries we have been traveling.  It has gotten to the point that we have a running joke whenever we get approached by someone saying “Gucci, Fendi, Prada, Rolex?!?!” I want to SCREAM “Stop stereotyping me! I may be a white Westerner but I don’t want your stuff. Ahhhhhh“.  In reality I don’t scream but I find the most effective method of shutting them down which also varies distinctly from each country.  In India “No Thank You” was actually an invitation to be followed for a a few blocks, but out of everything I have practiced my entire life it just kept coming out, which created several aspiring sales people to follow.  You have to be stern to the point of what would be rude in America. So while I  keep rediscovering the most sternly polite yet harsh way to deter these hawkers, Terrie and Taisha and I like to ‘keep score’ on who gets pegged the most. Unfortunately since I’m the token white girl of the bunch I think I have a strong lead which is actually a loss in my book, its part of the Western mold that I have worked hard to break free from yet still get pushed into.  So no, I’m not coming home with Lacoste, Burberry shirts, North Face gear, or Gucci bags for all my friends but I can direct you toward a good street to get pegged as what people overseas view Americans.

 The rest of the day we spent shuffling around the city, grabbing coffee, and exploring a few areas of town the Terrie as she was leading us through her old neighborhood with new eyes 24 years later.  My experience was only 8 years ago and Ho Chi Minh City but the most significant part of my time in Vietnam was the tremendous growth and development that has occurred.  I felt like I witnessed a city growing into maturity, building itself up after a history of war after war defending itself against nation after nation (sometimes 2 at once like US) trying to take its sovereignty.  I got to spend time witnessing a city become its own.  A professor in China (at an event to be blogged about later) said the Vietnamese are invincible, they are willing to fight at any cost and they are undefeatable… he of course was referencing when the Chinese lost 3 times at trying to take Vietnam. And brought it up to discuss the importance of travel and perspective of a country you didn’t know much about before, so my final day in Vietnam was spent just walking and living the learning experience of watching a third world country grow into the first world.  Yet the last night I had an amazing night with Terrie, Taisha and Moises trying to stick with the total local dinner.  We call eating local, something that the people that live there would actually do, many times our tour operators or information desks try to push us toward the Western/Tourist restaurants and constantly try to think that we will not be happy unless we get the fine dining skewed toward foreigners food.  However, we continuously rebel against that advice and head straight for the most authentic place we can find eating skewered prawns that you peel yourself, clams, calamari, and drinking Tiger Beer at a sidewalk (like literally sitting on tiny kids plastic chairs on the sidewalk).  Following dinner we went to a bar on the 20^th floor of a high rise and unexpectedly found a live band, from Cuba! Wahoooo Cuba made it into our itinerary, (our first port was scheduled to be Cuba not Dominica, but it was cancelled as we did not get our travel license in time.)  We spent the rest of the night dancing and moving our hips to the sultry sounds and beat.

We had a various amazing meals.  The first night was Hue food, which is a region of Vietnam and it is delicious.  Terrie helped us order all the things she grew up with and we set out for a feast.  If you can find a Vietnamese restaurant near you (there are tons in Chicago!) then here is a list of helpful dish recommendations.  Change it up this weekend and go out to eat while ordering all of the following:

• Banh bot loc (steamed chewy rice roll with shrimp and pork dipped in fish sauce).  These look like little clear jellow like rectangles but I promise you they are delicious.  Add fish sauce, don’t be shy the more the better.
• Banh beo (white rice cakes with dried shrimp and scallions dipped in fish sauce).  These are like little sticky discs that set as they sit in a tiny saucer so you kind of remove them like jello and then enjoy.
• Chao tom (shrimp cake wrapped around sugar cane, wrapped in rice paper and vegetables, dipped in fish sauce, of course)  This is kind of like an make your own spring roll, be sure to chew on the sugar cane and soak up the juice that is interestingly flavored both sweet but also with the spices from the shrimp.
• Bun thit nuong (rice vermicelli noodles with grilled pork and vegetables).  This is a spin on Pho with delicious meat and fresh veggies that add a crisp clean taste to the pasta.
• Obviously Pho! It is the main dish that was massively popular all over the city, a great go to for any lunch or dinner.  It’s a noodle, soup, with lots of fixins in it and it will fill you up!  There were all kinds of funny t-shirts that were sold around town with funny Pho sayings “iPho” with pictures that look like Apple advertisements.  My “son” in my extended family got one that had a Star Wars theme with the noodles creating the face and the chopsticks the laser beam and it said “May the Pho be with You”.  
•  A few new fruits we feasted on were Mangosteen, Dragon fruit, Jack fruit,  Rambuten.  Not sure where you can find all of these back home but I’m sure Whole Foods will catch on one of these days in case they don’t carry them already.  (I’m going to be having fruit stand withdraw, in EVERY country I have savored fresh fruit at simple street stalls.)
• Café Sua Da is the mt amazing little coffee treat, it even rivals the espressos that I would sip so deliciously in Europe and I’m quite frankly surprised that Starbucks hasn’t caught on and taken it global. Essentially it is a rare form of coffee bean production (I’ll spare the details as it involves a weasel) and they add sweet and condensed milk to it over ice, simply richly delicious.

Of course I also took the opportunity to pamper myself in the spas notably dirt cheap and pervasive all throughout the city, and seriously prices are so inexpensive its startling…not just because of the exchange rate, which was a tricky one at 20,800VND to $1.  Yep that’s right if you want to feel like a millionaire come to Vietnam and go to the ATM and go ahead and push that 1,000,000 button…it will only get you about $50USD. So I got my nails done for $6USD and a much needed pedicure, which after the lady scraped our feet and formed a little pile I was like “there goes India, ahhh that feels good, and there is a little South Africa safari, and oh there is Ghana and don’t forget Brazil.”  (yes I understand its gross to blog about but its a reality of the travel experience do you know how many countries these feet have tirelessly trekked around!). A deep conditioning treatment was a life-saver for $20 which would cost $150-200 at home for my hair which has been the victim of the ship water, excessively treated to purify the sea water.  Drinking it is another story, I feel like I’ll have a whole new appreciation for good old Lake Michigan Chicago tap water when I get back.

Overall, I guess what I want to convey is that Ho Chi Minh city is a beautiful live-able prospering culturally proud glowing city.  Literally, I could live in this city!  It was a refreshing connection to city life in Chicago and leaving Vietnam I realized that it was like the “home” of my SAS itinerary, it was the place that rounded out so much of my first SAS experience and getting to walk through the same city after so much development was like a continuation of what I started in 2004.  I can’t wait to see where my future travels take me in getting to connect anew and further with some of the other ports on our agenda as Hong Kong, China, and Japan will be repeat visits for me but as a new place in my life and that of each country I’m certain they have much to continue sharing with me during my continuous connection and exploration of our world.

(If you have not yet guessed, I am a bit behind on my blog.  We have only had 2 days of sailing between each of the last 5 ports and the in country travel is reaching that climactic point of the voyage.  I will be catching up as possible but will still have the 19 days of sailing in between Asia and the US so there is plenty more to come!)

In Singapore for a Second to Share S@S

So this was the port that the “work” part of traveling around the world became more of a reality.  We were docked in Singapore for 1 day and students were able to be off the ship from about 8am until 8pm.  However, my day was packed with tasks to host various groups that were interested in becoming more familiar with Semester at Sea.

National University of Singapore is a partner institution of SAS as it is the 3^rd ranked university in all of Asia.  Nearly all the Ivy League institutions and many top tier institutions in the US have branched out to offer courses at NUS both for their students and to send their US students abroad.  First, was a group of faculty from National University of Singapore (NUS) and a few of our Board of Trustee members, one on the ship as a guest lecturer and the other living in Singapore.  The meeting was to aimed at informing various NUS faculty on what Semester at Sea offers to pass on to their students but also to explore the potential of some of their professors to join our faculty for future voyages. One of our partners had already been heralding a program for Yale at NUS and was also SAS’s main contact as she works with any perspective NUS/SAS student.   I had anticipated being a silent observer during this meeting, as the Board of Trustee members were designated to lead the business portion of the program, but as questions kept coming my way that were focused on the context of being a student/alum and then further questions regarding the current voyage that my staff position equipped me to answer.  One of the topics of discussion included the professor sharing with us that all of Singapore both public and private sector could be run by only 10,000 people, the annual retirement rate would then only free up about 300 spots for their new graduates each year.  Therefore, the students are looking to move around the world and grow their perspective of the world in order to become resources for a number of markets.  It was yet another example of the multitude of professional development opportunities that keep coming at unexpected moments.  I had to leave the meeting slightly early to get out to the Port Authority security to begin to check in our 76 guests that were registered to come for the event that would consist of an admission presentation and tours of the ship.  Our guest list of students and professors were from 12 different countries, which is one of the unique aspects of Singapore.  Although it kept me on the ship, getting to share the story of Semester at Sea with new students is always a rewarding occasion.  Upon presenting the reasons why Semester at Sea’s mission is to educate individuals for leadership, service and success in shaping our interdependent world I got to witness the eyes of the audience growing bright with the opportunity that they were contemplating.  As an alum this is always such a passionate topic to talk on and the unique nature of our program constantly drives this desire to spread the word further and further.  (Hence, why I returned as staff!)  On of my favorite quotes that I shared is by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a repeat distinguished guest on our program who said this of SAS:

“The mission of this grand experiment has been to foster greater intercultural understanding by exposing its participants—young and old, students and faculty—to people and cultures around the world while providing them with a sea-going classroom in which to study and absorb what they’ve seen and learned.”

Other guests of our program include Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Indira Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Corazon Aquino, Sidi Mohammed, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela, and our current guests Former Senator Chuck Robb and Lynda Johnson Robb (daughter of US President LBJ). Therefore, while I missed out on one of our ports but got to share some of the life-changing aspects of the SAS with a new group of students and professors.

