Long Time, No Blog

So, as you can probably figure out by the absence of blogging, we've been quite busy the last few days. I'll try to give you the rundown of everything we've been up to since our last post.

Sunday January 3^rd:

Today we went to the Sunday Market in Pondicherry. In other words, we did a bunch of shopping. On Sunday there are a lot more street vendors out on the sidewalks and it is generally busier than usual. Both Sadie and I were able to find a few things that we liked, and in my case, quite a lot of things. I have definitely done my part to support the economy in Pondicherry. After doing some shopping and such we came back to FERAL and had some class time. Then we called it an early night because we had another very early morning coming up.

Monday January 4^th:

Today we got up before the sun once again. In my book, if you're beating the sun out of bed, there's something wrong. However, the local fishermen do not share my ideas, so we started getting ready to go at about 5am. We headed off to another fishery visit with Tara to Anchiankuppam. There, we saw a lot of similar things as we did on Friday. We got to see a few different fish that they caught, including a few stingrays, but other than that it was largely the same. Once we were done there we went back into Pondicherry to go back to register again since we were not able to complete the process on our first visit. Unfortunately we couldn't do it this time either. Then we came back to FERAL and met up with some other people that we've been spending time with lately. There are some faculty members from a few colleges in the US who came to look into some social work programs in India. While they are here they are also checking out our program as well. So there are 4 of them, 3 in social work, and one in marine science, as well as the son of one of the women. We joined them in a few presentations at FERAL that afternoon and learned about some of the conservation work that FERAL is involved in. In the evening we went back into Pondicherry for a big dinner together. We went to a really nice hotel in the French section of Pondicherry (Pondy was originally a French colony, and this section of town is known as 'White Town' as Tara tells us). The food was really good, but the whole situation was just a little bit weird for me. We were just doing a regular buffet, but as I walked in I noticed the price of our meal: 525 rupees per person. This is just over $11 US dollars which is quite a great price considering the food that we got, but for comparison, 100 rupees per day is considered a living wage and just above the poverty line here. So our meal, once you include drinks, was the equivalent of about 6 days of work for the poorer locals. Needless to say, the differences between the rich and poor in India are quite obvious. Once we finished dinner we went for a quick walk on the beach in Pondy. Unfortunately, as we had explained to us the next day, the beach in Pondy has eroded significantly because of poor coastal management by the local government. Now it's become an artificial rocky coastline as a seawall has been built along the coast to fight the erosion. By this time it was getting pretty late so we came back to FERAL and called it a night.

Tuesday January 5^th:

This morning we went back into town and had a lecture about coastal zone management (which is where I learned about the stuff that I wrote about above). The rest of the group concluded the lecture by going on a little site visit to the seawalls at Pondicherry to see the things we learned about first hand. Unfortunately, Sadie and I needed to go back to register once again and hope that this time everything would work out since it would be our last day in Pondy. Luckily it did, but not without some significant waiting. We got in pretty quickly, then waited for the guy that was handling our paperwork to finish talking to his friend for a bit while we just sat, waiting for him in front of his desk. Of course, even though they knew that we were coming we had to wait for 45 minutes for the guy to fill out all of the paperwork right in front of us so that we could get a stamp in our passports. This is not anything that's out of the ordinary though. We've gone through similar things before. But thankfully, we got what we needed.

Once we were done here we went to Auroville. Auroville is in short, a hippie commune. I thought it was a pretty really cool place and it's only about 5 minutes away from FERAL. The general idea of Auroville, is that it is a non-religious, spiritual community, that does not belong to anyone, but to humanity. It is an artisan community in which nobody owns anything. It's kind of hard to describe, but this is how Wikipedia describes it, “Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity”. They only have money for the purpose of interacting with the outside world. Apart from that, people within the community have personal accounts which they draw from. We went there for lunch and did a bit of shopping and a little tour of it. Everything in the stores there are made by the residents of Auroville. There is clothing, jewelry, incense, pottery and other handicraft items. We watched a few educational videos about it while we were there. As I said before, the whole thing is kind of difficult to explain, so I encourage you to look it up yourself. I found the Matrimandir and the surrounding area particularly interesting, albeit a little out there. Our visit to Auroville concluded with a visit to the pottery shop of a close friend to FERAL who is a resident of Auroville. He is an incredibly gifted artist. The things he does with his pottery are quite amazing. For instance, he was showing us a bunch of pottery that was ordered by the Hilton in Delhi. Once we were done in Auroville we came back to FERAL and watched a lecture, packed and cleaned so that we would be ready to leave early the next morning.

