India

Bhuleshwar Bazaars

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Kalbadevi
You would love this area if you don’t mind being scared out of your wits by long lines of honking taxis and motorcycles behind you and worker after worker coming at you from the front with loads of goods on their narrow long handcarts. Then make way for the cows that seem to know where they are going without anyone leading the way but with an absentee owner and maybe a woman with a bucket of food or water nearby. And don’t forget to look down so you don’t step in a hole or into greywater or even urine and spital caused by the use of paan (betelnut, tobacco and other ingredients).

Workers stared at Bob and his camcorder-many didn’t know what to think-others were delighted to see themselves on the digital screen-thanking Bob and shaking his hand. But not the Muslim women.

Bombay Renamed Mumbai

Posted on by Laughingnomad

July 13-18, 2002
India forces you to look beneath the surface of things…there is more here than your eyes see…a midnight ride into the city from the airport in the non-A/C taxi with hot humid squalid air blowing the aroma of grey water and human waste across my face was not my idea of a good time. But we knew it. Expected it. Actually it was not as bad as I thought it would be and as I am writing this on the second day already I don’t notice it. Everyone remarks how cool it is for this time of year in India but after coming from a wintery South Africa it may as well be a tandoori oven.

Bombay was renamed Mumbai in 1996. Those that favored the change believe the name, derived from the goddess Mumba who was worshipped by the original Koli inhabitants, reclaims the city’s heritage and signifies it’s emergence from a colonial past. When I asked the taxi driver driving us from the airport which name he uses for the city he said that Mumbai was a new name and “people keep calling it Bombay so I guess we use both names,” he said shrugging-seeming not to care which name his city is called.

Eating In India
A thali dinner (there is no “th” sound in Hindi so it is pronounced t-holly) is a traditional meal on a large round platter that is served with small tin bowls (katoris) around a larger bowl of rice and costs 10-50 rupees ($l.00) or more if it contains meat. It usually consists of a variety of curry vegetable dishes,relishes, papadam, puris or chapatis and rice. Often there is a yogurt raita and rice pudding for dessert. We had thali twice at “The Majestic Hotel,” a plain large dining hall on the Colaba Causeway where we were staying. The restaurant was full of working locals, mostly men, some barefoot, some in pants and shirts and some Hindus and Muslims all in white, some in blue, yellow and white turbans-all who couldn’t keep their eyes off us Westerners. The non English-speaking waiter found the pictures in our Lonely Planet India a wondrous curiosity.

During lunch one day I struck up a conversation with two black African men at the next table. They were from Nigeria but one had gone to school in Madison Wisconsin. I asked if he thought he would ever go back to the States. No, he said, it is so much easier for us to be here…people are so nice…no hassling he said with a knowing look…I get that it is easier to be black in India than in the US.

A Sidewalk Miracle
A few steps down the street at a right angle from the hotel we are tempted by a large group of people eating at night from a pavement stall on the street. Huge thin handmade chapatis called rotis were twirled around in the air by the young chapati-maker and then cooked on a red-hot half-globe shaped grill. The chicken and lamb kabobs, dahl, (pureed split peas), bharta (pureed eggplant), curried lentils sweet and sour tamarind sauce and fresh hot chapatis exploding with flavor on your tongue.

But halfway through our meal a big truck drove up and several men got out and walked over and motioned to our table…table…have table…they said roughly and then stood and watched us intently waiting for their table. At first we refused to give up the table…they were not asking for the table of the Indian family behind us although they did take two of their chairs leaving the mother standing…how silly we Americans are-expecting fairness! What? I can’t believe they want our table…what are we supposed to do with our food…put it on a chair…the sidewalk…what? But the men just kept standing there staring at us…feeling very uncomfortable…so not wanting to be the ugly Americans we give up the table…finally figuring it must not be legal for the restaurant to have the 4 or 5 metal tables on the sidewalk. We gathered up all the little dishes, the chapatis and our water while they threw the table in the truck and took off!

