The Hardships of Being a Woman in India

I wake up at 3 am to venture off to the field, it’s almost impossible to sleep with such bumpy roads filled with potholes and if you do sleep you’re most likely rudely awoken by hitting your head against a window multiple times throughout your journey. So instead I stay awake and look out the window expecting a very boring ride with no one on the roads. Instead I am intrigued to see women in colorful saris lining the streets, getting ready for the day. I soon find out that women in India wake up at extremely early hours to bath themselves and take care of any other matters because it is the only time of the day in which they will have some privacy.

The life of a woman in India is so interesting, it makes me realize how easy it is to be a woman in America, we can wear almost anything we want, we have the freedom to choose who we want to spend the rest of our lives with, we can be out at night without any question, and most importantly every woman in the U.S. has the privacy to bath and pee! It’s an unforgettable experience when you stop at a field site and ask for a restroom (called a socharlie here) and soon find out that the restroom consists of a large open field with no shelter of any kind. Of course being the Colorado girl I am that wouldn’t generally be a problem except for the 6 or so children and mothers trying to get a peek of me peeing in their field, most awkward pee moment of my life!

Of course not every place in India is like this, but being in one of the poorest counties in India just goes to show how little freedom Indian women have. Every once in a while I will have an elder woman come up to me asking where my red mark is (the Indian signature of a married woman) when I say I am not married they often look at me with a puzzled expression. I’ve already made it past my prime for marriage in India, most Indian women are to be wed somewhere around 18-22 years, if I was living here I would probably be married with a child or two cooking every night for my family. Although I toy with the idea of being a stay at home mom sometimes it seems so overwhelming in India, it’s as if the women here stop moving all together and only take care of their families, no work, and no outings to the gym, no anything.

The weirdest thing to see as an American is the marriage system. The idea of marrying a complete stranger is interesting in its own way, but the fact that some families will tell their daughter merely ten days in advance of their wedding that she will even be getting married seems surreal to me. Apparently this helps to decrease the amount of time in which a bride to be will be upset over the marriage.

Woman all over India have started standing up for their freedom and I think it should be interesting to see what will happen over the next couple of years in the country. Things are slowly progressing, for example woman who are educated often have a little bit more say in when they would like to get married and are often allowed to wait until after their education has been completed. One of the larger issues surrounding the freedom of women is rape. Recently a law was passed allowing for consequences to be placed against anyone who may rape a woman. This has been a large issue over the last couple months arising from a brutal gang rape of an Indian woman on a bus last year. However there are so many politics involved that the crime is still going unpunished, almost every day I read about the rape of a girl in India, a lot of them occur with only children, it is such an awful problem that has yet to be fixed.

Although the woman here don’t have the freedom that they do in America it is also interesting to see the way in which they live around these obstacles. A new bride will accompany her groom to his family’s house after their wedding, my initial thought was what a nightmare you just got married to a complete stranger and now you have to try to impress your mother-in-law for the next couple of months. But that idea isn’t carried as much over here, from the sounds of it most mother-in-laws take their new daughter-in-laws in as if it is their own daughter. I guess going through the same passage in the past has created a bond between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Because families live together (grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, sons, their wives and children) the women of the household seem to create miniature networks. You often see them in the courtyards all working together and talking amongst themselves, probably gossiping about the day’s news. While the men go out into the field and work.

If anything, I think one of the most eye opening experiences here has been the realization of how easy it is to be a woman in America. I often think that women in America take this for granted and don’t realize how difficult and limited the freedom of a women is in other countries. I hope that freedom is granted to women across the country but with the mindset and corruption of the country I don’t foresee it happening anytime soon.

Three Days

3 days. That was all the time we had to spend in India, after going through the chaotic process to get an Indian visa through the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal we ended up with a 15 day period in which we could spend up to 72 hours traveling through India. As ridiculous and costly as this route was much of what we saw in the 72 hours was a journey in and of itself, most of it focusing around New Delhi and Agra (where the Taj Mahal lies).

Talking to other tourists throughout our journeys in Nepal we soon learned that Delhi was not the tourist friendly haven we had experienced throughout many regions in Nepal. We heard horror stories ranging from people not getting picked up from the airport and wandering around in the middle of the night to people staying in flea/cockroach infested hotels lining much of the touristy portion of New Delhi called the Pahar Ganj. After reading pages of Lonely Planets India we were well equipped to take on the many "tourist tricks" that are often used by taxi drivers and the like. A few of these include "Your hotel has burned down/is full let me take you to another hotel" or "Is this your first time in India? Yes. Ohhh well let me charge you 100x the normal value!" And so I learned to say no this is not my first time in India, even though it was and tell them no we still want to go to our "burnt down hotel" because we know it still exists.

