Delhi feels like living in a big, grey dome. Today is fairly clear, and from the top of our class room building visibility is maybe a kilometer? Beyond that buildings and trees fade into a ghostly shade of gray that of unbeing. On the streets at night gloating lights glare through the gray until the dark masses of cars, busses, bicycles and three-wheeled auto rickshaws bear down like a horde, honking and schreaching their war-cries of hustle and bustle. The long rickshaw ride to my homestay each evening leaves the inside of my mouth feeling gray and grainy-filthy. This morning I blew my nose and something black came out. Assode from that I am excited to be in India.
After a week of vacation in Arusha, a city at the base of northern Tanzanian mountains, I was antsy, ready to pack my bags and move, excited to reclaim my status as a psuedo-nomad. (This urge almost worries me--what will I do when I return to the states?) The whole group was together again, all piles of bags and bodies, pouring in and out of busses and through security. At a center of the night layover in the Ethiopian International Airport some of us heap ourselves on benches and drink vodka from the bottle, celebrating our return to each other and the freedom of movement.
I can already tell that India will leave its mark on me far more than I will leave my mark on India.
Written 11-25-2009
It is 7:15 on a friday night.
I am riding out of the city center, contorted onto the front bench of the rickshaw with its driver, a 500 Rupi fin no one seems to care about. Half my butt is hanging off the seat and half my knee is hanging out the side. A muslim couple is riding in the back and the goat they shoe-horned in with them breaths warmly on my hand. It is 7:20 on a friday night.
The goat is a sacrificial one, and tomorrow it will be killed and eated, some of the meat given to those who can't afford it in a muslim tradition. But for now ot nuzzles my hand as I hold onto the ricksahw frame, holding myself into the little green three-wheeled vehicle and out of the staccato rush of traffic. I smile.
Written 11-26-2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania
Taking strange shits in foriegn countries, that's one perspective on my life right now.
Yesterday I was sick, walking dead style. I tried going to class because the alternative was lying in a pool of sweat in a room with little ventilation and no natural light. Meredith walked me home mid-morning when I realized I was bing completely ineffectual. I had weird half-asleep fever dreams for most of the day until my fever broke in the early evening.
Today we went snorkling over a coral reef off the coast of Zanzibar for class, definitly a 'hey guys, guess what I did in school today?' experience. Add it to the list. Tonight I watched the sun set from a cafe in Stone Town, hearing the patter of the waves on the beach, surrounded by a tables-worth of friends, eating ice-cream.
My life is this weird combination of comfortable and uncomfortable experiences, not so much alternating as simultaneous. Crapping for the 6th time in 3 hours (or the 1st time in 3 days), buying street food (and getting overcharged for being white), lying spread eagle in the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, waking up in the morning already sweaty. Talking to a Kenyan fisherman who came here a year ago in search of work. Whether he finds a job or not he'd rather stay in Tanzania then go home because, he says, "there are [corrupt] politics in both countries, but here they don't kill each other, they talk instead" (at least until next year's elections). When he asked, we gave him money for food. He says he needs just $100 to buy his own dhow, a fishing boat. We part ways, him going to buy food, us to get on a hired boat and look at coral under the sea. My life is very surreal most of the time.
In conversation my ecology professor mentions that RG [Rethinking Globalization, the program I am on] is a lot like the army. Should know; she was on active duty as a military police officer for 5 years in the mid 90s. And its true. We, the students, willingly give up most of possessions and leave everyong we know to be with 25 fellow strangers, going where we're told, seeing and learning whatever someone thinks it is important for us to know, sleeping and shitting in strange and interesting circumstances. We get on bussess and into the backs of trucks without knowing where we're going. Just roll with it.
We get no choice who becomes our friends, but we'll put our trust in them. What kind of person voluntarily puts the comforts and friendships of home asside for a year to live, cry, laugh, and question with a group of total strangers who's greatest commonality is that they too were willing, eager to take that same step. My life is very surreal.
By the way, I'm staying with a local family in Zanzibar right now. I have learned a maze of alleys and landmarks necessary to navigate anywhere. I sleep in my boxers under a blue mosquito net. I eat with my right hand, clean myself with my left in the muslim way. My host father has two wives, one here, one in Dar es salaam. I accidentaly say assante, thank you in swahili, even to my classmates. I have seen my reflection once in 4 days. I hve no running water. I take a pink malaria pill every morning. I am surprized and amazed by how nice, open and genuine Zanzibari people are.
Salaam.
