Reflections on Things at Hand: Indian Sacred Caves

Don't know why my mind is full of India images tonight - maybe I feel like I'm cheating on India by spending so much time in the Middle East. Plus, as I was working up a presentation today I went through hundreds of pictures from the summer of 2004 that I spent teaching at Champlain's campus in Mumbai. That was before I started this blog, and, for that matter, before I started writing in my regular travel journal - so maybe I should make an effort to get some of this down before it all fades away. It really was the most amazing educational experience of my life, and India remains my favorite place in the whole world. I could fill up dozens of blog posting with my remembrances of India.

That said, let me, quickly, say a few words about the trip I made to Aurangabad shortly before I left India. I had been planning to make a weekend trip for a while and finally figured out where I wanted to go (my father and I made a wild trip down to Vellore and then up to Agra, but that's another posting). From Mumbai you can take a sleeper bus - sort of like in Harry Potter - up to Aurangabad, to the northeast. I saw several things that weekend, but what amazed me were the sacred caves of Ellora and Ajanta - I saw Ellora on Saturday and Ajanta on Sunday. Both are natural cave formations that were added on over the centuries - there were efforts to dig deeper into the side of the cliff and also innumerable statues were carved. Ellora is a combination of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain statues, carved depending upon what religion was popular with what leader at the time. Ajanta is all Buddhist, and also has paintings, which Ellora does not feature. I have a bizarre story about the most famous cave painting at Ajanta, but I've save that for later. The carving at Ellora which, to this day, I can't quite believe I saw - it ranks up there with the pyramids and the Taj Mahal and Petra and Notre Dame in the category of most amazing things I've ever seen - is what is sometimes referred to as cave 16, or the Kailasa temple. It is one massive temple, but it is even more astonishing that at first glance. It is carved out of one piece of stone - and is twice as big as the Parthenon. It is believed the 7000 craftsmen worked for a century and a half carving it out of the cliff. They just started at the top of the cliff and began to work their way down. It is almost beyond comprehension.

Saturday in Amman

It's Saturday night and back safely enscounced at ACOR. I had to get up early this morning to finish one of the two presentations I had to give this morning over at the University of Jordan (and after yesterday's long flight it was a challenge). The first one was about Global Modules and, not surprisingly, I was able to adapt that one fairly quickly. The second presentation was my own take on intercultural awareness, which was an interesting topic (although I'm sure not an interesting presentation). Both presentations, along with several others, were part of a small conference that UJ put together for their Intercultural Communication class. I had spent several hours working on the second presentation - mainly going back through thousands of old pictures from foreign travel and seeing what they sparked. In the end it was a series of pictures along with corresponding observations on what it means when cultures meet/clash/meld - the philosophers will be happy to know that I started with a picture I took from inside a cave at Petra and ended with a drawing of Plato's allegory of the cave. They both went well and it was a lot of fun. The kids from UJ, like their own international colleagues, really do want to communicate with the US. I'd love to have the people who routinely bad mouth the Middle East just spend some time with these wonderful students.

After the meeting I went out to Sane Yagi's house for lunch. Yagi is a UJ professor who is a big supporter of the GMs. He had a really nice house in a new suburb of Amman - and, like seemingly every building in Amman, it is made of white stone. He assures me it is very nice because he went in with all of his brothers on the construction of it (and because, before coming to UJ, he worked overseas for years). The house has five levels, with Yagi and his family living on the first floor, and four other brothers having their own level. We had a huge lunch - I accused Yagi and his wife of being closet Indians in their mad desire to stuff me - and I spent a long time talking to Yagi, his wife, and his two sons, both of whom are great young men. The younger son had just finished a midterm exam and UJ, while the other son is in e-commerce and was getting ready to take off in a couple hours for a conference in Las Vegas - typically, he handed his mother a long list of things he needed for the trip at the last moment (he had studied in Australia and New Zealand and had a wonderful mixed Arabic-Australian-Kiwi accent). His wife taught chemistry at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman for years. In addition I met Yagi's father, who also lives with them. We talked about politics and students and the peculiarites of the Arabic and English languages. All in all, a lovely day.

So, I'm now back at ACOR listening to Neil Young sing about a "Bad Fog of Loneliness." ACOR is a nice place to stay, but the only two TVs are downstairs, so the rooms are a bit quiet at night. Still, they have quite a collection of burnt CDs so maybe I'll go pick one out for a viewing on the laptop. But first, time to raid the kitchen for leftovers.

Back in Amman

OK, I've made it back to Amman, safe and sound. I'm staying at the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) again, although it looks pretty deserted at the moment. The flight was fairly uneventful, although the bulkhead seat I connived to score didn't have nearly the legroom that I was hoping for. Not much time at the moment because I have to get two presentations ready for tomorrow.

The Next Trip

. . . and there always seems to be a next trip. I'm in the middle of this trip and I'm already focused on the next one. I get back very late on the night of Tuesday 4 November (I'll be travelling the entire day of the elections, which will be a little odd - luckily I was able to vote early) and after being home for around thirty-six hours, I'm off on a two and a half week trip to Jordan (visits to the University of Jordan and Princess Sumaya University), the United Arab Emirates (visits to the Dubai and Abu Dhabi campuses of Zayed University), Oman (an initial visit to Sultan Qaboos University), and Hungary (visits to Corvinus University and Pazmany Peter University). I already have places to stay in Jordan and Oman, so I'm ahead of the game . . .