Wednesday January 6^th:

This morning started off early again, surprise, surprise. We drove to Crocodile Bank today, back towards Chennai. Croc Bank is a reptile zoo / herpetology research center. While their main focus is crocodiles they also have snakes and turtles. Our day there started off with a guided tour, which was interrupted because it was time to go to work. I honestly had no idea what was going on. Then I was told to go put on some clothes that I wouldn't mind getting dirty because we were going to clean out one of the croc enclosures. I seriously felt like I was on an episode of Dirty Jobs. We jumped into an enclosure with 11 baby crocodiles to clean out their little ponds. One of the staff helped to keep them in one pond while Sadie and I scooped out all of the dirty water, sand, and croc poop and scrubbed the walls of the pond clean from algae. Once this was done we moved onto the other pond. There was one significant difference this time though. This one had 11 crocodiles in it, each about 2 feet long. Once again, one of the people that worked there helped to keep them away from us. Then when the time came they grabbed some sticks and flipped all of the crocs out of the pond, towards the other one so we could finish. It certainly made what would normally be pretty mundane cleaning a little more exciting. We continued our tour, saw snakes being milked for their venom to produce anti-venoms, and had a lecture. We also got to see an exhibition of crocodile training. We saw that crocodiles would answer to their names and would respond to commands such as, come, stay, and up. It was really cool because this was also being done as research to see if this was possible. Obviously it was. When we were finished at Croc Bank we went into Mahabs for the evening. We met up with the social work group. At this point we split up a bit. I had been feeling sick all day and we wanted to get to a doctor because we were leaving the following day for the Andamans. In the Andamans it is much more difficult to get quality medical care, so we went so that we could take care of whatever I had, even though it wasn't serious. I was also joined by the mother and son of the social group because he was very sick. He was dehydrated and ended up staying the night at the hospital on an IV drip to get his fluids back. From what we hear though he is doing fine. As for me, I went and got some medicine to take care of whatever I might have and left once we were done there. It was an interesting experience, but not one that I was planning on getting. By the time I got there, I wasn't feeling very sick at all, so I was able to take it in as an experience, rather than worry about being sick. As a health update, I am feeling fine, just working on getting my appetite back. I should be completely feeling better in the next day or two.

Thursday January 7^th:

Today we woke up at 3am so we could get to the airport for our flight to the Andamans. The flight and everything went fine and we are doing well here. We are staying at ANET which is a research center for the next couple of days. It's pretty much one of those research centers in the middle of the jungle. We are staying in little thatch huts here. There's no running water except for the water which always seems to be running down your face because it's so humid. The adventure continues. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that it's pretty much exactly how you would imagine it. Once we had settled in we took a walk through the mangrove which is right beside us. We went in at low tide and got to see tons of fiddler crabs and mudskippers (one of the fish that can live on land), as well as the mangroves themselves. Once we came out the tide was coming in and we tried not to get stuck as we walked through the muck. This afternoon we had a mangrove discussion and then some time to ourselves which pretty much leads us up to now.

Hopefully that's a sufficient catch up of everything for the last few days. We are all doing very well. Think of us as we fend off relentless mosquitoes and trounce around in the muck of the mangroves. Also, reaching us out here can be a little difficult. In the time that I've taken to write this the power has gone out 3 times. And with the power, goes the internet. Hopefully you'll be hearing from us though and before you know it we'll be back home. God bless.

Lucas

2 Jan 2010

Today was overly stimulating to a point where it was almost scary. In fact i felt scared at some points. We started our day off at a dark 4:30am before the sun but not before the temples began blaring music. Every morning that i have been here the temples start our day between 4 and 5am with loud music. They also serenade the sun as it sets at five in fact i am listen to some hindi music playing from a temple a few miles away. This month in hindu tradition is a time when it is seen as essential and good to wake up early in the morning. For 15 day the music plays loud and competes with other temples in the area for the loudest songs. Traditionally it would have been members of the temple to sing but now its just a cd over a PA system.