Written on 10-14-09
Yesterday I was sick, walking dead style. I tried going to class because the alternative was lying in a pool of sweat in a room with little ventilation and no natural light. Meredith walked me home mid-morning when I realized I was bing completely ineffectual. I had weird half-asleep fever dreams for most of the day until my fever broke in the early evening.
Today we went snorkling over a coral reef off the coast of Zanzibar for class, definitly a 'hey guys, guess what I did in school today?' experience. Add it to the list. Tonight I watched the sun set from a cafe in Stone Town, hearing the patter of the waves on the beach, surrounded by a tables-worth of friends, eating ice-cream.
My life is this weird combination of comfortable and uncomfortable experiences, not so much alternating as simultaneous. Crapping for the 6th time in 3 hours (or the 1st time in 3 days), buying street food (and getting overcharged for being white), lying spread eagle in the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, waking up in the morning already sweaty. Talking to a Kenyan fisherman who came here a year ago in search of work. Whether he finds a job or not he'd rather stay in Tanzania then go home because, he says, "there are [corrupt] politics in both countries, but here they don't kill each other, they talk instead" (at least until next year's elections). When he asked, we gave him money for food. He says he needs just $100 to buy his own dhow, a fishing boat. We part ways, him going to buy food, us to get on a hired boat and look at coral under the sea. My life is very surreal most of the time.
In conversation my ecology professor mentions that RG [Rethinking Globalization, the program I am on] is a lot like the army. Should know; she was on active duty as a military police officer for 5 years in the mid 90s. And its true. We, the students, willingly give up most of possessions and leave everyong we know to be with 25 fellow strangers, going where we're told, seeing and learning whatever someone thinks it is important for us to know, sleeping and shitting in strange and interesting circumstances. We get on bussess and into the backs of trucks without knowing where we're going. Just roll with it.
We get no choice who becomes our friends, but we'll put our trust in them. What kind of person voluntarily puts the comforts and friendships of home asside for a year to live, cry, laugh, and question with a group of total strangers who's greatest commonality is that they too were willing, eager to take that same step. My life is very surreal.
By the way, I'm staying with a local family in Zanzibar right now. I have learned a maze of alleys and landmarks necessary to navigate anywhere. I sleep in my boxers under a blue mosquito net. I eat with my right hand, clean myself with my left in the muslim way. My host father has two wives, one here, one in Dar es salaam. I accidentaly say assante, thank you in swahili, even to my classmates. I have seen my reflection once in 4 days. I hve no running water. I take a pink malaria pill every morning. I am surprized and amazed by how nice, open and genuine Zanzibari people are.
Salaam.
Written on 10-14-09
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Dar es salaam, Tanzania
I am so far underwhelmed with Dar. I'm not sure what I expected, I hadn't put any thought to it, but it was not this. Something a little grander, perhaps, a little more openly exotic, openly foriegn. It took me most of the first day to realize the three-story YWCA compound we are staying in was not in the outskirts or the sprawl of the city but the center. My conception of City includes towers, places where you walk through canyons of glass and steel, but the tallest buildings are hotels, not offices. It strikes me that the offices in the cities i'm used to might manage the hotels here. Dar reminds of Atlants on a small scale.
I feel uncomfortable being a tourist here, and I feel uncomfortable being constantly objectified for my money or my citizenship on the street. The city feels to me as if it sells itself but receivs nothing in return.
I pass compounds, all surrounded by metal bars or concrete walls topped with barbed wire (Dar as a city does not seem overly adverse to barbed-wire--the stuff is everywhere). Each gate bears the name and logo of some security group. Based on the man or two all dressed in kakhi in our hostel's courtyard I assume security means men with kalashnikovs. These compounds are for contractors, concrete companies, an oil exploration group, consultancy (lots of these) and a countless number of ambiguously titled and undescribed companies.
The swimming beaches are reserved for tourists. The coast not suitable for tourist ebaches are worked by locals, for what I cannot tell from this distance; at low tide there are several hundred yards of green sandbar and tide-water between the road and the ocean. Where one of these tidal inlets is deep enough locals are bent over, wading and reaching into the water. We want to swim but don't feel it would be appropriate to do so where someone works. Appropriate. This idea comes up over and over again but has no clear definition, only a mess of meaning muddied by Mikhal's (our anthropology professor) impressings on the uncertainty of any judgement. Anthropological thought has become a maze of shifting sfumato layers of awareness, self-awareness and self-unawareness more akin to a chess game played without seeing the pieces and best navigated by uncertainty.
I knew there would be trash, that the city would be dirty, but I was not prepared for the casualness of how trash was spread. I see it especially in areas of grass. I am used to seeing litter by the sides of roads, in alleys, but litter is not what is in Dar. Trash is the only word that seems appropriate, and it is omnipresent like the dust.
