Chennai, India

This morning, the MV Explorer arrived in Chennai, India. Formerly known as Madras, Chennai is the capital of one of India’s 28 states, Tamil Nadu. With a population of roughly 8 million inhabitants, which is about the same as New York City, it is India’s fourth largest city. Chennai is sometimes known as the “Detroit of India,” due to the fact that it is responsible for roughly 60% of the country’s auto exports. It is also India’s second largest exporter of software and information technology. The city is also an important cultural center. It is home to India’s second largest film industry, Kollywood, and Chennai is the site of some of India’s best dance, theater, and art festivals.

Semester at Sea Voyager’s have been privileged to have three wonderful interport lecturers with us since Chennai, who have been introducing us to Indian culture and history. Sneha and Anusha, two Indian university students have been on board the ship as well as Dr. Hamsapriya Srinivasan, an Indian professor in political science.

While this was the first voyage for Sneha and Anusha, Dr. Hamsapriya has been a part of the SAS community for the past twenty years. Her first contact with Semester at Sea was when she was invited by the U.S. Education Institute of India to give a lecture to visiting SAS students. Afterwards, she tagged along with others and visited the ship. The next day, she hosted around 30 Voyagers for lunch and showed them around Chennai. Every year since then, she has helped organize trips for Voyagers on their stops to India, briefed them when they arrived, and she has been an interport lecturer twice.

Dr. Hamsapriya is also an avid supporter of the mission of SAS, and told me that it, “scores hands down on any other education program,” when I asked her how she felt it compared to other study abroad options. India is often cited by Voyagers as the port that impacts them the most during their journey. This will be my first visit to the country but Dr. Hamsapriya conveyed to me that, “The sites, sounds, smells, and crowds hit people as soon as they’re off the ship…but for those on the trips that involve human contact, they find that people are very open, generous, friendly, and go out of their way to do things for students.”


Semester at Sea students also were very interested in talking to Sneha and Anusha to learn more about the lives of Indian university students. They learned that education is extremely important here and is compulsory beginning at age three. Schools are free until you reach the university level and even then, the government provides loans and scholarships, which make the costs extremely low. The two girls were also quick to point out that on average, females in India score much higher on the national exams than males.


Photos by SAS Photographer John Weakley

Vicarious Voyage

In addition to the friends and family members of the Voyagers aboard the MV Explorer, there are hundreds of school children across America and some others around the world who are following this semester’s voyage as well. They are part of Semester at Sea’s Vicarious Voyage, which pairs up classrooms of K-12 students with students, staff, and lifelong learners aboard the ship. It is a unique opportunity for us with SAS to share our experiences with others back home and it offers the students we are corresponding with a far more intriguing way to learn about the world than textbooks can provide.

Classrooms participating in the Vicarious Voyage program range from inner city New York to rural Virginia to the California coast, second grade through seniors, and include ESOL (English as a Second/Other Language) learners of all ages, art classrooms, Teach for America classrooms, Gifted Education programs, and two international classrooms in Thailand and Okinawa, respectively. The SAS Voyagers participating in this program exchange postcards, letters, and emails with their selected classrooms throughout our journey.

SAS Voyagers also send cultural packets to their classrooms that contain interesting items that will help explain the people and cultures of the countries that we are exploring. Amber Tullos, an SAS student from the University of Oklahoma has been corresponding with 21 students in a third grade class at O'Hara Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At our first “packing party,” where participants in Vicarious Voyage gather together to send out their cultural packets, Amber decided to include newspapers, postcards, maps, and other items that would help, “broaden their understanding of different cultures,” as she told me. She also put together a CD with videos and pictures taken in port, which is something that many of the SAS Voyagers I spoke with are doing. They find it a great way to make their exchanges more personal and the added media provide a great visual accompaniment that will allow Vicarious Voyagers to see more of what we’re seeing than ever before.

Below is a video of our first packing party, enjoy!




Created by SAS Staff Video Producer, Jerry Pratt

Giving Back

An often overlooked but very significant component of Semester at Sea are the service opportunities provided through the International Field Program and some of the independent service projects that students undertake on their own. In most ports, there are often numerous chances to contribute in some way to the local population. Many of the students I have spoken with are continuing the charitable efforts that are part of their normal schedules back home while others are volunteering for the first time.

Why are students choosing to visit a hospital, or an orphanage, or distribute food to the hungry instead of visiting a famous site or maybe visiting a museum? Here are some of their answers:

“To do something beyond yourself.”
“Because we all need help at some point.”
“For a reality check.”
“For the gratefulness in the eyes of those you have helped.”