So here i am before the sun and on my way to Samyarpettai the beach finally. We can't be situated more than 10 miles from the coast and i had yet to see the Indian ocean from India. It was beautiful. The blazing red sun came up as we made our way south toward this particular beach. Our drive VJ and guide for the day Tara as well as Tara's assist came with us. Tara is conducting a fish survey of all the fisherman on 17 fishing villages off the coast of India. With all of her stats she is going to assess the infastructure of the fishing and try to bridge the gap between the fisherman and the policy makers. On the beach was something i have never seen before. The beach was empty at seven but around eight it became full of boats and men laborusly pulled the boats onto shore. originally the fisherman had used raft-like boats to do their fishing but after the tsunami the government aid provided motor boats. At fist this was a great idea but the cost of fossil fuel became an issue and every other fishing boat became a hand on the motor boats. The men all work together to get their fish to market. the first place of sale is from the fisherman to the sellers at the market or transporters to the market. A few auctions happen at a time. the bushel of fish is poured onto a cloth on the sand and the elected autioneer handels the bids but also gets a share of the fish for holding such a role. the people who buy the fish are the wives and sisters of the fishermen. The women do the selling and the men do the fishing. This went on for a couple hours until all the fish came in and were sold. Depending on the catch, type, and size of the fish determined the price. A milk create full of fish would go for 6 or 7 dollars.

From the beach we headed to Pichavaram Temple. First we went and got so traditional Indian breakfast which was a crepe like bread wrapped around a potato filling with spicy curds and two other dipping sauces on the side. It was so good. We also had these deep fried dough things that puffed up like a balloon. It was a thin crispy dough that look just like a balloon and you dipped it in the same potato filling as the crepe thing. I wish i could tell you the names but i can't remember and they are difficult to remember and impossible to try to spell. Just look at the names of places.

The Temple was interesting. There were a lot of people asking for money because it was very touristy. Four huge structures stood at the cardinal directions and acted as the entrances for the Temple. The whole space was the size of a stadium. Inside there were a few smaller temples. It was mainly for the dancing god. this god is very common it has the four arms. There was the temple of a thousand pillars. There was a huge pool in one part. There were three boys swimming in the green stagnant water and women came to sprinkle some water on their heads. There were also men sitting with just clothes wrapped around them praying and congregating. the there was the main temple where the dancing god was said to be dancing. It is here i felt so uncomfortable. There were statures of cows and many gods. you would walk in a cirle and get blessings from all the gods. At one station you drank holy water for one god. Then you touch the imprint of feet for the part monkey god. you were tapped on the head by another god. there was a chamber in the center where the men had to remove their shirts and walk inside to be blessed. We left our shoes outside the temple in what i thought of as the shoe park. you left your shoes, received a number and paid when you got back. I was nervous in the temple because it was a place of worship and there was trash and beggars all over the place. The holy space for these people was just a place for tourists to exploit and i guess that happens everywhere but i felt very uncomfortable to participate in the blessing first because i am not a Hindu and second because by participating i am cheapening someone else's ideas.Plus i had no idea what anything meant so by receiving a blessing from the monkey god how do i know i wasn't asking to become a monkey? i'm just kidding. It didn't feel right.

From the temple we went to the second largest mangrove forest in the world. the first largest is on the other coast of India. Chidambaram, we were there for less than an hour. We got on a boat that was supposed to take us out for an hour but it took us out for thirsty minutes. Way to take advantage of the tourists. So we just left and went to have lunch near the temple on the way back to pondicherry. A long car ride and now we are back on campus and exhausted from the long day. I learned a ton about India culture today. Its scary being here and uncomfortable, but i think culture shock is beginning to wear off little by little.

The inside of my nose is entirely black and my skin is beginning to get some color too. Blah pollution, thats why the sun was so red today.


love you all

sadie

December 31st HAPPY NEW YEAR

December 31st

We did all sorts of things. Lucas and i were taken around to see Pondicherry. Here the locals just call it Pondy. Waking up in my capsule i felt a bit anxious for the first day. As i said to Luke, i just want to be led by the hand around everywhere until i get the hang of things. Its difficult when people begin speaking to you in a different language or with thick accents and you cannot understand anything they say. The culture is also very difficult to get in touch with as well. I was surprised that there weren't tons of hippies and everyone isn't into yoga. At least i haven't heard much about the subjects here. Well i have heard of some hippies that live down the road. Anu told a story about this "Hippie" who walked around FERAL campus past the gates and everything and when she tried to tell him he was on private property he looked confused. Anu made the point that these people wouldn't do that in their own country but suddenly they come here and all space is their space.

okay so my day. well i woke up around seven and had and average breakfast of bread and eggs. Then we went to register as students in Pondicherry. That was interesting i looked around the building as i have in others as well and its interesting here in India. The buildings are tattered and worn but with very little repair. The paint is chipped the furniture is old there isn't much supplemental lighting, so windows are very important. The buildings are entirely functional but without the glitz and glam you find in the US. The people are also very interesting. The woman are harsh but that's just their way. they argue and yell at each other but for good reason. The village that we live in is full of extremely hard working woman and alcoholic husbands. The woman have jobs and take care of their stuff while the men by cheep booze and do nothing. Sound familiar? These are whole communities.

