Round the World and Home Again

We finally made it back after a busy month of traveling! I've fallen a long way behind in my blogging, so I'm going to take a big step back and pick up where I left off, our trip to Kanyakumari.

We decided to take the train down, which is a 20 hour trip. The journey was scenic, taking us close to the coast of Kerala before joining Tamil Nadu at the extreme southern point of the Indian subcontinient, which is the Kanyakumari region, a major pilgrimage site for Indians. Gandhi came here early in his political career, and his ashes were spread over the ocean here after his death; the box that held them can still be viewed in a seafront memorial.

This area was not as severely affected by the tsunami as other parts of Tamil Nadu, mostly because it was sheltered by nearby Sri Lanka, which took the full brunt of the wave. However, several villages were damaged and there were around 200 deaths. Additionally, the fishing communities have been economically threatened by the loss of fishing equipment, including boats, and the fact that many of the fishermen lived very close to the coast. These fishermen have been receiving relief from international and local organizations. As they are mostly Christian, they have also enjoyed some support from Christian church-based groups. So at the request of a local NGO, we focused on a different group - Dalits (formerly known as "untouchables") who depend on the collection of seashells for their livelihood. They live a few kilometers away from the coast, so they did not lose their homes, though a few villagers were injured by the tsunami. Many villagers were storing seashells along the beach, and quantities equal to one month's income were lost by some. Worst of all, they have no way of knowing whether there will be shells to collect during the next season. Shell collecting, and the production of whitewash from the cooked shells, has been the villagers' means of livelihood for generations, and only the young people of the village are receiving a high school education. The NGO's goal is to provide new opportunities to these educated young people so that their communities can have more economic stability. While it was encouraging to hear from these youths, their parents and grandparents would have significantly more difficulty changing occupations.

The villagers welcomed us with open arms, showing us their homes, displaying the methods they use to collect shells, and even inviting us for meals and to a wedding! We enjoyed seeing this very different side of India and interacting with the villagers. I recorded about 6 hours of footage, and Gilles took the sound. Now it's to the editing room! (Well, my laptop.)

One side note: as we were arriving on the train, we could not read the signs of stations easily because they were not always in English. We pulled up to a station, but we were far from the platforms. The rest of our car had already been abandoned in Trivandrum. So we started to hunt for the sign of the station and found out it was ours. Gilles found a door out to the platform, so we grabbed our bags and headed for it. The train started to pull away from the station, but Gilles pointed out that we could still get off (he, apparently, has done this before!) However, weighed down as I was by my backpack, and not used to jumping off trains, I slightly miscalculated the speed of the train and my distance from the ground, and landed more on my face than on my feet. I escaped with only a few bruises and, well - many of you may have noticed that I had one tooth that stuck out a bit in the front? That tooth has always annoyed me, especially since after two orthodontists and a couple thousand dollars it still stuck out. Well, the offending bit of tooth made contact with the train platform and disappeared. So, not knowing how badly the tooth was damaged I went to a local dentist, who spoke English but conveniently didn't tell me everything, and he ended up shaving down my tooth for a crown, along with a back tooth that he said had a cavity. He had a very charming assistant who spoke no English but was extremely friendly and talked non-stop. He told me to come back in four days for the crown and charged me about $30. I walked around with a gap in my teeth all week, which made me fit in pretty well with the villagers. I later found out that normally they give you a temporary crown, but ah well...

Anyway, the crown he gave me in the front looked okay, but the back one was ugly and made of gold! So I went to a dentist here in Bangalore when we got back - this time I chose the most American one I could find, an Indian-born dentist who has lived in New York for 20 years. He caters largely to expats. He took one look at my crowns and said they were made of a toxic gold-nickel alloy and had to be replaced. This time he gave me temporary crowns, and I should get the permanent ones tomorrow. He charged me $300 for both crowns - still pretty good considering the prices they charge in the US! I may have more dental work done here. But not in small towns!