Rongkhla Tiger Festival

Last month some friends and I visited Nongtalang, a village south of Jowai where they speak the War language. My Pnar friends were going to document and record clips for the news channel, and I went along for the experience. A couple of my Australian friends came as well, since the event was a local festival that happens relatively rarely. This festival is called Rongkhla, and can only occur after a large cat has been killed ("khla" means 'tiger'). You can read more about the festival at my friend Rev. Mohrman's blog here.

We really enjoyed the festivities - the dancers wore very colorful clothes and the music was lively. Most of the dancers wore traditional clothes, and people who liked their dancing would clip money to their shirts. It was quite an exciting experience. After the main event, the cat was carried down to the edge of town where the memorial stones stand, and at the end of the day the meat of the animal was thrown out to the onlookers. We were told that if you can eat a piece of the meat it brings good luck for the rest of the year.

For some video of the event (including where I got to drive on the Indian side of the road), check out this link or watch below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VVfpkjNkDE

Nohkalikai Falls and Living Root Bridges

A couple weekends ago I visited Cherrapunji/Sohra with my Australian linguist friends, which is the first place foreigners entered Meghalaya. We had heard there were quite a few sights to see, and were not disappointed. Cherrapunji is a beautiful place if you manage to be there when it's not raining (this area is the rainiest spot on earth, due to the high mountains that drop severely to Bangladesh on the south). And we managed.

We took a nice hike to Nohkalikai falls, which is named after a lady who jumped from the top. The story is that kong Likai fell in love and got married to a young man from her village. They were very happy and had a child. Soon after the child's birth the husband died. Ka Likai was having difficulty providing for the family and remarried. The new couple were still very poor, and the new husband started to dislike his stepchild. One day when Likai was out of the house he killed the child and used it as meat for a meal. When Likai returned home she found dinner prepared, and though she wondered where her child was, her husband assured her that the child was only playing, and as she was hungry he convinced her to eat. As soon as she had eaten a piece of meat, she knew it was her own child that she had eaten, and full of remorse she ran to the waterfall and jumped off.

The waterfall itself is quite beautiful, though the story is rather sad. The next day we trekked down over 2,000 stairs (and back up in the afternoon) to get to a number of living root bridges that local farmers have trained slowly over the last 150 years. Apparently this kind of bridge is quite common in the War-speaking areas in the mountains at the border of Bangladesh. According to this blog, they are not common anywhere else. Here's some video: http://youtu.be/TXml5M2jkQc

Nartiang Monoliths

Last week my friend Ruhi took me along with some other friends to Nartiang, which was once the summer capital of the Jaintia kings, who ruled most of this area from the 1500's until they were deposed by the British East India Trading Company in the late 1800s. When the power shifted, trade shifted as well, so that the once-prosperous town of Nartiang is a quiet backwater.

However, it still boasts the finest collection of monoliths in the area, on a special site where the king's soldiers gathered and erected large stones and set huge flat slabs on smaller rocks to create stalls where people could display their goods and elders could gather for meetings. It was quite an incredible experience. From pictures I had seen the stones looked rather small, but once there for myself I could see that it was more like a giant's playground. Just to give you an idea of the scale, here I am standing on a huge rock slab next to one of the stones. If you come to northeast India, this is one sight you won't want to miss.

Below is some video from our visit: http://youtu.be/YDk-IwlIwfU

Krangsuri Falls

Earlier this week my friend Peter was in town looking for speakers of a different language. To aid in his search I introduced him to Ma Jowai, an older Pnar gentleman who knows a lot of people and has been helping me learn Pnar. Ma Jowai invited us to go with him to another waterfall, Krangsuri. So on wednesday we hit the road. Along the way we stopped to take pictures at an ancient bridge made by the Jaintia kings in the 1600-1700s. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the blocks they used, here's a picture of me and Ma Jowai on the bridge.

We continued on to the falls - it was a beautiful day for visiting the falls, with warm sun and slight breeze. Peter and I marveled at the stonework for the path on the way down, and another bridge along the way with a really cool arch. We walked around on the top of the falls, where the water escaped through the holes in the sandstone. I scoped out a spot to jump from when there's more water. The drop is only about 30 feet, and the water was so clear you could see where the boulders were.

