It's time for Africa!

It stayed sunny all day, and it stayed just as windy, too.  What a glorious day to be on land!

My time in South Africa is largely taken up with Semester at Sea trips.  I had signed up for three of them, and then was asked to lead a trip where there were no faculty or staff members, so now am committed to running three trips and participating in a fourth.  It will be an intense week, but so much fun.

Today's trip was the City Orientation tour, which turned out to be largely history, with a bit of politics and geography thrown in.  Our tour guide, Buz, has an infectious enthusiasm for his native country.  And he is, of course, full of interesting information.

First off, he said, Table Mountain is absolutely the reason for Cape Town's location.  In every other way, Cape Town is a lousy port, the most dangerous in the Southern Hemisphere.  Unpredictable weather, terrible storms, crazy winds, dangerous ocean currents.  But Table Mountain acts as a giant cistern, and an early shipwrecked sailor saw streams flowing from it and realized that good water and good land allowed for restocking ships' provisions on the way to India and the Far East.  So Cape Town it was, the only green spot in southern Africa.

Our first stop was the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest building in Cape Town.  Originally built by the Dutch trading company, it later became the headquarters for the English governor.  Buz told us the stone for it was quarried on Robben Island, which was a prison back in the 1600s as well as more recently.  The yellow brick came from the Netherlands as ballast in the ships and was repurposed.  You can see it all over town in historic buildings.

Afternoon sundial at the castle.

Highlights of our castle tour included the small of freshly cut grass (ah, small pleasures of being on land!) and seeing the parade ground in front of the city hall building, where Nelson Mandela addressed the public after his release from prison in 1990.

The smell of the land, specifically, grass!

It's an unimposing space, but it was the only space where the thousands of people could be accommodated.  Tensions were running high, he said.  White South Africans were terrified of losing power and terrified of the Other.  For years they had been told that blacks and coloreds were going to ravish their daughters, run wild, and so on.  Blacks came with arsenals in the boots of their cars.  And Mandela said, "Put away the guns."  His message was one of peace.

And it was one of strategy.  As Buz told us, the whites had been preparing for the eventuality of armed insurrection, and they would have overwhelmed the opposition forces, with great loss of life on both sides.  He told us of a colleague who said, "We were gobsmacked" by Mandela's announcement.  But peace was the possibility that had not been tried.

Mosaic bench in the Company's Garden, depicting community watch

Parade ground outside the Castle, with City Hall in the distance.

It's a rocky peace.  There are still huge disparities of income, there's 40% unemployment, a miner now makes about $10/day after a recent 50% raise.  Cape Town has the highest crime rate in Africa.  But they are doing some things right, too.  South Africa has a flag that was designed as a result of a public competition, truly representing the people.  Children are taught in their native language, and college students can take their exams in the language of their choice.  (Imagine that in the US!  Perhaps that's operationalized by having only objective tests.  Otherwise, what a grading nightmare.)  The staid colonial building that houses the art museum has vibrant native art front and center.  Land seized from the colored population is being developed to benefit all, and some compensation is being offered.

The second stop on our tour was the Company's Gardens.  Originally the vegetable gardens for restocking ships, it has been a botanical garden for over 100 years.  We stopped there for "a bit of something," tea (or other beverage) and scones.  Scones on steroids!  The scones themselves tasted more like shortbread, cut open and served with a large dollop of jam and a generous portion of whipped cream.  Ohmigawd good.

Not just for breakfast.

We spent about an hour in the natural history museum.  (No photos allowed.)  Possibly the most remarkable thing about this museum is that it does not have a gift shop.  It has a locked cabinet of things you might buy, outside the cafe.  A couple of pieces of jewelry, a few books, some souvenir keychains.  Probably a dozen items, total.  A four hour tour with no opportunity to fill the coffers of the host country, no opportunity for kickback to the tour guide.  We were gobsmacked.

In addition to the usual dinosaur skeletons and jaws from whales, there was an exhibit of rock art--paintings and carvings from caves and outdoors--mostly depicting shamanic healing and trance dancing.   That was amazing.

Intense colors of the Malay Quarter

There was also an installation on rats, throughout the museum.  It is supposed to challenge the way we organize and present information.  A brochure on the exhibition says rats are closely connected to humans, but they are rarely shown in natural history museums.  So here they are incorporated into the history of mankind:  their skulls compared to the skulls of other animals, their contributions, positive and negative, on museum cases and display cards.  In one diorama, a pair of mice is being expelled from paradise (an allusion I don't get even with the explanation).  There is an exhibit of newspaper headlines about rats, and a display of rat movie titles.  It is all beautifully done, but I found the brochure vital to interpret what I saw.  Sneaky little critters!

