Delhi-cious Delhi-rium

After spending just a day in the city of Delhi, I proclaimed to my journal, "I have fallen madly, hopelessly, deliriously in love with India." Oh India! Land of Gandhi and Arundhati Roy, where vegetarians are catered to (even at McDonalds), cows are sacred, and yoga isn't just for hippies. I had found my spiritual home... Now that what the IHP handbook terms the "initial euphoria stage" of culture shock has worn off, I can see that my love, though geunine, was also a part lust, part utter delight to be anywhere but Tanzania.

Upon arriving in Delhi we had two free days to explore the city. After two beautiful morning runs in the park and several delicious meals of lentils and vegetables, it was decided: I would strike up residence in Lodhi Gardens park, learn Hindi, and live out my days dining on chana masala and naan, sipping sweet chai, and practicing yoga.

My whole being heaved a sigh of relief to realize that I could walk down the broad sidewalks and feel safe and happy. No one shouted "mzungo" or shoved souveneirs in my face. Walking by men, I stopped instinctively lowering my gaze and bracing myself for comments and stares like I had in Tanzania. It even SMELLS better. The stench of deisel and BO of Arusha was replaced by alternating whiffs of spicy curries and sweet floral jasmine.

The food here is incredible. I still can't get over the fact that I get to eat Indian food everyday, three times a day. It's like winning the argument over what kind of takeout to get, at EVERY meal- INDIAN! Our host mother delights in feeding us too much of her delicious homemade bengali cuisine- yellow dahl, a myriad of vegetable curries, fish, and always plenty of rice. She is a wonderful grandmother of a woman. The other day I washed my underwear and hung it up to dry overnight on my clothesline in the bathroom adjoining our bedroom. That morning at breakfast she recounted to us her surprise amd sheer delight at finding my laundry there that morning. She clasped her ringed, wrinkled fingers together under her chin and exclaimed with glee, "So beautiful! So small!", and laughed and laughed. She calls Maria and I "you people", and shouts (lovingly) when she talks because she is a little hard of hearing: "What time you people take de breakfas?!!" "You people take de chai?!!" "Acha. Acha. OK. OK."

I love the autorickshaw rides we take to and from class everyday. The streets are teeming with the little, 3-wheeled green and yellow tuk tuks: an army of rogue bumpercars broken free from their bumpercar chains to swarm the city of Delhi. To ride in one is to take part in a live-action game of MarioKart, complete with just as much swerving and fear of losing your life as the videogame. The lines in the road are taken as completely arbritrary designations of lanes: if you can squeeze your rickshaw into that tiny gap between the Hyundai and the bicycle and the pothole and the pedestrian, the spot is yours to drive in. Invariably, there'll be gold-framed pictures of technicolor hindi gods behind the bicycle-handlebar steering wheel, and heart shaped stickers of bollywood stars pasted to the review mirror. Stopped at lights, passing drivers and passengers will peer through the open sides of our auto and stare. The degree to which I enjoy exchanging flirty smiles with passing motocycle cuties is probably a good indication of the current dearth of menfolk in my life.

On Sunday (a precious day off) a group of fourteen of us travelled the four hours to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. For me, the Taj, with its glowing white bulbs and towering minarets, has always been the ultimate emblem of world travel. So to actually be there, to be a part of that picture I hold in my mind's eye, was surreal. It felt like meeting a celebrity. The kind of celebrity that is just as nice and beautiful in real life as you'd expect from her movies, but just another human being nonetheless.

And now, I feel the need to give a caveat to the extensive praises I've sung of India. I recoginize that the only part of India I've seen is Delhi, and the relatively wealthier parts, at that. In preparation for hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the city has "cleaned up" the streets, pushing most of the poor to the margins of the city. We have seen some poverty. It is a terrible feeling to have filthy, skinny children, their hair streaked false-blonde from malnutrition, clutch at your hands through the sides of your rickshaw, begging for money and chocolate. But the amount of poverty we've seen is, unfortunately, nowhere near representative of its prevalence in this country. We've seen the shiny, happy face of India. Yet I'm aware that in horrible contrast to this wealth (and perhaps precisely because of it) millions of Indians are living in abject poverty, malnourished, dispossed from their land, and victims of all kinds of violence. Not pleasant thoughts, but a reality.