After serious effort we finally decided on a low costly costly hotel with reputable reviews that was also situated in the Pahar Ganj area. Upon arrival we expected everything that could possibly go wrong would go wrong. However, much to our disbelief we were picked up straight away by our hotel, and therefore were not hasseled to be taken to another hotel, and best yet were not infested by fleas or cockroaches!

One way of describing India would be "extreme". In our case it was a more extreme Nepal with more people, more trash, more traffic, a larger dividing line between the rich and the poor, etc.

The second day we woke up earlier to catch a train, which we had to book at least a week in advance, as everyone and there mother seem to take the train to different destinations across India. Everyone had an assigned seat on the train and to my surprise the Taj Express was very low on tourists. Fans line the ceiling of the train and serve as a means of air conditioning in the summer (it can get up to 45 celcius plus in the summer!). Once the train starts vendors filter through the aisles promoting their products "samosas, tomato soup, pakoda" it was like a song repeating throughout the 3 hour train ride. On the second to last stop people filtered into our train from every direction which seemed like mass chaos to us, we often didn't know what was going on and it was very strange to all the sudden go from about 50 people in our car to possibly 150 people squished in like sardines.

When we finally arrived in Agra we took a rickshaw to our hotel and shortly there after were surprised to see a marching band go through the city followed by a parade of people. Apparently the marching band and parade of people were part of a political campaign supporting a politician for an upcoming election. I feel like our political campaigns would be so much more interesting if we had a different marching band associated with everyone in the US too! We were then escorted up to lunch where we had an astonishing panaramic view of the Taj Mahal. It was surreal, almost like a puzzle that had been carefully put together.

The next day we walked about a kilometer to catch a bus to see the Taj Mahal. It was unbelievable as expected. Tourists surrounded it from every angle and people lined the benches taking pictures looking as if they were holding the top of the Taj themselves. Taking 25 years to create it is no wonder the Taj Mahal is one of the 7 wonders of the world.

That night we caught a bus back to New Delhi where we were to catch our plane in the morning to go to Thailand for a week. One thing I know for sure I will not miss from both Nepal and India are the honking cars filling every street. Our bus had the most obnoxious horn making it near to impossible to sleep because every time you were about to sleep this loud pitched beep would ring through your head and wake you up out of near bliss. It seemed that the driver especially liked to honk his horn as when I was watching his driving he seemed to often beep at nothing in particular.

The next day we arrived at the airport to find it is just as difficult to leave the country as it is to get in. Our hotel told us we needed to arrive 3 hours in advance however they didn't tell us this until we were leaving (2.5 hours in advance) so we got there and realized the reason you need to get there so early is because their passport services must take at least 2 hours for one person to get their passport stamped to leave!

Anyways we finally left the country and are now in Thailand which is so different from both Nepal and India and that story will have to wait for another day.

The Inner Workings of Nepal

 After thirty six hours we finally arrive to our destination. Looking over the vast valley where Kathmandu sits I can make out houses that slowly grow larger and start to make up a large town surrounded by lush hills and further back by white capped Himalayan mountains. The scenery seems surreal and completely different from anything I had imagined previously. Houses seem to have a mix of Indian and Middle Eastern influences as they are each dipicted by a different color and all have flat roofs where families often grow plants or hang laundry to dry in the sun.

Once we acquire our baggage we go out to meet Anya's contact in Nepal who has offered to take us to a hostel in Kathmandu. As we drive along the streets of the bustling city I notice the trash linned streets, unfortunately for the people of Nepal there is no organized trash maintenance and therefore trash is often littered on the side of the streets. However, amidst all this trash I soon notice that cleanliness is of high importance for the people of Nepal, and will often be seen sweeping around the outside of their shops. Additionally, it is culturally required that one removes their shoes before entering a home as not to dirty up the living areas.

As we continue along the crowded roads of Kathmandu I can feel myself starting to grip the seat and get tense as our car seems to be doding other cars, motorbikes, people, animals, anything that may enter the street. Among all this chaos, however, there seems to be a bit of orderliness as I never witness a crash and people seem highly confident in crossing the street.