Al Akhawayn University

I'm currently at Ifrane, Morocco, visiting Al Akhawayn University. I've said a lot about the university in the past, so I won't go on and on about it this time. It's been a very lovely and productive stay so far. The folks here are very supportive of Champlain and our Global Modules project, and also remarkably friendly folks. It's bitterly cold - rainy and blustery - and one of the professors, my good friend Bouziane, even dropped off a sweater for me yesterday with the instructions that I should keep it and then just drop it off at the front gate to the university with the guards when I leave at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning (on my way to my 6:00 a.m. flight out of Fez). I'm staying at an apartment in one of the faculty housing units, which is very nice - and has cable TV - so I can keep up with the U.S. election through the BBC. I don't get CNN, which is OK because the British coverage is so far superior that it is a laughable comparison anyway. The students are having a big Halloween party this weekend, which may seem a little odd, but the Moroccans have a very tangible European sensibility about things, especially here in Ifrane, and the school also has a fair number of European students here on exchange (I'd love for some Champlain students to come here as well).

Like I said, the university is very supportive of our attempts to create international educational links. We are looking at embedding GMs in the first year courses in Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology and Geography, and in the second year courses in History, Literature and Philosophy - in addition to other selective courses across the curriculum. This is exactly the type of foundation that we need to take the GMs to the next level - I couldn't be happier. We've also begun discussions about grant opportunities, similar to the one we just submitted with Kenyatta University, the University of Pretoria and North Carolina A&T University.

Culture of Fear

Even though my latest passport adventure in Kenya ended up eliminating the Cape Town part of the my trip to South Africa I still had a great time. Everyone I met was wonderful - very friendly and out-going, and they reminded me, I suppose naturally enough, of Australians (although the South Africans would cringe at that comparison). I ended up spending my time in Pretoria, presenting at a conference on African curricular development and visiting the Universitity of Pretoria and the University of South Africa. I'll have more to say about this all later on, but what really struck me was how fear has taken hold in so much of the white community of Pretoria. When I first arrived in Pretoria I spent a few days at a bed & breakfast out in a very nice suburb of Pretoria, but you'd think it was an outright war zone for all the barb wire and electric fences that surrounded every single house. Home security has been an absolute boom industry in South Africa for some time now. The nice folks who ran the bed & breakfast were really intent on me never walking anyplace by myself - and, again, this was essentially a series of gated communities with not a poor person in sight. On a Sunday I didn't have anything to do and didn't want to sit around in my room so I asked the owners over breakfast if there was public transportation that I could take to downtown Pretoria for a walk and the woman who ran things had an absolutely stricken look on her face at the thought that I would do something so reckless. A nice young couple who were visiting from Cape Town volunteered to drop me off downtown at the zoo as they left for the day. The owner said that was OK, but that I had to call, from the zoo, as soon as I was finished and that they would come pick me up - and to not leave the zoo under any circumstances. Well, of course, I paid no attention to that directive. After a lovely couple hours in the zoo I went for a walk around downtown Pretoria and had a perfectly safe time. I ended up in the main square and just sat there, had some ice cream, and watched the world go by. I called her when I was finished and her husband drove out to get me. On another night I went for a walk to a local Chinese restaurant to grab dinner and suddenly a car pulled over - it was the owner who was out for a drive with her son. She insisted that I get in the car and she took me to the restaurant and volunteered to sit there while I picked up my food to go - and seemed a little startled that I intended to eat at the restaurant and then walk home. It reminded me of my first visit to Kenya when the woman who ran the conference center picked me up on the side of the road when I went for a walk, but I could at least process that event because I was walking towards a sort of ramshackle area - but this was a very posh area of Pretoria. I talked to several folks, including my driver (who I'll have more to say later) and the young couple from Cape Town, who felt that the folks in the suburbs of Pretoria were completely overreacting and that while there was a fair amount of crime in Johannesburg (or Joburg - pronounced jawburg - as everyone in South Africa called it) there wasn't enough in a nice area of Pretoria to justify that level of hysteria. It has inspired me to try and do some research on crime levels in South Africa. It reminded me of that book, Culture of Fear, that is discussed in Bowling for Columbine. In that spotless neighborhood in Pretoria there were even eight-foot high fences, topped with razor wire, around the local funeral home.

The U.S. Election

It's always amazing, and a bit humbling, how focused the rest of the world is on the U.S. elections - and also more than a bit embarrassing how little attention we pay to theirs. When I was in Kenya in September the Kenyans, naturally enough, were absolutely fascinated by the election. Everyone I met asked me if Obama would win or even could win. There was also great interest in South Africa, and here in Morocco. Most of the folks are hoping Obama wins, mainly because they view it as the opportunity for a much-needed change in American foreign policy. They are hoping that an Obama presidency would bring about a more balanced foreign policy - or at the very least a presidency that will actually look out to the rest of the world with a sense of leadership and optimism, as compared to fear and protectionism. For the Africans, especially, the hope is that an Obama presidency might signal an interest in a part of the world that routinely feels completely marginalized if not outright ignored. Here at Al Akhawayn University, up in Ifrane, Morocco in the Middle Atlas mountains, the students are actually having a mock election on Tuesday, that includes presentations by professors, as well as a celebration around both the mock election held here at the real one being held in the U.S. (or at least we hope it's not a mock one in the U.S. as well). I always tell my students that as American voters they have the most important and serious job in the world in that they are truly voting for the planet. Or, as my good friend Bouziane Zaid says, everyone on the planet should be able to vote in the U.S. election because the results impact them directly.