Two of the most recent projects that Voyagers participated in were Operation Hunger in Cape Town and a visit to the SOS Children’s Village of Bambou in Mauritius.

Operation Hunger
The Townships of South Africa are home to millions. It is estimated that approximately 10,000 people arrive in Cape Town from the Transkei and Ciskei every month in search of work, that in most cases cannot be found. When they arrive, they squat land in the Townships and build shacks out of tin, plastic, cardboard, or any other materials that they can find.

Operation Hunger works to combat malnutrition and promote the dissemination of knowledge about poverty and malnutrition in South Africa. Its integrated development program includes locally managed growth-monitoring programs, targeted food support, water supply, sanitation facilities, health/hygiene education, income generation and livelihood programs, agriculture and food production. Two groups of Semester at Sea Voyagers participated on a program with Operation Hunger on consecutive days in South Africa.

The principal activity of the Voyagers was to help Operation Hunger staff ascertain malnutrition levels by taking weight and arm measurements of Township children and recording the results. The group was so touched by the children they encountered that during the bus ride home, they started a collection amongst themselves and put together over $300 to purchase toys for the Township’s children. These Voyagers also began planting a nursery, which the second group completed. The hope is that the residents there will be able to take these plants once they grow and start their own gardens.


The participants of the second SAS Operation Hunger group were the lucky ones who actually were able to hand out the toys purchased the previous day. After putting the finishing touches on the nursery and taking the malnutrition measurements, the SAS Voyagers spent hours playing with the children as the Operation Hunger staff tabulated the recordings taken by SAS.

After all of the calculations were completed, everyone went to a soup kitchen where the children were to receive their meal, which normally consists of a soup with additional vitamins added in. However, the Semester at Sea Voyagers went into a store and literally bought every loaf of bread available and then took food from their own lunches that they had brought with them to make sandwiches for the children. In the words of Adrienne, a student from UCSD who was there that day, “The smiles we helped put on these kids faces were amazing. All we were doing was playing with them and it brightened up their day…it was completely life changing.”

SOS Children’s Village
The first SOS Children’s Village was opened by an Austrian medical student, Hermann Gmeiner, in Austria in 1949. Today, there are SOS Children’s Villages in more than 106 countries and they provide homes to approximately 50,000 needy children. The Village that the SAS students visited in Mauritius can house up to 120 children and consists of 12 family houses, homes for the Village’s director and the SOS “mothers,” who help to take care of the children, a staff house, a community hall, an administrative building, and classrooms. The children who live here are for the most part “social orphans,” meaning that they have parents who are either in prison or incapable of providing care for a number of other reasons. About forty SAS Voyagers participated in this service project. They met with the administrators of the program, toured the Village’s facilities, and then spent time interacting with a number of the children who live there.

A Belated Happy Birthday

Although I’m a few weeks late, I’d like to wish Charles Darwin a belated happy birthday. Semester at Sea Voyagers spent yesterday in Mauritius, which was one of Darwin’s stops on his five-year circumnavigation of the globe aboard the HMS Beagle. During that time, a young Darwin, who was a recent graduate and just a few years older than most of the students aboard the MV Explorer, made the observations that would become the foundation for this evolutionary theory. Darwin then went from Mauritius to spend a few weeks in Cape Town, our previous port of call. Although that is the extent of our shared itinerary, the themes of our voyages, separated by about 178 years, are very similar.

Both Darwin and the students of Semester at Sea set out on a worldwide journey of discovery and academic pursuit. As our own Voyagers seek to compare the countries and people that we encounter to gain a better globalized perspective of the world, so too did Darwin build upon his findings in each stop that he made and compare the results to build a greater unified theory.

Our voyage’s academic theme, Migrations, also finds common ground with Darwin. Our Academic Dean, Reg Garrett, wrote the following in a letter to Voyagers. “As we travel, we will consider the myriad consequences following upon the early migration of humans out of Africa and their dispersal to all corners of the globe…we will see how migration has influenced art, music, language, culture, social structure, economics, history, and politics.” All of these facets of society are constantly evolving and in an ever-shrinking world, migrations play a fundamental role in the global exchange of ideas. So, we say thank you to Charles Darwin for making that not only evolutionary, but also revolutionary voyage so long ago, and wish him a happy birthday.




Photos by SAS Photographer John Weakley

MICE

One of the most unique classes I have come across so far is Professor Matthew Burtner’s (for full bio, click here) Mobile Interactive Computer Ensemble. When I first saw the signs for a MICE show to be held outside on Deck 7 of the MV Explorer, I went not knowing what to expect. To be honest, even after seeing the show, I still had no idea what was actually happening on stage.