Leaving the rats behind, we made our way back to the ship.  I had planned to go out to dinner on shore with a friend, but reports of salmon aboard ship kept us home.  In deference to the parents who are visiting, we get fancy food.

With the parent trip, the open ship event, and being in a beautiful city where English is spoken, we have a lot of visitors.  A surprisingly large number of students have family living in Cape Town.  There are over 100 visitors on the manifest, and more who will not come aboard.  As I walked back from the dining room, I was acutely aware of being a solo traveler.

Arch parts (from) the seas

We all knew this day was coming, but we still weren’t prepared.  Goodbyes are like that.  This last week has been full of requests for Arch’s time in classes, for photos with Arch, for movies featuring Arch, to show Arch movies he is in, to get Arch’s autograph.  His assistant Nancy (my boss Jim’s wife) serves as Arch’s gatekeeper, trying to preserve some private time and some rest time (he is 82, after all), balanced against his desire to say yes to as many people as possible.  It’s been a tough week.

I got my Arch time in early in the voyage, and I’ve enjoyed watching him from a little distance.  He loves the students and they love him, and there’s a little buzz that accompanies him everywhere.  When Arch dances, people circle him to film him dancing.  When he moves through a crowd, the seas part.  When we took our group picture, students who had staked out front and center willingly gave up their spaces to Arch.

His last day on the ship happened to be Palm Sunday, and he celebrated Communion with us.  Christine, the Resident Director in charge of spirituality, arranged to get crosses, lovingly made for us by several churches in Mauritius.  The kitchen offered communion wafers, but Arch prefers bread.  Mass for 400 is quite a production, even abbreviated.  Arch gave a small sermon (message:  God loves you, just because you’re you) and we all stumbled over the South African Anglican prayers, which are not quite like the ones back home. 

The Palm Sunday service was followed immediately by preport, where we officially said goodbye to Arch with a very touching video put together by the communications team.  (Again, our internet connection prevents my uploading it.)  His last hurrah was singing along with Doc Micah to “Don’t worry, be healthy.”

The one thing missing for me was a picture of Arch with Nancy.  For me, she was so much a part of his shipboard life.  She and Jim ate with him frequently, they had communion with him every Sunday in his cabin.  As a self-proclaimed shy person, Arch counted on Nancy to make things a little easier.

I asked her if she –after all the pictures she helped other people get—had gotten a picture with him.  No, she said, but that was okay.  She had lots of pictures of him with other people.  No, no, no, she said, it was okay.

For her, maybe.  It was not okay for me.  I asked her, would she be angry if I asked Arch for a picture of them?

Of course he said yes.  

I’ve taken thousands of pictures on this voyage.  This one will be one of my favorites.  I hope it will also be one of hers.

Crew members with Arch and Leah's luggage--and balloon menagerie

Windy morning in Cape Town

We have been sailing very close to the coast of South Africa for a couple of days, hoping to find calmer waters. Not calm, to be sure, but perhaps calmer. At night, you can see lights. During the day, it's hard to distinguish where the clouds end and where the water begins. If you know there's land, you can sort of see it. Maybe.

This morning, we could see land clearly as we came into Cape Town harbor. At full light, I went up to the observation deck on 7, only to find it was closed due to high winds. (This is common. Deck 7 is often closed. Deck 8 is almost never open once we get into open waters.) I went into the faculty/staff lounge and found an intrepid (and defiant) group of people braving the deck.

Since I am pretty heavily scheduled with SAS trips in this port, going out on deck may be the most adventurous thing I do in Cape Town. You can see from my hair how windy it is. After I came back in, I realized my hair ribbon (you can barely see it) had blown completely off.

The view was worth it. The aptly named Table Mountain looms large. The city hugs the shore, with the mountains rising close behind. There's a cable car up the mountain (on days less windy than this).

Warnings for Cape Town: don't go anywhere alone, or even in a small group. Beware of ATMs which might blow up, or where you may be mugged. Don't ride the trains unless you are in a car with an armed guard. Never let your credit card out of your sight, even at a good restaurant. Compared to Cape Town, everywhere we've been is considered safe.

Tom has been getting a lot of flak for emphasizing crime and safety in the preports. This time, he just sent everyone the Country Specific Information and said, "Read it and take heed. This time it's up to you." I think the students were disappointed. There's a certain amount of Schadenfreud--we all want to know the adventures we avoided.