Once we arrive to our destination we are immediately shown our room and offered dude chia (milk tea) as is customary in Nepal. Our family is very interested in us, and as the next few days unfold make it their mission to know as much as they can about us and the country we come from. Although we seem normal within the homestay household, on the streets we are often stared at regularly, but when I say stare they don't look away when you look at them they just keep on staring like you are some sort of insect they have never come across before. We are often laughed at by the younger generation and it probably doesn't help that Anya and I coincidentaly have matching blue down jackets which makes us look even more ridiculous.

Kathmandu is filled with culture, in the few days that we were there I must have seen fifty temples and stupas. The worlds first or second (I'm not sure which) largest stupa lies outside Kathmandu in the heart of Bouda and is stunning. Surrounded by a circle of prayer wheels the stupa lies in the middle of the square teaming with prayer flags on each four sides and is lit by butter candles at night to illiminate its beauty. After only a few days in the city we are off to the tea growing regions of Nepal called Ilam. This is where Anya will do the majority of her field work for her thesis assessing the sustainability of tea tourism in Nepal.

The flight there is astonishing, Nepal is interesting as the Himalayas lie in the Northern portion of Nepal and the plains lie in the Southern portion. Therefore, the entire plane ride is spent with eyes glued to the windows looking at the Himalayas, and most of all trying to spot Mount Everest which lies among this chain of massive mountains.

Once we reach Badropour it is somewhat of an oasis in comparison to Kathmandu. The landscape is spotted with farms and the streets are now only scattered with tik tiks (people being moved around by bicycles) and motorbikes. The air is fresh here as in comparison to the often polluted air of Kathmandu. Everywhere you venture there are cows, goats, chickens, and babos (babies). Babos are everywhere! It is as if each family group had one babo within the last one or two years, and Nepali babies are the cutest things ever.

The next day we go up to Ilam, specifically a tea estate near a town called Fikkal. The tea growing regions lie in the hills of the country which is surrounded by lush asian vegetation and tea of course. I have never consumed so much tea in a day, sometimes I must drink 5 to 10 cups of it. Especially when we venture to the farmers houses and are offered tea at each house in which we stop. The farmers houses seem very unique in comparison to other houses in the city. They are often amidst a large span of tea plants and are often overlooking the valley that sits below their mountain. I can imagine it is very beautiful during the summer when it is not so foggy.

During our time here we have had the chance to stay with a few of the farmers and experience their way of life. More then often, however, they seem to feel like hosting us as in a hotel. We are often placed at our own table for dinner to eat alone. The food in the homestays is all so fresh and scrumptious, it often is comprised of dahl bhat and two or three vegetable sides ranging from potatoes to cauliflower. I never realized how many different types of dahl bhat could be made, my favorite so far is a creamy dahl that tastes slightly like potatoes. Although I am starting to get sick of eating dahl all the time and am therefore looking forward to returning to Kathmandu where they have delicacies such as sandwiches, middle eastern food, and dessert.

Within the next few weeks we will be going back to Kathmandu and then will be off to Chitwan and Pokhara before we enter India. Until then!

All About Food, Almost

Because I am a food guru and because I am in love with the food of South Africa I decided a blog must be dedicated to explaining the deliciousness of it.

Over the past month and a half I have been lucky enough to try some traditional dishes of the afrikans (South African) culture and have to say the least fallen in love with them.

Two typical meals that you will find while having a large group of people are a braai and a poike. 

A braai is much like a BBQ in the states except instead of just having hamburgers and hotdogs each person invited to the braai brings a dish to share.  Typical dishes include browurst (similar to bratwurst except it is generally drier meat then we are used to), steak, lamb, chicken, sandwiches, ribs, etc. There is always a large variety of food that is brought which makes it so delicious!

Generally, instead of having a modern grill, like we would, they use a very old fashioned grill (almost like what you would see at parks and campgrounds). Logs of wood are then burned in order to provide coals to heat the grill. Generally one of the guys cooks as it is almost an honor to cook a good braai. So delicious!

A poike (poy kie) is a traditional stew here. It is also very traditional to have with a large group of people or for some sort of event. It is a stew that is made in layers and can range from 3 to 7 hours to make. It takes so long because you cook the layers at a variety of time intervals. For example, you start with the things that take the longest to cook, maybe carrots and some sort of meat (generally lamb, beef, or chicken (they eat a LOT of lamb here which is really exciting)) you just cook the meat enough so that it is seared on the outside. Then you can add your squash and carrots which take the second longest to cook. Later you add your mushrooms, onions, etc. And lastly you make a broth, which can be made out of a variety of things. Some use a packaged soup mix and gravy. I’ve also heard using Coca Cola, which I have yet to try yet, but that is a very big thing here. Apparently marinating chicken in coca cola is also supposed to give the chicken a very nice flavor, who woulda known.

