Kochi, Day One

John: We’re spending this entire week in India, yet another place we never realistically expected to be able to visit. The ship docked this morning in the port of Kochi—also known as Cochin—on the southwest coast. Many people on the ship have elaborate trips planned to explore more distant parts of India; from here; a good many are going north, to Agra, to see the Taj Majal, with some continuing on to the Ganges River, while others have been trying to figure out train schedules for trips to one place or another. (One component of figuring out train travel in India, clearly, is trusting your eyes when you see how cheap fares are—you can travel clear across the country for the equivalent of about four US dollars.) But we’ve never been to Kochi before, and there’s lots of stuff to do in the city and nearby in the rest of Karala, the Indian state in which Kochi is located, so we don’t feel a lot of wanderlust; we’ll use the ship as our base and make excursions from here.

Practically our first sight as the ship rounded into the harbor here this morning were the enormous fishing nets that are the virtual emblem of Kochi:

"Chinese" finish nets in Kochi Harbor

They’re elaborate spiderweb-type things that use a complicated system of counterweights to lower the nets into the water. They’re called “Chinese fishing nets” because they were introduced here when Kublai Khan invaded in the fifteenth century. That might be long enough to call them "Kochi fishing nets" in most other places, but that doesn't count for long enough in a culture like this, I guess.

The ship was greeted with drummers and dancers:

Drummers on the dock outside our ship. We have no idea who set this up.
We were then all anointed as we disembarked.

We all took a field trip today to a rural village; it was a trip organized in coordination with Vicki's class on women's fiction as well as another class, taught by Sandra Hinchman, on political and economic development. The goal was to see how the women in this village have worked together with NGOs over the past couple of decades to establish businesses of their own. As an exercise in learning about the politics and economics of micro-financing and women-led village cooperatives, the trip didn't work perhaps as well as we would have hoped.  It was only at the end of the visit, in the late afternoon, that we got to see one of the businesses, a small factory filled with hand looms, where weavers make beautiful cloth. And it's hard to figure out how anyone could make that a going concern--these looms were vintage 1750 technology, and they can't be competitive with machine looms, unless there's a guaranteed market for this kind of thing. Or there is some other angle that was never explained.

But, as a first-day introduction to village life in Karala, this was almost perfect. The villagers were almost unbelievably gracious and hospitable.  We were greeted, once again, with drummers, anointed, given necklaces made of jasmine flowers, and then served an extremely good lunch in the front courtyard of the home of the woman who seemed to be the group's leader. 

Lunch, served on a banana leaf

We toured the village. What was maybe most impressive were the houses, which were often architecturally impressive, and frequently painted in bright, cheerful colors:

One of many really nice houses in the village

These are family homes, often with large extended families living in them, and they're often quite beautiful. The last item on the program was a dance performance by some of the women in the village:

As I say, everyone was extraordinarily friendly, eager to get to know this group of college students, pretty well charmed by Aidan and Maeve, and hard to leave. They told us that they get a group like us about once a year, so this was kind of like a festival for them.  And for us, too.

So I actually couldn't tell you all that much about how micro-financing and collective decision making have made the lives of women in this village better. But we did have perhaps an ideal introduction to the people of Karela; it left an impression that the aggressive taxi drivers we're sure to encounter will not erase. 

There is, as often, something verging on the surreal about these experiences. At 8 am, we pull into a new country; by 1 pm or so we're sipping coconut in a country village, and chatting with people; in the evening, we're back on board in our rooms that look like they're in an American hotel. Weird. We'll make a sortie into town tomorrow.