Boma Sweet Boma

After Safari we spent five days in the Maasai village of Terrat. My first night in the boma was quite an intense immersion experience...

We walked the 6k from the campsite to the boma at sunset under a cotton candy sky- pink and blue and fluffy with clouds. The dusty path we walked was dotted with the footprints of goats and the treads of the recycled-tire shoes worn by Maasai men. We could tell we were getting closer as progressively larger groups of children ran out to greet us. By the time we entered the community through the opening in the thorny fence, our group was enveloped in a cloud of children, pulling at our hands.

A young teenage girl grabbed my right arm firmly and I had to convince her (through sign language) that if she would let me hold her hand instead of the vice grip she had on me, I wouldn't run away. Then my soon-to-be host mama, Siyaya, grabbed my left hand. In her other hand she held my friend Sadye. I was literally pulled in two directions in the scramble for host mamas and children to select their new family members from our group. Siyaya convinced the vice-grip girl to let me go with her, and we were promptly whisked away to our new home. It felt good to be among the first snatched up- like getting picked first by team captains in a playground game of kickball.

Inside it was warm and dark and smokey. There was no vent in in the thatch ceiling to let out the smoke from the cooking fire in center of the circular room. There was much giggling and little understanding as we attempted introductions. We met Siyaya's 15-year-old daughter-in-law, Elena, and three children (I'm still not really sure if they were hers or her daughter-in-law's).

We sat around the fire, content to be quiet and smiling in eachother's company. Siyaya, Elena, and friends couldn't stop giggling at Sadye and me. It felt like being in a Japanese nail salon- not understanding the conversation but knowing that we were being laughed at, in a good natured way. The children grabbed at my headlight and never tired of pressing the indiglo button on my watch. They pulled at my henna'd forearms, calling each other over to see the strange designs.

We sipped sickly-sweet tea from big enamel mugs. Dinner was a huge pile of greasy rice. I may have accidentally eaten a piece of goat I found in my rice pile. And it may have accidentally been delicious.

After dinner we went to the center of the community of mud houses for dancing and singing. The full moon made it light enough to see faces. I was again surrounded by a crowd of children, dry fingers and cracked black nails grabbing at my hands, pinching my henna, touching my hair, pressing over and over the button that illuminated my watch. In my left arm I held my baby host sister, covered in my kanga. She buried her precious, snotty face in my shoulder when her friends called out to her from the ground. She was plucked from me as I was pushed toward the center and instructed to sing ("Why don't you sing?!). The sound of high-pitched childrens's voices--full of smiles-- rose into the night, past the thorns of the Acacias right up to the milky stars and full moon. I realized periodically that I had a permanent smile.

The singing celebration ended with a song for which I was instructed to hold up my open palms at my shoulders and sway with the music. I realized the song must have been of the praise-you-baby-jesus variety when we then proceeded to recite what sounded like (from what I could gather from cadence and tone) a Maa Our Father or Hail Mary, closed with the sign of the cross.

There were three of us in the bed that night- Sadye, Ngaise, a young woman translator from the village, and I. As we crawled onto our bed made of cowhide stretched over a frame of sticks, we were watched by a group of 5 or so women. Just watching and giggling. Like "the mzungos go to bed" was a fantastic new TV show.

Sleeping on a cement floor would have been more comfortable, because at least a floor would have been flat. All night long I switched from my back, to my side, to my other side, all the while bumping elbows and ankles and knees. I woke up with a smoker's cough and one nostril plugged with thick brown snot to the sound of roosters cockadoodling away under our bed. It was 5 am and I really had to pee. But I was scared I would be followed by a gaggle of children if I ventured out to relieve myself. So I shut my eys, adjusted my bones on the cement cowhide, and tried to forget my bursting bladder.

I drifted in and out until 7am, when I finally threw on my sneakers, ran to the nearest thorny bush, and peed a veritable Lake Victoria in the red dust. I was surprised to look up and see no one around but a herd of goats.