Several students are departing in Cape Town, having gathered enough disciplinary points that they are no longer welcome. Others are going to be enjoying South Africa from the ship, having accumulated double or triple dock time for landing in the drunk tank after Mauritius. (If you land in the drunk tank, it's an automatic 24 hours of dock time in the next port. I think about 40 students ignored Tom's warning of triple dock time and came in wasted. At 6 PM. These kids really are flirting with a life of alcoholism.)

Me? I had wine at Communion last night. I'm on a search for Easter Candy.

It ain't over till it's over

...and then it was over.

The Sea Olympics gave me an opportunity to find some sports quotes, and I chose Yogi Berra.  The title above is one of his most famous.

My work study student Heidi thought it was a typo and drew this little sketch.  We're making a book of quotes from the Deans' Memo for the Shipboard Auction in April.  She's illustrating it.  Yogi Bear won't make the cut, but he's cuter than the average bear, so here he is.

I could have also used the inimitiable Chickpea's "I won first.  And you won second."  There were some pretty amazing performances yesterday. 

The faculty came in fourth, a middling showing.  There was a little muttering over breakfast this morning along the lines of, "If they worked as hard on their schoolwork as they did on their karaoke..."  Their routines for that competition were impressive in both their creativity and technique. 

The last two competitions were the synchronized swimming and the karaoke/lip synch.  Because the seas were rough and all the water was sloshing out of the pool, the synchronized swim was moved to dry land, which presents some interesting challenges and hilarious results.

I was a judge for that competition, so no pictures.  Some of the kids did more dancing than (fake) swimming, but most were down there on the floor, kicking, diving, and doing water ballet. 

Luna Sea had planned on a Lion King number featuring a toddler and an older child as the two brothers, but scrapped it at the last minute when our team captain heard another sea practicing to the same music.  (Our team captain, the assistant dean of students, is VERY competitive.) 

Instead, we got four guys, with children's bathing suits on their heads, rocking a bizarre combination of sexy and baby to "Living the Vida Loca."  Turns out the crowd goes wild when the assistant dean of students rips off his shirt and demonstrates his zumba booty dancing skills. This picture was lifted from Rachel's blog, Sea What I See.


Sea Olympics is designed to break up the monotony of the long passage from India to South Africa, give the students something to think about besides drinking, and build team spirit.  The prize was the choice of getting off first or last in Barcelona (they choose).  The winners were the Caribbean Sea, who were convincingly pirates and had some amazing choreography for their cheer, karaoke, and synchronized swim.  One of my shipboard children said, "I don't want to win.  I want to get off somewhere in the middle!"  Lucky for her, they also get an ice cream social in the faculty lounge.

I learned some things, too:

1. Sports, even fake sports, are not very interesting unless you are watching them.
2. I am culturally illiterate.  At least half the music chosen meant nothing to me.
The noise of 600 cheering students is exhausting.

I am old.  Time for a nap.

Luna Sea reigns

We OWN the Eastern Toilet Squat.

In the Sea Olympics, every event has the same number of points.  There are 9 seas, so first place in any event gets 9 points.  This means that the person who comes in first in the (random) game of Captain, wave, ship earns the same number of points as the team that prevails in volleyball.  No points awarded for difficulty here!  (The point system is actually a bit more complicated for the sports with brackets.)

Like other Olympiads, competitions take place simultaneously at venues all over the ship.  The games started at 1000, with Jeopardy, Ping Pong, Dodgeball, and the Eastern Toilet Squat.  Having spent the first half of the hour watching Jeopardy, I wandered aft to see what else was happening.  There was an enthusiastic crowd around classroom 4, where the toilet squat was down to two competitors, my work study (from the Adriatic Sea) and my teammate Rachel.  For 40 minutes, these two had been going squat to squat, hands raised above their heads, feet flat on the ground, on deck 6 of a rocking ship. In a room of screaming people. 

Both of them looked a little green.  They were definitely trembling.  Heidi’s teammates shouted, “It’s one point.  No one will think the less of you if you quit.”  Her arms dropped below her shoulders.  She pulled them back up.  Rachel called for a judge’s ruling.  Finally, it was over.   The judge lifted Heidi to a standing position and the toilet squat was Rachel’s.  Her Luna Sea teammates howled our approval.

At noon, Luna Sea is in first place, having won the banner and Ping Pong and come in second in Jeopardy and pull ups.  Very poor showing in Ninja and Captain, ship, wave.  More to come.