Bob and I just sat there looking at each other for a few seconds…should we take the food to the hotel…no Bob says…so we set the food on a third chair and were proceeding with our meal as best we could when the truck came back with our table and the chairs belonging to the other family. A bureaucratic sidetrack? Now they can say they did their job? I don’t understand I said to the 7 year old boy with his family at the table behind us…what has happened? “A miracle!” he shouted with bright eyes as if he knew exactly what he was talking about!

Sleepover In Soweto

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township
On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in Soweto-a township about 30 minutes outside the city where most of the violence occurred in the years leading up to the end of apartheid. Lolo’s nephew who runs Jimi’s Face To Face Tours, picked us up at the Johannesburg airport in his van.

Soweto has always had a small and thriving middle class and after all the press about the violence before the end of apartheid they are anxious to get the message out.

About one million people live in the township that was designated for blacks and established in the early 1900’s. The community is still poor and more than half of its adults are unemployed. Roughly twenty percent live in one room tin and cardboard shacks. Lolo, a retired high school principal and school inspector, lives in middle class Diepkloof Extension, however, in a new two story brick faced multi bedroom/bathroom home that would sell for half a million dollars in California. A member of Parliament lives across the street.

Lolo raised several of her niece’s children and her one natural child is an attorney and works for the Justice Department. But she said that blacks didn’t have electricity and she never saw TV in a township until about 1982. She worked 35 years as a teacher and for that she only receives a $300 a month pension. This is because blacks didn’t pay into the pension fund because they were not going to be given pensions.

Lolo cooked us a feast of dumplings, oxtail stew, fried chicken, carrots, beets, salad and fruit. The cuisine includes other traditional treats such as mealie-pap, samp, spinach and ‘mabele’ porridge.

The next day she drove us to the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere where we walked through the pitiful emergency area with people inside and outside lying on gurneys. Most of the doctors are young white doctors from other countries eager for the experience they will gain here-especially with weekend knife and gunshot wounds.

The next morning she drove us to the beautiful Museum Africa housed in what used to be a fruit and vegetable market. One section dealt with the four and a half year trial of 156 people opposed to apartheid that were arrested in 1956. All, many of whom were white allies of the freedom fighters were eventually acquitted. Most of the defense were white and the trial was held in a Jewish Synagogue.

Another interesting section depicted the places and activities of Mahatma Gandhi who lived for a time in Johannesburg. His philosophy of “Satyagraha” or passive resistance was shaped by his 10 year resistance to black discrimination in South Africa.

Finally we drove out to Liliesleaf Farm where Mandela and about 10 other political activists were arrested during a resistance planning meeting. Apparently they had been given away by someone on the inside. The beautiful 29 acre farm and buildings now in an upscale Johannesburg suburb-far from Soweto-had been purchased with Communist Party funds for the use of the freedom fighters. It has been a guest house but recently was sold and will become a museum next year.

Back in Soweto we drove by Mandela and Winnie’s old house that has since been bombed, by Winnie’s new big beautiful home and Archbishop Tutu’s home (yes, he still lives in Soweto! Two Nobel Prize winners on the same street!

For dinner we stopped at a tavern owned by one of Lolo’s former students and had a wonderful supper of African delicacies-mielie pap (corn porridge picked up with the fingers and dipped into a gravy), lamb ribs in gravy, chicken, beet salad, lettuce salad, green mango chutney, cole slaw and I can’t remember what else.

I asked Lolo what happened between Mandela and Winnie. She said it was personal and had to do with the bedroom. But it is only speculation as to who was sabataging the relationship and for what reason. Mandela has since married the pretty widow of the President of Mozambique.

As a single divorced mom Lolo didn’t say how she was able to afford her home. The most curious thing though, was that there was not a single African-motif item in the entire house. A walk inside and you could have been in a quaint B&B in a western country…the new black rich…

Reflections on Africa
We loved Africa and feel sad to be leaving. But the one single strong impression is how little Africans everywhere we traveled, black and white, knew about the outside world and how few, even those who could afford to, had ever traveled out of their own countries. The news media is pathetic and our references to current people and events went clear over the heads of the people we talked to whether it was the sophisticated gay Afrikaner managers in the Waterkant office across the street or Lolo in Soweto.