This, apprently, is development. Hotels and awkward construction and street venders hawking shoes, clothes, wallets, all cheap factory-mades, either 'local' or chinese or indian or south-east asian. Yay globalized production model. So much here seems to cater to the outsider. Evidence of americana in the form of foods, experiences, services, consumables of all shapes and sizes, is thrown in everywhere. It seems plastic and cargo-cultish. The american food is wrong, off in a subtle, glossy, cut-out kind of way, the western-style outifts the waiters wear in the restaurants that cater to tourists look costumish to me. Everything western is shaped right, but the flow, the shift and shuffle of life here is different, is not American of European, never will be, never should be. But it is sad to see how innefectually parts of this place seem to sell themselves out.
My first day of classes is tommorrow. Wish me luck.
-October 5th, 2009
None of this is to say I am unhappy, or even dissapointed. In fact I am enjoying myself immensly. I am writing these posts in the moment (gonzo style) and then posting it when I can, so these are not crafted, complete views but snapshots of my reflection and experience. Also, there will be typos. I pay for my internet here, and my typing muscles have already atrophied (I write all my papers by hand now).
I feel uncomfortable being a tourist here, and I feel uncomfortable being constantly objectified for my money or my citizenship on the street. The city feels to me as if it sells itself but receivs nothing in return.
I pass compounds, all surrounded by metal bars or concrete walls topped with barbed wire (Dar as a city does not seem overly adverse to barbed-wire--the stuff is everywhere). Each gate bears the name and logo of some security group. Based on the man or two all dressed in kakhi in our hostel's courtyard I assume security means men with kalashnikovs. These compounds are for contractors, concrete companies, an oil exploration group, consultancy (lots of these) and a countless number of ambiguously titled and undescribed companies.
The swimming beaches are reserved for tourists. The coast not suitable for tourist ebaches are worked by locals, for what I cannot tell from this distance; at low tide there are several hundred yards of green sandbar and tide-water between the road and the ocean. Where one of these tidal inlets is deep enough locals are bent over, wading and reaching into the water. We want to swim but don't feel it would be appropriate to do so where someone works. Appropriate. This idea comes up over and over again but has no clear definition, only a mess of meaning muddied by Mikhal's (our anthropology professor) impressings on the uncertainty of any judgement. Anthropological thought has become a maze of shifting sfumato layers of awareness, self-awareness and self-unawareness more akin to a chess game played without seeing the pieces and best navigated by uncertainty.
I knew there would be trash, that the city would be dirty, but I was not prepared for the casualness of how trash was spread. I see it especially in areas of grass. I am used to seeing litter by the sides of roads, in alleys, but litter is not what is in Dar. Trash is the only word that seems appropriate, and it is omnipresent like the dust.
This, apprently, is development. Hotels and awkward construction and street venders hawking shoes, clothes, wallets, all cheap factory-mades, either 'local' or chinese or indian or south-east asian. Yay globalized production model. So much here seems to cater to the outsider. Evidence of americana in the form of foods, experiences, services, consumables of all shapes and sizes, is thrown in everywhere. It seems plastic and cargo-cultish. The american food is wrong, off in a subtle, glossy, cut-out kind of way, the western-style outifts the waiters wear in the restaurants that cater to tourists look costumish to me. Everything western is shaped right, but the flow, the shift and shuffle of life here is different, is not American of European, never will be, never should be. But it is sad to see how innefectually parts of this place seem to sell themselves out.
My first day of classes is tommorrow. Wish me luck.
-October 5th, 2009
None of this is to say I am unhappy, or even dissapointed. In fact I am enjoying myself immensly. I am writing these posts in the moment (gonzo style) and then posting it when I can, so these are not crafted, complete views but snapshots of my reflection and experience. Also, there will be typos. I pay for my internet here, and my typing muscles have already atrophied (I write all my papers by hand now).
Friday, October 2, 2009
A little late for a first post, but better than never
I think my main backpack weighs about 33 lbs, my carry-on about 10. I've got a 15 lb box of crap I'm sending home, just waiting for me to slip this netbook into it and haul it off to UPS. The only thing left to buy are rechargeable batteries for my camera and headlamp.
I am one of 26 students. We are three weeks into our 8.5 month long study abroad program, and In 40 hours we will be in Dar Es Salaam, capitol of Tanzania.
I am one of 26 students. We are three weeks into our 8.5 month long study abroad program, and In 40 hours we will be in Dar Es Salaam, capitol of Tanzania.
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