Taking India on a Tuktuk

Our TUK TUK! Lala is the wonderful little man sitting down!

Krista and Tori were FABULOUS friends to see the Taj with!

Handing out pencils at Gandhi's memorial..before the police chased the boys away.

I can’t decide whether to keep my eyes open or closed as I am squeezed between two other girls in an auto-rickshaw, the Indian “TukTuk,” and we are slashing through the chaotic traffic of trucks, other rickshaws, cars, cows, and cyclists. We are on an intense mission to get to the Taj Mahal before the ticket office closes so we can see it at sunset. Danger is no object and traffic rules don’t exist when we are on this kind desperate race against the sun. Alas, the speeding and sprinting through the streets of Agra failed and the ticket office was closed. The thrill of the chase was worth it though, and not to worry I got to see the incredible marble glowing beneath the sun from across the river at sunset and right up close the following morning at sunrise.

Every minute in India seemed almost as much of a rush as that rickshaw ride. Hitting one city per day, we saw as much of this incredible subcontinent as we could. Beginning with the huge city of Mumbai (formerly called Bombay and actually still called Bombay by all the Indians) I fell in love with India. Bombay is fantastically exotic because it combines the dirty beggars and trash filled streets and waterways with the most beautiful trees that look like they were imported from the rainforest. Surrounded by water, this city brings the term “concrete jungle” to life. I half expected to see a tiger chilling next to the little kid asleep on the sidewalk.

The classes I had taken, the books I had read, and the pre-port lectures I heard about the complexity of India and the love I would find there were dead on, yet hardly prepared me for the extremities I found there. In keeping up with my anthropological observations, I have to note India really surprised me. I had this preconceived notion that the genuine hospitality and devotion of the Indian people was going to blow me away and when I didn’t immediately experience this I was disappointed. All I encountered for the first few days was in-your-face tagic begging and the strongly held belief that since I was white I had all kinds of money to throw around. Indians charge 5 times the amount to tourists as they do to locals and it can be really frustrating to be treated as such a foreigner when you are trying to understand a complex country. But, as I got deeper into my travels, I was able to see that shinning charisma that I knew must be there.

In Bombay a fellow-SAS student and native Indian invited our group of 7 into his home. Not evening knowing me before that moment, I was offered a place to shower, eat and a driver to take me where I pleased. His mother (along with their 4 “helpers”) prepared an incredible Indian meal with tastings from all parts of India. It was the kind of meal that no matter how full you are; you are drawn to keep eating serving after serving, desert after desert. The Columbian and Mexican boys I was traveling with decided that they MUST learn how to cook this way and open an Indian restaurant in their counties so that they can become millionaires. It really takes a home-cooked meal to appreciate the power of good food.

Shantaram is a huge book that I read in my time leading up to India and it was the source for my desire to go to Bombay to see the slums, Leopold restaurant, and find my own equivalent of the charming character, Prabaker. I was disappointed when the closest I got to being inside the slums was a smelly fish market and I didn’t find my Prakbar in Bombay. However, I did see the terrorist-attacked Leopold’s and it was so surreal being in the real place that I'd read so much about. Then, in Agra, I finally met my Prabaker – his name is Lala.

He picked us up from our hotel and we sent him on a mission to grab a bottle of wine and watch the sun set over the Taj. What was originally going to be a one-way drop off turned into an afternoon and evening of trusting Lala and his young friend to take us any and everywhere. On our adventures through the town Lala insisted that we didn’t need to pay him, that money was not as important as showing us a good time. And that he certainly did with a smile on his face and a wiggle of his head. I have to interject here to say that the Indian “head wiggle” or ("waggle" depending on how you look at it) is one of the most interesting and simultaneously hilarious cultural motions I have ever seen. It is this movement of the head that look as if it has actually become disjointed from the neck. It is their way of saying yes, or agreeing with you, but you always wonder how sure they are since it kind of looks like they are shaking their head ‘no.’ Quite funny.

We ended our evening with him in a souvenir store where we found ourselves immersed in converstaion with the shopkeeper (Amin) as we bargained away our money. Amin was quite the businessman and convinced us to post our praises on Trip Advisor.com in exchange for good deals, whiskey shots, and a free headband.