Pondicherry was quite a sight. Narrow streets in bad condition and three story buildings on either side. These were intermingled with grass huts, cows, and buffalo. There is a mixture of bikes, scooters and mopeds, as well as cars racing through the town center. Rows and Rows of bikes and motorcycles line either side of the already narrow street. No one pays attention to pedestrians or signals as honking and road rage is everywhere. Its just like the highways here but compact into densely populated area. After exchanging our money we went shopping. The hub of the city/town is a market. The type of market you see in Indiana Jones mixed with Slumdog millionaire. The fish markets was completely amazing. The smell was worse a few blocks from the market than the market itself. Inside there were women in brightly color saris selling fish on low wooded tables. fabric was hung above to keep the sun out but it was still hot with all of the bodies in this confined space. Every type of fish, squid, and prawn could be found and each in various sizes. Some were huge. Some were sardine size. The weirdest part of all was that the fish were not on ice. They were just being sold right off the blocks. It was crazy to see. Anu was leading us around and told us that this was very empty for the market. Sunday is apparently the day when everyone goes to the market. (they eat meat sundays). This hard to imagine because there seemed to be many people in town. Vegetarianism is huge here, there are veg and non-veg places to eat and signs that let you know which is which.

So in the market which is entirely outside and covered by the colored cloth is what gives protection from the sun to the store fronts. Each alley way between buildings has different products in each different row. In one row there is fruit, another has pasta and lentil,sand then you get into clothing. Everything is in the big sacs and you can buy the dry foods in bulk. Its awesome. We walked past it all to textiles store to buys some scarves. They had every type of scarf you could want. Apparently they had the best prices compared to the five or six other shops next door that looked exactly like the one we were in. Each scarf was about six dollars. Scarves are the more expensive type of clothing. Pants and shirts are around 100 rupies a piece. This would translate to about 2 dollars.

After the market we went and explore some interesting natural features around us.The first was a watershed that filled in monsoon season and slowly dried through the progression of summer. Some farmers had begun to encroach on the land and use it to grow rice. There were all types of birds here.

pond herons
jungle crow and House crow (they have gray necks)
egrets both snow and great

From there we went for brief overview of the tropical dry forest which FERAL was finish a restoration project in. It was really interesting to see what the forest should look like and the low shrubs that were trying to rebuild the forest now. After a tour and a brief history of the temple that the forest surrounds, we moved on to the salt fields and the inlet where the wetlands connect to the ocean to form an estuary. Salt fields are very interesting. To produe these huge salt mounds, men and women trudge through salt water all day to compress the salt entirely by manual labor, there are no machines at work.

By the time we headed back to FERAL it was getting dark and the moon, the blue moon was high in the sky. There was lots of traffic headed into Pondi because of New Years and all the parties on the beaches. Everyone drives with their high beams on with only increases the danger on the roads as you are blinded by the lights and can't see pedestrians, bikers, or motorcyclists. Many cars have one or both head lights out with creates even more of an issue. The center lane is still just a suggestion to the drives and we pass cars as we fly into on coming traffic.I think the most dangerous part of India is the time spent in cars on the roads.

For our New Years dinner we had pizza and grilled chicken every thing was delicious, but Lucas and I could not make it. The lack of sleep was in full affect and my eyes could no longer stay open.

I Still haven't encountered any snakes yet.... thank goodness.
HAPPY NEW YEAR its here and i didn't even have to stay awake to make sure it came.
Also Lucas and I are going to want a big birthday bash at some point!

Happy birthday to the both of us. Me for December 29th and Lucas for January 2nd we both got and get to spend our birthdays in airports.

First Post

Well we all made it just fine and are now sitting pretty in 2010. As we do a few more thing other than getting government paperwork filled out, we will begin posting in earnest. Until then.....