And in late breaking news from Thailand, I hear from our hotel director Stefan that squat toilets have been banned.  The government is concerned about a high incidence of arthritis in the knees.  Stefan, who lives in Thailand with his Thai wife, points out that people spend a great deal of their time squatting in places other than toilets, so the ban is not likely to affect arthritis in Thailand. 

However, we who cannot squat thank you.

When the inmates run the institution

We are Lunacy.  It is all lunacy today. 

Today is the Sea Olympics, another of our diversions to make us forget that we are going 13 days out of 14 at sea between India and South Africa.  The students, whose residence halls are named after the seas, compete with each other in feats of strength, agility, speed, intellect, and most of all silliness.  The faculty, staff, life long learners, family members, and Unreasonable at Sea folks make up a giant team of over 100 people.

Having spent my school years figuring out ways to avoid all team sports, field events, and mob action, I was not terribly disappointed that I was not assigned a role in any of the competitions. The “competitions” include Sudoku puzzles, Jeopardy, and a shipboard version of rock, paper, scissors (Captain, ship, wave).  I signed up for several, but was not selected.  It’s not easy to figure out how to include everyone on a team that includes ages 2 to 80.  Or to explain to our eager elementary school students that the college students they have been adopted by are not to be trusted in dodge ball.

I’ve done my little bit for the team.  I was tapped to be the costumer, turning 10 yards of fabric into headbands, kerchiefs, armbands, and florets, and then decorating them with moons, stars, and our sea name.  I had to sacrifice for my art, too; that fabric was ugly, cheap, and icky to touch.  (Yes, I am a complete fabric snob.)  And don’t get me started on our “color,” which is grey.  Fortunately, I have a grey t-shirt and pants, but they are far below my standards.  

No one takes the faculty/staff team seriously.  We are playing for laughs and surprise.  Our entry in the cheering competition was a bunch of lunatics stumbling around in the dark chanting, “We will haunt you, we will taunt you, we will win the day,” followed by insane howling.  You know, the werewolf, lunatic, full on full moon insanity.  I gather that our karaoke number involves spit takes. 

I was hoping we could persuade Arch to be part of our team.  I’m pretty sure he could win musical chairs, since it’s quite likely a crew member would rush up to bring him a chair if one of our students were so bold as to not defer to him.  (Or maybe we would all wind up sitting on the floor together, singing hymns.  He likes to shake things up a bit.)  He would definitely take the stand up comedy competition. 

Instead, we have the advantage of the judges, all of which are on our team.  Not sure how that is supposed to work. 

As part of the opening ceremonies, we had the flag and cheer competitions. Our flag, designed by Charlottesville artist Kaki Dimock (who is also director of the Haven), has moons made by members of our sea, incorporated into one big moon shining over the sea.  That’s Kaki on the left. 

My little moon is on the right, over the red square.  It’s a silver crescent moon (cut from a Burmese candy wrapper) sewn with Indian thread onto a disk of turquoise cardstock.  (As usual, overkill.)

Nothing else even came close in design or technique.  The Persian Gulf had a drawing of a fluffy cat playing golf.  The Adriatic Sea banner had us all stumped until the Resident Director held it up. 

The cheers were harder to judge.  Some were unintelligible.  Others were too complicated for the teams to remember, or they dissolved into giggles when they messed up.  But some were well choreographed and executed.  Ours was so different it’s hard to compare.

The faculty/staff team has never placed above third in anyone’s memory.  I’ll keep you posted.

Ship to shore to ship

Mauritius is a small country, struggling for identity.  It’s the most prosperous country in Africa, but it identifies with India.  It’s part of the British Commonwealth, and its official language is English, but its citizens speak Creole first, French second, and English a distant third.  It’s named after a Dutch prince, with a capitol city named after a French king (pronounced in the British way).  Pinning its economic hopes on technology, it is perhaps no surprise that it is home to many customer service call centers, places where people pretend to be what they are not.

The most famous animal of Mauritius is the dodo, a bird that became extinct only 100 years after its discovery by Europeans.  (Mauritius had no native population.)  Although our tour guide told us the dodo was eaten by the Dutch and its nests plundered by rats who came as stowaways on the Dutch ships, this is disputed.  It was an easy bird to catch, but not particularly tasty.  How disappointing:  a huge bird, which does not fly and is not afraid of humans, but whose meat is tough.  Perhaps best used as a croquet mallet (see Alice in Wonderland), although it’s unclear how a child could swing a 3 foot croquet mallet that weighed as much as 50 pounds. 

But every country finds its niche, and Mauritius has established one as a model ship builder.  They build them in bottles and they build them without the bottles, and they build them in a wide range of sizes.  You can take home a Mayflower, or a Bounty, or any number of other sailing ships.  Oddly, although the ships are painstakingly detailed and accurate, almost none of the ships in the showroom are labeled.

Vasa model in Stockholm--made in Mauritius?

They didn't get the memo about the paint colors in Mauritius.

Because I was studying the ships, I soon attracted a salesperson who told me what fine quality they were and how they will of course happily pack them for shipment around the world.  I was trying to pick out the Vasa, the Swedish ship that sunk on her maiden voyage, and remembering a lovely day I spent in Stockholm's Vasa Museum with Catherine.

Alas, no matter how I squinted, I could not find her in the crow's nest of this Vasa.

and a child shall lead them

[Tomorrow, we return to travels overseas.  This post is inspired by an email from home.]

This just in from the Human Rights Campaign:  Republican Senator Rob Portman supports gay marriage.

His change of heart came about for the same reason that millions of others have taken a fresh look at this issue around the country: someone close to him came out as gay. In the Senator's case, it was his college-aged son, Will. As Portman told reporters,

"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have – to have a relationship like Jane [my wife] and I have had for over 26 years."

We are asked to thank Senator Portman.  I think we should be thanking Will. 

I think we should be throwing out of office every elected official who can’t see beyond his own family when considering laws that affect every constituent in his district. 

It wasn’t until my own daughter was struggling in school that I saw we needed to provide public education.

It wasn’t until my son fell in love with an undocumented worker and my granddaughter went back to a third world country with her deported mother that I understood we need to think on a global level about immigration and trade.

It wasn’t until my sister couldn’t get health insurance…

Really, Senator Portman, Vice President Cheney, and all of the rest of you on both sides of the aisle, in the pulpits of the country, or holding signs in the street.  Look around!  If you don’t know a gay person flying under the radar, it’s not because you don’t know a gay person, it’s because the gay person you know is good at flying under the radar. 

Even if that person is your son, evidently.  I think about what it must have been like for Will, knowing that his father was making a career out of trampling on his civil rights.  How much harder to have the conversation knowing that your father’s affirmation costs him his job.  How many family photos paste a smile on the pain of supporting a campaign that invalidates you as a person?  It’s not just the law that keeps people like Will from marrying their true loves. 

I am glad that Senator Portman chose love over party.  I am glad that Will’s future can include bringing his boyfriend home for Thanksgiving dinner. And I hope that every policy maker can look beyond his or her own family album and realize that government for the people means ALL the people, not just the ones that you have personally invested in.

Beware the Ides of March

Today was Neptune Day, a day of pure silliness.  Dating back hundreds of years, it’s an initiation ritual for sailors crossing the equator for the first time.  Charles Darwin wrote about it on his voyage on the Beagle.  The Wikipedia article on it has a shout-out to Semester at Sea.

It is one of those loosely kept secrets.  We were warned we’d get dirty, we were invited to donate hair to make wigs for people with cancer, we were assured participation was voluntary.  We were advised to get sleep, because the festivities would start early. 

Faculty and staff members who have already crossed the equator by ship played the roles of Queen Minerva (Judy McLeod of Charlottesville, in a headdress of her own device) and members of the royal court.  King Neptune was played by Captain Jeremy, in a get up so bizarre it was only his English accent that revealed him to us.

It was pretty much impossible to get pictures.  Put 700 people on the pool deck and you can’t see the pool.  I got there early enough to get a stool at the bar, which was in the shade, but behind the royal proceedings.

The morning actually started with members of the crew providing a wake-up call, deck by deck.  They paraded through the corridors beating on snare drums and blowing whistles, dressed vaguely like Romans.  Hours later, the troops were assembled on the pool deck, waiting. 

Arch came.  He’s our rock star.  Everywhere he goes, he attracts a circle of attention.  When he started dancing, the cameras came out.  It did pull some focus from the Royal Court, who arrived to find attention was directed elsewhere.  No matter, they quickly took over.

To be inducted into the honorable order of Shellbacks, you have to prove your worthiness.  Basically, this is just hazing, but our version of it is good natured and tame.  The crew pours gunk on you (it looks like the fruit punch they serve for lunch), you jump into our tiny swimming pool, you kiss a fish (a real one, dead) and kiss King Neptune’s ring.  If you are willing, the Royal Barber shaves some portion of your head.

Jim was one of the barbers.  He estimated that 100 people had their heads shaved.  Arch was the first. 

Jim was at it for hours.  That part was not a secret, but there was no way to see the proceedings.  He reported later that he could barely breathe.  Students crowded in to see (and chant) from every direction.  It was brutally hot.

Finally, the barbers turned over their razors to the students.  There are now many boys and a few girls with shaved heads.  Or Mohawks, or other fanciful partially shaved heads. 

The water of our pool turned from crystal clear to brown.  The deck flooded from all the splashing, and clumps of hair sloshed from side to side with the deck’s motion.  The students started painting on each other with chalk and body paint they got in India.  I went down to my air conditioned office for some peace and quiet.  I knew Neptune Day was over when I heard the announcement that everyone needed to vacate Deck 7, leaving the crew to clean up after us once again. 

Oh, Captain, my captain

Tonight was a Q&A with Captain Jeremy Kingston, and there were no holds barred.  The questions ranged from how much fuel the boat uses to what kind of car he drives on land.  Captain Jeremy came with three of his officers, Staff Captain Korney (the second in command), Hotel Manager Stefan (who handles all the food service and housekeeping staff), and Chief Engineer.  It was an interesting evening.

Our ship is really fast.  The promotional materials say it’s the fastest ship of its class, a statement that doesn’t really say much.  (My father used to quote a district manager who boasted the company was “the largest one of its size in the industry.”  Not all records need to be claimed.)  The captain said apart from its sister ship, the Voyager, the only cruise ship he knows of the goes faster is the QEII.  He’s had the ship over 30 knots, but says the top speed is really closer to 28.  We have four engines, and today we’re running on one, at about 14 knots.

We measure the fuel in tons.  We measure the cost in millions.  For this voyage, fuel costs are $3.5 million.  For the whole year, food costs are $1.8 million.  Fuel for the ship costs about 6 times what fuel for the passengers costs.

Captain Jeremy came on board in 2005, immediately after the ship reached Hawaii following the major storm in the Pacific.  He said it limped in using the navigation system from one of the lifeboats, steering using a direct connection to the rudder.  (It also had windows blown out on the bridge and in some of the cabins.  It was really limping.) 

The ship management company decided the captain needed to be relieved of duty, and brought in Jeremy, who was just finishing a tour with another ship.  He is one semester on, one semester off, working about 6 months of the year.  Others on the ship work closer to 10 months before getting vacation. 

He was asked what’s the worst weather he’s been in, and he said a storm in the Atlantic, on a different ship.  And that second was the storm we went through in the days just before Japan.  Even though he thought his personal gear was secured, one big lurch to starboard sent all of his drawers and doors flying.  In this, the captain is no different from anyone else on board:  the ocean doesn’t play favorites.

The most interesting questions were about pirates.  A few days ago, my boss Jim’s wife, Nancy, mentioned that it seemed as if we were going faster at night, and Jim confirmed that we were.  He said it was a safety precaution, to outrun any pirates who might be operating in the area.  Tonight, Captain Jeremy was asked what was the fastest we’d traveled, and he said about 25 knots, just after leaving Singapore.  What he didn’t say directly was that it was during the passage through the Strait of Malacca, another pirate haven.

He did say, with evident relief, that we had passed out of the area considered at risk for pirates about an hour earlier.  The pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden have been going further and further afield, presumably because of the presence of military ships deployed to their earlier zone of operations.  Now, the area of highest activity extends east to Sri Lanka and south to 10 degrees below the equator. 

It’s a calculated risk.  The captain told us they had been receiving intelligence reports from the UK and the British Navy has been monitoring our ship.  (I have no idea what they would do to help.  They are not exactly nearby.)  Most interesting, he said that the Navy’s evaluation of our ship is that it cannot be boarded if we are moving at more than 16 knots, due to the design of the hull and the pattern of the wake we generate.

And finally, a low tech defense system:  the crew is prepared to deploy high pressure fire hoses to flood any ship that tries to interfere with our passage. 

Back in Japan, when passengers were fretting about rough seas, I put my faith in the captain and the crew.  What other alternative did I have?  My anxiety would not have helped to steer the ship through the storm.  My reasons for wanting to live were no stronger than anyone else’s.  Those charged with our safe passage were doing the best they could.