I escaped the ship for a short stint in Singapore, which quickly introduced itself as a city of the future.  Some of the buildings, technology and transportation was advanced beyond what exists on a normal level in the US, even in a major city like my sweet home Chicago.  It was a little weird stepping into a country that was so far advanced much beyond the US and such a blatantly contrast to many of the countries I have been seeing on this voyage.   Terrie and Taisha had graciously returned to the ship to meet up and we headed to Arab street,which was just one example of the multitude of neighborhoods that highlighted different ethnicities this global city represented.  The large mosque shined between the clouds and down pour of rain that timed itself to begin during my only 3 hours off the ship.  We hurried through the streets not letting the rain stop us as we looked around as we got ready to share a meal to sample the cuisine of Singapore.  The place to eat in Singapore is the “hawker stands” that are scattered throughout the city.  Essentially these are areas of countless stands that serve authentic meals representing cuisine from just about every nationality you can think of, which again is representative of the city itself.  We just kind of went up to random stands and pointed at pictures and paid the meager $1 or $2 that was the cost of each dish.  I wish we could set one of these up in Chicago as it is not only delicious but also very affordable.  Imagine a cheap version of Taste of Chicago with more authentic food, and year round.  We ate chicken, noodles, soups, dumplings, many mysterious hot sauces, sipped random juices, tea-milks, and smoothies.  It was a good quick way to sample a taste of Singapore which anyone that knows me knows I’m always up to eat so of course my 3 hours off the ship consisted of this experience.

My time in Singapore was short but the sacrifice of time in port was overshadowed by the experience of sharing SAS with perspective students and faculty of a world renowned institution like NUS.  Spreading the word about this program that continues to change my life and the perspective I have on this globe of ours of which Singapore is a glance into the future in terms of modern technology, architecture and the diversity of the interdependent world being able to be fully together and embraced in one city, or one ship on SAS.

 

Intensely Experiencing the 5 Senses in India

I experienced India through the 5 senses. I smelled rose water, body odor, coconut, trash, curry, rotting fish, Masala tea, feces, incense, cows, Marigolds, River Ganges water, vanilla, gas, cardamom, and so on…the contrasts and juxtaposition were constantly repositioning my mind on what to think about what I was taking in.  Over the course of my 6 days the tastes, sights, sounds, touch, and smells, were at a level I have NEVER experienced before in such a rich depth.  Needless to say, this is another port where I am completely overwhelmed by the insurmountable experience of which I desire to convey and share but that is impossible to accomplish in writing.  I have already broken my rule of completing my blog on a country before I reach the next.  Today is already the day after Singapore and we are one day away from Vietnam and two from Cambodia.  The remainder of our trip is a domino effect of experience clashing with travel clashing with workload clashing with the personal time I need to process of all of the above and more. BUT HERE GOES… (please excuse grammar and other issues its been hectic trying to get all this down.)

For years I have pondered what it would be like to travel to India, various people in my life actually said they do not have an interest in seeing the land that has 1.2 billion people. Which, in terms of geographic scale would be the US equivalent to an area that only has .3 billion in the US. However, I have always possessed a deep urge toward exploration as opposed to intimidation that some feel.  This country is very different than the US, and a startling statistic is that 50% of all people in India are under the age of 26 and 12 million new people enter the job market EVERY year.  (And you thought our job market was tough).  The development that has occurred since independence from British rule in 1947 is monumental.

Everything I heard about India yielded an excitement that I could feel run through my blood the few days before arrival the anticipation was already stimulating my senses.  My fellow staff shared this buzzing feeling and we decided to start our India experience with yoga as we pulled into port.  So the few of us wrestled ourselves from our beds at 6am and made it out to where the darkness that still covered the deck as the ship was still snuggled into the vast blanket of the sea. A fellow staff member Krista led us as we calmed our minds from the excitement and we stretched our bodies as the sun began to rise around us, soon enough we could see land on both sides as we pulled into our port located in a group of islands off the mainland Kochi (Cochin). Immediately as I set my sights on India it started to intrigue me… there were Chinese fishing nets, boats, trash, temples, people bathing in the water, monkeys, and land on both sides as we approach our berth on the island part of the peninsula of the city.

When I began selecting my field programs I knew that I would be going all out in India, it could be complex to do independently and I wanted to see as much of this country I have been longing to explore since I first discovered my thirst for travel.  Therefore, I deemed the SAS field program as the way to fit in as possible in the 6 days. And I accomplished just that, I took 4 flights, 4 train rides, countless bus rides whisking us one place to the next, a boat ride on the Ganges and one on the Kerala backwaters, a few auto rickshaw rides and a proper bicycle rickshaw ride…all in 5 days. All of this took place in 3 of the 28 states of India, in the cities of Cochin, Agra, Delhi, and Varanasi.

One immediate reaction on the first day and continued throughout my time is that hospitality is an art that the people of India have mastered, every place we went you could feel a warmth in your heart from the reception we received, and a small sort of embarrassment feeling like I was undeserving or unworthy of such elaborate sentiments or gestures.  Whether it was a shopkeeper, a tour guide, a village, a hotel, every last place.  The blessing through a talik on our forehead, marigold necklaces, our hotel smelled like roses (literally the sweetest smell), the many extravagant meals, the way people would converse in a professional proper manner.  In the words of one faculty member from India “Everyone will want to talk to you, learn about you.”  A SAS student from India stated “there is this concept in India that they want to achieve what you have in America, we want to be like you.”  This contributed to the way we were received and believe me they are well on their way to being like the US but yet so different.  I struggled with whether their desires to be “like us” meant more Western, is that a good thing.   It was also meant in the context is on being financially/consumer/economically “like us”, this too troubled me.  I’m conflicted about these questions and wrestled with them throughout my time in India.

The bureaucracy of India was apparent from the start but so was the hospitality, this is an ironic concurrence.  While we waited for the immigration officials to clear the ship, which took 2 hours long than it was supposed to, there was a welcome ceremony, more elaborate than any of the previous ports.  The members of the welcome party were wearing ornate outfits in the heat and played the music and kept dancing the entire waiting period and then as each of the 900 passengers scurried down the gangway to be blessed/welcomed with a traditional tilak, a mark of powder on our foreheads.  All around us even the construction men that were working on a large building next to the port entry stopped and stared for the majority of the day.  There were 2 national newspapers that published articles in the paper about our arrival and interviewed students.  The reception and keen attention surrounding our visit has been unparalleled to any previous port on this voyage and my last.

We docked in Cochin, which is actually Kochi, the majority of the city names were altered by the British, for easier pronunciation by the Westerners. (My friend Terrie and I note this as one of a multitude of lasting examples of disrespect that has been a pattern throughout the histories of imperialism we have been studying.)  Names of cities and regions are slowly being arranged back to Indian tradition. Kochi is in the Southwestern part of the country in the state of Kerala, there are 28 total states in India and 22 official languages.  It is typical to find that almost anyone you speak to knows 3-5 languages.  Hindi and English are pretty standard for almost all Indians but in Kochi they also spoke Malayalam.  I have terrible language/pronunciation skills when it comes to anything outside of English, it’s like a thorn in my foot every time I try and I can’t get the pronunciation or memorize the words.  So in each country I have been merely trying to master ‘Thank You’…it’s the most important phrase to be able to communicate and sentiment convey as we are guests in discovering elements of cultures that are not our own but gracious for the opportunities.  So I found myself saying “nani” often and witnessing the sudden joy on peoples faces as they recognize the effort to both relate and give thanks in their regional dialect beyond the English and Hindi that was more often blanketed across the country.  I have found that the exchange of these simple words in each country often yields a significant interaction of spirit/facial expression/empathy, more intimate than the words itself.  Try it next time you have the chance in whatever circumstance/language you can find, instead of merely stating the words themselves, send them to off your lips with more significance, I guarantee you (and hopefully the recipient) will feel in it your heart.

I signed up for a trip to Kumbalanghi village on the first day in order to squeeze in some time in a setting I was not likely to see during my big trip to several larger cities.  We pulled up to an area where we boarded a boat and were given little sun hats as the men used long bamboo branches to push our boat along literally each “stroke” was pushing off from the bottom of the river.  Along the way we witnessed how some locals fish for prawns and small pearl fish placing them in large silver urn looking containers.  The village was an exemplary look at how some villages in developing countries are tapping into global economics to become mindful and strategic about getting into the global market. The focus of the village is to create Value Added Products that can be strategic in the global economy. It was remarkable to learn about coconut, clay pot, fishing, clamming, raising crabs and growing of pepper (known as black gold from the history of India) that went on in this small village.  Using coconuts as an example. They explained how the labor force of those available to climb coconut trees has been greatly diminished by the danger and rigor of the job.  Each coconut laborer is charged with the task of climbing 75 trees a day which requires the laborer to build up of unique calluses that are almost like rubber on their hands and feet.  After the coconut is harvested, there are distinct uses for all parts of the husk, milk, meat of the fruit.   The husks are soaked for 5 to 6 months and turned into fiber for ropes, the pith is used for making bricks, the meat of the fruit is turned into food, soap, and oil.  90% of cooking in India uses coconut oil.  The coconut leaves are used to weave together and making roofs, brooms, baskets, siding for houses endless items. The way in which the people received us will always stand out in my mind.  The people in the village that we shared time with ranged in age from toddlers/babies to an 83-year-old woman who demonstrated coconut leave weaving with her large gold earring in her ears that are the dowry for her marriage, only her children have permission to remove.  The tradition layering the global market was a fascinating perspective to examine.

The rest of the day we spent exploring Kochi.  The city boasts the oldest church in India, winding streets crammed with 500-year-old Portuguese houses, cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, a Jewish community whose roots date back to the Diaspora, a 16th-century synagogue, and a palace built by the Portuguese and given to the Raja (king) of Kochi.  Our port city Kochi is in the state of Kerala which was on the NY Times 45 places to see and National Geographic’s 15 top places to see in your lifetime.  (The Taj was also on NGeo’s list as well).

After the first day I set off on a Semester at Sea trip to see all the big sites during a whirlwind of 4 days trip to Dehli, Agra and Varanasi.  The itinerary of this field program actually stated “Please note:  This is a rigorous itinerary involving a lot of traveling and early morning departures”  That turned out to be an understatement as I averaged 4-5 hours of sleep each night.

We flew from Cochin to Delhi and I was surprised by the modern nature of this city that mirrored many qualities of our Washington D.C. we got a tour of Old and New Delhi.  We saw Humayun’s Tomb, a precursor to the Taj and another examples of the ornate Mughal style of architecture. In Dehli we drove along the ceremonial avenue, Rajpath, past India Gate, Parliament House, the Secretariat Buildings and the official residence of the President of India and the Red Fort in Old Delhi we also got to see Raj Ghat which is the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi and the location of his cremation that took place the day after he was assassinated.   Dehli had caught me off guard, as it is a modern city that created a stark contrast to the image I had in my head of India.  It was a sign of where the nation is heading and demonstrated an exuberant amount of wealth that does exist amongst a high level social class in the country that has houses costing $40 million. However, as our guide spoke of the great wealth of few and some of the issues with the politicians I was deeply troubled at the economic disparity which is what Dehli stood for in my mind.

