Caffeinated in the Caribbean

It never ends. After returning to the Purple Valley in January, I thought it would be a while before I would have any adventures to talk about. But apparently, there's always an expedition lurking around the corner. I recently returned from a week in the Dominican Republic: now sunburnt and satisfied, I recount to you the spoils from my wanderings...

Few people know, but I write for Gusto!, the campus gastromic society. For spring break, the gastronomes decided it was time that we really understood our food. Food is, of course, incredible... we can continue to talk about how delicious the black truffle oil is on this quiche or in that pasta, or how to make the perfect hoisin glaze for your pork this evening, but there is a growing consciousness that our food doesn't just grow on supermarket shelves: it comes from living, breathing, working communities. So, in hopes of exploring the process of farming and the ways it effects the people involved in it, Gusto! organized a trip to Finca Alta Gracia: a small-scale, fair-trade, organic coffee farm in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. The farm is owned my famous novelist Julia Alvarez and her husband. It is about an hour and a half away from the nearest big city (Santiago) and forty minutes away from the closest town (Jarabacoa), up in the tiny village of Los Marranitos (The Little Piglets), population 400.

10 foodies from all different walks of life converged on this rural farm last Saturday, huddled in a cold cabin in the mountains. Who said the Caribbean was warm? Headed by Deanna, a Middlebury graduate working as a volunteer in the community, we started a five day-long exploration of a community whose labors and lives can be found in our mugs every morning. Through our crazy experiences, not only did we get to have one of the most informative breaks ever, but I got to make 9 friends for life :)

Surrounded on all sides by glorious vegetation and idyllic mountainscapes, we were in nothing short of paradise. But even in this land up in the clouds, the workings of global capitalism has made its marks with the good, the bad and the ugly. Expecting a micro-farm handled by loving owners, we were instead met with one that had been incorporated into a large network of Dominican coffee farms owned by the Ramirez company. Turns out Bill and Julia just couldn't keep up with the maintenance sitting at home in the US.
The farm has maybe one full-time employee: all others are hired on a day-to-day basis. Workers show up at the farm's gate and if there's work, they get paid by the pound of coffee cherries. Preference goes to Haitian immigrants, since they will work at a lower wage. (So much for fair trade, huh?) Hardly any of the processing takes place on the farm -- after the beans are picked, they are taken to Jarabacoa for most of the processing. Beans from Finca Alta Gracia mainly go to Vermont to be packaged under the Cafe Alta Gracia label, certified organic and fair trade. Very little of the coffee actually stays inside the country.

With most of the work contractual and going to Haitians, the rate of unemployment among Dominican men reaches almost 100%. The community is supported entirely by the women, who work in cabanas: elegant country homes for Santo Domingo's rich elite. Rates of alcoholism among the jobless men are high. If theirs is a difficult plight, the Haitian men (many refugees from the earthquake) have it rough, too. Haitian workers live in a slum-like setting - a wooden dorm, built by the Ramirez, houses 80 of them, who all use one latrine.

The schooling in Los Marranitos only goes to third grade, with older kids having to walk to the high school in Los Dajaos over an hour away. School gets out at 12, leaving kids with nothing to do all afternoon. None of these towns have much electricity (what there is is solar-powered) and there is no running hot water for miles.

We spent three out of our five afternoons playing with the kids after school, singing songs, reading to them and teaching them about basic sanitation and the need to keep their community clean (with more back-and-forth taking place between Haiti and the DR, there is a real worry of a cholera outbreak). They really gave my Spanish and my stamina a run for their money. We played infinite games of Duck-Duck-Goose and cooked S'Mores on a gas stove. WTF is S'more in Spanish?

The first morning we were there, we attended a community meeting with Haitians that taught cholera prevention. Another morning, we attended a ceramics workshop with a Spanish woman who teaches the forgotten art of Taino pottery. (The Taino people were the indigenous people of the Dominican Republic who were almost completely wiped out by Columbus' men). She believes that art can be an invaluable tool for women: by taking ownership of an art form, women can derive empowerment through a creative outlet. The women we talked to, however, felt like they didn't have the time for it. They had a whole community to support.