I’m a big snacker, so snack items are always a must for me. My all time favorite snack food is called biltounge, which is a lot like our beef jerky, except Biltounge is like 10x better. I don’t know how I will survive without it when I go to the US! I probably go through at least one 200g bag a week! Biltounge is made out of any type of meat (I’ve had beef, buffalo, kudu, and ostrich (which is currently my favorite)). They hang up this meat to dry (which sounds quite disgusting) and then they go crazy with seasoning all over it. The flavors just melt together so well in your mouth it’s almost indescribable.

Then there are always chips, but the flavors here are so different from the US. They have sweet chili, chutney (which I will describe later), and some other strange ones I can’t remember. And then their candy and drinks and such comes in so many amazing flavors! Mango, peach, guava, papaya, pineapple, and squash (which is not actually squash its just a very sugary drink, kind of like soda (speaking of soda their cream soda here is green which I find very bizarre.))

Lastly, they have a bunch of different condiments they like to use on their foods. The big one is chutney (which I stated before). Chutney is almost the texture of a jam, and it often comes in different flavors such as peach and mango. They put it on everything, in sauces, on meat, mixed in with curry, but not generally on bread. It is sweet but savory enough to go on meat, its quite delicious!

Of course with every great thing you must have a not so great thing. Here it is mayonnaise. They put mayonnaise on everything and in such copious amounts! And its not like the mayonnaise in the US it is much more sweet and tangy so I find it quite atrocious. Just to put this in perspective I ordered a wrap at KFC the other day (yes they do have KFC), and it was like asking for chicken with your mayonnaise, I couldn’t even eat it all it was just too much mayonnaise. Also I went to have sushi about a week ago, and you wouldn’t believe it! They put mayonnaise on all the sushi pieces! Lucky enough I asked before hand for absolutely noo mayonnaise on any of my dishes. They of course looked at me like I was insane.

My life over the past couple of weeks hasn’t been filled with too many stories. I have been spending most of my time working on my project doing herbivore counts and behavioral surveys. I will have to go more in depth on these projects in a later post.

This last weekend I was able to venture with a coworker through some more of Mpumalanga (the county outside of the park). We went to stay at a friend’s vacation house that is situated in a nature reserve residential area. It is quite fascinating because there are all these gorgeous houses and then you’ll see some zebra and giraffe grazing in the yards. The animals are quite tame in this area as they are used to having humans around more then in the park. I had the opportunity to feed a Zebra an apple, which was quite extraordinary! It wouldn’t let me pet it but it took the apple right out of my hand which is quite cool. Some animals however cause lots of problems around the area. For example, that same night, one of their other friends in the neighborhood had a baboon attack. The baboons came in and ripped out all the plants in their garden and then took a luggage trailer and threw it at their car!

The next day we went to a resort in a town in the mountains called Badplaas. The mountains surrounding this area were amazing to say the least! They were lime green, almost unreal, I’ve never seen anything comparable to it.

This resort is where the only water park is situated in Mpumalanga. It was quite exciting; the park is located on a hot spring so there were 6 different hot pools (3 inside and 3 outside). There is 1 very hot pool, 1 warm pool, 2 luke warm pools, 1 cool pool, and 1 cold pool. The hottest pool was 43 degrees Celsius (about 107 F)! It is so hot you can only sit in the pool for 10 minutes maximum, according to the rules, I however could only stand about 4 minutes of it. When you jumped into the hot pool you had to be sure to move quickly to sit down and then not move until you got out otherwise you would get too hot. There was a cold pool just a couple of steps next to the hot pool so that you could go from one to the other. Apparently this is good for your circulation, I think it sounds more like a health hazard haha. There were also 2 luke warm pools, which I spent the majority of my time in.

In addition they had two body slides and a tube slide with waterfalls and what not. It is a lot smaller then our water parks but very nice for the price you pay. I was actually surprised at how cheap it was to get in. 

This is Africa

I’ve been told by multiple people that it’s about time I give an update on my African adventures. Sorry for such a long delay but here it is… this is Africa.

I’ve been gone for about a month now in South Africa, after a 22 hour flight I finally arrived to Johannesburg. I was astonished at how lush and green it is here! I guess after being in dry, brown Colorado for a while coming to a brilliant green atmosphere was astonishing. The next day I took one more 50 minute flight to my destination, Kruger National Park. The airport I flew into was a 4 hour drive from my camp in the park, Satara.