As similar fears have been raised about piracy, I’ve taken the same approach.  Still, it’s a relief to know that we’re out of the danger zone.  Because this guy does not look like great protection.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

When you cross the equator, does the water start circling the drain in the opposite direction?

Does anyone still believe that?

Silly question:  there are people on this ship who believed they would see the International Date Line.  Pretty sure there are people even now, filling their sinks with water and watching it drain out.

My primary job on the ship is to write the Deans’ Memo, and one of my tasks is to think up new ways to say “Save water.”  So when one of our faculty members suggested repeated experiments with drain circling, it seemed inappropriate for a publication that had been recommending fewer showers and less shampoo.  We weighed the alternatives:  irritate the faculty member or irritate the ship’s staff captain and my boss decided we should print the notice. 

As a scientific experiment, it’s nonsense.  Even in calm seas, the ship rocks enough that the water in the sink isn’t still.  The sink doesn’t hold enough water to create a spiraling drain.  And the ship had crossed the equator 12 hours before the Deans’ Memo was published.  I gritted my teeth and did as I was told.

Five minutes after I sent out the Deans’ Memo, I got an email:  You’re a day late and a dollar short.  We already crossed the equator.

From the faculty member who submitted the notice.

In my position, I have to suffer fools all the time.  I don’t promise to do it silently.

Vanishing point

Last night, there was a spectacular sunset, the kind that makes students crowd the rail to take pictures.  I was having dinner with friends and the conversation turned to how inadequate our pictures are.  The sea spreads out in front of us in all directions, our boat the only thing in sight.  Birds are occasional visitors, and today we were treated to flying fish.  They are a little like shooting stars, gone so quickly you aren't sure you really saw them.  They look like a dotted line in the water.  

The ocean is an incredible navy blue up close, and fades into the horizon seamlessly.  The sea is calm:  yesterday the wind was only one knot and the sea conditions almost imperceptible.  Both air and water are a balmy 84 degrees. 

Change is hard to gauge.  The sea is featureless, the days alternate between A and B, but days of the week have no meaning.  The ship goes slowly and steadily, night and day.

We crossed the equator sometime in the night.  It’s an imaginary line; there’s no yellow caution tape, no horns blaring.  We are pretending it didn’t happen, because our official Neptune Day celebration starts tomorrow morning.  

The ship’s noon report also tells us that we have traveled 10,000 nautical miles since San Diego.  Coincidentally, google maps tells us we are also 10,000 “crow flies” miles from San Diego.  That’s a lot of hours, moving along at a speed of 11-15 knots. 

On the bridge, the person at the helm has to press a button every 16 seconds to prove that he or she is awake.  Otherwise, sirens go off.  During the day, there are two people on the bridge.  At night, there are three.  It’s easy to get mesmerized.

Ten thousand miles.  It’s a little hard to take in.

Smells like fogey spirit

While we’re on funerary customs, here’s a post left over from Viet Nam. 

On our way out to the Mekong Delta, we passed many fields with small monuments in them, and our guide confirmed that they were gravesites.  Usually there are just a couple, but a few had half a dozen.  Families want to keep their ancestors close to home, our guide told us. 

I couldn’t get any pictures from the bus—too bumpy, too fast, and too far—but here are some from the islands in the Delta.  These were taken from the pony cart, I think.  An even bumpier ride, but much slower.

The small number of monuments tells us that it is a family plot.  A friend who traveled to Hanoi shed some light on how everyone fits.

The newly deceased is buried in a large coffin, and stays there for three years.  Then, the coffin is opened and the bones are cleaned of the clothing and flesh that remains.  It is considered an honor to be able to perform this service for your loved one, and there is a great ritual aspect to it.

There is also a certain unpleasantness, to put it delicately, and this part is not performed by the family.  As part of the mortuary services, the original casket is dug up and aired out for a week before the family claims the remains.

In this way, the family member’s job is more of an honor and less of an onerous chore.

Thank you for sharing

Travel shakes up your sense of what's right and what's wrong.  If you're even minimally open to reflection, you are confronted again and again with the assumptions you make about the universality of just about everything.

Kerala, the Indian state we are docked in, is a small sliver of land between the sea and the mountains.  It has a literacy rate of nearly 100%, and an almost even split among Christians, Hindus, and Moslems (40-30-30).  Judaism remains only in signs and historical sites.  Wikipedia tells us there is one Jewish woman of childbearing age left in Kochi.

The Wikipedia entry also diverges considerably from the version I heard aboard ship, which included a great deal more rescue of a persecuted people.

Jewtown remains as a street full of shops run by Indians who are not Jewish.  It is a tourist attraction which has no shops other than those catering to tourists.  This also means it is cleaner and more expensive than other areas of the city.  It sits at the end of the ferry, which costs 2 rupees (4 cents US).

The "God's own country" signs are everywhere.  It is the motto of Kerala, referring to the natural beauty of the area.

Our guide on the Agra trip, Arvind, is very proud of Indian diversity, and very concerned about income disparity.  He told us more Swiss bank accounts belong to Indians than to nationals of any other country.  I present this as unverified, since my understanding of Swiss accounts is they are numbered in order to be untraceable.

I wonder if God, who evidently resides in Kerala, has one of those Swiss bank accounts.

Close encounters of the school kind

After our day in Agra, we had one day in Delhi before coming back to Kochi.  Our first stop was the Deepalaya School.

These school/service visits are included in almost every SAS trip.  In China we went to a school for children whose parents are in prison.  In Burma, we went to a school for blind children and another for girls who have no better educational opportunities.  In India, it was underprivileged children whose parents have come to Delhi seeking work. 

(It’s not clear to me why these children don’t go to public school, which is free.  The government provides uniforms and school supplies when necessary.  Perhaps it’s the transient status of the parents. Our guide told us they come from families who do not have a history of education.)

I feel like a curmudgeon for not liking these trips.  I have heard people describe them as the highlight of their visit.  To me, they seem more like zoos for children.  We make a donation to the school and it purchases a little performance from the children.  They seem good natured and obedient, but not particularly interested in the parade of Western faces coming through their school.  It doesn't look like they have any say in the matter.

My discomfort here is a variation of my general discomfort at being a tourist.  For this trip, I grabbed a skinny book from the "take one, leave one" shelf in the library.  It was Jamaica Kinkaid's A Small Place, a memoir of Antigua.  The basic message: tourists are horrid people who think they own us for the time we are here, but they have no idea how much we hate them. (So that's the translation when the waiters, or tour guides, or vendors speak to each other?  Thanks, we were wondering.)  We make this kind of deal with the adults--this is how you make your living here--but it seems unfair to enlist children, trading on their big eyes to shake loose a few bucks.

I felt most comfortable in the blind school, where the gawking occurred unobserved by the children.  We watched them stream out of morning worship, sort their shoes out of the piles of shoes at the door, and zip off to the next thing.  They know their way around the school and you'd better not be in their path!

At this school, we were invited into a kindergarten class, where the children were coloring worksheets.  The worksheets said they were an exam, and each question had a point value.  The front asked them to identify examples of air, land, and sea transport and to identify creatures of the sea (including a garden snail).  On the back, they were to match the parent and offspring of dog, cat, chicken, and owl.  As far as I could tell, however, they were simply coloring.  They couldn’t read, they hadn’t written their names on their papers, and they weren’t labeling any of the pictures.

The coloring was painstaking work.  Each child was carefully pulling one crayon at a time out from their box, then putting it back when done.  Most of them slid a cover onto the box and put the whole box into their schoolbags each time.  There was no squirming, no talking, no distractions.  These children were here to work!

They were carefully copying each other’s work.  At several tables, there was a clear “alpha” child, and one or more children copying the alpha’s color choices.  That self-censorship seemed very sad to me.  What kind of pressure is exerted to make a four or five year old unwilling to risk using the wrong color crayon?  The motto of the school is "Enabling self reliance" --they have a long way to go!

The children sang for us, and then we sang “Itsy bitsy spider” for them.  The teacher declined to translate.  They are, in theory, taught in English, although the children I spoke to did not respond to anything I said, beyond confirming their names which I read off their papers.  The kids gamely imitated our hand motions, but I don’t think they understood the words.  We also sang “If you’re happy and you know it” with the same results.

Evidence of aliens among us

In another room, one of our students made balloon animals for the children.  One balloon artist, 30 children.  Jessica was racing to try to make one for each child, and was working from right to left.  The children on the have-not side were straining to see and clearly envious.  The children on the have side seemed perplexed.  I wondered what would happen when the 30 became haves in a school of 470 have-nots. 

George came to the school with us, and one of our students found a Curious George book in a pile of children’s books.  I wondered how that would play over the dinnertime bowl of rice. 

A monkey from a book came to our school today.  And he was wearing a t-shirt that said “F*** swag.  I’m gangnam style.”   

Education is learning the ways of the world.  Sometimes, the world doesn't make a whole lot of sense.