Next was Agra, which is located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Agra is the 19th most-populated city in India. Although many Indian cities easily surpass Agra’s census figures—1.6 million inhabitants compared to 7.2 million in Chennai and 15.9 million in Delhi—Agra continues to be a cultural mecca for this country.  Home to three UNESCO World Heritages sites: Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri, Agra is understandably one of the most visited cities in India.  And during our time there we visited all three:

Agra Fort is the flourishing center of the Mughal dynasty, created by four successive emperors.  It is a perfectly preserved Mughal city that include many fascinating buildings inside the massive 20-meter-thick walls of the fort that stretch for 2 ½ kilometers.

Fatehpur Sikri is a silent and petrified sandstone city where time has stood still for the last 400 years.  According to legend, Emperor Akbar was without a male heir and made a pilgrimage to this spot to see the saint Shaikh Salim Chisti.  The saint foretold the birth of Akbar’s son.  In gratitude, Akbar named his son Salim and transferred his capital to Sikri.  He built a new and splendid city that was later abandoned, probably due to difficulties with the water supply.  Its red sandstonepalaces are still in a remarkable state of preservation.

Taj Mahal:  the majesty of this marble structure with intricately laid stones and the sheer size of it makes it an international destination. The Mughal Emperor Shahjahan married Mumtaz Mahal in 1612, when she was 21 years old.  It is said that tales are still told of her generosity and wisdom.  She gave him 14 children, and it was in childbirth that she died when Shahjahan was waging a battle campaign.  Grief- stricken, he vowed to build her a memorial surpassing in beauty anything the world had ever seen.  It was this love that built the splendid Taj Mahal beginning in 1632 and was completed by 1653.

 

Stepping into the shadows of the Taj was literally breathtaking not in the simple manner of the expression but something more comples than that.  The anticipation felt within my chest moving alongside of the burgeoning crowd of people from all parts of the globe as you enter the dark shadows of the main gate…everyone gazes straight ahead eagerly anticipating the first glimpse as we encounter the view of the marble masterpiece reflecting its greatness in the reflecting pools lined with the stunning promenades and gardens…it was a breath that made you feel like you were creating, protecting and destroying based on the three levels of transformation that the Hindus believe the practice of Ohm is…it was that kind of breathtaking.   After various periods of photos and the began setting we decided to just revel in the blessing of the place and soak it in. 

I will say that during my travels through India I had this resonating feeling that I was still searching and waiting to see the “real India”…the one I had in my head, that everyone was bewildered by, that was overwhelmingly crowded, that was insurmountable poverty, that was the starkest contrast to the US that all those who were turned off about travel to India carped about.  Cochin was less crowded than I thought, Dehli was far more advanced and metropolitan than I thought, Agra felt like a quaint village and was getting closer as I rode the train as I saw the rural nature of the lands and the nearby major landmarks that everyone knows…but as we ventured to Varanasi and were thrown into the mix of the city life making our way alongside of 1,000’s I had this inebriating deep human experience.  Maybe it was because of all the other travel I have done to date and recently, or maybe it was me feeding into the preconceptions of my mind and what Westerners see as the traditional India that had me on this journey to find “the real India” but by the end of my 6 days I realized that THE REAL India is one of the most diverse countries there are and as one of my interport students stated, “I have lived in India all my life and I still have not tasted, seen, nor experienced all that my country is.”  Therefore, I plan on returning to continue learning what else my 5 senses need to experience in India but I decided that my favorite was Varanasi.

Varanasi is known by natives as Banaras and is situated on the banks of the Ganges River it is known as the area.  This is a holy city of the Hindus, that is known as being one of the most important pilgrimage sites.  Located on the banks of the sacred River Ganges, it has been the center of civilization and learning and is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world with existing for 3,200 years.  Life and death are equal matters of privilege in this city, and many come to this city to die and be cremated in the Hindu tradition in crematoriums along the Ganges.  Our tour guide said “If you want to see the past, present and future of India you will see it in Varanasi. As we made our way to the city center our guide made a special request for us to experience our 5 senses.  He challenged us to tune into each, I found myself dialing down from anything on my mind and walk myself through each as we rode the bicycle rickshaw through the bustling city as the sun was setting and we walked alongside massive amounts with noises of every method of transportation and the occasional cow alongside of people making the “pilgrimage” to the Ganga Aarti, Hindu ceremony on the banks of the Ganges.  I sat next to a group of elderly hindu women as I witnessed the ceremony It was a deeply personal practice and as I tried to memorize my understanding of what we were encountering with each sense it was impossible to account for all that I was undergoing.  I have no words to fully describe it except that I feel that all 5 senses were maximized to a level I had no idea was possible in one single location.  We awakened early the next day and returned to that same place on the banks of the River Ganges before sunrise.  We boarded a boat and sailed along the river to witness a spectacle of religious practice that has continued unchanged over centuries.  At dawn, pilgrims converge at the holy waters for the ritual immersion and prayer to release their souls from the cycle of rebirth.  This is one of the most memorable experiences of a visit to India.

This city stood for so much in my mind and experience of India.  Our tour guide mentioned that “In history we have created many empires of the sword, India is the only empire of the spirit.” And in Varanasi I experienced that spirit and will hold it close to my heart always.

The last day I was in port I had no plans but upon learning of a yogi (yoga master) who opened his home to us I knew that no matter what time or where I would make it work.  I emailed him from my hotel as I adventured around the North of India and got this in response

Dear  Blessed Soul Christina,

                     you  are  most welcome 7.30 morning is the class and its out side our school so you have to come 7.15 at our school we have to walk 10 minute………..any doubt call me………see you soon Cosmic Love

I got back to the ship at 11pm the night before and headed out bright and early with some students.  We found the outdoor area of the “Secret Garden” bed and breakfast type area that he holds his weekend classes.  He was a tall very thin man with a large grey beard and provided a tone in his voice that already allowed you to tune into his teachings of the spirit by listening.  We were circled around a tree in the courtyard area and were attentively tuning into his teaching and leading.  As we moved into the physical engagement of the body he began circling and ensuring that each of his students were getting to the level he viewed appropriate.  He took a special interest in one of the students next to me and myself as he began to push us to the next level of flexibility.  You could tell that he was excited to emerge us from our comfort zone and show us how yoga is done.  All the sudden h he said “You’re ready…” and as he guided my limbs into place I was thinking and very submissively saying “uhhh I don’t know….ok…I ummm… oh dear I guess that works” and found myself in a sort of pretzel.  He did the same thing as he guided me into a headstand move that I have always struggle to accomplish and a couple others that I knew would hurt tomorrow.  WOW what a difference from the gyms back home where things are rushed and we only experience half of what is capable in such a session.  Enjoying yoga outside in the crisp morning air with the guidance of the yogi Sanjee was followed by an intimate lunch provided in his home (5 generations have lived there) for our little group and more importantly the application of oneself and appreciation of the surrounding and spirit.  (Remarkably this entire experiences was 250 Rupee donation, that is $5). 

The rest of the day we set out to continue to explore Kochi, got henna work done and pick up some of the treasures to take home and remember our time. So I haven’t done much shopping in ports but I knew India would be my splurge shopping port.  There are just so many intricate unique elements to everything and lets be honest things are cheap…very cheap…like practically free cheap.  Don’t be deceived bartering is a hardcore process in India and at one point after I was exhausted from the banter of bargaining (its seriously getting draining) it was explained to us by one many that it is a prideful part of their culture an engaging in it was an opportunity to examine India from a new light.  Well I’ve been pretty good at it, some of my students actually follow me around and have me throw some of their purchases in with mine to reap the fruits of my bartering labor.  I didn’t end up buying much of the clothing or one of the elegant extravagant saris, mainly because I had no idea when I would wear any of it when I return.  However, I would gladly collect an entire wardrobe if I ever lived there someday.  Instead, some of my treasures include an amazing bedspread made of woven silk, various throw pillow cases, an intricately made little marble elephant (the same technique the entire Taj is made of), some vintage jewelry, a shirt made of vintage sari fabric, a vintage sari to take home to make a dress out of and cute little porcelain cabinet knobs for 20 cents each (the kind you pay $10 for at Anthropologie).  Each item is like a little luxury treasure, despite costing much less than in the US, and each has the unique and extravagant to the eyes and are like tiny representations a culture and country that I completely adore.

One of my favorite things about my interactions with people was the little quirky lessons/phrases/reflections they would share about their culture.  It made for a collage of personal touches on my understanding of the country beyond the many famous sites I saw.

You need 3 things to be able to drive in India “1) Good Horn, 2) Good Breaks, 3)Good Luck”,  seriously if any of you back home thought traffic was bad in our big city Chicago or DC or NYC you haven’t seen anything until you sit in some traffic in India. Your not just competing with cars, but auto rickshaws, donkey’s with wheel cars, bicycle rickshaws, cows, large trucks, bicycles, people, more people, wagon carts, and like 8 variations of motorbikes.  Well I may not remember how to drive when I get back from my 4 month hiatus from driving a car in the US but I got some practice in here in India and apparently I have all 3 of the qualities you need to drive in India because when Terrie and I were returning from our evening out in Old Town our auto-rickshaw driver offered us the reigns as we continued down the long street back to our ship.  It was completely vacant of vehicles as our ship was docked in a rather obscure place on an island. It was completely dark with pretty much only the moonlight to guide us.  Of course we said yes.  Zipping around in these little contraptions all day felt like a go-cart smart car and it just seemed so funny, I just had to try it.  Our driver of course stayed very close to the “wheel” which was more like motorcycle steering with two handlebars of sorts.  I couldn’t get the clutch to switch over so once we got going I took over and the rest of what ensued was filled with thrill, giggles, shouting over the motor to Terrie and our driver who was teaching us to speak more Malayalam all heralded with hysterical laughter.  I was accelerating as I had seen plenty of them zip around all day but the driver kept slowing me down, I think he knew that his little American passengers couldn’t quite cut it like the veteran drivers. I started to see something coming up on the side, Terrie was taking video of the fiasco from the back seat and realized it was a cow and some of his cow friends were in the middle of the road as Terrie shouted out “Holy Cow, don’t hit the cow Christy” and I answered back in complete laughter “Literally, no really Literally HOLY cow” the driver got as much a kick out of this whole scenario as we did and we ended up back that the ship with our abs hurting from laughter and a great story that we will treasure.

