India Day 8-12: Nongrim Hills and Mowkyndeng

I did more exploring of Shillong recently, and I'll be posting a few photos in subsequent blogs to try and capture what I think are great views of the city. I'm staying with some friends in Lower Nongrim Hills and I often cross through Nongrim Hills to get to Laitumkrah where I meet friends for lunch/dinner or language research. The quickest (and least crowded) way to get there by walking is to climb the hill where people live in houses stacked on top of each other, pretty similar to what I saw in Norway. Here's a view looking back down the hill toward Lower Nongrim after climbing past a bunch of houses.

I took that photo before I went to work on the Pnar language spoken in Mowkyndeng village, a few hours away, where another friend was going home for holiday. I went with him for a week to learn what I could about this dialect and begin to document the language. I stayed with a wonderful family of vegetarians who kindly gave me fish and chicken, though secretly I loved their rice and vegetable dishes. Here's a picture of me and the family, along with all the children boarding at their house while they attend the mission school.

Mowkyndeng is probably best known as a mission station for the Catholic church in that area. When Catholic missionaries came to these hills they came directly to Raliang and were given land at Mowkyndeng to build their mission and start schools. Here's a picture of the church at Mowkyndeng, which has a lot of ties to the work of Don Bosco and the Salesians, a Catholic society that he founded. Early in June the relic of Don Bosco's body will be coming to the northeast of India and staying at the church in Mowkyndeng for a bit. I don't know if I'll make it to the viewing, but people from all over the area will be there.

India Day 7: Shillong

Ok, it's been a few days since the last post, partly because I didn't always have internet access, and partly because I didn't do much except meet people and get to know the town a bit better. Also I forgot to bring my camera places, so I didn't have much in the way of visuals to offer. But now I'm back.

Shillong is a pretty town perched on a series of hills in the centre of Meghalaya. The streets are narrow, winding, and the buildings are perched precariously on the hills, squeezed tightly together and sometimes built almost on top of each other. In many ways it reminds me of a village in Europe. Taxis, trucks, cars, motorcycles and little buses negotiate their way along the streets along with pedestrians - there aren't very many bikes around here.

I've been spending some of my time with Mary, a local resident who is from Jiantia Hills where they speak Pnar. I'm learning some Pnar from her and she is helping me connect with some other speakers, and hopefully I'll be going to Jowai and the Jiantia Hills district this week. It's been fun, and we've been meeting at Swish, a local cafe. It takes about 15 minutes to get there by car, going in a bit of a circle. I discovered that there's a shorter way to go, cutting the angle, along a much less busy path that is only about a 15 minute walk (and more picturesque). I should really get a map of Shillong.

India Day 2: Meghalaya

I woke up this morning after a good night's sleep at Hotel Jagannath (apparently this hotel is named after a Hindu sun god) and headed to the Calcutta airport to catch the plane for Shillong. We got off around the time listed on the itinerary and had a quick 1.5 hr flight to the airport which is actually 1 hour away from Shillong by car. Meghalaya is a beautiful part of India, in the highlands just north of Bangladesh, and below is a picture I took in front of the airport just after it rained.

It's pretty incredible how God works - I sat next to an elderly nun from Calcutta who was traveling to spend a month of the leave she gets every 3 years with her niece and nephews who live in Shillong. I talked with her on the flight and learned a lot from her about the area, and then helped her with her luggage and disembarking from the plane. She introduced me to her nephew when he arrived and they offered me a lift to Shillong, which I gladly accepted.

Along the way, her nephew John filled me in on some historical and political details of the area. It turns out that he is a local political figure very interested in the intersection of tribal and constitutional policy, and he knows a few of the people that I was hoping to get in touch with in the Khasi and Pnar communities. It was a great discussion and amazing to meet someone so well-connected in just my first hour in Meghalaya. Wow! I'll be getting in touch with him again once I get a SIM card for my phone.

I'm staying with my advisor's sister-in-law's family here in Shillong, and hope to connect with some Pnar speakers in the coming days, then head to Jowai and the Jiantia Hills at the end of the week to make more contacts. Today I also went to one of the local hot-spots, Cafe Shillong, which has great food and atmosphere. I'll be posting more about the town this week. It's been raining quite a bit for the last month, but is cool and peaceful - did I mention the northeast of India is beautiful?

India Day 1

Alright, I have internet access! I'm sitting in my hotel about 1km from the airport here in Calcutta (Kolkata) and thought I'd post a quick not before I crash. I didn't sleep much last night, what with the late flight to Delhi and then spending most of my layover trying to figure out where to go after I went through customs and was trying to re-check my luggage. I did have a whole row to myself on the Delhi-Calcutta leg, though, so I curled up and went to sleep as soon as we were airborne.

The Delhi airport is actually really nice. I think they've done a lot since my friends were through there last. The Calcutta airport is a little bit more like the airports of my childhood. Here's a shot of me standing at the one baggage claim in the terminal we flew into. What's funny about that is - see that fake grass? Just after I took that shot all us passengers watched as a cat jumped onto the turf, felt around and then took a dump right on the 'grass' before jumping off and going about its other business. Everyone around that saw it chuckled.

I then took a cab from the airport to my hotel. Here's the view from inside the cab. They use these really classic diesels, painted yellow - they look more like English cabs of the 1920s or so. And they feel about that old too. As usual, lane changes are frequent (lines are more of a suggestion) and the road gets shared by everyone. My cabbie took a few minutes for chai just after starting the engine, and then we took a slight detour on the side of the road so he could yell at someone - maybe for directions, it's hard to tell.

And finally, here's a picture of me in my bathroom at Jagganath hotel. It's not a very big hotel, but things are clean and after resetting the router we got some internet working. Gotta love it. You can see I (mostly) look none the worse for having slept so little. BUT I think I'll take a nap or something... tomorrow's another big day.

Getting Ready for India

The last week or so has been busy with getting ready to go to India. After talking things over with some of the other profs, my advisor suggested that instead of trying to confirm in May, I should plan on going through confirmation in the first week of August. This works for me, especially with my sister's wedding in July, back in the US. So I'm heading to India today for about 6 weeks, to learn as much about the language as I can and hopefully have something to present by August.

I moved out of my apartment on Friday, and my friend Nick is kindly letting me spend the weekend with him and storing my stuff at his place while I'm gone. Tonight my flight leaves at 11pm for Delhi, and today I'm just packing and printing off receipts and other things like my traveler's insurance. You never know what could happen, but I'm pretty positive it will be a grand adventure with no mishaps. If you think of me you can send up a prayer.

I'll try to update this space with photos and information about my trip, depending on what the internet connection is like. Of course, with today's internet-connected world, I might even be able to update when I'm in remote villages ('remote' here being defined as "physically hard to get to"). Unfortunately, friends of mine have been through the Delhi airport and said it wasn't a great experience - I have something like a 6 hour layover there... ah well.

May Day

Here in Singapore there is an observed Labour Day holiday today, since May Day officially happened on Sunday, May 1st. Labour Day also happens to be the day when the government begins distributing its "Grow and Share", package - much like the tax breaks those in the USA received last year under the economic incentives package. While the package itself benefits individual Singaporeans (who wouldn't want $800-$100 in extra money?), some Singaporeans have wondered if this isn't just an incentive to vote for the current ruling party, since general elections are happening May 7th. The timing of the payout is a bit suspicious, reminiscent of the recent payouts that citizens of Bahrain received from their rulers.

Politics in Singapore

Singapore has a unique political system: it is a representative democracy in which the same party has been in power since 1959 (51 years!). Either that means everyone likes the current government, or the ruling party has taken pains to write the rules in their favor. Perhaps a bit of both. Some people point to the Group Representation Constituencies as a re-drawing of boundaries to consolidate constituencies which the current ruling party, the People's Action Party, believes it might otherwise lose. Sounds like the age-old battle between Republicans and Democrats on voting lines, eh? Except in Singapore there is no clear opposition - just one party that runs the government.

Don't get me wrong - the PAP has done wonderful things for Singapore, as increases in immigrants to Singapore indicate. But many Singaporeans view the current party as complacent, pointing to increasing pay raises that officials voted for themselves - many times higher than the average salary. With an average of around $2 million, according to IMF and The Economist, political leaders in Singapore get paid the same as many CEOs or sports stars.

What makes this year's general elections slightly different than previous ones is that many more seats are being contested and quality candidates are being put forward by other parties. Response has been quite good for many of these candidates despite the rule that limits campaigning to the 9 days before voters cast their vote (a policy that seems to favor the incumbents) - choosing not to vote is against the law here. Of the 84 seats available, in fact, on May 7th all 84 are open to contest. While most Singaporeans believe the current party will stay in power, many also want Singapore to have a decent opposition party that will bring true democratic debate to the country's decision-making process. In this they hold the sentiment of the middle-aged Chinese Singaporean I talked to:

"I want the PAP to win, but not by too large a margin. We want to give them enough opposition so that they're no longer complacent and start paying attention to the needs of Singaporeans rather than their own interest."

We'll find out what happens when Singaporeans go to the polls on May 7th.