Jimi, our driver who was born and raised in Soweto and who picked us up at the airport said that he didn’t know what poverty was until he made a trip to the Congo one year… “that was poverty,” he exclaimed! Ironic.

Jimmy’s Face to Face Tours arranges overnight stays with families in Soweto, including Lolo’s Guesthouse, for $52 a night per person, including breakfast and transportation to and from the township, at 8.15 rand to the dollar. Information: (27-11) 331-6109 or (27-11) 331-6132, http://www.face2face.co.za.

Lolo’s Guesthouse: Diepkloof Extension. lolosbb@mweb. co.za. Lolo Mabitsela charges about $50 a night for two, which includes dinner and breakfast. She can accommodate up to four and can be reached at 011 (27-11) 985-9183 or at 011 (27-82) 332-2460.

The Soweto page of Johannesburg’s Web site, http://www.joburg.org.za/soweto, has the most useful visitor information for the township. Gauteng Tourism Authority has regional info at http://www.guateng.net. You can also contact the Soweto Tourism Association’s Dumisani Ntshangase, 011-27-73-310-5886, or Zodwa Nyembe, 011-27-72-437-3944.

Bo Kaap or Cape Malay Quarter

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The next day we take a minibus for 3 rand each (10 rand to a dollar) to look for an apartment. The buses are many and frequent with no schedule-you just wave one down when you need it-very efficient!

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As we walk into the neighborhood where we have found a beautiful modern apartment, de Waterkant Village, in a quiet residential area near downtown, I see a young guy in red plastic tennis shoes with a funky white patent plastic shoulder bag with Catch 22 written on it it cross the street and I know which Cape Town neighborhood we are in…do you? The neighorhood, used to be Malay, a (colored) neighborhood until all the Malays were run out by the apartheid system. Now it has become a gentrified little village with little cafes although some Malays are moving back in. This is the gay neighborhood.

The “Bo Kaap” or “Cape Malay Quarter” belongs to the culturally and historically most interesting parts of Cape Town. Many of the inhabitants are decendants of the people from Indonesia (Batavia), Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, who were captured in the 17th and 18th century and enslaved by the Dutch-East Indian Trading Company. Many were Mulims and others were converted to Islam by the Cape Muslim community.

The Cape Malays and their religious leaders played an important role in the development of the language and culture of the Cape colony. The Afrikaans language evolved as a language of its own through a simplification of Dutch in order for the slaves to be able to communicate with the Dutch and amongst each others, since they all came from different countries and cultures. Educated Muslims were the first to write texts in Afrikaans.

The Cape Malays have preserved their cultural identity and Muslemic creed. The old Malay Quarter with its steep and narrow streets, the plain artisan houses, Mosques and Minaretts reaches from the Buitengracht street up to the Signal Hill. The houses were restored and colourfully painted. The architectural style is a synthesis of Cape Dutch and Edwardian.

One of the oldest buildings in Wale Street 71 houses the “Bo-Kaap Museum”. It is furnished as a Muslim house of the 19th century and documents the history of the Cape Malays.

Coon Carnival
Around the corner from our apartment was a little muslim owned market we would go to every morning for a pastry and the newspaper. One morning I asked the shopkeeper who all the people were who would come at night to sing those wonderful rhythmic songs in the big empty garage across the street. He tried to explain to me about the “coons.” When I looked at him with a quizzical look he said, oh, yes, in the United States coon is a bad word isn’t it?

But later, when we visited the District 6 museum we learned about the Coon Carnival that takes place every year at New Years. They practice all year long, three times a week, for the new years carnival where groups from all over compete in singing contests. They parade through the center of Cape Town wearing their coon uniforms and black and white cream on their faces. No one ever did explain why the participants are called “coons.”

It was originally introduced by the Muslim slaves who celebrated their only day off work in the whole year. Nowadays men, woman and children march from the Grand Parade to the Green Point stadium, singing and dancing. They are clad in colorful, shiny suits, white hats and carry a sun umbrella.

The next leg of our journey is supposed to be India but since the state department has asked all Americans to leave India because of the Kashmir/Pakistani conflict I don’t know what we are going to do. We have four weeks here to decide but we will probably go. Right now I don’t want to think of going ANYWHERE!