I was expecting India to be so unbearably hot that I would just melt away, I was prepared and full ready to be uncomfortable.  However, it was the end of the winter season there and our tour guide shared with us that we were lucky as people were just beginning to shed their jackets and the weather was perfect.  This was an alternate to summer that he described to have 4 classifications.  1) Hot 2) Very Hot 3) Bloody Hot 4) Bloody Bloody Hot.  Quoting that at some points it is 115 degrees Fahrenheit.  There is actually no work for our amazingly professional and expert tour guide during their Summer months.  He was a fabulous guide and gave us all kinds of clever stories and funny ones too.  I really liked one quote he made about the way that India runs their country, although there are several corrupt things about the administration he stated that the country is run with much faith religion in mind and that “Faith is Logic but Logic without Faith is Nothing.” True!

I read the newspaper on the train is that 55% of Indian college bound students study at a University in the United States.  Can you imagine half of the US population going abroad for all 4 years?  The paper had numerous accounts of violence against women, exceeding numbers of sexual attacks and gang rapes.  All the articles were written with a sort of bias, more casual language and hype.  It also used more vivid language when reporting on accidents getting detailed about injuries sustained.  The exciting articles in some magazines about the Hindu holiday Holi which celebrated the coming of Spring made me long to be there one week prior to have experienced the throwing of brightly colored powders/paint all over the city and people in the streets.  Hopefully I can time it better in the future.

Another interesting fact are the various reasons for the colored powder paint markings on ones forehead. Men typically receive the mark upon being blessed after their morning prayers. Married women wear one on their hairline to demonstrate they are taken.  And then Vishnu followers have a three types of markings .  A final option is some elderly people or very wise individuals such as yogi’s wear them to demonstrate their wisdom. Young women wear bindi’s, small intricate jeweled stickers, as a fashion statement.   I received a batch of fashion bindi’s to wear during my time there as a gift from my interport student, and shared them with the students on my trips.  We had fun wearing them each day to share in the fashion of the women who carried this amazing allure of beauty wearing bindis and amazing saris patterns.  Our tour guide commented on our fashion statement and how everyone would take interest in our eyes since almost everyone has deep brown eye color in India and they always think our blue/green eyes are fascinating to them.  Well it turned out not only to be the eyes that caught many peoples eyes in India.  At nearly every sight we went to and even just passing by on the street we attracted an insurmountable amount of attention.

People were waving, saying hello in a particularly American accent.  We had a lot of instances where people were trying to pretend they were taking a picture of something else or talk on their phones as they were actually recording us or taking photos…you know how you do that on the El or around the city when you see something ridiculous.  I asked our tour guide and he was trying to flatter Christine and I by saying it was our beauty but it was taken to a whole new level at the Taj Mahal where there was a exceptional composition of various ethnicities and tourists.  We had many groups of young men casually positioning their photos with us near/behind them and then some that just came right up and asked to take a picture.  A married couple with some kids that asked me to pose with them and hold their baby.  Most strikingly interesting was a little elderly man with three little elderly ladies in their beautiful traditional dress saris that asked to take our pictures together with our hands together.  What was beginning to feel overwhelming and paparazzi like ended up being kind of a special moment with the little elderly couple. I asked our tour guide if it was my curly hair (which was rather rare in India) and he said people were just happy to see us and wanted to capture our being American.  Whatever it was, it was the first time as a tourist that I felt like the object of the attention and the experience.  It was exciting to know that they were so passionate about our experiencing their country.

Returning to the ship after India has been reverse culture shock, especially with food.  I ate every meal and spent almost every minute off the ship during our time docked.  Averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night due to our busy travel plans and then ambitious plans to get everything in I felt as if I accomplish a smorgasbord of experiences and am so satisfied but still long to fill up again on all that India has to offer.  That hunger/longing hits me not only when I now stand and stare blankly at the food that is offered for our meals of the ship (it’s a blessing to be fed and waited on but at this stage my interest in even attempting to eat the food is puttering out).  But also my hunger/longing to experience has reached an amazing depth that stretches to the bottom of my soul as I consider my next 5 ports and how I experience my life hoping that I can get a little more of the 5 senses in each day.  I’m thankful to India for awakening the intensity of experience within me and I can’t wait to see what it offers me to experience the next time I visit.

 

A Moment in Mauritius

Mauritius marked roughly halfway based upon the number of days.  After only a short 4 hours on shore it came and went in what felt like a moment.  Mauritius also served as a mental midpoint of our journey and now that I am faced with the reality that we have made it half way around the world I feel like the first half has only been a mere moment and I don’t want that moment to be over.

BUT Mauritius almost didn’t happen as part of our itinerary.  We were informed 3 days prior to our scheduled arrival that our ship was surrounded by two cyclone storms which made for a very concerning weather patterns.  It was extremely rocky, in fact the ridiculous rocking of the ship was getting to be a bit freaky, and that was while we were traveling at a slower pace!  Therefore, when we were looking about 30 hours behind schedule and the Captain along with ISE/SAS decided we were going to have to forgo our time in Mauritius in order to avoid being tardy to India.  Our students put together a protest and petition to challenge this decision which bless their hearts was cute and charismatic of this millennial generation.  If they stopped long enough to really think about it they would realize that you cannot petition mother nature or God in terms of waving a wand to make the weather change.  AND in compared to past dilemmas of ISE with voyages that have incurred everything from being stuck in the Suez canal and having students spend 6 weeks in Israel then flying to the rest of their destinations OR the change up of itinerary in the aftermath of the SARS scare OR in Spring of 2005 where a hurricane hit the ship so severely that it made the television show Storm Stories and ISE had to fly people to the next several countries…then our students would have realized that ISE will make what can happen, happen and that no one is intentionally trying to deprive them of their itinerary.

AND I ended up being correct in my faith in ISE.  There an amazing day of activities planned in place of the day we were to be in Mauritius with a fancy brunch (which they had been begging for because normal breakfast concludes at 8:30 which is not compatible for college students schedules).  We also had a huge outdoor BBQ which was delicious (and a lot of hard work for our crew) and then we threw a big dance party outside on the 7^th deck which is not normally permitted.  The dance party highlighted some staff/faculty busting out their dance skills with the Dean’s doing the Dougie and a faculty demonstrating unparalleled dance moves to Michael Jackson and MC Hammer.  Concluding the evening with a down-pour of rain as Shakira’s Waka Waka played, a shipboard favorite while we were in Africa. AND after all that as a consolation prize they also announced that one of the storms had cleared just enough to allow us to dock in Mauritius, albeit a day late, but instead of just stopping for fuel they organized it so we could get off the ship for a short 4 hours!  (This was quite a feat seeing how we reserve a “parking spot” in a berth roughly a year in advance.)  ISE/SAS is truly a extraordinary organization and provides so much to its participants and staff.  The Mauritius situation (along with the Bahamas and rectifying our visa issues) stands to represent much of what ISE provides which is a life-changing and unforgettable experience no matter what.  Through a lot of hard work, sacrifice and strength in how the organization runs and is funded.

The day began very early with face-to-face immigration, every student must present their passport before the ship can clear for anyone to disembark.  This makes for a groggy group of 600 college students at 6:00am.  After a surprisingly quick process, we were cleared and off the ship by 7:30am. Much of our ship was treating Mauritius as the Spring Break of our itinerary, thus heading to the beaches.  I would have been destined to enjoy their famous beaches as well, but I had to be back on the ship early.  I was scheduled to greet our two inter-port students who flew to Mauritius from India to become part of our community and teach us about their culture.  So myself and several other staff who also had duties requiring them back early, headed out to explore the city center. 

We took a 20-minute walk into the market area, it was sill very early and the city was just emerging from its slumber as people began to set up their roadside stands and open their shop doors. The immediate waterfront area appeared a little touristy much like a smaller version of the Bahamas as it had been commercialized for the large cruise ships that come in. There was also a huge China influence as many of our other ports reflected.  China is EVERYWHERE people, seriously we have seen Chinese investment and funding in every single port we have been to thus far.   We continued beyond the waterfront to the market to explore and were confronted with the bright colors of all types of fresh produce and the smells of various fresh herbs and fruits.

It was interesting to hear the names of the produce and the languages that were used amongst the people.  The official language is English but what you hear much like the other ports was a mix of many.  The island is a unique product of French, Creole, African, Indian, and English influence.  After picking up some postcards and locating my staple souvenir flag (I am collecting one from each port) we chatted with some shop owners and grabbed a intricately cut pineapple to feast on and continued around the market stalls. People were shouting “princess” please come look at this, “princess you would look beautiful in this tunic”…I have never been called princess so many times in my life (even if you count up all the times in my life my parents/brother would say it both jokingly and as flattery).   They were all very interested in getting our business and it was becoming the usual port experience to be overwhelmed by vendors.  However, this market struck me differently…everything that surrounded us seemed to be influenced by India or South Africa… I was looking for the Mauritius in the mix.  Searching for what Mauritius means.  Beyond the little Dodo carvings and figurines that were strewn about everywhere, the Dodo was indigenous to this small island and was found no where else in the world before becoming extinct and therefore is a quirky little mysterious bird.

Continuing through the markets, I was especially intrigued by the bright colored powdered dye that were set out in neat little piles that created this intoxicating visual with all sorts of bright colors for my eyes to enjoy.  They told us that this was for Holi, a Hindu celebration that celebrates the coming of Spring.  It would have been amazing to be there or in India for Holi, but we would be sailing in between the two on the actual day of celebrations.  The market also offered a stands selling intricate bundles of fresh flowers, little cages of bunnies, chicks, and various other animals that I didn’t want to think about why they were for sale but it reminded me of what is to come in Asia. Most of all our time in the markets was about finding that Mauritius was the people we met, they were all very friendly, despite their strong desire to sell us things they asked us about where we were from, about studying at sea, about Obama, and just enjoying the exchange of smiles.  So even if the pashminas, fabrics, henna, was influence by India and other places the people shined based on their interest and reception of other cultures.

As our quick time was elapsing Terrie and I were determined to get our taste of Mauritius cuisine and started gathering items to make up our lunch before heading back to the ship.  We bought a coconut, mango, already had our pineapple.  Then we stumbled upon a street side stand to purchase an sandwich that caught our eye and we affectionately named “street sandwich” (you may recall me telling you about street meat and beach meat we had eaten in previous ports) and finished our purchases by getting a few of what we called “subway samosas” from the underground walkway between the city and the waterfront.  You see we are the adventurous eaters amongst the group and are keen on savoring the different tastes that the countries have to offer which as somewhat seasoned travelers we know to be the street food.Most travelers are warned away from eating food outside of the very regimented restaurants and sticking with the “safe” stuff but we can’t settle for the safe because we know it greatly limits what you have the opportunity to savor.  So we have vouched to test our limits and so far we have been perfectly fine in doing so.  The sandwich came with some intense sauces that were extremely spicy and we were sniffling as we calmed our mouths with the coconut.