Amin described Lala as “long in everything but his height.” This holds so much accuracy as Lala was about 4 foot 8 but so genuine and enthusiastic. Lala’s faithful 12year-old companion (of whom we never learned the name of) had a crush on me and whispered in my ear, “I have a gift for you and only you but it is a secret so don’t tell the other girls.” The gift turned out to be a bracelet that I will always cherish. I also learned that this boy had never been to school because it was too expensive. Despite this, he spoke excellent English and a little Spanish that he had picked up from riding around the tuktuk with Lala. I couldn’t have been happier to meet those two incredible Indians.

I myself was also a source of entertainment for Indians many times when they begged to take pictures with curious American girls, and once when my sari was falling off me (because I had no idea how to wear it) and all these Indian women laughed and laughed at my cluelessness…while they helped me fix it of course.

Some other amazing highlights from India included riding an elephant in Jaipur, going to an orphanage in Chennai, getting henna on my hands, holding an Indian baby girl who wore little bangles on her wrists, driving a rickshaw on the crazy streets, and seeing Gandhi’s memorial in Delhi. My only regret from India was that I didn’t get to go to the religious city of Varanasi, which sits on the Ganges River. I think that maybe I was not meant to go there because when I come back to India, I will be able to experience that holy site not as a tourist, but as a lover of India. In my future travels after Semester at Sea, it will be my ultimate goal to spend enough time in a place that I really get to feel how the people there live. For now though, I wouldn’t have had my first taste of India any other way.

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant…An elephant’s faithful – one hundred percent!
-Dr. Seuss Horton Hatches the Egg

Quote explanation: In most of the world I have been concerned about pick pocketers and misguidance. India is different. After I got past the barrier of “rich white tourist” I learned that Indians don’t want to overcharge you or lie to you about the quality of something – it goes against their basic beliefs. That night in the store, as Amin promised us a good deal and Lala refused money for driving us I realized that Indians and the beautiful elephants of their country are similar in their faithful honesty.

Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA – UBUNTU “I am because we are”

Strawberry picking with Erin!

The township!

Erin and I had a BLAST on our wine tour in Stellenbosh!

Girls dancing for us in front of Mama Ellen's home

The backdrop of Cape Town is breathtaking. Table Mountain and Lion’s Head tower over this rocky coastal city and as clouds pour over the mountain and fall across it like a tablecloth you feel as if you are in a floating metropolis. Hiking Table Mountain was challenging but fun. The trail (the “easy” trail) literally goes straight up the face, and climbing it is equivalent to walking up the Stairmaster for an hour and a half. At the bottom of the trail, a blond Rastafarian man greeted my two male, hung-over hiking partners and me. “Yellow man,” he called himself and although we were eager to get on the trail, he wanted to chat us up and take photos with us. The benefit being that he gave me some much-needed water along with the criticism that I was a “lazy woman” for not brining my own. We hauled up the mountain to see stunning views from the summit - I felt as if I was looking onto Neverland.

One of my highlights was spending the night in the Gugulethu township. Mama Nox is the local businesswoman who arranges to have tourists stay in the homes of other neighborhood “mamas.” Her house was the central meeting point and from there we were broken into pairs and sent away with our mama. I was paired with a girl named Andrea but neither one of us could properly say our mama’s Cosi name, which had a “click” in it. So we fell back on her English name, “Mama Ellen.” She tried to teach us some Cosi (one of many local languages) but she gave up rather quickly on us stubborn Americans.

The township looked similar to New Orleans 9th Ward, not the run down rows of shacks I expected (which I did see later, I just wasn’t sleeping in them). Mama Ellen’s home was gated, equipped with a TV, toilet, and running water, and had a little room with a bright pink bedspread for Andrea and I to sleep in. Each unsure of what to do now that the three of us were alone in the house, we offered to help her cook. Stavipop is made of mili-mili, which is a corn-based starch that is combined with water to make a thick mush. She taught us exactly how to make it – including a huge dollop of butter, vegetables, and chicken to finish off a simple, but delicious meal. Where is your husband we asked, concerned about eating without him. “Oh at the bar, I don’t know when he will be home. It’s ok though because he’s very quiet anyways, not talkative like me.” So we ate without the absent husband.