The closest village to Satara is about a 2 hour drive, meaning I have to think in advance and have enough groceries for about 2 weeks until we are able to get back into town. I was actually very surprised at the development here, I didn’t know at all what to expect. But you can find almost anything here that you would want to find in the US. The grocery stores here are generally found within a mall, which really intrigues me. Everything is very disorganized however and it can often take multiple trips through isles of food before you find what you need.

The villages here are also very interesting, their driving laws are much more lenient here, which could be a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. When there are two lanes on a road cars will often pull over and use the shoulder as a “slow” lane. Every one packs as many people as they can in one car, which doesn’t surprise me too much. Tons of people often line the roads waiting to be picked up for work in random cars and are always walking somewhere on foot. This is generally in the bigger villages, the smaller villages are a lot different and typical to what you would see on TV with random chicken, goats, and dogs running around, grumpy old women sitting outside of their brick houses, and children playing football (soccer) in their stadiums after school. Of course I had to be a typical tourist and get a picture of some African children who were more then thrilled to be in our photograph.

  

Where I live is amazing to say the least! Kruger National Park is the largest park in South Africa and would take an entire day to drive from the Southern point of the park to the North. I live right in the middle in a camp called Satara, it is equivalent to the eastern prairies of Colorado. Except filled with multiple large predators. To give an example, the other night I was out helping a PostDoc fill a generator at night. When we were driving to her sight a hyena erupted from the bushes. I started screaming, as I am still not used to giant wolverine looking predators coming out of the bush. I scarred everyone half to death and then created quite a big laughter. 

The research camp I live in is a lot nicer then what I was expecting. My living situation is a large army tent, with out air-conditioning. Luckily it hasn’t been too hot yet and has been pretty bearable during the day. Its funny because the permanent residents in the research camp have almost luxurious tents. One girl has a television in her tent connected to a satellite dish for movies and TV. When I got here I laughed and was like what is this, a television in the bush, I still can’t get over the ridiculousness of it. Yet I am there pretty regularly taking over her bed and TV after a long day of field work.

Last weekend we did some traveling around the park and went to the South Eastern part of the park. It was gorgeous, the landscape had very lush green mountains, it reminded me a lot of Colorado. Its probably my favorite part of the park. We stayed in a trails camp, called Bushmans, about an hour drive from the closest camp, Burg en Dal. These trails camps don’t have electricity and the lodging is in thatch roof huts, a very typical African style. Tourists pay a lot of money to stay at these camps but staff can rent them out on Saturday for only about 100 rand (approximately $12). Bushmans was situated high in the mountains in a valley next to a water hole. It was very remote, we could hear lions around us at night, another thing I have yet to get used to. The view was astonishing.

It still shocks and excites me when I am in the field working and see a giraffe curiously peaking its head over a bush looking at us while we collect plant samples. For the most part I have seen all the animals any tourist would want to see while in Africa. The only thing I have yet to see is a good sighting of an African Wild Dog and a Cheetah. I have seen tons of lions, some with cubs only about 5 feet away from my car as well as Leopard. Speaking of Leopards, one morning I was on a game drive and happened to come up to a jam of tourists, we stopped to ask what they saw. It was a gorgeous female leopard, the first one I had seen thus far. They also told us there were 3 other leopards hiding in the bushes behind. After sitting there for a while looking at the leopard we decided to be on our way and then all of the sudden got a flat tire. The only thing we could do of course was pull over to the side of the road and change this flat tire. Probably scariest thing of my life, considering there were 4 leopards less then 100 meters away from our car, we were literally directly across from where the leopards had been spotted. I, of course, was put on leopard watch. We luckily were not eaten, and I live to tell the classic story of how I was almost eaten by a leopard, except not really.

It is amazing at how many dangerous things South Africans live with, coming from a country where I don’t have to worry very often about my life being in danger I have still not come to the realization how many things can harm me out here. I often forget to look around me while I am doing fieldwork and an elephant is still just as intriguing to me as before, where as so many people here fear elephants. I have also come to fall in love with Warthogs! They are by far one of my favorite animals, I love seeing their little tails sticking straight up running through the tall grass.

I was hoping to get some images of Africa up here, but unfortunately the internet connections are so slow it would take ages to load even one file.

I of course have tons more to tell but am off to do herbivore counts. Until next time!