All in all we feel we sampled both the culture, the city of Port Louis and the food of Mauritius and headed back to the ship on a water taxi in order to be on time for our duties.

As staff I’m not able to talk at length about what ensued for the rest of the day as our students came home from partying at the beach, but it was really sad to witness what some had been up to between the hours of 8am and noon.  It gave me a new lens to examine my fascination with the Student Affairs side of higher education.  All in all it would provide a forum to re-center our identity as a community of Semester at Sea and have a few open dialogues on what it means to be American students traveling the world as we prepared ourselves for some of the heavy hitting countries that await us on our itinerary.   Most of all it allowed me to stretch the boundaries of what it means to be a staff and a “mentor” to some of my students.

We are sailing strong toward India and have actually been able to enjoy some mild seas along the way.  India has been a country that I have been waiting to explore for a LONG time.  In examining the Spring 2012 itinerary I have been reluctant to pick favorites but it has always been the one that has stood out!  I will be doing A LOT while we are there including planes, trains and automobiles to explore our port city, Cochin and heading north to Agra, Delhi, and Varanasi and of course will be standing in the shadows of the Taj Mahal at sunset.  And everything I have read has told me that “Nothing can prepare a person for India”…some would be scared of that but I simply cannot wait!

Our evening announcements just came on billowing over the loudspeaker that since leaving the Bahamas we have traveled 13,580 nautical miles.  Sea swells are only at one half meter (as opposed to 12 meters during our choppy sail into South Africa).  As I know most of you back home are “Springing Forward,” we have changed time zones 14 times thus far and will have a total of 27 by then end, including living 2 April 20^th’s as that will be the day we cross the International Date Line on our way back through the Pacific Ocean.  I am certainly on a trip of a lifetime and about halfway through circumnavigating of the globe!  Every day continues to be special and remarkable.

South Africa Stole My Heart

My heart was swept away by South Africa.  It was sweetly swooned by the sensations of safari, its was at home with luxuries of city life in Cape Town, it was energetic by actively engaging with the outdoors of hiking Table Mountain, and at uncomfortable ease with excitement to be in a place that felt like America yet different enough to explore.

However, my heart was throbbing from the reality of the history that was contained in this complex country and the shockwaves that shake society still today.  My overall assessment is that it would easy to be a tourist in South Africa, but the nature of Semester at Sea and the traveler I want to be demands that we not settle for seeing the sites but rather we are charged to seek to understand what the destination, people, and story offers/stands behind the sites.

Here is an attempt to tell you how I did in accomplishing that charge:

You must understand the history of South Africa in order for my travels to have any significance to you at all.  As we sailed into South Africa we began learning of the convoluted nature of what we were about to see.  Like many of the countries we are visiting South Africa was a victim of imperialism, only when the rest of the world finally abandoned the country and handed control back over to a group of whites that made up only 20% of the total population, from 1900-1948 policies were instituted that mirrored the Jim Crow laws of America.  The focus in the beginning was on labor forces (similar again to America), and then in 1948 things were taken to a whole new level with Apartheid.  The white Afrikaners began instituting policies that mirrored the worst of segregation in the United States South, as well as policies that were happening to Jews in Europe during the Holocaust.  All blacks and coloureds were required to carry a pass at all times and they were only allowed to be in specific parts of town, laws were in place preventing anyone from having any relationships across color lines.  There were 9 levels of classifications in total, including all variations of “coloured” people from places like China, India, Taiwan.  Each had distinct and separate levels of privileges but none the same as the white Afrikaners.  The politics and history surrounding what it took to conquer this system and the individuals involved was inspiring to learn about.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu had a significant role in the breaking down of Apartheid, leading nonviolent movements and encouraging the world in divestment from the South African economy until Apartheid was abolished in 1994.  Desmond Tutu has been a distinguished partner of Semester at Sea traveling on multiple voyages and speaking to students every opportunity our ship has to be in port.  The remnants of Apartheid are clear and while there has been a tremendous amount of change, the history lives in the day-to-day.  This history framed my mindset stepping into South Africa and my hearts emotion as I set out to explore.  As I interacted with people I attempted to probe them on their feelings and reflections of the history.  I began to find mention of color everywhere and very open discussion and use of the term, black, coloured and white.  Despite the current politics having moved past the classification according to law and racist policies, the discussion of color was still very prominent.  One of the professors on the ship, who was born and raised in SA, explained this as when you have a country that has existed for 120 years on the basis of defining people by color it is still ingrained in the casual conversation and terminology that is used today.  Therefore, the majority of people no longer seek classification in conversation for racist means but rather as a means of understanding and knowing one another.  It was an irony that I wrestled with being from the US where we try to prove our integration by not talking about race or as being color blind to believe everyone is the same.  However, here people use ethnicity as a point to build understanding and appreciation, their Apartheid only ended in 1994 but it seems the US still struggles with making this concept mainstream, and we could take a lesson in this approach.  As I walked around the markets and met people they began with “senorita” and tried to define me as being from Argentina or Espana, and I enjoyed watching the people I met try to place me as they took an interest in understanding their visitors. 

The first day in Cape Town I hosted an Open Ship event for 20 students from University of Western Cape, University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University all of whom we are trying to build partnerships and grow our international student population.  The three different institutions represented different populations of students, one a white university, one a colored university and one a black university.  In doing my research I simply thought this was in reference to the history of the universities.  However, after my visit I would soon understand it to be the way that their society is still threaded together. After a successful event introducing them to SAS, I sent the 20 chattering excited students on their way.  It was refreshing to see the passion I feel for SAS/ISE come to life as new students are exposed to the “world as their classroom”.  Next I welcomed some special guests that we have on our voyage, Former Senator Chuck Rob and his wife Linda Johnson-Rob who are joining our voyage for 5 weeks as distinguished guests.  Semester at Sea has a history of influential figures joining voyages either to sail as lector, participants or professors.   In this case Linda Johnson-Rob will talk about her father, Lyndon B Johnson’s, presidency using Vietnam as a backdrop and Senator Chuck Rob will speak on the same topic with a different platform using his experience of the years of military service in Vietnam.  Welcoming them and seeing the same excitement in their eyes as they were introduced to SAS, as I experienced as a student, and as I witnessed with my student visitors and that I am continuing to foster in our current students was very rewarding.

After a long day of doing the “work” side of being lucky enough to be on this ship, I was clamoring to step off the ship and get a taste Cape Town, despite having a 6am departure for safari the following day.  With no time to explore to gather my bearings in what was widely talked about to be a port with a lot of crime against tourists, and with most of my colleagues scattered about the city already (you must remember we don’t have cell phones in order to meet up with one another) I managed to jump on an evening field program to Baxter Theatre.  The drive to the theatre brought on a bout of reverse cultural shock, I felt like I was in America.  I didn’t like it, I felt disoriented…I was not ready to be “home” after Ghana,  I had just begun to get a grip of what “travel” is as an American in places that had immense poverty and all the sudden I was dropped back into a setting that made me feel like that world I just intimately witnessed didn’t exist. (Much like America does).  As I stated in my last post, it’s not as if I was ignorant to the fact that Ghana was impoverished and Cape Town is a major world urban metropolitan city but  the experience of witnessing cannot always include all that your mind knows.  (And I still had not captured a sight of the townships that are strategically hidden and tucked outside of the city/white areas.

Baxter Theatre is adjacent to the University of Cape Town, it was beautiful campus and again I felt at home like I was about to encounter the comforts of Lincoln Park.  Michael Williams, the managing director of the Cape Town Opera, organized our visit was is a past professor of Semester at Sea.  He introduced us to his home and his passion of Baxter Theatre as he shared his passion for SAS.  There was wine and smorgasbord of SA appetizers waiting.  The play was titled Somewhere on the Border and was a “flipside” showing which is when the stage and audience are flipped so that the actors perform on the front part of the stage facing  the back where the audience sits curtains normally hang, essentially it was a very intimate environment our connections got us front row seats and we could easily reach out and touch some of the actors.  There were only 8 actors performing with a few small adjustments in set to alter the scenes.  The 6 young white men of about 20 years of age, one late 30’s white man, and one young black man…all played soldiers.  The white men were Afrikaners who among those under mandatory conscription into a Border War in what was Namibia/West South Africa against Angola.  This Border War was similar to the US/Vietnam war.  The performance was so vivid and well done that I was starting to get uncomfortable with the language and mentalities presented by the soldiers.  After awhile I had to remind myself that it was script and amazing acting. I was witnessing not something intentionally offensive.  It was an intimate look into the military and the distinct nature of a segregated country that was fighting battles that were not their own.  Each soldier represented different strata of beliefs and subscription to the inner conflicts of politics in South Africa.  After the show the 8 actors sat down with us for a Q & A, they had questions for us about what we had learned about South African history and we had questions for them about what it has been like to live South African history. Representing the group I shared that SAS has been in operation since 1963 and that just the other night I was in conversations with one of our LLL who was a former Dean of Students on a SAS voyage about when in 1979 the African-American students on board could not even disembark at the Cape Town port because of the safety concerns and politics in South Africa.  The Q & A became an intimate discussion of the 20-year-old SA actors and our 20-year-old students about living in different worlds, and studying each others history as they compared their war to our Vietnam and each found value in critiquing our nations histories.  The evening gave me goosebumps as I made my way back to the ship I realized that this last-minute trip I added to my day just framed my time in South Africa perfectly and rustled up the reality of what I was to think about during this port beyond the luxuries of the enchantment of Cape Town.

The next day I set off as the trip liaison for a field program visiting Kariega Game Reserve, a private reserve just a short drive away from the town Kenton-on-the-Sea and about an hour and a half away from Port Elizabeth, which is a short flight from Cape Town.  Originally I had opted to leave a safari off my schedule for South Africa because of the big sticker price and the priority I placed on a few other big-ticket trips in India and Cambodia.  After Brazil, I felt confident in my choice to sacrifice the Rio trip because of the price tag but had I not received the trip liaison role for this last-minute Safari experience I’m certain I would have regretted the choice for a long time.  Yet volunteering to be  the “chaperone” meant that I got 50% off, but also meant I had to take care of all the logistics and the responsibility that comes with tending to 23 college students.  Arriving in Port Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela’s birthplace and noted to be the “where the nation started” under his leadership, it was good to see another small side of the country.  Driving through fields to the reserve I spotted a wind turbine, which was noted to be responsible for lighting one of the stadiums during the World Cup (Dad: you should get Exelon to expand their wind portfolio here in South Africa!)  Ironically I also saw a sign that said “This is John Deere country”?!?!  We also observed several Farm Stalls, which we would get to stop at on our return trip, basically this is the REAL version of the Whole Foods phenomenon.  They sell wonderfully natural and fresh farm produced items, I got fruit that had just been dried and packaged the previous day and a venison savory pie with the most delicious 100% pineapple juice I could ever imagine exists (taking me back to the roadside pineapples and mangos of Ghana).