We sipped another mug of sweet tea before morning chores. Sadye and I washed the dishes in a plastic tub of dirty, soapy water, poured from an old yellow plastic vegetable oil container. We were watched intently as we washed. I was thrilled to be told (through Ngaise) that I was a good dish-washer. Skillz. Then we swept the dirt floor with hand brooms made of bundles of twigs. It was then my job to sweep around the outside of the house. I was bewildered as to which dirt I was supposed to be sweeping where, exactly. So I brushed around and decided I was done. Ngaise was content with whatever I had done, which, combined with the group of neighboorhood women and children watching me, made me feel like my task had more value as entertainment than as a vital daily chore.

Elena made maize flour porridge for breakfast. I would have much prefered this gruel to the margarine and chapstick-flavored-jelly on slightly stale white bread sandwiches we were given. (In the interest of health and hygeine, we were provided with all the food we ate by the cook from our Safari team.) If they were concered about hygeine, they efforts were futile. I had eaten my rice the night before with my hand, which was only as clean as the dribble of unboiled water from the yellow jug could get it (which is to say, not very). That, and constantly having snotty, dusty children's fingers all overy my hands and face and hair.

When we left on the final day, Elena gave to me her two plastic bangles. These tokens of her generosity were representative of the overwhelming feeling of openness and welcoming that characterized our stay there.


I can't believe we're already leaving for India! I am looking forward to the vegetarian food there. I could (and probably will) eat soupy lentils three meals a day. It will be a much needed change from the white bread and fried things that compose the staples of my diet here in Tanzania. Friends in the group have been talking about how much they want to go to ashrams India. I just smile and think to myself about scrubbing ovens and toilets and Dr. Bronners soap scum for the evil stepmother at Sivananda Yoga Ranch, and feel very inclined to run as fast as i can in the opposite direction at the first sight of an ashram. Though I'm sure they'll be much different in India. Not so many crazies, (maybe?).

Safaris, Cognitive Dissonance, and Halloween

I'm happy to be back in Zanzibar, relaxing here for a leisurely week of vacation. I have quite a backlog of stories to share from our travels through northern Tanzania...

I think you could say I had a not-quite-typical safari experience. Not in terms of what happened (we weren't caught in any wildebeest stampedes or chased by lions), but in terms of my reaction to the whole experience. Our first safari excursion was in Lake Manyara National Park. I was excited as we climbed into the sand-colored land cruisers, sticking my head out of the open roof, eager as everyone else was, to see me some wildlife! As our guide drove us through the park, we stopped to gawk at baboons and warthogs, taking pictures and adding names to the lists of animals we'd spotted.

And then I got to thinking. The whole thing felt like a videogame. There was a sense of competition: How many of the "big five" will we see? OUR truck saw a rhino! My thinking turned to a sense of confusion. And then utter despair. By the time we stopped the trucks for class I was beside myself. I bawled in the bathroom. I felt overwhelmed. Cognitive dissonance. I felt like an invader. There I was, in Tanzania, driving through the savannah in a gas-guzzling, erosion-exacerbating, rut-creating land cruiser. I was just as bad as those stupid french tourists we had seen- with their head to toe safari getups and super-zoom lenses. They would go back to their fancy hotels and take long showers (despite the terrible drought), return to France, and share their safari stories like they were valuable trading cards at snooty dinner parties. I couldn't bear the thought of being one of them, of exploiting nature for my entertainment.

After the breakdown, I sought out my ecology professor for guidance. She helped me to realize how powerful and valuable the experience that I had was. How I could harness this feeling of distress; channel my anger into change for good. I had been dreading going on any more safari outings after that, but I realized that being miserable as some attempt at protest helped nothing. So I decided to be present, to recognize the beauty of the nature around me, and learn as much as I could.

This approach served me well in the following two days on safari in Ngorongoro Crater, where we celebrated halloween! I threw some underwear over my leggings, cut eye-holes in my head band for a mask, and donned my kanga as a cape, and-presto change-o!- I was a superhero.