Down at the bottom the overhang was pretty extreme, thus the word "krang" in Pnar, which describes this kind of cave. I'm told that the word "suri" is a form of "churi", which is the old word for sword, as this is the place where the Jaintia king's soldiers would sharpen their swords. I'm looking forward to coming back in the summer, when the water is more extreme.

Rynji Waterfall

On Sunday some friends and I visited Rynji waterfall near Larymbai here in the Jaintia Hills. Seven of us borrowed a friend's Gypsy jeep and drove an hour and a half to the area where the waterfall was, carrying drinks and food along with us for a cookout. Once we reached the river where the falls were, our path took a slight detour through the stream and up the other bank before we finally reached a parking spot at the head of the path to the waterfall.

The waterfall was really beautiful, and huge. We started a campfire above the falls next to a small lake, and as lunch cooked (have I told you how good Pnar food is?) we explored the rocks, had some drinks, and generally chilled out. It was awesome to be with friends and try to understand what they were saying in Pnar. I found I could catch most of it, and could even respond - my production skills definitely need work. The bag of styrofoam plates we had brought blew into the lake, so I stripped down and jumped in after it and almost froze to death. Fortunately the sun was shining and the wind dried me off pretty quickly so I could change into warm clothes once I got out.

On the way back after a really fun day, at the ford where we crossed earlier a couple big Tata trucks were blocking the road, getting washed in the river. So we took a breather and hung out on the rocks where some of the locals were making dinner. I took the chance to scale a huge rock and bathe in the sun (from which I took this picture). What a wonderful day!

Tioman Island

Here's some video from a vacation to Tioman Island. I went with a few friends a couple weeks ago - apparently we hit the only weekend with gorgeous weather. It was really amazing. Unfortunately my camera battery died and I didn't get any pictures, but at least the videocamera worked.

http://youtu.be/JWyq8MzGB0E

Desaru Day Trip

This past Saturday I took a day trip to Desaru in Malaysia. We had an awesome tour guide named Shirley, who guided us through the scenic bits of the journey, via the chocolate shop, then Henry showed us his fruit farm (we filled up on all sorts of fruit including many kinds of durian) and we also visited an ostrich farm (and I fed a cassowary!) and took a river cruise to see the endangered fireflies. Lighting the wishing lantern was the perfect end to a day full of feasting and fellowship. Here's a short vid:

http://youtu.be/rCSUZx4Fm2c

Men vs. Wild (Malaysia)

This past weekend my friend Sam and I took an overnight trek through the jungles of Malaysia. While not quite a "Man vs. Wild" equivalent, we did manage to have an adventure. We took some tips from AngryAngmo.com's 2009 blog post about Kota Tinngi forest reserve in southern Malaysia, not too far from Singapore. Our criteria were location (close to Singapore), challenge (packing everything in and out), safety (we didn't want to die), and scenery (waterfalls). Kota Tinngi met all that criteria quite nicely, though the blog post didn't quite prepare us for everything we found.

We met up at Johor Bahru for breakfast at the Oldtown Coffee shop just inside the City Centre mall at the border, and then proceeded to hire a taxi to the Kota Tinngi waterfall park. The taxi price was a bit more than what the blog stated, but inflation is expected, of course. It took about an hour to get to the Kota Tinngi waterfall.

Once we arrived, we almost entered the park, but the lady said there was no camping, so we checked the blog post and realized that it said to follow the river/stream just in front of the park. We weren't clear whether to walk upstream in the river itself, but managed to find a path along the bank that wound through a palm-tree grove, following a group of day-hikers, until finally we had to cross the river in order to stay on the trail, which we discovered to be marked with red and white striped plastic bags.

The trail itself was pretty well marked from then on, and it was a pretty easy hike to the first real waterfall (crossing the stream occasionally), where we left the day-hikers. Here's a group shot of us all together. On our own, Sam and I continued upstream, and this is where the going got quite a bit tougher. At several points we were in the river itself, wet up to the waist, as we followed the markers. Had that been more clear in the blog post, we would have been sure to bring slightly different footgear. A word to the wise who follow - plan to get wet! As it was, we soaked our tennis shoes and clothes through, and simply had to be extremely careful when climbing the rocks and waterfalls, as many of the surfaces were slick from the water.