Upon arrival on the reserve I knew that the next 3 days would be a luxury and I was filled with anticipation and stimulation of all that I would see and learn.  We had wonderful accommodations in Chalets (private cabins), as trip leader I walked into my own chalet and immediate wished I had friends and loved ones to share such a special place with.  We had game drives everyday, one in the morning and one in the evening, for a total of 12 hours out in the open top land cruisers simply admiring the scenes, searching for animals and enjoying the solace that living on a safari brings.  We ate our hearts out savoring the luxury of meals consisting of food far more special than ship food.  My students got to have their fun but were also extremely well-behaved (I was anticipating the worst from some horror stories of past ports and voyages and college student trends with alcohol).  I took the approach that if you treat students like adults then they will in fact behave and be adults, apparently too often other leaders treat them like children and therefore results can be childlike drunken behavior.  I bonded with them and they were asking me 20 questions of what its like to be a “grown up” and a past student of SAS now working in the “real world”. Our time at the safari felt like the epitome of luxury in the midst of such a busy itinerary work/life in circumnavigating the globe!  There were plenty of opportunities that I took to gaze at the countryside as far as you could see and imagine what was out there and how I was to explore it.  I witnessed sunrises and sunsets with the most beautiful view of the sky, including one night getting to see the planet Venus in a rare form paired brightly next to the moon. All that I saw and felt as I witnessed this unique and rare part of nature that is so foreign to the landscape of my home in the Midwest cannot be captured and placed into this blog but just trying to imagine yourself in the solace of safari and know that it was an intimately special place.

My favorite part of the safari was sitting up front with our ranger Daneil and trying to absorb as much knowledge that his expertise could offer to me as a novice remedial science/biology girl (it was not my forte in school).  It was inspiring to learn the extensive nature of the rangers role and catch a glimpse of the intimate and highly specialize knowledge that they possess.  I won’t write out the pages of notes I took here but here are a few fast facts of the 4 of the big 5 that we saw rhinos, elephants, buffalo, lions and their friends the wildebeest, warthog, impala, kudu, eland, baboons, ostrich, waterbuck, monkey, zebra (that’s zeh-bra NOT zeeeee- bra):

• Lions have a hierarchy of picking carcass in which if you step out of line you may be killed, which happened to a 14 month old female recently, typically females get last (I would not do well with this, everyone knows if I don’t eat I get cranky).
• Zebra are extremely strong, one kick could be “game over” for any predator or person.  Their weak spines prevent them from being domesticated into labor or for riding. Their stripes are designed to confuse lions who only see in black/white/red.  When they gather together the lions cannot view them separately and cannot find the weak/injured/small ones among the herd to prey upon.
• I’m not a birder but I think its pretty cool that there are 980 different types of birds in Africa! Our reserve had 400 different birds!
• Giraffes hearts weigh 13 kg their blood pressure issues cause issues with allowing them to lay down along with a brain/oxygen dilemma that makes them nearly impossibly to capture and keep alive.
• Elephants are the most fascinating.  You need a 25 year management plan to effectively possess elephants.  The reserve had 23 elephants on their property.  If you over populate you would have to kill all of them, you cannot leave rogue elephants by themselves because as they mourn their loss they will become destructive and destroy everything. They understand words much like dogs do and their moods change very quickly. They recreate their diet based on the terrain and season.  They eat 18-20 hrs a day consuming 150 liters of water and 300 kg of food each day.  I could go on and on but elephants are awesome and the 8 or so baby ones we saw were my FAVORITE of the trip.
• AND because the baby animals were my favorite part:  Lions have a 3-month gestation period with about 4 cubs each round, but many get killed off because the rest of the animal kingdom know how much of a threat they can be.  Giraffes have 14-month gestation period having only 1 at a time and babies can get up and stand within 20 minutes of being born, there were two babies that hung out together. Elephants have a 20-month gestation period and the babies weigh 50 kg when born!

          

Since being back on the ship I have learned that 3 Rhinos at the Kariega have been poached, literally days after our visit.  The poaching industry is as organized as the drug cartels in the Americas.  Essentially, they can take a helicopter into reserves and use a chainsaw to cut the horns (which actually is the entire face as to not to lose out on any horn) and then fly out of the area before the reserve staff and security can get to their location.  There are large security infrastructures at the reserves and the South African government has issued a shoot to kill policy in which is just as it sounds, if you catch a poacher you can shoot them on the spot no arrest/trial/sentence necessary. 

As I settled back into Cape Town I realized, as a Chicago girl, how in love with city life I am.  We spent the evening on the waterfront at a restaurant on the wharf featuring live music (a single guitarist with a dreamy accent), eating seafood, chatting about our blessed lives and enjoying various African beers followed by late night ice cream walking around admiring the sights of Table Mountain and our ship in the water.  A late night out was followed by an early 6am morning as Terrie and I were determined to fit hiking up Table Mountain into our busy schedules.   The two of us grabbed a taxi to pick up fruit, muffins and coffee and get us to the base of the mountain. Our plan was to hike up Platteklip Gorge and we got there just as the sun was peeking out over the horizon and the cool air was still settled into the path.  If you have never seen Table Mountain Google it and imagine what its like to stand at the base, peering up into its greatness at sunrise and glancing down at the breath-taking view of Cape Town below.  The marathoner in me was so excited to get some physical activity free from the 30 min time slots I have to be condemned to a treadmill on board.  I was eagerly pushing the limits in wanting to go fast and I periodically scurried up the mountain, but was glad to have Terrie there with me to encourage slowing down and taking breaks so as to enjoy the view from our continuous elevation.  We used our pit stops up not just for water but to break down what we had experienced in our first 4 days of South Africa, she and I are alike travelers/thinkers/believers and it is refreshing to have a soundboard to both listen to and talk with.  After awhile we wondered if we had taken a wrong turn or if we would ever make it to the top, I could see it but once you are one the path for an hour you feel as though you have disappeared into its embrace and that you may be the only ones on the entire mountain.  We had several breath-taking sights and found ourselves viewing what seemed like fog but in reality we were high enough for it to be clouds.   The only way we knew we were not alone on the mountain is when two Beagles belonging to a young couple a bit behind us caught up with us and were showing us how it was done.  The dog lover in me was excited and found it ironic that I found dogs domestic enough to pet on the side of Table Mountain.  Finally reaching the top Terrie and I got our little breakfast snack out and admired the view and our accomplishment. The sky looking down to the city had a few more clouds than what is considered ideal, but it’s also amazing to realize that you are IN the clouds.  It was a view that you can literally feel filling you up inside with inspiration.  We continued our time with a heart to heart and some time in prayer.

Right as we prayed aloud the cloud cover started to clear and brought clarity to the view of which we were there to admire.

The second half of the day I spent on a field program Spier Winery to a Cheetah conservation organization alongside a Bird of Prey Centre/Hospital.  Due to little enhanced writing of the field program description the Cheetah experience ended up being highly restricted and confined to a small pet on the back of Hemingway, a 7-year-old cheetah, who was perched up on a table with two handlers.  It felt a little quick and incredibly staged and controlled but it was still really amazing to be in the presence of such an amazing animal.  We were able to have a significant experience with the birds, which I barely knew the program included.  Literally snuggling with some incredibly soft owls, learning a ton about the different unique birds and interacting with our guide/students/birds.  That left only about 30 quick minutes to be whisked through a mere sample of what the stunning setting of Spier winery entailed.  It had remarkable grounds, restaurants and an enchanting tasting area and is well-known for its sustainability and eco-tourism.  We sampled 4 wines and blew through a little presentation and were whisked back onto the bus.  It was a shame to rush through but solidified one of the items that will be on my list when I return to South Africa!

    

That night I returned to the ship only to quickly turn around for an evening out in Cape Town, we were determined to experience the fullest extent of the nightlight and after some searching on Long Street we settled into restaurant with a balcony terrace reminiscent on a higher end Bourbon Street of NOLA.  Terrie and I got to know some locals and chatted away the night with a large group of guys that were in town for Sonar an international music festival that was scheduled for the weekend (of course we were sailing before that!)  Apparently the cool thing in Cape Town is to be a DJ because we had guys left and right telling us about their spinning skills.  At one point we witnessed a shouting match that demonstrated some of the color lines and tension that remain in the country.  Following dinner, conversation and cocktails we needed to find the spot that would solidify the nightlife in our minds like Byewell did in Ghana.  Locals referred us to The Waiting Room which was nestled into the top 3 floors of a building like a loft style bar that could very well pass for someone’s apartment.  It was intimate, filled with couches that made up an audience to a live band that was about to begin.  Drinking our cider and jamming with our new friends from Spain (more DJs) I took in the beats of the music and let it fill me up just as I do a breath, it moved us and culminate our nightlife experience of South Africa as we ended the night on the rooftop of the bar in the perfectly crisp night and views of Table Mountain.

My final day would fill me with intimate examination of the history of South Africa, with a trip to Robben Island and a visit to Langa township.  The reality of the world I was witnessing would soon set in and the severe struggle that endured was about to be more strictly my subject. Robben Island holds a prison that is famous for the anguish that was suffered by many blacks and coloureds since the 1900’s until the abolishment of Apartheid in 1994.  It was a severely corrupt and destitute place that was used to punish any individual that demonstrated resistance to the policies that Apartheid asserted.  Our tour guide was a former prisoner and was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts when him and a group of fellow students simply were stuck late at night at their university attempting to make sense of what was going on to some of their fellow students already imprisoned.  The racism and corruption that existed outside of the prison was magnified within, policies of severe censorship and different privileges were given to different levels of inmates, how well you conformed to the system created a higher number of privileges.  This is the place were Nelson Mandela was known as prisoner 466/64 and stayed for 27 years.  Little did the white Afrikaans understand that placing all their political opponents within the same walls with nothing to do all day but think/talk and even the limestone quarries where they were forced to work became classrooms of discussion and learning.  By imprisoning these individuals for nothing but political thought or crime they were arming an entire population of people to come out of that prison as some of the strongest leaders the nation would even know.

