Thoughts while Indian Ocean sailing

Friday, 19th March



We are sailing along at 13.8 knots just south of the Equator, past the Maldives and towards Mauritius. The sea is a calm milky blue. the sky is gently clouded but mostly blue and the temperature is in the eighties. Our deck will now get the sun in the morning (and the moon at night!) and shade in the afternoon...perfect. We are rocking but barely perceptibly.

I keep saying to myself 'Here you are on the Indian Ocean, on a wonderful ship, with a huge cabin and deck, you can choose what you want to do for the rest of the day, you have your food cooked for you and a good book to read. How fortunate can one person be?' We all saw poverty and dirt in India: small hot dwelling places without even a fan: people working hard under the hot sun, men and women: not even owning a kitchen sink to wash dishes and clothes: sitting selling their wares for hours a day and making pitifully little. We can step away from it all, the heat, the dirt and the poverty, heave a sigh of relief and get on with our very comfortable lives. What an enormous discrepancy! There has been a huge impact on many students: I believe that whatever their feelings: empathy, delight, affection, respect, disgust or discomfort, they will never be quite the same again. None of us will. India gets you in the gut....and I'm not discussing "Delhi belly"!

We (George and I) had a relatively stress free holiday, in beautiful surroundings and mostly in great comfort. It only takes a few hours of sailing down the backwaters or walking the streets of Kochi and Munnar to realise how privileged and 'cosseted' we are. Some of our SAS students jumped in at the deep end and took off travelling in the trains, walking the back streets, talking and receiving help from unknown Indians who invited them into their homes and even cooked for them, sharing the little they had. Now this is education! None of us will ever look "through" a visitor or stranger in our own home towns again in the same careless way, we shall see them!

I have asked one of my Performance class mates to let me have a copy of a poem she wrote after India and which she read most beautifully at the Post Port reflections. I would like to print it in my blog for you all to read. Her name is Emily. I'll give her a blog to herself.

9 pm Same day: Just been to the Union to watch a story telling session given by my 'Performance' teacher. She was good! Told us about being a deck hand in Panama and Costa Rica and holding the wheel on a boat with no radio, sexton or compass in a dreadful storm. While being terrified and alone she promised the powers that be 'up there' that if she got out of it she'd go back to school. She got her PhD and here she is! (to cut her long story very, very short!)

Although we crossed the Equator today we have no classes and celebrate with first time 'crossers' tomorrow. On the last voyage it meant being pushed in the swimming pool and having heads shaved! Fortunately for me I have crossed it many times so (touch wood) I'm safe.

Jo and Chris leave Toronto for Johannesburg today......bells, whistles and booming cannon roars! Bon Voyage and see you in South Africa....!