Mama Ellen’s passion for the children and the community is my favorite thing about her. Each day after school is out she teaches the local kids to dance. Mama Ellen even rallied the neighborhood kids to give us a private show of the girls dancing! The problem she told us, is that the after-school program is located in a building that isn’t always available and closes early. The kids all cry when they get kicked out at 7pm each evening. She has this incredible goal of purchasing a spot of land and building a community center with a park and soccer field for the kids to have somewhere to go after school. She is concerned that the kids will get into drugs and violence if they don’t have some way to occupy their time. This leads into the Amy Biehl Foundation (which I will go into detail later) which works to do just that – establish programs to get townships kids involved in the arts and channeling their energy positively. It was so amazing to see the way Mama Ellen’s dream was being carried out by the initiatives of the Amy Biehl foundation.

Andrea, Mama, and I sat in the living room (which doubled as a dining room) watching TV and Andrea and I began to wonder if we were going to spend our entire homestay just watching TV. Then Toto, the husband, came home. Drunk. Tanked actually. He stumbled in the door and looked as us like we were two white aliens sitting in his living room. Then he warmed up and contrary to what Mama had said about him being “quiet,” he chatted us up all night. He was very welcoming, if not incredibly repetitive and made it clear that he was BOSS of the house. Mama laughed it off but I found it to be very telling about the current climate of South Africa. Here was this woman, who can only find work 2 days a week but volunteers to teach the children every afternoon. And there was her husband, who out of work, sleeps in till 11 every day and goes drinking every night. Sad, but common story of women and men in South Africa.

Our 6am breakfast was the same milli-milli from the night before, but less thick and more of a watery porridge. Then, to top it off, Mama put MAYO on it. YUCK. We tried so hard to eat it, but it’s the kind of substance that you can eat 100 spoonfuls of and still not make a dent. So when she went into the bedroom to change, we dashed into the bathroom to flush the mayo-porridge down the toilet. Mission success.

I got to go back to the townships a few days later when I did a SAS service visit with the Amy Biehl Foundation. Amy was a young US woman who went to South Africa in the 80s to register blacks to vote. In an abrupt tragedy, she was confused as the white enemy by a group of black rioters in a township. In the middle of the day four men attacked, stoned, and stabbed her in the same township I slept in. Her mother is just as much of a hero, because she accepted Amy’s death as an opportunity to bring peace and education to the townships to prevent future violent acts from occurring. The most amazing part, though is that Linda Biehl, Amy’s mother, forgave all four of the murders during the Truth and Reconciliation hearing, fought for their release from jail, and eventually hired two of them to work at the foundation. If there was ever a lesson of forgiveness, it’s in Linda’s story. Such amazing compassion!

After hearing about Amy and Linda’s story, we toured through almost all the townships - except for Kalelitcha – the biggest and most dangerous one that I couldn’t get anyone to take me to! I did see the shacks and the squatter homes and I learned that often, even if the government pays to build houses for these people, they will often sell the houses and move back to their shacks where they don’t pay rent and can steal electricity from the main electric lines. We had traditional meat at a township restaurant for lunch, then continued to the after school programs that the foundation maintained. We played with kids, saw them perform dances, sing, and there was even a poetry reading!

Back over in downtown Cape Town, there’s the famous Long Street – home to shops, restaurants, and bars. I ventured down it at night to go out and had one great evening with a guy I met from America who had done SAS a few years ago. And I wandered along it during the day, although I must say its more fun at night! I also got to see the World Cup Stadium, go on a pirate cruise (where we saw a gorgeous sunset, whales, and a fabulous view of Cape Town), run along the coastline, pick strawberries, see cheetahs, and do a winery tour of Stellenbosch. I was bummed that my shark dive was cancelled due to foul weather, but I heard the water was freezing anyways. Next time I’m in South Africa I can do the animal stuff – Safari and shark dive – but for this trip the people of the townships, the wonderful wine, and the gorgeous city of Cape Town were absolutely amazing. I am very sad to leave this continent – Africa – home of my heart. But of course, I will be back! Except not Terminator Schwarzenegger style, Ann Jones (a woman who drove across Africa) style!

“Dream, dream, dream the craziest dreams.” –Desmond Tutu


"When you come to Africa, you catch the African disease. It's not malaria or AIDS; it's a disease of the heart. And what it means is that you have a heart for Africa. Whether you ever come back, you will yearn for Africa, you will cry for Africa, you will pray for Africa.
-Bishop Hathaway