The townships were a result of catastrophic levels of relocations of blacks and coloureds forcing them off white lands/areas and literally into temporary dwellings that were/are no more than thin metal sheets that made up a small hut.  This type of poverty was reminiscent of what we saw widespread in Ghana, however this was with the backdrop of the obscene wealth and lavish nature of Cape Town and any other white neighborhood where the wealth was visible as if money grew on trees. It was also a result of the distinct place in which politics had pushed an entire population of people, and with that the majority population of the country as there are 14 million coloured and blacks compared to only 5 million whites.  The politics are complex and the story of District 6 neighborhood in Cape Town that is famous for being demolished due to a heightened level of integration that began to happen during Apartheid started me thinking of my own cities intensive gentrification that is widespread.  We come into this country thinking “how could they let this happen in such recent history, 1994?!?! That was not long ago” or “how could this stratified society survive in today’s world, why do people classify individuals and treat them differently”.  However, these assertions made for powerful critiques inside me of our own country and what Americans believe themselves to be innocent of while ascertaining that other countries have big problems.  Americans need to know and learn the history of South Africa and then they need to turn that learning on ourselves.  Pay attention to a key philosophy about which I have learned during my time in Africa that I will now hold forever near to my heart, Ubuntu which Desmond Tutu describes as

-  “speaks particularly about the fact that you a can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness You can’t be human all by yourself We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another where as you are connected and what you do affects the whole World.  When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

And keep in your minds the 1994 inaugural speech of Nelson Mandela as he became president,

-  “Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster… must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.  The time to build is upon us… Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another…’”

Our time in the township was not all somber. The spirit and organization around the township was actually very inspirational and full of life.  We ate at an amazing restaurant where Mama Shelia opened her home to show outsiders what the townships were and the reality that laid within its walls.  Her success has been heralded as a center for development and employment for locals as they show tourists what their world is like.  It was cheerful and beautiful and welcoming and it felt like a home that was opened to be ours. I even got up on the stage playing music with the band and treasured the tunes that I brought home which they shared with us.

So was I a tourist in South Africa or a traveler? I don’t know, I wish I could blatantly say traveler but as an American can we ever escape from the status of being a tourist based on our wealth and access to resources that blind us from truly knowing a place beyond our foothold amongst the privileged?  I know I am certainly not done with South Africa and I did not get everything that I could say down on this blog. AND I had this longing desire to stay in South Africa, (beyond what I have felt in the other 20 or so countries I have seen) I wanted to continue to engage with the people, places, history, and new level in the world that this enchanting country is taking.  I will most definitely be returning to South Africa, perhaps within the year!

The Sights, Smells, and Struggles of Ghana Stirred my Soul

Agoo (greeting meant to say I’m ready to speak/be heard…and its a looooong one)

You answer Amae (which mean’s I’m listening/you have my attention)

Its happened and I’m having a hard time dealing with it… nothing I can say will put my experience into enough eloquence to expose you to actual experience of Ghana.  If you know me well, I’m rarely at a loss for words.  Amidst all my travels of the past I honestly feel I can describe experiences effectively to make an accurate reflection of the place and impact with whom I share.  However, Ghana was like a switch that flipped abruptly and placed within me a feeling of despair of not being able to do it justice.  Therefore, I’m not going to share just a play by play nor just walking you through what its like to experience Ghana for 5 days because that is impossible.  I also don’t want to just tell you what I did so you can walk through my footprints because that would be a waste of time. My new platform is to tell you how Ghana has stirred my soul and the things that are now placed within me that will bring me back from this circumnavigation of our world that will make me a different person.

I have now experienced 15 ports during my time as a student and the beginning of being a staff on Semester at Sea.  The port in Ghana was undoubtedly the most complex and largest barrier to getting out of the dock and into the city/country/people.  Most of the countries we dock in what appears like a commercial shipping port (huge semi truck crates stacked as high as you can see), this is because our destinations are not ones in which large cruise ships visit enough to warrant the building of a fancy port.   Our berth was at Tema port, Tema is a small city outside of Accra, the capital of Ghana.

The process of getting out of the port area was complex, discouraging, overwhelming and time intensive, dealing with traffic worse than Chicago.   But once finally exhumed from the closed off semi truck trailer stacked area of Tema port the sights available for your eyes to ingest are endless and provide good company for the long bus rides to Accra.

I have never been to a place where every single (I’m sure India will be similar) direction you look meets a new smorgasbord for your eyes to ingest.   My method in attempting to capture this concept of saturated sights was to take photos of everything.  Let’s just say I made my photographer brother proud, I feel as if each and every photograph has something different captured from the last.  I think I have 700 photos total.

So I have decided you haven’t truly been to Ghana unless you have traveled on a Tro-Tro.  It is the way of travel that is used for 70% of Ghanaian commuters.  Very few people in the country own or operate vehicles. (And yet the traffic is ridiculous!)  Imagine time before the El existed or city buses, then picture large van-like vehicles that are run down and have bench seating…most have sliding doors that a man sits and hanging out the window to find new passengers.  He recruits from the side of the street and the tro-tro stops by the roadside, swings open the sliding door and people go in and out as the process continues on as a constant cycle.

  We took this local pleasure on as myself and 5 other staff made our way to Cape Coast, beach town where we were headed, we likely stopped 24 times, during which the radio blared all kinds of talk radio in English/Twi and music.  One element that was especially entertaining was a meritage of Whitney Houston songs, which we all took the opportunity to sing along to and remember her good ol days.  We also stopped at about 8 police checkpoints, which is interesting because the officials carry semi-automatic weapons that look like large rifle-meet-machine-guns. However, my favorite part of the 3 hour tro-tro traveling like a true Ghanian adventure was the solace I found as I popped my headphones in and fed my soul with the sights of Ghana.  I just kept thinking…what is going on inside me?!?! Something was drawn up and stirring up and I didn’t know what to do about what I was seeing.  I always knew Africa would be much different but I guess I never took the time to realize what exactly it would be…although I’m not sure anyone could have explained it.  (Much like I don’t know how to find the words now).  I spent the time just watching every sight, contemplating every notion that came to mind about what I was witnessing, and praying for what I was seeing at the same time I gave thanks for the opportunity to place me in this experience.  We settled into our hotel last night that technically had the title of “resort” at the end but I believe “hostel” would have been a more accurate term for it.

We had dinner right next to the beach as I enjoyed the company of my colleagues and we all tried to let it sink in that we are in GHANA!

That night I settled into my bottom bunk bed, in room that was reminiscent of camp that slept 12 total.  My mosquito net was all around me and I remember feeling this solace and such a sweet sleep, that when I was awakened in the middle of the night it was one of those scenarios where you don’t know exactly where you are but you feel like you could be home.  The only way I knew I was not anywhere close to home was when I heard the Twi being spoken by security men outside were speaking Twi and I was not under the fluffy comforter or pillows but rather just surrounded by the light texture of the mosquito net.  We had an early morning to get to Kakum National Forest where our main event was to walk on top of the trees.

No LITERALLY we were going to maneuver the canopy walkways, only 5 places in the world hold such an experience.  We took a cab out of the city of Cape Coast and were situated on a slight hill to climb to the top.  There was a intricate path of netting and 8 inch boards that stretched over the tops of the trees for as far as you can see.  There were 7 total walkways as we made our way through the forest, looking down you could not even catch a glimpse of the ground due to the height and the nature of the trees below.  It was a captivating beautiful experience.

One of the amazing things about Ghana was the presence of Christianity all around.  Taxis drove by with messages of faith displayed prominently on their back windows.

All the store fronts had names that included “God is Able Hardware”, “Pray Hard Provision Shop”, “The Blood of Jesus Christ Bicycle Shop”.  Some of the taxis had some fabulous phrases that I feel could be useful in the traffic of the city of Chicago.

The countryside was open fields with the scattering of small gatherings of houses some cement some clay, and we would continuously pass small areas of markets and schools.  This was a great contrast to the city of Accra and Tema, which was dense, dirty, smelled, crowded, saturated with efforts of capitalism in the form of small markets and roadside stands, hawkers, and hustlers.  Everyone wants to sell you something and bartering is the only way to buy in Ghana.

If you don’t barter you’re a fool and yet it becomes exhausting to do so for every purchase.  However, our favorite and most regular purchase was at the fresh fruit stands.  We could walk up and ask for any fruit your heart or palate desired, the women would cut it up with remarkable technique and you pull the toothpick out of the bag to walk around enjoying the freshest pineapple, mango, bananas, papaya that your taste buds have ever reveled in.   It became a daily practice and I couldn’t wait to get my mango and enjoy it as we explored.  One day for lunch in we just took fruit, ground nuts and fresh off the roadside grill plantains.  It was simple, sweet and something I will savor about Ghana.  Another special treat, although advised against by the on ship Dr., is street meat.  Terrie and I have a belief that we want to experience the local food and to us some of these countries tend to make some magic right on the side street restaurants and grills.  So we decided as fearless food seeking women that we would risk it and just choose wisely.  So we finally got to eat some street meat, after opting out of it in Manaus because we were too full.  The first stand we approached we requested chicken only to find out that they only serve chicken gizzard and goat.  We had conflicting palates as we both said we would eat one but not the other, so we found beef with pepper at the next one.  This will be the first skewer of many in our search for savoring street meat in each port.

I was captivated by the complex patterns and color of the African fabrics of the traditional clothing.  Whenever I spotted a woman in traditional dress I found my gaze captivated and my eyes admiring the beauty of the garment. The men with traditional African pattern button down shirts were also exciting to discovery as I gazed at the crowded streets amidst   The patterns stuck out of in the crowd and I found myself searching for the beautiful patterns amidst the western dress of everyone else.  I started to wonder why so many people adopted the style of western dress abroad, most of the shirts and attire appear to be remnants of the American system.  The roadside stands sold items that look like they were packed up directly from Goodwill stores around the U.S.  My theory was confirmed when I began seeing many people wearing Super Bowl hats from 2004, t-shirts with things like  “New York City” (which made some sense), Ohio (which didn’t), and statements of all kinds that just didn’t make sense to flaunt if they were admiring American fashion.  I was troubled by the fact that I was witnessing all around me the gross overconsumption of the United States and the vast discharge of our closets.  I just kept wrestling with why a people with such beautiful tradition would set aside that beauty for our cast offs. (I know this is blunt and is not intended to be demeaning but I told you there is emotion that corresponds with what you see and no matter how I describe it, that authentic experience of viewing it validates to a certain extent the reality that may appear to others as disrespectful.)

A more academic side to this struggle is that on the Human Development Index Ghana is .47 (which is the lowest of all the countries we are visiting).  1.0 is the highest HDI and it combines normalized measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).  The United States is a .97.  Another fascinating way to look at this is in terms of electrifications if you look at World at Night.  

The livelihood of people in Ghana was variable but most found their income in selling a specific good.  Some were the stalls selling goodwill clothes, bras, household anything on the side of the street, some where hustling the tourists to buy paintings/Ghana soccer jerseys/quilted bags out of African fabric/tiny bracelets that were in the Ghanaian flag colors which spell out your name (they make conversation and ask you your name if you tell them all of the sudden they have made a bracelet with your name on it and expect you to buy it, I didn’t fall for their scheme) others were “hawkers” who in the middle of traffic would approach cars and sell to the passengers of crowded tro-tro’s.  Most sold one commodity plantain chips, bags of water, baked goods, cold pop/juice, gum, but they didn’t stop there, you could by a fish, lobster, toilet paper, house hold gadgets, a framed picture of Jesus, a game for children… the list goes on.  The hawkers just walk up and down the lines on the roadways in and out of cars through traffic as calm as can be.  (And I thought we were aggressive pedestrians in Chicago?!?!)  However, their model of business brought some interesting struggles to my mind.  The bartering that we were forced into became a norm.  I got very good at it, in fact once I was with one of the guys who was about to get suckered into overpaying for a t-shirt and I cut in on the bartering, the hustler told me “You are a bad woman” because he saw that I had influence over the opinion of the guy to whom he was selling.  Essentially he was pissed that I interrupted him ripping off my friend.  As this process continued to purchase pretty much anything during our time in Ghana, I struggled with the fact that we are placed in a situation where we are getting overcharged for all kinds of goods because of the color of our skin or the way we spoke our version of proper English.  However, I was also confronted with the reality that the average salary a year in Ghana is  $1,300 where as the average in the US $47,200.  We were bartering for souvenirs trying to get it down to the smallest amount of cedi, and yet when considering what the quantity was in dollars we were rich and I could afford their original asking prices! Its not the first time I have traveled in a bartering country, I have experienced many, and yet this was the first intimate experience with this intense side of thinking because of all the other realities around me.  I know bartering will be a big part of many of the remaining countries and yet our affluence has really begun to affect the way I feel I am supposed to interact.  I don’t want to be ripped off but I also don’t want to simply pay up. I know that the people that are really good at hustling are likely not the ones that need the money either, if I’m going to give my money away I would rather give it to a person in the clay house that I witnessed going to the bathroom in the gutters who could likely feed their family for an extended time off the cedi I was about to bargain down.

When I was looking at the field program list as I sat in my apartment back in Chicago, putting the trip to the Slave Castles and Dungeons on my list was a no brainer.  Being a history major in undergrad, a certified secondary social studies teacher, and studying the ideologies and inequalities of the US education system while in graduate school; the history of the triangular trade was integral to all that I have ever studied. I had to see it and stand in the place that holds such power and impact over the entire globe.   It was not the story (as I have learned of it before), nor the sight (as that was not what it was about), nor the structure (as it was no grandiose) that held the largest impact over the course of my visit, although each element contributed to my understanding of this sacred space.  It was the smell. When I say smell please do NOT imagine the most putrid smell you have experienced, nor the most vulgar, powerful, refined, nor the most awful that has filled your nostrils; because it was not that simple.  It was the most poignant. It was something that I will never be able to fully describe and yet desire so fervently to in order to share the impact of the experience.  The smell contained damp, musty, smoky, urine, waste, cold, and old…it was as if you could smell the history of the space…and it was everywhere.  Yet it’s scent was most powerful while inside the chambers.  It made you actually feel that the presence of the people who stood in that space, died in that space, were sick in that space, lost their sanctity of freedom in that space.  WOW it was powerful.  It was not something I wanted to run away from, nor cover my nose, it was something I found myself longing to understand, define and decipher…and to figure out how to never forget it.  As I sit on the deck of the ship writing this blog… I breathe in and try to remember how it smells. I hope that I can still understand it as I move on to new countries and return home. 

The castles have been visited by many people, including President Obama and his family, which was commemorated with a plaque built into the stone.  (The people of Ghana love the Obamas).  Although, the structures are painted and look undoubtedly more museum like than original state they largely  remain the same.  One particularly stark example of this are the floors of the cells which are a thick layer of preserved history.  Studies have been done on small sections of the floors which contain original dirt, as well as compacted amounts of human waste that is so thick that the years of castle use and the conditions in which the inhabitants were forced is disturbingly clear.  We were standing on decades of human excrement, death, disease that is so much a part of the history of the place, it was a component of the structure itself.

The tour guide referenced an area where people were placed as punishment.  While explaining the cause for this confinement he said “Those that tried to escape and then corrected himself by saying “Excuse me those fought for freedom”.  The juxtaposition of these phrases was powerful to me.  The discourse around slavery in fact enslaves those that even discuss the topic.  We have been indoctrinated to state first that it was an act of escape?!?!  Are we not first and foremost humans that own ourselves and are free.  I found it captivating to contemplate the order in which this Ghanaian man, trained to give tours, made a statement to his audience but then corrected himself with more feeling and desire as he used the words “fought for freedom”.  Perhaps, he did so intentionally…used this play on words for academics like me, but I wouldn’t give that benefit of the doubt to the vast majority of people that speak of slavery, which demonstrates the disconnect in the way we learn history from the learned experience of history.

One of the most influential sites of the structure was when we passed through the “Door of No Return” which is situated down within the lower level of the castle and opens up to the beach that lies behind it.  We walked through and the guide tells us that as each person walked out of this door and made their way to the ship noting that it was the last time they would ever see their continent.  Standing in that doorway and pausing to ponder that concept was a deep moment of reflection for me.  On the outside a sign was added at one of the castles that read “Door of Return”.  As the guide finished our tour he stated that this sign was added in 1998 when the skeleton of a man and a woman were brought back by their descendents who live in the US.  There was a large reception and the skeletons were brought back through the “door of no return” in order to signify and commemorate all those that had originally exited that door and either died or were enslaved in the New World.

In closing our tour guide shared that there are many types of people that come to visit the castles and some are descendents of slaves others descendents of the slave owners and the visits are important to provide continued commemoration of the stories of the people who suffered.  However, the judgment is not up to any of them but rather “leave that to the one we cannot see, and that is God.”   The slave castles and dungeons were a profound experience to walk through and I hope never to forget the sights and smells of that sacred space.

On the 4^th day I visited the World Bank office in Accra, which is the headquarters of its operations for the majority of the African continent.  One of the professors, a retired Economist, worked there from 1991-1994.  There were a lot of trips offered in this port and many experiences to be had, however the opportunity to spend a day talking to a multinational corporation about a third world country whose development led that of an entire continent was something my nerdy side could not pass up.  It wasn’t as glamorous/eventful/moving/active as most adventures in the ports, we essentially sat in a chair in a extremely modest building and a simple conference room all day but it signified more to me.  There were specialist that came in all day lead Economist, the lead Oil specialist, lead Communication strategist, 2 Ghanaian government officials, and the president of the Ghanaian World Bank office (who is actually from Honduras).  The intimate nature of being able to stand in a area where a International Organization that is responsible for restructuring and rebuilding an entire country, and in this case leading the way for a continent, is the epitome of what engages my history/nerd/intellectual side.  We got to ask whatever questions we wanted, we had 8 specialist that are responsible for everything the World Bank does in Ghana and there was a certain openness that is lacking in most political arenas in the States.  To get a small example of a topic we spoke about please watch the YouTube video called The Girl Effect.

The flag was everywhere, my friend Terrie and I discussed how the Ghanaian people emulate such a pride of their country and despite being foreigners we actually felt the excitement of Ghana every time we saw the Ghanaian flag.  The red stands for the blood of their forefathers fighting for the independence, which was not gained until 1957. The middle band of gold stands for the gold it possessed as it was once called the Gold Coast. The green band on the bottom stands for the agriculture that it holds and the natural resources from which it profits. The black star in the middle is the star of Africa.  The flag was EVERYWHERE, we had conversations of how in the U.S. the flag seems to take on a different meaning and patriotism is often used to make a point based on a platform rather than the sentiments the Ghanaians seem to display here.

The last night in Ghana adopted the same mantra as previous ports, no matter how tired I am I have to make the most of my time.  I took a nap on the 2.5 hour ride through traffic to the city and then we got some fresh fruit and walked around Accra til we found a place to eat, somehow the city streets that had been so overwhelming at first were now our norm and we walked around like locals. The highlight of the night was finding a little bar called Byewell, it was essentially an outdoor patio with 2 bars and live music BUT the people, the dancing and the atmosphere of being under the stars in Africa made it much more.  Settling in we realized we had found an expat bar (foreign government officials), which was obvious from the white skin and various accents/languages.  The disturbing part of finding people that looked like us was that they did not behave like us.  Their respectable highly positioned jobs in the country and yet they were interacting with Ghanaian women who were dressed, drinking and servicing the men beyond the level of a prostitute and more accurately a slave like relationship.  I was disgusted at the reality that was starkly in front of me.  As I focused on the company of my colleagues rather than the company that those men were running we began to break loose and enjoy the beats of the African music version of hip hop/Reggae and a few special renditions of American music as the live band made our souls move.  We gradually got comfortable with the company of the locals and their respectable dance moves, no inappropriate touching or attempts, entirely just the moving to the music under the stars of the night.  Some of the locals swooned in, leading us in dancing to what felt like Salsa/Reggae mix and we all literally danced the night away sweating and sipping on what we deemed the best beer in Ghana, Club.  Whose tag line is “Spot means club in Ghana, Club means Beer”.  

My time in Ghana was filled with amazing learning, lots of contemplating, and an introduction to the continent of Africa by the sights and sounds of one of its leading nations and people of Ghana.  Many of us struggled with our reflections and blogs as we witnessed so much that was different from our own lives.  I’ve come to settle on the fact that I think what we need to contemplate is why we are abject to our own poor.  Here in Ghana we had no option but to deal with these inequalities. We have the privileged to be sheltered in the US from all that we have seen in Ghana, what we really need to deal with is why we haven’t dealt with that at home.

The 5 days at sea are already passed as I finish writing this the night before we arrive in South Africa, in which I have a packed schedule. Until then… Medase (Thank you) for reading.