When we were not learning about the wonderful community of Los Marranitos, we were off scurrying around the central DR. We went sit on rocks by a secluded river, trekked down to a waterfall that was featured in Jurassic Park, learned Bachata Merengue in the dark, got stuck in the back of our pickup truck in the pouring rain, hiked all the way to an old stone Taino settlement, explored the nearby town of Jarabacoa, sunbathed on the farm and took a starlit ride out to Manabao (I have never seen so many stars in my life -- the Big and Little Dippers were all up in my grill).

It was a five-day intense experience and it was life-changing. Coming out of IHP, I really felt like I was following up on some of the critical lessons I learned about community organization and local needs assessment. It also brought an incredible depth to an otherwise hedonistic interest in gastronomy. Our food comes from places where people live, fight and suffer. And it is important to know that. Think twice about labels like fair trade -- what does it actually mean? Very little can be done in five days, but most importantly, we learned and I for one am going to work hard to spread the message.

To Prim, Christine, Zara, Fiona, Brooke, Omer, Lily, April, Kim and Deanna: you guys are the best. I cannot remember having felt so refreshed in my life. MORE COFFEE, MORE GREEN BANANAS! For some awesome photos, check out the Williams Expedition Blog.



I left the group on Thursday to go to the beach on the Northern coast. What's a Spring Break in the Caribbean without A SPRING BREAK IN THE CARIBBEAN? I journeyed solo to the seaside surf town of Cabarete, where I checked into a hostel and parked my butt on the beach for two days getting my tan on, listening to music, eating Haagen-Dasz out of the carton and reading. I met a whole host of people: a PhD student at Georgia Tech who put the 'blond' in blond, two crazy Cornell kids on Spring Break, a beautiful Belgian girl who had been island-hopping for two months and a Norwegian girl who had been going kite-surfing every day for three weeks. In the course of the three days, I switched from English with the Americans, to Spanish with the Dominicans, to French with the Belgian girl to Portuguese with this dude who had spent time in Brazil. My brain was one crazy linguistic blur. A couple of mojitos cured that, though.


Before flying back to New York, I spent an afternoon walking around Santo Domingo, the capital of the DR and the oldest colonial city in the Americas. The colonial quarter is a little slice of Spain in the Caribbean: walking around the old buildings felt like I had been transported back to the 1600s when Columbus was running around the country with his men killing all the locals and instituting Spanish iron law everywhere he went... aaah, colonial history: why does it have to be so pretty?

I was welcomed back to the country with a romp through Manhattan with my boys Sam F and Malik!! Delicious breakfast sandwiches at No.7 Sub Shop, an escapade through the Museum of Sex and a whole lotta Chipotle in my tummy. Best morning ever? You betcha.

A Whole New World

It has been more than a week since I’ve returned to the States. At home with my sister, brother-in-law, two sick nephews, parents and a brother on the way today, I find myself contemplating this past semester and this past year as a whole. After all, with the new year looming, isn’t it natural?

2010 started at home in India. It took me to Georgia, back to the states, to Morocco and Spain, then back to the states, to Kuwait and then back to the states. To Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam and then back to the states one last time. I have lived out of a suitcase for the most part. My life took transience to new levels.

This past semester was a challenge. On the one hand, there was the feat of settling into a place and space within the short five weeks I had there; on the other, there was the constant battle to remain good-humored while dealing with the same 31 people day in and day out. There were definitely times when all I wanted to do was disappear. But now that I’m out on the other side and with the benefit of that tricky little phenomenon we call hindsight, I can’t help miss my constant travels. Though it might be a while until I begin to miss class time, I have already started to think longingly about the wind in my hair as I zoom by on the back of motorcycle through the streets of Hanoi, the countless glasses of Sauvignon Blanc in Cape Town and the kind of unsettlingly cheesy smell of pao de queijo in Sao Paulo. I did IHP because I needed a change of pace: a little taste of life outside of the purple bubble, where some people don’t own an article of J. Crew clothing, where people aren’t assumed to be liberal until proven otherwise, where dinner is always a great surprise. It certainly did the trick.