Last night, Matthew and his class gave a great presentation though, which cleared a lot of this up for me. MICE, which is a program that Matthew also runs at UVa, focuses on Interactive Acoustic Ecologies. In essence, he and his students are able to harness the natural world to make music. Originally from Alaska, it was Matthew’s home growing up that inspired him to fuse together nature with music.

How does one “play” the wind? Sand? The students of MICE know how. The technology that they use to achieve this is truly impressive. The special microphones and computer software, which they themselves have written, allows the MICE students to directly capture and input the sounds of nature to the computer, allowing them to then “own” the sound, synthesizing it with musical instruments or other acoustics and enabling the MICE to change the pitch and tone of all of the inputs instantaneously. Justin Thompson, a student from University of Vermont, remarked that the course is “completely unconventional for any kind of music you could think of and it opened my mind up to all of these natural elements being music.”

The process is basically as follows. After capturing the sounds of nature, as they did on board the ship by placing a special microphone in the wind and in Namibia by burying special microphones beneath the sand, the sound is then sent to a computer. Acoustic instruments are also added in and the students manning the computers filter the sound and using their self-designed software, which can interpret their movements and gestures, meld it together. Then, other members of MICE, using “instruments” like a percussion control, can add beats and melodies to further control the sound.


This course really allows students to use music to connect with the environment around them. In the words of Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist who produces art in natural and environmental settings, “You feel as if you have touched the heart of the place.” The students of MICE 2009 have staged concerts on board the MV Explorer, in the middle of the Namibian desert, gave a show at the Cape Town waterfront and the team has announced that an underwater show, utilizing the sounds emanating from the ship’s pool, is in the near future.


Photos #1,2, and 3 by SAS Photographer John Weakley

Namibian Choir Greets SAS

Below is a video of the Namibian choir that greeted Semester at Sea Voyagers upon our arrival in Walvis Bay.



Their visit to the MV Explorer brought a smile to all of our faces. After they had finished singing, the girls came aboard for brunch and met with students. One SAS student, Audrey, described her experience with the girls. After talking and playing with them, Audrey and her friends decided to give little gifts to the girls. They had planned ahead and had little things like stickers and pens in their rooms. The Namibian girls were so excited and asked if they could come down with the SAS students to see their rooms. Audrey described the Namibian girls' excitement and amusement over seeing new things, like contact lenses and crayons. A few of the girls asked Audrey if they could have the pictures she had up on her wall of her friends and family. One of the Namibian girls told Audrey that she wanted a picture of her family because she, "wasn't used to seeing a family together." There was one girl left though, and Audrey was out of gifts. She was trying to think of what she could give this Namibian girl and then an idea hit her. She ran to her closet and took out the dress that she had brought along for the Ambassador's Ball, which will be held towards the end of the voyage. The Namibian girl's eyes lit up. "For me?" she asked. Audrey smiled and answered yes and presented her with the dress.

This is one of the instances where I know that Semester at Sea students were able to make an impact on the lives of people they met in their journey, which is something we always hope for as we meet people around the world who touch us so deeply.


Video created by SAS Staff Video Producer, Jerry Pratt

Visiting the Ovahimba Tribe

One of the most unique field trips offered during our time in Namibia was a visit to the Ovahimba Tribe in their native kraal (village). Voyagers were flown from Walvis Bay to Opuwo in the northwest corner of the country where the tribe is located. The next morning, accompanied by a guide and translator, the group arrived at the kraal.

One Voyager described the experience as “like walking into the cover of National Geographic Magazine.” The Ovahimbas live a life that is for the most part secluded and untouched by modern society, and therefore have retained a mostly traditional lifestyle. The tribe breeds cattle and goats for sustenance. It is a very harsh natural environment though. To protect themselves from the sun, women cover their whole bodies with a red mixture of butter fat, ochre, and herbs.

One of the Semester at Sea Voyagers to visit the Ovahimba kraal was Marjorie Seawell, a lifelong learner on board for her third voyage. She shared her experience in Opuwo with the community at post-port reflection. “I knew that when I chose to go on this trip, I would be confronted with otherness.” The marked differences between their lives and ours truly struck her. However, Marjorie also found the commonalities that bind us all together. A retired labor and delivery nurse as well as a grandmother of thirteen, Marjorie is a real baby lover. When she saw the Ovahimba mothers with their babies, “it looked the same as me with my kids, and them with their kids. I felt a bond, a sisterhood, mom to mom, grandmother to grandmother…we have relationships of love and caring in our families that are the same in Denver, Colorado as a remote corner of Namibia.”