Thursday, December 30, 2010

a page from my journal & a song about squid

12-28-10
Spent 2 days looking at and learning about Sisal (relative of Agave)-- apparently the most sustainable plant in existance! And now I can't stop seeing it-- spikey rows sprawling throughout the valleys and to the base of the Usambara Mountains. Like caterpillars marching along who've just backed down because the grade becomes too steep. Not too much of a slope for some people, though, like the farmers I saw out the bus window, side-stepping to till and weed some sideways plots.
Lots of thoughts on sisal and the enterprising upstart industry, and they swirled through my head at full speed like the wind ripping through my hair, windows down through the savannah.
The scenery is splendidly gorgeous and utterly unexpected.
Cactus trees look like they grow upside down or are copying the looks of umbrellas blown inside out by a blustery gust (Providence rains and puddles feel pretty far away).
Scrubby greenery is awash against the richly red earth. And the hills seem to erupt arbitrarily like fingers poked through kneaded clay.
And the sun is BRIGHT, my hair is getting light. The sun bleaches the sisal too-- white gold, he calls it. The strong, straw-like fluff meets the brushing machine in a room of people wearing breathing masks, covered mouths make their eyes more expressive and they're looking at us like, mwanafunzi? [student] and I think, yeah, why am I so lucky? I'm studying you? Who dealt these cards? And then it's like seeing my own commodity chain consumption, my consummate guilt, but seeing my history too. A few generations ago we did this too-- this is development? At least your factory is autonomous, not imperialistic ? Maybe this methane will bring electricity to your house, and maybe this $2 minimum day wage will afford you a tin roof so you can legally have that energy.
You can see Tanzania's wealth in its earth, the sisal standing tall, spiking sharply into the sky; the dirt a mysterious, luxuriously potent and saturated red, and now clouds suspended, casting shadows that mark their territory with protection and depth.
In Moshi, I paint with cinnamon and eat breakfast watching the clouds move across the peak of Mt. K.
I wish I could pause everything and hole up in a room somewhere, let my brain run like an old film reel, let my hands make art, and all the rest will rest until I pull back together.


Interlude (the lighter side):
I picked up the group traveling ukelele and spent idle bus time strumming distractedly and looking out the window. I made up a song, which is more of an ode because there are no concrete chords (I'm actually never sure when the uke is in tune...) or consistent melody, but managed to stick in everyone's head for a few hours:

BICYCLE SQUID
Stormie bought some BICYCLE SQUID
bibi cooked it in tomato sauce, you know,
she sautee'd it,
and Stormie ate it
BICYCLE SQUID,
not a fish but they live in the sea
they're not food for me.

That's all there is really, a true story from Zanzibar and a vendor who comes to the house by bike, his newspaper-lined basket full of glistening, gelatinous white squid, which Bibi (host mom) bought and cooked for our final dinner, explaining that they stand apart from the categories of meat, hen, egg, and fish that I won't eat. No hard feelings when I filled up on vegetables and chappati though, it just meant more squid for breakfast.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

neepo, neepo, piggaram piggaram

here here, somewhere somewhere
Kiswahili for "oh you know, I've been just been here and there and around somewhere"
A journal entry from the first few days in Zanzibar, an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania (East Africa):
Pineapple for breakfast, the best I've ever eaten! First day of classes-- lectures on Zanzibar political history, dhow [beautiful, traditional wooden boats] culture/trade/racial mixing. Ugali for lunch, a maize mush that tastes like idli from India, tomato-y curried vegetables. Took a taxi across town and arrived at our homestay (with Stormie) in the rain, drizzling; grinning, unsure. Walked through alleyways just starting to get muddy, twisting behind houses, then ours: brown and pale orange concrete. An inner courtyard with bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, dining and living room all splitting off. Stormie and I each have a luxuriously large, soft bed in a shiny pepto-bismal-pink room with white whale-ribbing ceiling. Our host mom is BB Alwiyah [BB is a respectful prefix, like Mrs.] which means "higher power." She is 72 and amazing, speaks good english but is hard of hearing. Has 9 children. Loves long walks around Stone Town and on the beach early in the morning. The house is directly next to the mosque (Mskiti) and there are 5 prayers a day, the first call blares at 4:30 AM! Then we go walking at 6 AM. Today we stopped at the beach and swam (with a dolphin ? Maybe.) and she read the Koran onshore. Several soccer teams were practicing. Le Corbusier-style aparment complexes along the road.
In the house, there are all the fixtures but no running water (for 10 years now), and filling buckets with the pump at the mosque is free, but everyone else has to pay. In the morning, boys bike by balancing jugs filled to top. BB Alwiyah says water is "very difficult." In fact, "everything" has been difficult since the revolution-- when many people were killed for no reason. Before the revolution [1963], the British government met everyone's needs: healthcare, services; now, even erasers for schoolkids must be purchased. She has so much to say it's a honor to listen. We walk through the streets and she points at the political posters and tells me about the elections and a shift in the governing party. Now she's hoping things will change ("they promise")-- Shah Allah! She says "alluh" and it sounds like a heavy stone sinking, dropped without a splash, a flat and swallowed tone.
In the streets, greetings ripple and bounce and it catches me off guard:
Jambo (Jambo)
Mambo (Poa)
Habari (Mzuri)
Salaam Aleykum (Aleykum Salaam)
It's easier to adjust to the heat of the sun than the warmth of the streets.
Handshakes are important. I tend to hesitate, fumble [I'm getting better, figuring out the rhythm! poleh poleh, slowly]
I like to try wearing my kanga [traditional East African-print fabric like a big sarong] as a hijab, headscarf, especially at night. It's like an alter ego. Still attracts attention as a foreigner, but people seem more respectful [almost all of the women cover themselves for modesty, social norms, sun protection], think it's a beautiful and traditional look, if slightly confusing. I am Lebanese? Libyan? Arab?