I’ve had three very different travel experiences over the course of the past year. I came out of each with some refreshing perspective. The hardest thing? It’s keeping that perspective while walking up and down the slopes of Mission Hill. If there’s one thing that this semester taught me (and it might go without saying, but it’s surprising how often we seem to forget it), it’s that there’s an ENTIRE WORLD outside of Williams. Everything that happens in that warped little Berkshire town has absolutely no impact on the greater globe and should not have an impact on you either. When I get back to college, I hope to devote myself more fully to the things and the people I love. My life is ultimately about me and I need to continue to make myself happy. For those of you who know my woeful tendencies at Williams, check back with me in a few months to see if I’ve kept my game up.

And so that concludes a year of travel. 12 months and 10 countries later, I’m headed back to Williams in less than 5 days. I’m excited to be settled, to be with the friends who I love and who have supported me over the past 7 months even in absence and to finally get back to Art History: I’VE MISSED YOU!

Down With The 'Rhea, Oh De-Ah!

So here we are in Hanoi, final destination and final frontier. I’m down with a case of the stomach woes so I’ve taken the day off and holed myself up in the favored IHP spot, Joma Café – an expat-run coffee shop furnished with a clean bathroom within easy access.

Apart from running a riot in my belly, Vietnam has treated us well. We have class in the Ho Chi Minh museum under the tutelage of a coordinator who has her s**t totally together. I have a wonderful, loving host family that gets incredible pleasure from seeing me and Andrew feasting on the spread every night. Also, the dong goes far, allowing us to live in a lap of luxury.

After having been the road for over six months, you’d expect me to suffering from at least some homesickness. Though I haven’t suffered from any heart-stopping yearning to be back at Williams or the U.S., I have found myself giving into the homegrown pleasures like eating a smoked salmon sandwich for lunch or going to see the new Harry Potter movie at the one English-language movie theater in all of Hanoi yesterday afternoon. I love being in Hanoi and I feel like I could be on the road forever, but I think it’ll be nice to settle down again with creature comforts like my own room, a closet to hang my clothes in, regularity to where and when I’m eating …

Last weekend, a group of us went to Halong Bay, one the most incredible natural wonders I have ever seen. Over 2000 limestone kersts rise from the water to make a haunting archipelago of islands, perfect for cruising along with friends for an entire weekend. We rocked the deck of the boat with karaoke and wine, the setting incredible, the company fabulous. That was an experience that will be etched into my mind forever.

Only two and a half more weeks to go. How’s that for a scary thought?

(Images courtesy of the magnificent Andrea Roman-Alfaro!)

Happy Happy Happy in Hanoi

Caught in a shroud of smog and incense, Cape Town is now set a distant time and place. With Vespas zooming by within a hair’s distance of my body and heaps of noodles being dished up at every corner, South Africa couldn’t seem any further away. And for the first time on this trip, I feel homesick – not for Kuwait, not really for India, not even for Williams, but for the glorious city of Cape Town. Hiking up Table Mountain might be strenuous and exhausting, but once you’re at the top, it’s nirvana: mountains and oceans come together in to find a city that is truly eternal.

The last week in South Africa was our one vacation over the course of the semester. I spent it in style, first heading to the glorious winelands followed by four days at a beachside apartment in the surfer’s village of Muizenberg. Camped out in the stunning university town of Stellenbosch, the wine country’s unofficial capital, I spent the first half of our holiday reveling in one long Bacchanal. From winery to winery, restaurant to amazing restaurant, I lived in a hedonist’s paradise. With friends in tow, we went to Paarl to muck around at the Taal monument, to Franschhoek to dine in delight and around Stellenbosch to discover its tranquil splendor. Pierre, an eighteen year-old French exchange student who was living with my first home stay family through his yearlong English program, had come to join us. With his boyish good looks and instant charm, he was an immediate hit with everyone – break just would not have been the same without this amiable Frenchman’s presence and his connoisseurship of wine and good food. I miss him and his lost puppy dog ways dearly already.

We spent the second half of the week lazing around an apartment and bumming around the beach. I got to do what I’ve always wanted to do in life: wake up early to get bread fresh out of the oven at the local bakery, pick up coffee and do yoga all before everyone else in the house had woken up. Over those four days, I cooked up a storm. Best creations? Maybe it was my Thai Ramen with chicken, shitake, baby corn and snow peas? Or possibly even some French Toast with melted Brie and blueberry coulis? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

Four our last night in Cape Town, we went out with a bang. After having spent the day visiting with the penguins at Boulders Beach and then eating with the baboons at Cape Point, a bunch of us went to the Capetonian outpost of Nobu for a final celebratory dinner. Sitting on the eastbound flight the following morning, mere hours after saying goodbye to my Bo-Kaap host family, to Pierre and to Table Mountain, it was hard not to let my excitement get muddled up with the feeling that I had left something behind.

But Vietnam doesn’t allow for any sappy Eeyore-like pondering. Hanoi is has been amazing so far. As I sit under a fan, getting ready for bed in a mosquito net, I feel like I’m as close to be being back in India as I can get without actually being there. We spent the first few days in the Ancient Quarter of Hanoi where the hustle and bustle of nonstop activity had our senses abuzz. The best thing about Vietnam? The food, duh. Pho everywhere; noodles for every meal. Delicious Vietnamese coffee’s milky sweetness. It’s nothing short of amazing satisfaction.

Now if only I could be assured that I won’t get hit by a speeding motorcycle…

In Love With The Mother City: My Oedipal Complex

Looking out over the sweeping view of the city that the summit of Lion’s Head affords, I know that my eyes are drinking in every thing that is right with Cape Town. There’s the hipsterish Neighbourgoods Market held at Old Biscuit Mill in up-and-coming Woodstock every Saturday – it’s otherwise known as my idea of heaven. There are the soft, sandy beaches of Camps Bay hugged by the Twelve Apostles. There’s the verdant expanses of the Kirstenbosch Gardens displaying all the glorious flora the Western Cape has to offer. There’s the Company’s Garden to wile away the hours following the ducklings as they waddle across monuments and marigolds. There are countless great eats in breezy, open cafes and chichi froufrou restaurants. And then there’s Table Mountain: the one Godly presence that follows you everywhere in this breathtaking city.

Yes, I guess I’m in love. There are few other cities in the world that have so undoubtedly swept me off my feet. But of course, IHP doesn’t have you just frolick through a city for pure pleasure. They let you know what the problems are and they make you live it.

Despite Cape Town’s seductive beauty, it remains incredibly dangerous. Vestiges of apartheid keep people in desperate poverty and that has led to some of the highest crime rates in the world. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of uncomfortable run-ins to suggest that this is true (nothing awful, don’t worry – but some of us have come super-close to finding ourselves in trouble). One of the most pressing issues today is the stigma that is attached to the townships – areas designated for the blacks and coloreds* of South Africa to live under the apartheid government. In true IHP fashion, they have us living in a township for the second half of our Cape Town stay. I’m currently staying in Langa, the oldest township in Cape Town.

How can you blame the international community for misrepresenting life in the townships when South Africans themselves are so sheltered from the reality? After having only spent a few days here, you realize that ‘township’ is no synonym for ‘slum’. Yes, townships are prone to accruing informal settlements. But I am not staying in a shack. In fact, I live in a stunning three-bedroom one-storey house in which my host mother has fitted a surround-sound home entertainment system and a Jacuzzi tub. In no way is this the expected norm, but quality of life in the township can often rival that of inner-city dwellers. Unfortunately, it is these people who don’t come to the outskirts of town to see what life here is really like.

South Africa remains a very unequal society. But there are some obvious marks of a silver lining. South Africans, regardless of whether they are white, black, colored or Indian, can now all occupy the same public spaces – something that was unimaginable only sixteen years ago. Sitting at a bar on Long Street or at a bench on the V&A Waterfront, the most visited destination in all of Africa, you look past the lost-looking tourists to see a Cape Town that has hope. There might not be as many interracial mixing as one would look for in the ideal environment but it’s moving somewhere. We can only hope that time will heal the wounds… for my sake at least, because any city where you can see zebras on your daily commute into town needs to be the paradise it deserves to be.

Cape Town like Candy; The Buzz in Buenos Aires

Saying good-bye to Sao Paulo wasn’t hard. We were ready to move along. Nothing allowed me to wish it farewell better than a stop at the ballyhooed Biennial and popping Sonique. The Biennial, themed around the intersection of art and politics, was a sensory overload of art from all over the world housed in the never-ending layers of an Oscar Niemeyer building. Sonique, a bar-slash-club, kept the Lemongrass Martinis flowing and the Spicegirls playing. Z Carniceria is a mini-Meat Packing District: what was once a butcher’s is now a bar catering to the alternative hipster set, replete with meat still hanging from the ceilings. It is places like this that will make me miss Sao Paulo: the city is unbelievably grittysexycool. You need to peel away at some layers but you will finally get to something juicy. Maybe it’s a small store in Bixiga selling delicious pesto or a tiny pizza place on Rua Augusta with graffiti-covered walls and incredible slices – Sao Paulo will have you reeling at its hidden gems.

Our journey to Cape Town took us through the city of Buenos Aires. We had a twelve-hour layover and I wasn’t about to waste it. I cabbed it to Plaza de Mayo’s Casa Rosada to meet up with my darlings Emily and Kera, not just friends but sisters by a bond stronger than blood: a cappella. Streetphoria, Latin America edition, was on. Emily needed to go to a Bolivian festival out in the boonies for schoolwork so off we went on the rickety Subte to a far out part of the city where 65,000 people had gathered to celebrate the Virgin and the Bolivian community. Dancers, parades and different smells all came together in a complete inundation of the senses. After a guided romp through the festival, Emily’s coordinator was kind enough to drive me back to downtown Buenos Aires, pointing out the sites as we went along. We spoke in Spanish, but a month of Portuguese seemed always to get in the way. Once in Palermo, Emily and Kera were intent on giving me a quick taste of Argentina, since I had practically spent the entire day in Bolivia. They rushed me from empanadas to dulce de leche ice cream in a flash and boy, what an intensely phenomenal experience that was. But if there was one thing that made my race through the city worth it, it was being with two people that made me excited about Williams again. When I went back to share a cab ride with two people on my program to the airport in order to catch our 11:30PM flight to Cape Town, it turned out that they had left already, leaving me stranded in a city that I didn’t know without a peso to my name. Shocked, flustered and totally lost, I wouldn’t have known what to do without my friends. Emily and Kera handed me cash, hailed me a cab and got me on my way back to the airport. I owe them so much more than just the money they lent me. After over a month of resenting what waits for me back at Williams, they reminded me of a Williams that is a world of beautiful friends who will look out for me (and I them), no matter what.

In Cape Town now and life’s good. I’m living in the Bo-Kaap, a Muslim neighborhood of Cape Malays living in pastel-colored houses, just a couple of blocks up from the action of City Bowl. Table Mountain and the two oceans follow me wherever I go. The city is full of great eats (tons of breezy hipster cafes and restaurants to keep me satisfied), but the thing I drink in the most is the fresh ocean/mountain air. The colonial architecture, the imposing cloud-covered mountains and the crystal blue ocean are all enough to have seduced me for life.

Carioca Charisma, Porcine Paradise, Calming Curitiba and Flippin' Floripa

Steaming dumplings straight off the frying pan in Liberdade. Coffee and organic bread in Jardim Paulista. Graffitti art in Vila Madalena. Acai, passion fruit, guavas and star fruit at every turn. Wavy Niemeyer modernism on the streets and in the bends of downtown. Art and light at the Pinatoeca do Estado; Van Gogh, Renoir and Dali at the MASP. This is all that Sao Paulo has to offer.

No, it’s not a pretty city, but its tantalizing flavors keep me coming back for more. Unfortunately, this semester is not the hedonistic romp across the world that I secretly wanted it to be. With its highfalutin name, the International Honors Program takes itself pretty seriously. And that’s slightly inopportune for vagabond young souls like me who want to spend the semester goofing off in museums and cafes. The program does not leave you a second to breathe, with days jam-packed with lectures on politics, economics, development, urban planning, race relations and the list goes on endlessly. We spend hours discussing contentious contemporary issues, always wary about our stance as an outsider and always frustrated at our inability to access all corners of knowledge. The fact that there is so much going on means that the seams are often frayed and parts of the program are executed sloppily. At times it can all get a little exhausting, a little exasperating, a little claustrophobic… a little much. But though I often worry about the fact that I am traveling all around the world with a group of 31 students all affiliated with American institutions, I realized one thing today: that loving, caring atmosphere that I found at Williams is following me around uncomfortable situations across the globe and there’s a real value in that. It is quite the departure from my summer travels and I delight in knowing that I’ve dappled in two extremes.

I took a break from the hustle-and-bustle of Sao Paulo to visit what is arguably Brazil’s most iconic city: Rio de Janeiro. Nine of us piled into a bus at midnight to undertake the 6 hour-long journey to find shelter in the shadow of Cristo Redentor. We arrived Saturday morning to a rainy, overcast weekend. Was that going to stop us? Hell no. We put on our rain gear and headed out to the beach, welcomed into Christ’s open arms. We spent the morning running around Leblon and Ipanema before ducking into a café in Copacabana for some Irish coffee to warm our hearts up a little. We spent the afternoon eating Bahian food in a hut by the lake, the night in Lapa's bars drinking and playing games followed by clubs dancing to Carioca funky (imagine M.I.A on ‘roids). The next day it was to Sugar Loaf Mountain and the Ipanema beach hippie fair. One last walk by the Atlantic before we hopped back on a bus and came home to Sao Paulo for dinner. The image of Cristo Redentor swathed in a sheet of fog will be burned into my mind forever...

About ten days ago, the program took us to a site of the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – The Movement of Landless Rural Workers). The MST is an organization in Brazil through which activists seize land from private owners of latifundias (large plots of land that stretch out for hectares and hectares) to allow the rural and urban poor to come farm the soil using sustainable techniques in a radical effort to redistribute resources in a highly unequal society. The encampent we visited was in the rural village of Itapeva, located in the south of Sao Paulo state. We arrived to a small community of dirt fields with basic lodging, a large pond and several agrovila settlements that had every thing from bakeries and pig farms to banana trees and pharmacies.

We even got to witness pig manure produce methane gas to power Our night in the village, replete with porcine company, caipirinhas and samba, brought our individual political ideologies to the forefront: dealing with a movement that stands on the far left is enough to bring out the most vehement of arguments. But we all left content, stomachs filled with rice and beans straight from the fields in the backyard and butts covered in dirt.

We moved on to the city of Curitiba in the state of Parana. Curitiba is supposedly world-renowned for its efficient transit systems, green spaces and waste management. Well… I had never heard of it. Curitiba is a buzzword for urban planners worldwide and its system of flood drainage and transport interconnectivity is a model for cities all across the globe. The classes we had might have been informative, but the best part of our Curitbano experience was our host family. Rob, Andrew and I got to live with Yara, her daughter Gabriella, her son Rafael, his wife Juliana and their six dogs. They were the warmest, most welcoming people I have met in a long, long while. They showed us around the city’s many beautiful parks, took us out drinking, sent us off to clubs, fed us happily and then drove Rob and I to a fantabulous weekend in Florianopolis, the magical island. Florianopolis is nothing short of amazing. I knew it was destined to be good when all Rafa played on the four- hour-drive down was a Glee medley. Beautiful beaches, palm trees everywhere, breathtaking panoramas, an expansive lake, dunes, amazing bars… yes, it was the winter and yes, it did rain, but it definitely did not stop our parade. We went out to a bar on Saturday and got the band to let us join in on their cover of “Save Tonight”. We spent a lazy Saturday afternoon walking the beach, eating fresh mussels and going out shopping in little island stores. Though we left early on Sunday, I still got to go do early morning sun salutations on Barra da Lagoa beach. The most unfortunate part of the trip? My camera was out of battery. Oh, and that now, I’m broke.

It’s now our last week in Brazil and there are a lot of different emotions surfacing among the group: restlessness, relief, happiness and sadness are all mixed in together. In such a tight group, it’s hard not to be confused about what you think. Personally, I am ready to move on, though I will miss this place dearly, just like I do any city I’ve spent a lot of time in. People who came to Brazil expecting an island paradise were disappointed – as they should be, since that Brazil exists only in the imaginations of tourists. Sao Paulo is a driven city of the future and I will think about its smorgasbord of delights for months to come.

One to Cape Town, with a brief 12-hour sojourn in Buenos Aires!