The climb was very picturesque, and since it was our first time, there were a few places where we had to pause to search for the trail marker. Where none was evident at first, we simply continued along the river until we spotted one. There were also well-placed rope at spots where it would otherwise have been difficult to climb. We weren't prepared for the amount of bouldering/climbing that we had to do, but took it in stride. Fortunately, it didn't rain - had it done so we might have called off the hike.

It took us about 3 hours, with rest stops periodically, to make it to the top, where the river and the terrain pretty much leveled out. We set up camp on a slight hill next to the stream. Someone had strung a clothesline between two trees, which we used to hang our wet clothes on, and then took a rest in the pool next to the camp. It was relaxing after the climb. We did some exploring around the camp, noticed some deer tracks (we saw the deer later that night coming down for a drink at the stream) and saw a buzzard flying around. Dinner we cooked on our SuperCat alcohol stove - quite filling and tasty noodles - then made a fire and sat around talking for the rest of the evening.

After a good night's sleep (it rained a bit, but we stayed relatively dry), we took our time getting up, ate breakfast, and headed back. Going down was faster (though still a bit treacherous from the wet), only about an hour or two, and we stopped several times to swim in the waterfall pools. On returning we found a taxi to take us back to JB, had a late lunch, and headed home to Singapore. All in all, a great weekend!

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.

Third Culture Kids

Here's a plug for a really cool video I was told about. Have you ever wondered what it's like to grow up in a different culture? To move from one place to another every few years? This new documentary is a really great look at all the issues surrounding Third Culture Kids who grow up 'between worlds'. Check out the trailer below!

http://vimeo.com/11658942

Les Passagers : A TCK Story from kalen hayman on Vimeo.

Singapore's Orchid Garden

Last week I visited the Singapore Botanic Gardens with my friend (and fellow PhD student) Wang Hao Shu. He also happens to be a novelist in China, which is why I include the link on his name - if you read Chinese, check out his books! A word to the name illiterate: in China you say the family name first and then the given name.

Hao Shu really loves the orchids housed in the Botanic Gardens, and he had recommended we go and check them out. My friend Margie, on hearing that I was in Singapore, asked me about the orchids as well, so for her sake I thought I'd go and take some video. I also took some pictures which you can see more of below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpSUamHDJzo

The orchid garden is nestled in one of the many corners of the botanic gardens. We walked by the swan lake where people feed the birds, fish, and giant turtles. We kept walking past the large lawn and trees shading picnic-ers and families. Then through the ginger garden with many varieties of ginger plants and flowers, and finally on to the orchid garden, where we found to our surprise that for this particular weekend we got in for free as students! Sweetness!

Needless to say, there was more to see than can be shared in a short video, but find me on facebook and you can see some more amazing photos of our trip.

First Impressions

I'm sitting in Paul Johnson's place here in Singapore, quite far away from Nanyang Technological University, where I'll be studying - Paul lives off Ang Mo Kio Ave in the Serangoon Garden area. Sound exotic enough for you yet? He was kind enough to pick me up from the airport at 1am this morning (my flight was delayed) and has since been helping me negotiate the process of settling in to life in Singapore.

Singapore is an interesting mixture of western and eastern cultures. Streets are small and traffic drives on the left side of the road, public transport is air-conditioned and everything flora is trimmed and manicured carefully. English is accented in an Asian/Indian manner, and eateries are everywhere.

Paul jokes that eating is the national past-time, and judging by the incredible variety and quality of the establishments I think I'm going to fit right in! Nothing like a pastime that involves gastric exploration, eh? And judging by all the shops that smell heavenly even though I can't decipher the names and signs (they're written in English, but I've never come across the names they give these foods), it might take me awhile to explore the options provided.

The house we're in has been in Paul's family since his parents moved to Singapore from England in the 1940s or so. It has a yard and only two floors - quite unusual for Singapore in general, but many of the houses in this neighborhood are that way. We live on the second floor, which has two rooms and is quite spacious. It's actually so large that Paul is looking for an alternative smaller space.

I'll try to keep you all posted on further developments and give thoughts on my new surroundings. You can check out this short video update below for other details and prayer requests/concerns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJpYpdfpLE

Singapore!