AND, most importantly, ABOUT THE FOOD...
Zanzibar produces cloves and coconuts as commodities, but so many spices are grown here which makes the food fresh and amazing.
Pilau- "spice rice," with lots of cumin, coriander, ginger, black pepper, salt. Sautee onions then add a bunch of garlic and the spices, then add washed rice and fill the pot with water and simmer (for half an hour?)
nazi- coconut. There are 56 uses for the coconut tree-- leaves, husks, fruit. Cook any vegetables or beans, or green bananas, especially "spinach" which really means any leafy greens, in coconut milk, spices and chili, and a bit of tomato paste.
chappati- NOT the same as Indian chappati, flatbread. White flour with a bit of oil, add salted water until it forms a dough, knead lightly (to aerate) for half an hour (the longer, the softer the bread) then break into balls. Roll each dough ball flat with a rolling pin until 8 or so inches across, then put a bit of oil on the palm of your hand and rub it on the surface, then make a small rip in the center and expand the hole to the edges, rolling the dough into a circular ring. Break the circle, roll it in your hands like a rope. Lay the rope down and form a coil, tucking the end underneath. Then use the rolling pin to flatten, and cook in an oiled iron pan on a charcoal stove.
This is what I learned from Fasaha, my homestay sister for one night in the beach village of Jambiani.
Embe is mango and they're in season and have never tasted so good. Small yellow-orange ones are sold in pyramid-stacked heaps from street vendors or in the fruit market, unripe mangoes are sliced and spiced with chili salt.
Heading out by ferry on the 24th to spend Christmas in Dar Es Salaam ("heaven of peace"). Lots of love,
Bih-dye, See you later

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

An attempt

.. to explain some of things I've seen and done in India! Much love, Jess
Durga Puja- a shrine to the Goddess Durga (aka Kali Ma), the destroyer of evil. Staying in Chittaranjan Park, a 99% Bengali neighborhood, during Durga Puja was TOTAL CHAOS as dusk fell and streets were closed to allow pedestrians access to the festivals. There were several, but this photo is from the most elaborate of the shrines nearby, and after 4 days of offerings and celebration, Durga was taken to a river and submerged (and could be seen en route in a convoy of truck beds) or exploded with fireworks in effigy.


Delhi-Chennai Trunk Express- The group of 20 left Delhi for our next stop: Nagpur, Maharastra. After 15 hours in A/C sleeper class (triple-decker bunk beds, my feet dangled into the aisle), watching the lush countryside fly by, we had 2 minutes to throw our bags onto the platform in Betul. Appropriately, we've taken to calling the group a "traveling zoo" because every action attracts attention as if we're on display.

In Maharastra, we stayed on Vasant and Karuna Futane's farm. The daily schedule was usually yoga (at 6 a.m.), breakfast, farmwork, lunch, class lecture or discussion, dinner at 8 p.m. One morning I picked peanuts (a legume, NOT actually a nut) off the vine for farmwork, another day I learned how to roll and cook chappatis (aka roti, Indian flatbread).

The dining hall space. All of the houses on the farm are made of a mud concrete with bamboo and timber supports, bamboo roofs with tile on top, because that can be locally sourced and is actually the most comfortable (in the summer, temps get up to 120 F).
Cattle! The farm keeps cattle for dairy production, but follows Gandian philosophy of non-violence and therefore cares for the animals like family, using them to work the fields but allowing them to graze each day and giving half the milk to nursing calves. The waste from the cows is completely reused: urine is liquid fertilizer, manure is the raw material for a slurry that feeds the methane digester, producing bio fuel for cooking, and the leftover from that process is added to the vermicompost.

Class lectures were usually held in the bamboo grove! On the left is Savysaachi, the IHP India coordinator and anthropology class professor, and on the right is Vasant, the farmer and one of our gracious hosts. Vasant has an incredible knowledge of his land, more than a third of which is "natural" forest agriculture, meaning it looks like wild overgrowth of trees and plants but is consciously selected companion crops for fruit, fodder, fuel, and other uses.

Karuna Futane, translating for farmers who gave us a tour of their village and its dairy cooperative during our stay in Sevagram (at one of Gandhi's ashrams).

Continuing the conversation with the dairy cooperative, who operate with a consensus-based structure (self-governed) and deliver milk directly to surrounding local villages, eliminating the middle man. The village has about 1,000 cows and they are very proud of their system, though at this level of production the cows are not able to graze and instead spend the day in open-air sheds being fed hand-milled grass/grain fodder.

The next day, sitting in a lecture literally in the middle of the road, on a visit to the village of Dhorli (spelling?) where the livelihood situation is almost the opposite. Farmers in Dhorli grow Bt Cotton, a genetically-modified plant resistant to Boll worms, now the only seed available for purchase. Only 10% of the land has access to irrigation so production is unstable and price is dependent on the market, which in turn depends on cotton production in USA, China, and Pakistan. As promise of increased yields falls through and price fluctuates, the farmers have been trapped by their loans and unable to make living off the land viable. In response, as an act of protest, farmers have said that the entire village is up for sale-- a message to the government that if Bt cotton is a "miracle seed," and farming is the basis of the economy, then you come and do it. No takers yet.

Monkeys outside my window at the accomodations next to the ashram in Sevagram! I was trying to nap and heard rustling in the bushes that are maybe 10 feet from the window, only to see a whole troop of baboons (?) with babies on their bellies and everything, eating leaves and berries, then jumping on our roof. The ashram is part memorial to Gandhi, part living history museum, with multifaith prayers twice a day (never made it the 4:30 a.m. session though..) and an emphasis on truth and non-violence.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A few photos

A samosa on the roof of the IHP classroom in Lodi Colony, New Delhi
Peruvian food & a random street in DC
Writing papers in the basement of The Pilgrimage, our hostel in DC

It's really difficult to upload photos from here! I'm really glad I brought my old 35 mm camera because I took a roll of B&W film in DC and am hoping to get my first roll of Delhi color film developed tomorrow. With any luck I can post photos of those photos before we leave for a farm! All is well, I've moved into a homestay in Chittaranjan Park, Delhi, and will write more details soon




Saturday, October 9, 2010

DC to Delhi

I wanted to write a final post about DC but wasn't able to, so hopefully I'll be able to get some photos up soon. A brief synopsis: We (IHP group) stayed in the basement of a church called The Pilgrimage, in Dupont Circle bordering Georgetown-- it was like a hostel with bunkbeds and a kitchen/lounge. Class lectures and discussions were held in a room upstairs in the church, and there were lots of site visits, including the Institue for Policy Studies, World Bank, IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), and Conservation International, involving power point presentations and lots of questions. I got to explore DC quite a bit and really like Dupont Circle and the neighboring Adams Morgan neighborhood. One night I went out for Peruvian food in Adams Morgan with Jessie, Audrey, Kayla, Emma, and Majandra (who's from Peru and said it was really authentic) and had vegan cebiche. The next day we went to a really big craft fair called Crafty Bastards with a lot of silkscreened shirts and poster, handmade clothes, and buttons galore. Later in the week about 6 of us walked through the major monument area and all the way to Earth Care Corps in Anacostia and then took the metro to the Anacostia community history museum, then up to Columbia Heights, and walked back to the Pilgrimage. My first impressions of DC were based on K street (financial/NGO district) and thought it was all so business-y, but it after seeing different neighborhoods it has a lot more character than I expected.

A 14.5-hour flight of endless sunsets took the group from Chicago to Delhi, and the flight was really pleasant as transportation goes. The only downside was that sitting for so long made my feet swell up (which was a shock when I finally laid down in the hotel and noticed), but the UPSIDE was that there was almost no turbulence, good Indian food (vegetarian!), and a beautiful view of the night sky (even the northern lights at one point, on the other side of the plane).
We were greeted at the Delhi airport by the IHP India country coordinator Savysaatchi, and two professors- George and Aseem. Upon arrival we were given roses, water, chocolates, and when we go to the hotel/hostel had a welcome with incense, marigold garlands, and red for our foreheads (called Aarti I think ?)

  Yesterday was a super long day and I'm running out of time at this internet cafe so here we go:
-A brief introduction/info session from the IHP india team (including tea & samosa snack time on the roof)
- A walk around our block, went into a beautiful temple
- Walked to Khan Market, went in Fab India and was overwhelmed by amazing fabric
-Ate a crazy delicious lunch in the hostel cafeteria
-Took the metro (clean, cool tokens for admissions, but most crowded train I have ever seen.. quickly learned that the first car is Ladies Only) to Panar Ganj and walked around a hippy market (Audrey fox: think the santee alley of delhi), then to Connaught place which is an upscale rotunda and at the city center
-Back to the hotel by autorickshaw, which is a GREAT mode of transportation and super inexpensive
-Had a candle-lighting official welcome ceremony to burn the negative things and illuminate positivity as we move into the India program, then a great dinner, and bed

Monday, September 27, 2010

Rad.

As in radical, which is definitely what IHP RG is. In a good way! A weeklong retreat in West Virginia was a whirlwind: 20+ new friends who are essentially family, intense "community building" discussions and orientation, and some crazy alternative education. 
We're learning all sorts of things, all at once. In brief: education is indoctrination (see "Schooling the World" documentary), capitalism creates poverty, sustainability is a useless term, and the economy is a belief. This might not make sense to you, and it doesn't really make sense to me (yet?) but that's the point-- question, question, question.
We realized that as students we hadn't been fully sure of what we'd signed up for.. IHP says it will be like this: 
1/3 of the time on the trip is in academic classes (but not really in classrooms)
1/3 is "active learning" i.e. doing stuff, on site
1/3 is "autonomous study," exploring any theme/idea we want, comparatively in each country, and sharing our findings with the group
So far it feels inspiring and awesome and exactly the right place to be. This morning we arrived in DC and have all rushed off on errands and have invaded the public library near where we're staying. This week will be spent visiting different environmental and political NGOs, the World Bank, and hopefully some museums (Textiles Museum!) and generally lapping up the luxury of American life before flying to India on October 7th-8th.

p.s. That previous post about packing? LIES, all lies. I have tooo much stuff, Mom & dad expect a package.... 

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Packing

How and what do you pack for a 9 month, 1-backpack trip? I stayed pretty close to the minimum amount of stuff on my packing list, and actually wasn't stressed by what I packed but rather all the stuff I didn't pack. Why the hell do I have so much Stuff? What the hell is all that Stuff, if everything I need is in a backpack in the hallway?? I stayed up till 5 am cleaning my room and still had no answer to those questions. Except that I'm awful at getting rid of things (namely fabrics, also dried tea bags and uh, a warped bike wheel).
Anyway, 2 hours of sleep and 7 hours of family roadtrip later (first time through Delaware where, to my mom's surprise, the leaves are "already changing color", and Baltimore via a really big tunnel, kind of claustrophobic)
AND we arrived in northern Virginia to stay with family for a few days.
Off to DC tomorrow for IHP orientation and real goodbyes

Thursday, September 16, 2010

salutations, explanations

Hi & Hello from somewhere superlative, a way for me to reach out and keep in touch while I'm somewhere (everywhere) this year.
WHY? I've chosen to study away from Brown for my junior year through the IHP "Rethinking Globalization" program
WHERE? Washington D.C., India, Tanzania, New Zealand, Mexico
WHEN? Today. Sort of. Officially, 9/19/10-5/13/11

Details, details:
I've packed everything into one bag!
That bag does not include a laptop or cell!
SO
Please write to me! I will write to you, on here, in letters, in e-mail. Let's exchange information:
e-mail: Jessica_Daniels@brown.edu
skype: jessbdaniels
Address:

From 9/19-10/7: Washington, D.C.
Jessica Daniels
c/o IHP
The Pilgrimage
2201 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037

10/8- 12/5: India
Jessica Daniels
c/o IHP
Intercultural Resources
33-D, DDA, SFS Flats
Vijay Mandal Enclave
New Delhi 110016
INDIA

12/5/10-1/23/11: Tanzania
Jessica Daniels
IHP c/o Fatma Alloo
P.O. Box 4224
Zanzibar, TANZANIA


1/25-3/11: New Zealand
Jessica Daniels
c/o Peter Horsley
IHP Wellington
PO Box 7252
Newtown
Wellington, NZ

3/11-5/13: Mexico
Jessica Daniels
IHP c/o Gustavo Esteva
CEDI
Azucenas 610-A
Col. Reforma
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca 68050 MEXICO


abrazos y besos,
jess