Cape Town, More Monkeys, Mauritius and India

Another few weeks have whizzed by faster than I could keep up with…. I’ve now got three ports to report on all at once. Sorry about this. I’m a hopeless blogger…

Cape Town, South Africa: If you ever plan to visit (or re-visit) Cape Town there is one place you cannot miss! Monkeyland at World of Birds! World of Birds is a bird sanctuary/zoo (the largest bird park in Africa, apparently) where you walk into the cages with the birds – over 3000 species of them – and the various other animals they have there. In the heart of World of Birds is Monkeyland where you can play with squirrel monkeys (pictured below and previously pictured, I believe, in our update from the Amazon) – tiny little monkeys that run around like they’re on speed. These monkeys run right onto your arms and head and will jump straight into your bag to see what they can grab. They have the softest little hands and fingers and the tiniest little faces. I wanted to put one in my bag and take him home with me. (Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they check bags coming onto the ship.)

Aside from World of Birds, we also climbed to the Cape of Good Hope which sounds more adventurous than it really was. We drove most of the way and walked a half hour on a very-nicely built trail to the tip of the cape. The views (as you can see) were amazing.

It was quite interesting coming back to South Africa after having been there in July for our honeymoon, particularly since we had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Archbishop Desmond Tutu talk several times about the undoing of apartheid and the challenges South Africa continues to face since the transition. In Cape Town it is much easier to remain unaware of these issues as a visitor (and even as a resident, I would imagine) since it is one of the richest (and most white) parts of the country. Nevertheless, one does not have to travel far to see stretches and stretches of corrugated iron shacks. We heard that some of the townships continue to grow at rates of 10,000 newcomers per month.

Much of our time in Cape Town was spent with our good friends Holger and Andrea and their two little ones, Noah and Zoë. Holger and Andrea helped us organize our honeymoon project in Durban, South Africa, and we were glad to hear from Holger that fundraising is underway by the Mangosuthu Technicon (where we started a scholarship fund) in order to supplement the “Hervy Nicholson Endowment,” we created with funds from our wedding gifts. We are now working on the ship to try to have some of the donations collected from Semester at Sea students (last year the ship raised a whopping $35,000!) directed toward the fund so that it can start disbursing scholarships a bit sooner. Keep your fingers crossed!

Port Louis, Mauritius: Our next stop was Mauritius, a tiny Francophone island off the coast of Madagascar that has often been described as “paradise.” We only had three days there so it seemed like we hardly landed by the time we had to go… which means I don’t have too much to say…

But I have a poem to share with you, written by a friend of ours on the ship, about the Dodo bird – the now extinct native bird of Mauritius. The Dodo was from the pigeon family but over time grew so big and fat in Mauritius (where it had lots of food and no predators) that it could no longer fly by the time the Dutch arrived. This made them easy prey for the Dutch who ate the bird to extinction even though they thought it tasted disgusting, and hence called it “the disgusting bird.”

DODO BIRDS: THE TRUE STORY

There once was a pigeon that flew
To Mauritius, an isle with a view.
So much food was in sight
The bird ate day and night
And got fat while it grew and it grew.

But then the bird’s fate took a fall.
Hungry Dutchman with guns came to call.
Not able to fly
The fat bird would die
While its killers did dine, one and all.

They called it the ‘dis-gusting bird.’
Tough and foul to the taste, was the word.
Yet they made it their prey
Each night and each day
Till not one ‘Dodo’ more could be heard.

Chennai, India: How to capture our experience there? It was, for me (Anne-Claire) by far the best port experience thus far – and they’ve all been wonderful. It was a very packed five days, each day quite different from the other.

First, I should say that Semester at Sea’s arrival in India was announced on prime time television. Not many cruise ships, I guess, stop in India, particularly in Chennai – an industrial town covered in a thick layer of coal dust (as was our ship on the last day in port). So our arrival was eagerly anticipated – particularly by shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers!

On the first day we participated in a “Dalit Village Work Project” where we went to a Dalit school (a school for Untouchables – the lowest of the Indian castes) to paint and walls and gates. As we stepped off the bus in the village (a “village” within the city – Dalit people are essentially forced to live only among themselves) a marching band was playing for us, a banner was stretched across the street welcoming us, and everyone from the village was on the streets smiling, waving and reaching out to shake our hands and greet us. It was so overwhelming I almost burst into tears. I believe this was the first service project of this kind in this area and the people seemed so genuinely happy to have us there. I have never felt so welcomed. The work we did was almost nothing – but I got the sense that just being there to serve them was what mattered to them.

During the official welcome ceremony at the school, Simon, as trip leader, was pulled to the front of the auditorium and given an ornate and sparkling beaded necklace-type of thing that hung all the way down to his waist and was about three inches wide. Then they draped his shoulders with a purple and gold shawl. He looked like the village chief. It was quite funny. He gave a lovely speech that had everyone clapping and cheering. Unfortunately, this is the best photo I have of Simon in his garb...

Then we were all put to work. None of us volunteers seemed to be able to do things right as every few minutes someone new would come up and show us how to paint or sand “properly,” each time showing us a different way than the last person had demonstrated. Some volunteers were even told to work faster and to stop talking to the students and teachers who were watching us curiously the whole time.

At one point, some of the teachers noticed that I had a wedding ring on and asked me if I was married. I said, yes, I am – Simon is my husband. When they heard this all four of them began literally howling with laughter and giggling things to each other in Tamil. I asked them what was so funny but they only laughed harder. It was pretty funny although I wish I knew what they were laughing about…

(Incidentally, the story about our visit to the Dalit village – with Simon’s little speech misquoted – made it to the second page of the Hindu Times.)

That night we left by train for Kerala, in the southern part of India to spend two nights on a houseboat in the backwaters of Allepey, a place known as the “Venice of India.” After a fifteen hour train ride (which was a lot of fun despite the lack of sleep) we arrived at Allepey and were taken by car to our houseboat, pictured here, and met our crew of three: a cook, a driver and an assistant (in India, it seems, you can never have too many people operating a vehicle). We spent two days and two nights enjoying the sights from the boat and hopping off from time to time to see a village or two. In one village we were invited to a family’s home where they taught us a few phrases in the local language (there are over 100 different languages in India – I had no idea) and offered us fresh coconuts (of course). As we talked with them, more and more people came to see who we were and take photos with us. By the time we were ready to go, about twenty people had come by to meet us…

On the last day (back in Chennai) Simon stayed on board to catch up on grading while I went around town with a small group to do a bit of shopping and sightseeing around the city. We had the most wonderful rickshaw driver named Babu – pictured here – who took us around the whole day and protected us from other trickster rickshaw drivers. (For those of you who have never seen a rickshaw – here’s a picture.) In India, rickshaw drivers are notorious for not taking tourists to their requested destination and instead tricking them into going into expensive stores. The drivers receive a cut even if we simply walk in and walk out of the store so there’s quite a big incentive to play this game. It can be very frustrating sometimes – we heard fellow travelers say they sat in their rickshaw for up to a half an hour refusing to visit the store their driver was insisting they must go into. So we were very grateful for Babu who seemed to be a genuine kind-hearted man. When he found out that I was 31 with no children, he told me he would take me to a temple where there was a God to whom I could pray for children. He did take me to the temple at the end of the day and even bought me a prayer candle and walked me through the procedure. I prayed for a girl. (Not that we’re trying to have children right now – just to keep that straight!) At the end of the day (after he drove us around for nine hours) we rewarded Babu with a little over $35 which for India is about five times what we should have paid him. He was so happy he kissed the money and looked up at the sky and kept wishing us a good and peaceful life. That moment was, for me, the highlight of the trip. What I find so hard about traveling like this is that it’s so hard to really connect with people given the language barriers and the fact that time is so short. It’s nice to know that I will be remembered by someone at least for a little while after we leave, not just because that person received a bit of money but because we really enjoyed each other’s company (I hope).

That’s all for now… till next time!