Last week, on Thursday, I was getting ready to head to Plano to represent Math-U-See at a homeschooling convention. I checked my email, and lo and behold I had received... an acceptance letter and a scholarship to a PhD program in Singapore!

I applied a few months ago to a program at Nanyang Technological University for Language Documentation. I knew the program started in September and that I should be hearing yes or no relatively soon, but what a cool day! I remember sitting at my computer and trying to think through this opportunity - should I go or not? I realized that if I didn't go, I would probably second-guess myself for the rest of my life.

So I accepted the offer, filled out a visa application and hit the road for Plano for the weekend. This past week has been crazy busy with work, but I have a plane ticket to Singapore leaving Philly Thursday morning (I have to be in Singapore for registration on August 30th) and will be spending the next 3-5 years training to study an undocumented language in northeast India. What an adventure, eh? =)

I'd appreciate your prayers as I embark, and will try to keep you all updated via blog, pictures and video.. let me know if you have any questions.

Life on the Road

So I'm on a banquet speaking tour - the idea being to raise awareness of the need for bible translation into the more than 2,200 unwritten languages that are left in the world. Those 2,200+ languages represent over 350 million people (yes, 350,000,000!) that still have no access to scripture in a language they can understand. My parents have been with Wycliffe since the 70s, which is why/how I was born and raised in Ghana.

As anyone who travels for work can tell you, life on the road can be grueling. Dan and I travel to a different city, set up our equipment for the media part of the presentation, feed a meal and present to a different room of people almost every night. So far we've done 20 banquets over the past four weeks - 5 banquets per week. Tonight is the first banquet of our final week - our 25th and final banquet will be on Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida.

This kind of schedule doesn't leave much time for sightseeing (it's kind of like being on tour), but we have managed to see some of the sights, nonetheless (when there were sights to see, that is). This is particularly true of local eateries - there are lots of restaurants down here that I've never been to, chains as well as local delis and cafes. Here's me and Dan in 'Sweet Magnolias' in Gainesville, GA, which is in what used to be the old JC Penney arcade on the square.

And of course I would be remiss if I failed to mention the tour of UGA that my friends Sam and Marie gave me after the banquet in Athens, GA. On our day off (wednesday), they offered to show me around the campus, busting the myth of the 5-year curse, taking me to see the book bound in human flesh in the school library (not shown) and of course the tree that owns itself (not shown) as well as the double-barreled cannon that only fired one round. Check out the video below.

What ELSE happened on Tour

So if you've read all the posts on this blog recently, you know I was out on the road for a 9-day, 9-show tour with 3 friends which included stops in all the major cities and even a radio interview. It was a lot of fun, as much for the people that came to the shows as it was for us to play them.
The order of performance varied depending on whose fans were based in which city, so every evening was different. Of course we would play songs in different orders, maybe throw a few different ones in the mix, even play completely new material - but this was mostly for the edification of the artists, since the fans didn't really know what was different, one night to the next (I don't think anyone came to more than one show, seeing as the cities were far apart). The closest shows we played were an hour from each other, and the farthest was 7 hours. It was pretty grueling, and it feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
What the fans didn't get to see, though, was how much fun we had hanging out with each other, teasing each other, and generally making fun of life. Points in fact are our trip to Huddle House and Garrett's comments at the Baltimore show. We really had fun. For an added bonus, check out the Scrabble(tm) game we played in Pittsburgh (via Joy Ike's YouTube site):

4 on Tour Day 9 - Baltimore

In Baltimore we played at The Light Gallery, north of the Inner Harbor. It also happened to be Ravens game day, so it took us 15 minutes to get through this one intersection coming north off of 395. We literally sat at a green light for 15 minutes because the one-way cross street was full of people blocking the intersection. You would think when the light turned yellow they would stay on their side, but no, they just blocked the intersection. BUT we finally got through because I stuck my nose out and kept them from budging.
I didn't get video of that, but I did video the gallery itself, which is also home to a church, and the current show they have up of work by MaryKate Newcomb, which is quite cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCeV5i63Af4
The space itself is pretty rad, and we had a lot of fun playing there for our final show. People were really into the music, and we played/sang on each other's songs for the last time on this tour. Great folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSkGzjJcYRo