A couple posts ago I got pretty heated while talking about the geese that walk around like they own the Mojo plantation. Some of my readers have questioned my manhood for complaining about geese-attacks. There have even been some who have questioned my understanding of the animal kingdom. They tell me that all animals are territorial and that I am invading their natural habitats. Others have reminded me that geese are beautiful and accused me of goose-envy. One particular grump e-mailed me to tell me that this sort of hatred for animals resulted in entire species going extinct. I’m going to stick to my guns on this one though, because I don’t think any of my critics have ever been attacked by geese and I am pretty sure goose-extinction shouldn’t be anyone’s top concern these days. The worldwide economy looks like it’s in a long-term recession and this idiot is worried about geese?
Now, I know that writing about geese for the second time in my first ten blog posts might call my credibility as a serious writer into question. If however, that is what you are thinking than you should reserve judgement on my writing for a minute. Because this post is not actually about geese. It is about ducks.
My literary reputation remains intact.
In my post on geese I commented on the duck that lives with the geese. I’m pretty sure my exact words were “the duck just goes about minding its own business and eating dirt”. It might not have seemed like a particularly endearing comment, but something about that duck waddling around eating dirt really connected with me. For an animal to gain my affection I don’t really ask for that much. I don’t need an animal to do tricks or play games with me. I don’t need an animal to protect me and my family. Generally speaking, my only requirement to enjoy the company of an animal is that it not attack me. So I’ve got to say that even though the duck hung out with the asshole geese, I came to appreciate it for not bowing to peer pressure and physically abusing me.
The last couple days I even started feeding the duck scraps of bread. This was doubly rewarding for me as I got to play with a duck and also make the geese jealous. I even thought about naming the duck, but then I remembered people were already questioning my manhood for being afraid of geese so I stuck with calling it “Duck”.
As you can probably tell me and this duck had a pretty good thing going. Nothing too serious, just some good company once or twice a day. But this morning I was drinking my coffee reading an old issue of “Us Weekly”, and I hear a commotion coming from where the geese had been holding fort. I look up from my article on Heath Ledger’s supposed out-of-wedlock child, and see the three geese go flying past me. I didn’t even know the geese could fly so I knew right there and then that there was trouble afoot. Without even standing up I turned my head quickly to the left. That was all it took for me to see what had happened. There, hanging from the mouth of Stella, the owner’s German Sheppard, was my friend the duck.
I’m not going to go into any details about the dead duck because in all honesty it was pretty disturbing. But this afternoon as I walked down to get myself some lunch I looked at the geese and I regretted writing that post a few days back. Those geese looked at me and they let me pass by undisturbed. I’ll bet the geese gave that duck a hard time back when it was alive. The probably treated it like their annoying younger brother who won’t stop playing with his Yak-Bak. But I’d be willing to bet even more that those geese are going to miss having that duck around, just eating dirt and minding it’s own business. And maybe it won’t last past tonight, but for at least one day that duck’s death helped the geese and I lay down our arms and live in harmony.
So tonight I’m pouring one on the curb in memory of my old friend the duck, who did what no one else could and brought peace to the Mojo Plantation.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Effect of Honey-Bees on Coffee Crops in Karnataka
The Rainforest Retreat today hosted a presentation for 20 local farmers on the effects of maintaining a honey-bee population on coffee farms. The presentation was made in conjunction with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Envioronment (A-Tree) educated farmers on the increase in crop yield that honey bees can stimulate.
As an organization, A-Tree does not suggest that organic practices are the solution for all farmers. Instead it advocates for a best-practice method involving a high density of native shade trees, low chemical inputs, and a high usage of farmyard manure. By following these methods, honey bee populations survive and help farmers by naturally pollinating their coffee flowers.
In North America, the practice of “mobile pollination” has recently become much more prevalent. Mobile pollination involves the transport of huge numbers of bees in trucks that are released for a short period of time during pollination season. This practice is not only undesirable for a farm like the Mojo Plantation, where introducing a mono-culture of any species would be devastation, but is not practical for a heavy-rainfall region like Coorg. In spite of having nearly 3500mm of rain annually, many of the major crops flower during the rainy season and bees would not leave their boxes during a rainfall.
Therefore, the best-practice model that A-Tree advocates would simply generate larger populations of bees naturally. By substituting chemical use for manure use, Coorg’s farmers could prevent the wipe-out of useful pollinator populations through indiscriminate spraying. And as a region, Coorg is already an ideal habitat for bee populations because of the thick canopy of native trees that cover the hills.
While the presentation seemed to be advocating a fairly straightforward procedure that would drastically reduce the external input costs for farmers, many of those in attendance seemed unconvinced. Coorg’s farmers have seen the worldwide reduction in honey-bees firsthand, and many indicated that they had noticed no decrease in their yield in the last five years. The best-practice model however was widely accepted as being desirable as
it limited expensive external inputs. Many of the farmers had already begun to decrease their reliance on commercially-marketed chemicals by increasing their manure use and agreed that their annual yield had not significantly decreased.Aranin Chakdavarath, the student responsible for the presentation, defended his research but moved more towards the subject of how to popularize this best-practice system. As only 3% of farmers in Coorg own more than one hectare, it was generally agreed that some form of local body was require to form a co-operative among local farmers. Small farmers have little financial incentive to pursue these best-practice methods as they cannot afford to market their production practices and receive any premium price. Until a premium price was attached to coffee grown using the best-practice method, farmers would continue to farm either using chemicals or organically with little consideration for other methods.
Ultimately the A-Tree meeting provided the small farmers of Coorg with an opportunity to meet and discuss the issues that the all share. The likelihood of any concrete action being taken to increase the bee population in the area seems slim. Many of the farmers did however express their intention to avoid removing bee hives on their properties temporarily.
Maintaining Natural Bio-Diversity as an Alternative to Chemical-Use on the Mojo Plantation
It’s been a week since I arrived and I’m pretty sure I’ve beaten the jetlag. I still wake up at an ungodly hour, but at the very least I am able to stay awake long enough to eat dinner at 8:30. I’ve got to say that being able to sleep in past six is a bit of a relief because it turns out my roof is inhabited by a family of lizards. They scamper back and forth across my ceiling apparently playing some sort of lizard-tag or some other recreational lizard-game. They’re not quite loud enough to wake me up, but once I’m awake they sure as hell make sure I stay that way. At first I thought they were rats, and after my experience with the geese I was understandably upset that I was being tortured by yet another animal that nobody would find cool. Yesterday morning however I finally caught a glimpse of them and they are indeed lizards
I have spent the last two days mostly learning about organic farming practices. Part of the reason I accepted this job was because I felt that the term “organic” was losing meaning in Canada. I know that “organic” means non-chemicalization, but I also know that there is no way the organic oranges I am buying at Sobey’s in mid-February are particularly good for the environment. If I am buying organic products simply because I am worried about the chemicals, I might save myself some money on apples and buy Nicorette gum to cut out the thousands of chemicals I inhale every day.
But I try to buy organic products because at some time during my personal development I became convinced that they were good for the environment. But when I really thought about it I realized that a truckload of oranges (organic or otherwise) being driven across the continent does not exactly define environmentally-friendly. So I’ve got to admit that I was pretty skeptical about an organic farm in a rainforest. Didn’t David Suzuki say we should leave the rainforests alone?
Well it turns out that every once in a while a skeptic like myself can be converted, because this place not only preserves the rainforest, but that preservation is the only thing that allows the agricultural crops to survive. I’m pretty sure bio-diversity will be a pretty major them in this blog, because every single action taken on this farm seems to be motivated by not only maintaining the Rainforest’s bio-diversity but encouraging it as well.
One of the pre-conceived assumptions I had about organic farms was that they automatically produced lower crop-yields. I was convinced that by spraying crops, farmers were able to protect against disease and insects, thereby increasing their plants’ ability to produce fruits (or beans, or vegetables). Otherwise, why would farmers invest so heavily in purchasing chemicals and pesticides year after year? The Mojo Plantation however operates on the principle that by retaining the biodiversity within a rainforest a farmer can use the natural balance that exists within that ecosystem to control pests and disease.
The basic premise of this operating principle is that rainforests are able to survive for thousands of years because there are predators that control the population of each living organism. By maintaining the habitats that these predatory populations require, the Mojo Plantation can regulate the population of pests that would normally destroy their crops. When commercial agricultural farms spray their crops with pesticides, they wipe out the predatory population as well as their targeted pests. This creates a dependency on chemicals as the predatory population may take longer to return then the bugs that decimate their crops.
For me at least, this presented a pretty convincing argument for supporting organic farming. If the farmers are actively working to maintain the eco-systems in which they operate, than the ecological cost of transporting their products remains negligible when compared to the ecological cost of commercial farming. Buying organic products that are produced locally is obviously ideal. But if the term “organic” has sufficient regulatory standards, I believe that it does represent a substantial opportunity for consumers to limit the impact their purchases have on the environment.
I have spent the last two days mostly learning about organic farming practices. Part of the reason I accepted this job was because I felt that the term “organic” was losing meaning in Canada. I know that “organic” means non-chemicalization, but I also know that there is no way the organic oranges I am buying at Sobey’s in mid-February are particularly good for the environment. If I am buying organic products simply because I am worried about the chemicals, I might save myself some money on apples and buy Nicorette gum to cut out the thousands of chemicals I inhale every day.
But I try to buy organic products because at some time during my personal development I became convinced that they were good for the environment. But when I really thought about it I realized that a truckload of oranges (organic or otherwise) being driven across the continent does not exactly define environmentally-friendly. So I’ve got to admit that I was pretty skeptical about an organic farm in a rainforest. Didn’t David Suzuki say we should leave the rainforests alone?
Well it turns out that every once in a while a skeptic like myself can be converted, because this place not only preserves the rainforest, but that preservation is the only thing that allows the agricultural crops to survive. I’m pretty sure bio-diversity will be a pretty major them in this blog, because every single action taken on this farm seems to be motivated by not only maintaining the Rainforest’s bio-diversity but encouraging it as well.
One of the pre-conceived assumptions I had about organic farms was that they automatically produced lower crop-yields. I was convinced that by spraying crops, farmers were able to protect against disease and insects, thereby increasing their plants’ ability to produce fruits (or beans, or vegetables). Otherwise, why would farmers invest so heavily in purchasing chemicals and pesticides year after year? The Mojo Plantation however operates on the principle that by retaining the biodiversity within a rainforest a farmer can use the natural balance that exists within that ecosystem to control pests and disease.
The basic premise of this operating principle is that rainforests are able to survive for thousands of years because there are predators that control the population of each living organism. By maintaining the habitats that these predatory populations require, the Mojo Plantation can regulate the population of pests that would normally destroy their crops. When commercial agricultural farms spray their crops with pesticides, they wipe out the predatory population as well as their targeted pests. This creates a dependency on chemicals as the predatory population may take longer to return then the bugs that decimate their crops.
For me at least, this presented a pretty convincing argument for supporting organic farming. If the farmers are actively working to maintain the eco-systems in which they operate, than the ecological cost of transporting their products remains negligible when compared to the ecological cost of commercial farming. Buying organic products that are produced locally is obviously ideal. But if the term “organic” has sufficient regulatory standards, I believe that it does represent a substantial opportunity for consumers to limit the impact their purchases have on the environment.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The most dangerous animal in all of the jungle...
There’s a lot of animals I worried would give me a hard time while I was in India. I have never claimed to be any form of animal-fighting prize fighter, but in Toronto I generally think I could hold my own if a wild-animal attacked (note that I said “wild”, I am not claiming I could fight a dog). A raccoon might rough me up a little but if it really came down to it I think I would at the very least survive. When it comes to Indian animals though, I’m pretty sure I am overmatched. I would not just lose, I would die. There might be one or two people out there who would die more quickly than I would, but this probably would be little consolation as I would still be dead.
On the list of animals that I really did not want to encounter while strolling through the jungle, there is a pretty clear order. The top three would most likely include tigers, rhinos, and particularly big snakes. If anyone denies that they are scared of these animals they are in my opinion either lying, or idiots. Fortunately for the safety of my afternoon hikes, there are no longer any tigers left in my region of India, and my pre-departure rhinoceros research assured me that they did not live in mountains. There are apparently snakes but they are mostly non-poisonous and are afraid of humans, so I would have appeared to have had all my bases covered. What I did not anticipate however, was having to deal with a bunch of asshole geese every single day. Between my room and the eating area live three geese and a duck. The duck mostly minds its’ own business and goes about eating dirt and keeping out of my way. The geese? Well the geese will watch me as I walk down one of the two paths across the property, and separate in order to block both paths and attack me. They will literally waddle across a bridge and fly across a badminton court just to make sure I don’t get to eat lunch in peace. If this sort of behaviour was exhibited in a human being he would be sent to jail.
If you’ve ever been attacked by a goose you’ll understand how disconcerting it can be. It causes absolutely no pain because geese are stupid birds with no teeth or claws. For all intents and purposes if I were to be attacked by any one species in the animal kingdom based on their attack-properties I would probably choose a goose. But when it happens three times a day it begins to get pretty tiresome. I will be walking down in the morning thinking about the three coffees I’m going to drink before the guests get to breakfast and out of nowhere a goose will pop out and hit me with it’s chest before poking at me maniacally with it’s stupid orange beak. Lunch will come and I’ll be feeling good about how many bookings I managed to make that morning, and without realizing what’s happening I’ll be blindsided by a flurry of angry white feathers.
And what is a guy supposed to do exactly when he is being attacked by a goose? I would never respect myself again if I hit a goose, but I also don’t respect myself for getting bullied three times a day by a jackass bird. So far I’ve determined that as long as I wave a chair in their general direction as they are getting ready to attack they’ll back off and let me pass. The only problem with this is that it’s a pain having to trek up and down a mountain carrying a big wooden chair all day.
In conclusion if anybody has any advice on dealing with rogue geese please let me know. I don’t want to hurt or kill them. I don’t want to be friends with them. I really just want them to leave me alone.
On the list of animals that I really did not want to encounter while strolling through the jungle, there is a pretty clear order. The top three would most likely include tigers, rhinos, and particularly big snakes. If anyone denies that they are scared of these animals they are in my opinion either lying, or idiots. Fortunately for the safety of my afternoon hikes, there are no longer any tigers left in my region of India, and my pre-departure rhinoceros research assured me that they did not live in mountains. There are apparently snakes but they are mostly non-poisonous and are afraid of humans, so I would have appeared to have had all my bases covered. What I did not anticipate however, was having to deal with a bunch of asshole geese every single day. Between my room and the eating area live three geese and a duck. The duck mostly minds its’ own business and goes about eating dirt and keeping out of my way. The geese? Well the geese will watch me as I walk down one of the two paths across the property, and separate in order to block both paths and attack me. They will literally waddle across a bridge and fly across a badminton court just to make sure I don’t get to eat lunch in peace. If this sort of behaviour was exhibited in a human being he would be sent to jail.
If you’ve ever been attacked by a goose you’ll understand how disconcerting it can be. It causes absolutely no pain because geese are stupid birds with no teeth or claws. For all intents and purposes if I were to be attacked by any one species in the animal kingdom based on their attack-properties I would probably choose a goose. But when it happens three times a day it begins to get pretty tiresome. I will be walking down in the morning thinking about the three coffees I’m going to drink before the guests get to breakfast and out of nowhere a goose will pop out and hit me with it’s chest before poking at me maniacally with it’s stupid orange beak. Lunch will come and I’ll be feeling good about how many bookings I managed to make that morning, and without realizing what’s happening I’ll be blindsided by a flurry of angry white feathers.
And what is a guy supposed to do exactly when he is being attacked by a goose? I would never respect myself again if I hit a goose, but I also don’t respect myself for getting bullied three times a day by a jackass bird. So far I’ve determined that as long as I wave a chair in their general direction as they are getting ready to attack they’ll back off and let me pass. The only problem with this is that it’s a pain having to trek up and down a mountain carrying a big wooden chair all day.
In conclusion if anybody has any advice on dealing with rogue geese please let me know. I don’t want to hurt or kill them. I don’t want to be friends with them. I really just want them to leave me alone.
Arrival at the Retreat
My journey being complete, I arrived at the Rainforest Retreat expecting no less than a full-on jungle paradise. I wanted to be so overwhelmed by the colour green that I forgot any other colours even existed. I wanted to fall asleep to the sound of countless bugs chirping away and wake up to the sun sneaking through the cracks in the canopy. And for all intents and purposes, I was not dissapointed.
I should note that the Rainforest Retreat is not technically located in a jungle. It is located in a Rainforest (a “shola” rainforest to be exact). To my eyes however, it is a jungle. I am not going to sit here and act like I’ve got a wealth of experience when it comes to identifying jungles, however what I will say is that compared to every single other place I have ever been, this is the most jungle-like of them all. If I were to shoot a movie called “Danny in the Jungle”, most people would probably not say “That’s not a jungle that’s a shola rainforest” and give my movie negative reviews for a lack of integrity. So in defense of this blog’s title, I would challenge anybody who denies my new home’s junglehood to explain the difference to me.
The property is stunningly beautiful. The plantation uses a thick ground cover of weeds and shrubs to protect against run-off in the rainy season and provide habitats for predatory insect populations. The entire property is also covered in a heavy canopy that protects from heavy rains and sun. This gives the illusion of being in a thick rainforest, even while you walk through thick crops of cardamom and coffee. I should note that this illusion is not accidental, as maintaining the rainforest’s ecosystem is central to the farm’s mission statement. By maintaining a rainforest ecosystem’s biodiversity, the farm is able to use the natural balance that occurs in this environment to regulate pest populations and maintain a healthy soil.
In terms of being eco-friendly and sustainable, the Mojo Plantation and Rainforest Retreat is unrivalled in my experiences. The very first thing I did once I had met my bosses was go to my bathroom for a well-deserved shower. It had been explained to me that my hot water was solar-powered. It had also been explained to me that the rainy season was not quite over. However, somehow I hadn’t managed to put two and two together and realize that this meant I wouldn’t be getting very much hot water. Literally every single form of power is generated from solar energy in my room. This is admittedly not a particularly huge amount of energy, as all I have are three small wall-lights and a tap for hot water, but it is impressive nonetheless. The fact that 15 people are able to live on the plantation, and not one of them uses any external energy sources is pretty remarkable.
Energy is not created only through solar-panels either. The gas used in the kitchen is exclusively generated from the methane gas of cow dung. The cow dung is collected and deposited in a large cylindrical shaped container that is mostly below ground. The methane gas is naturally released from the cow dung and rises through a hose into the kitchen’s appliances. Between the solar-powered guest and staff-houses, as well as the kitchen’s reliance on methane gas, it seems to me that the Rainforest Retreat comes as close as possible to it’s promise of being entirely sustainable. I do not know how practical these solutions would be for Canada (in particular solar, where we receive very little sunlight in the winter months) but it has certainly demonstrated to me that energy-technologies can and should be used on a small scale. The technologies exist, and it is simply a matter of time before they become affordable.
Ultimately my first day at the Rainforest Retreat has been breathtaking. The plantation balances new technologies (energy) with traditional agricultural practices and has managed to create a farm and retreat where external inputs are virtually unnecessary. I’ll be uploading a batch of photos soon, and I know that this first post comes across as a tourist brochure for the retreat, but it is impossible not to be enthusiastic. My next post will focus more on the agricultural side of the farm, and the practices that make this place be truly “organic”.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
One last journey before reaching my destination
I woke up this morning and hitched a ride with Yohann’s friends to the bus station in Bangalore. My first experience with trying to actually get from point A to B on my own could have gone a lot worse. Essentially, I approached the ticket window and three men started yelling at me. Intimidated, and not knowing what to do I repeated “Madikeri, Madikeri” as loud as I could hoping that somebody could direct me to the bus headed for my destination. Much to my surprise, this worked. Three minutes later I was seated in as comfortable a bus as I would expect in Canada, and within ten minutes the bus was leaving the station on it’s way to Madikeri.
Observing Bangalore from the bus window I was struck by the socio-economic diversity from one block to the next. One block would be covered in what I can best describe as slums. People would be huddled in tiny bamboo shacks, cooking over a fire. The next block however would be a massive IT complex. The Lonely Planet describes these buildings as being “high-tech, high-security university campuses” and I can only wish I had come up with that description. The complexes often house three or four buildings surrounding a central green-space, and IT workers sat on the grass eating lunch or breakfast as I drove by. This socio-economic mosaic is really like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. In Toronto a low-income neighbourhood’s location is often described by it’s central intersection (Jane and Finch) or the name of it’s large public housing complex (Regent Park). To see middle-class professionals working right next to members of the absolute lowest-income bracket’s homes was disconcerting. This separation is probably a positive, as it means that the poverty in a city is not hidden from the middle-class and treated as if it does not exist. The middle-class in Toronto has no reason to enter the lower-income neighborhoods, and I suppose it allows us to ignore the poverty that does exist within our city’s boundaries.
After six hours on the bus I finally arrived in Madikeri, a town of 30 000 people Southern Karnataka. I really can’t tell you anything about Madikeri, as I had pre-arranged for a taxi pickup to take me to the Rainforest Retreat as soon as I arrived. It will however be my main connection to the urban world for the next five months, so I am sure regular readers of this blog will become well-acquainted with the ins-and-outs of Madikeri culture. So if you are interested in small-town-Indian culture, this is clearly the place to be!
My taxi drove me down a beat-up road that winded through the foothills of Coorg for twenty minutes, before dropping me at the gate of the Rainforest Retreat. I will save my description of Coorg for tomorrow's post, where I will most likely alienate anyone who has never been to Coorg by overemphasizing the natural beauty of where I now live. But after four days on the road and months of planning, I finally stood at the gates of my new home, ready to begin my life as an intern-organic-farmer-jungle-man….
Stay tuned for my first impressions.
Observing Bangalore from the bus window I was struck by the socio-economic diversity from one block to the next. One block would be covered in what I can best describe as slums. People would be huddled in tiny bamboo shacks, cooking over a fire. The next block however would be a massive IT complex. The Lonely Planet describes these buildings as being “high-tech, high-security university campuses” and I can only wish I had come up with that description. The complexes often house three or four buildings surrounding a central green-space, and IT workers sat on the grass eating lunch or breakfast as I drove by. This socio-economic mosaic is really like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. In Toronto a low-income neighbourhood’s location is often described by it’s central intersection (Jane and Finch) or the name of it’s large public housing complex (Regent Park). To see middle-class professionals working right next to members of the absolute lowest-income bracket’s homes was disconcerting. This separation is probably a positive, as it means that the poverty in a city is not hidden from the middle-class and treated as if it does not exist. The middle-class in Toronto has no reason to enter the lower-income neighborhoods, and I suppose it allows us to ignore the poverty that does exist within our city’s boundaries.
After six hours on the bus I finally arrived in Madikeri, a town of 30 000 people Southern Karnataka. I really can’t tell you anything about Madikeri, as I had pre-arranged for a taxi pickup to take me to the Rainforest Retreat as soon as I arrived. It will however be my main connection to the urban world for the next five months, so I am sure regular readers of this blog will become well-acquainted with the ins-and-outs of Madikeri culture. So if you are interested in small-town-Indian culture, this is clearly the place to be!
My taxi drove me down a beat-up road that winded through the foothills of Coorg for twenty minutes, before dropping me at the gate of the Rainforest Retreat. I will save my description of Coorg for tomorrow's post, where I will most likely alienate anyone who has never been to Coorg by overemphasizing the natural beauty of where I now live. But after four days on the road and months of planning, I finally stood at the gates of my new home, ready to begin my life as an intern-organic-farmer-jungle-man….
Stay tuned for my first impressions.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
September 15th, 2008
After roughly 36 hours of airport-related living, I arrived in Bangalore on a Sunday morning. Sujata and Anurag had arranged in advance for me to be picked up by a friend of theirs named Yohann so that I could have a day to rest up on his organic farm outside of Bangalore. As a first introduction to India, I got exactly what I needed.
What sort of guy was I expecting to have pick me up at the airport? The closest I can come to describing my vision would be sort of an Indian Jude Law (mild-mannered, clean-cut, drives a scooter). I was wrong. Yohann arrived in his vintage jeep sporting a headband covering his long hair, wearing Adidas sweatpants and a graphic t-shirt. He was smoking a Gold Flake and before saying hello apologized for his appearance, as “last night’s party hadn’t quite ended”. Far be it for me to say this wouldn’t be exactly what Jude Law would be like if he picked me up at an airport, but I sort of feel like if Yohann had starred in the “Alfie” remake it would have sucked a lot less.
What was the first adjustment to India I had to make? I guess 24 years of living in Canada got me used to highway lanes. Highway lanes sort of make sense. You stick to your lane, the driver next to you sticks to yours. Sometimes the driver in front of you isn’t in a hurry, and then you switch lanes and go passed them. If I was building a highway, I’d probably include lanes. But clearly I’m ethno-centric because Indians drive twice as fast with twice as many cars on the road and instead of lanes they just honk their horns. And somehow, it works. This isn’t like Paris where Parisians drive in the Arc-de-Triomphe and act like it’s no big deal. Clearly Parisians only take the route involving the Arc-de-Triomphe to prove their superiority to young and impressionable North Americans like myself. They could easily just have avoided the hassle of heavy traffic and taken a side street. Now, I can’t be sure, but as far as I can tell most of the cars on Bangalore’s highways aren’t driving tourists. So this is how they drive to get from point A to B on a daily basis. And even if my car-insurance was not expired and I desperately needed to get somewhere quickly (hypothetically my non-existent wife had just gone in to labour and it had caught me completely off guard because I hadn’t known she was pregnant or something along those lines) I still would not drive on the highways of India. I guess ultimately this paragraph just proves that Indians are better drivers than I am. Thanks for nothing Young Drivers of Canada.
Back to Yohann. Yohann lives on an organic farm about 30km outside of Bangalore. The farm has been in Yohann’s family for at least two generations, and his current crop includes tobacco and cocoa. But like farms all over the world that are situated close to urban areas, the city is rapidly encroaching. This has become especially prevalent since the completion of the Bengaluru International Airport. Yohann’s farm is about 5km off the main highway between the City and the Airport, and when I asked him if he has gotten offers for his land he laughed and tells me “Every single day”. The importance of this is that Yohann’s farm was my first exposure to the plight of the modern family farm. Yohann no longer markets any of his products commercially because agriculture in his part of India yields no economic benefit.
Yohann and Priyam (his wife) haven’t given up on farming completely, as there are still chickens, goats, cows, and rabbits (I’m not entirely sure why) as well as the cocoa and tobacco crops mentioned earlier. However, on the far end of their property, they designed and built a Montesory school. Students from ages 4 to 18 bus in every day from all over Bangalore and are taught in an inspired open-concept school. Built in red-brick, the spacious classrooms surround courtyards centered around trees and gardens. Outside, study areas are hidden behind garden-lined brick walls with streams and ponds twisting their way throughout the school yard. My elementary school had eight portables covering our sports field in order to house all our extra students, and what was left of the field flooded every time the snow melted. That being said, my grade six volleyball team also won the former Borough of East York’s grade six volleyball tournament, so we were doing something right. Getting back to Yohann’s school, it definitely goes to show that while urban sprawl is a serious threat to family farms like Yohann’s, there are ways in which to creatively keep your land. Ideally Yohann and Priyam may wish they could still use their land for commercial agricultural purposes, but for the time being at least the school allows them to maintain their way of life and keep ownership over their family’s land.
I should also add that apparently Bangalorians (Bangalites? Bangalomes? Bangalers?) defy every stereotype of Indians I’ve ever been told. It’s possible that they actually spend time researching Indian stereotypes just so that they can break them. I’ve now met two separate groups of Bangalorians (if you are reading this and you are from Bangalore and the term “Bangalorians” was ever used in a derogatory manner, I don’t have internet access as I write this otherwise I would have looked up the proper term) and all they seem to want to do is smoke hash and play Neil Young songs on their guitars. Unlike back home though, when you’re having a beer in Bangalore and they’re playing a Neil Young song, it is not “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” every time. In fact, I don’t think I heard “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” once during the entire 21 hours I was in Bangalore. I just naturally assumed that I must have heard it after four and a half years of going to the Frankenstein’s Hot Dog Themed Bar in Guelph. Apparently a few years back Bangalore had a vibrant live music scene, but a group of “traditional” politicians catered to the supposedly elderly Bangalorian community and banned all live music. But, as the “Silicon Valley” of Asia, a huge majority of Bangalore’s population is under-30, and according to numerous proud-Bangalorians I have met, it is due for a youth-culture renaissance unlike anything the world has seen since San Fransisco back in ‘64. To be honest I’ve never really associated revolutionary cultural, sexual, and political movements with young professionals working for multi-national IT firms, but based on Yohann’s friends’ rousing rendition of “Heart of Gold”, it’s not out of the question.
I’ve heard that Delhi and Mumbai can both be pretty overwhelming for a rookie touching down in India for the first time. Bangalore totally blew my mind and gave me a good taste of Indian life (albeit for only one night), but it felt like a good transition. Most of the people I met worked for IT companies and were modern in pretty much every way, but it definitely was not North America.
After roughly 36 hours of airport-related living, I arrived in Bangalore on a Sunday morning. Sujata and Anurag had arranged in advance for me to be picked up by a friend of theirs named Yohann so that I could have a day to rest up on his organic farm outside of Bangalore. As a first introduction to India, I got exactly what I needed.
What sort of guy was I expecting to have pick me up at the airport? The closest I can come to describing my vision would be sort of an Indian Jude Law (mild-mannered, clean-cut, drives a scooter). I was wrong. Yohann arrived in his vintage jeep sporting a headband covering his long hair, wearing Adidas sweatpants and a graphic t-shirt. He was smoking a Gold Flake and before saying hello apologized for his appearance, as “last night’s party hadn’t quite ended”. Far be it for me to say this wouldn’t be exactly what Jude Law would be like if he picked me up at an airport, but I sort of feel like if Yohann had starred in the “Alfie” remake it would have sucked a lot less.
What was the first adjustment to India I had to make? I guess 24 years of living in Canada got me used to highway lanes. Highway lanes sort of make sense. You stick to your lane, the driver next to you sticks to yours. Sometimes the driver in front of you isn’t in a hurry, and then you switch lanes and go passed them. If I was building a highway, I’d probably include lanes. But clearly I’m ethno-centric because Indians drive twice as fast with twice as many cars on the road and instead of lanes they just honk their horns. And somehow, it works. This isn’t like Paris where Parisians drive in the Arc-de-Triomphe and act like it’s no big deal. Clearly Parisians only take the route involving the Arc-de-Triomphe to prove their superiority to young and impressionable North Americans like myself. They could easily just have avoided the hassle of heavy traffic and taken a side street. Now, I can’t be sure, but as far as I can tell most of the cars on Bangalore’s highways aren’t driving tourists. So this is how they drive to get from point A to B on a daily basis. And even if my car-insurance was not expired and I desperately needed to get somewhere quickly (hypothetically my non-existent wife had just gone in to labour and it had caught me completely off guard because I hadn’t known she was pregnant or something along those lines) I still would not drive on the highways of India. I guess ultimately this paragraph just proves that Indians are better drivers than I am. Thanks for nothing Young Drivers of Canada.
Back to Yohann. Yohann lives on an organic farm about 30km outside of Bangalore. The farm has been in Yohann’s family for at least two generations, and his current crop includes tobacco and cocoa. But like farms all over the world that are situated close to urban areas, the city is rapidly encroaching. This has become especially prevalent since the completion of the Bengaluru International Airport. Yohann’s farm is about 5km off the main highway between the City and the Airport, and when I asked him if he has gotten offers for his land he laughed and tells me “Every single day”. The importance of this is that Yohann’s farm was my first exposure to the plight of the modern family farm. Yohann no longer markets any of his products commercially because agriculture in his part of India yields no economic benefit.
Yohann and Priyam (his wife) haven’t given up on farming completely, as there are still chickens, goats, cows, and rabbits (I’m not entirely sure why) as well as the cocoa and tobacco crops mentioned earlier. However, on the far end of their property, they designed and built a Montesory school. Students from ages 4 to 18 bus in every day from all over Bangalore and are taught in an inspired open-concept school. Built in red-brick, the spacious classrooms surround courtyards centered around trees and gardens. Outside, study areas are hidden behind garden-lined brick walls with streams and ponds twisting their way throughout the school yard. My elementary school had eight portables covering our sports field in order to house all our extra students, and what was left of the field flooded every time the snow melted. That being said, my grade six volleyball team also won the former Borough of East York’s grade six volleyball tournament, so we were doing something right. Getting back to Yohann’s school, it definitely goes to show that while urban sprawl is a serious threat to family farms like Yohann’s, there are ways in which to creatively keep your land. Ideally Yohann and Priyam may wish they could still use their land for commercial agricultural purposes, but for the time being at least the school allows them to maintain their way of life and keep ownership over their family’s land.
I should also add that apparently Bangalorians (Bangalites? Bangalomes? Bangalers?) defy every stereotype of Indians I’ve ever been told. It’s possible that they actually spend time researching Indian stereotypes just so that they can break them. I’ve now met two separate groups of Bangalorians (if you are reading this and you are from Bangalore and the term “Bangalorians” was ever used in a derogatory manner, I don’t have internet access as I write this otherwise I would have looked up the proper term) and all they seem to want to do is smoke hash and play Neil Young songs on their guitars. Unlike back home though, when you’re having a beer in Bangalore and they’re playing a Neil Young song, it is not “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” every time. In fact, I don’t think I heard “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” once during the entire 21 hours I was in Bangalore. I just naturally assumed that I must have heard it after four and a half years of going to the Frankenstein’s Hot Dog Themed Bar in Guelph. Apparently a few years back Bangalore had a vibrant live music scene, but a group of “traditional” politicians catered to the supposedly elderly Bangalorian community and banned all live music. But, as the “Silicon Valley” of Asia, a huge majority of Bangalore’s population is under-30, and according to numerous proud-Bangalorians I have met, it is due for a youth-culture renaissance unlike anything the world has seen since San Fransisco back in ‘64. To be honest I’ve never really associated revolutionary cultural, sexual, and political movements with young professionals working for multi-national IT firms, but based on Yohann’s friends’ rousing rendition of “Heart of Gold”, it’s not out of the question.
I’ve heard that Delhi and Mumbai can both be pretty overwhelming for a rookie touching down in India for the first time. Bangalore totally blew my mind and gave me a good taste of Indian life (albeit for only one night), but it felt like a good transition. Most of the people I met worked for IT companies and were modern in pretty much every way, but it definitely was not North America.
Brussels, and why I hate Belgium
September 13th, 2008
In my day, I’ve been accused of irrationally hating only two things. Those things are Margaret Atwood, and Belgium. Margaret Atwood went to my high school and I think that it’s understandable for anyone to hate their high school’s most illustrious graduate. Especially when that graduate wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which was inexplicably on the Grade Thirteen curriculum. And even more especially when questioning the inclusion of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the grade twelve curriculum instead of “1984” or “Brave New World” gets you told to sit down and stop asking questions.
My hatred for Belgium however, is completely different from my hatred for Margaret Atwood. Because while I was predisposed to hate Margaret Atwood, I really expected to like Belgium. Two years ago on a drive from Switzerland to Amsterdam, I visited Belgium right after Luxembourg (which is natural, as they are situated next to each other last time I checked). Luxembourg would probably be a really nice place to go for a roller-skate or some other leisurely recreational activity, but my entire time in Luxembourg was spent getting excited to leave and explore a country whose existence I could actually understand and explain.
Unfortunately for myself and my two travel-mates, some transport-minister in Belgium had decided that it’s highways required late-night construction. This wasn’t just any late-night construction either. This was the type of late-night construction that makes you regret traveling with a man who punches people when they try to change the music. Apparently when Belgians do construction on a highway they don’t post signs warning you that your car will literally not move for three and a half hours. Apparently when Belgians do construction they insist on using trucks with flashing lights that beep when they move backwards. And apparently the one thing Belgians don’t think they need to construct on or near highways is restaurants. This ensures that when you get out of your three and a half hour traffic jam and start thinking about breakfast, Belgium makes you suffer that much more.
So needless to say I was not pleased that my flight to India involved a stop-over in Brussels. This time I guess I should take some responsibility for my experience, as I had decided to take sleeping pills roughly an hour before landing so that I could avoid spending any waking-hours acknowledging where I was. However, that does not change the fact that not only would the Brussels airport not convert my Canadian dollars so that I could buy a bottle of water, but for some reason all of the water fountains were turned off. What kind of airport turns off their water-fountains? That’s the sort of thing that jail-wardens do when there’s a prison riot. Or corrupt dictators do when their country's citizens have a general strike. I was literally stuck eating the box of 20 euro chocolates I bought at the Duty Free for four and a half hours, hoping that I could suck some of the milk out and regain my body’s ability to produce saliva.
If those two experiences aren't enough to push a man to resent a country, I don't know what is. I’ve got nothing against the people of Belgium, most of whom I’m sure could write a better book than Margaret Atwood, but on my list of top ten worst places I’ve ever been Belgium comes in at a close second behind Brampton, Ontario.
****By the way It’s debatable whether Margaret Atwood is actually my high school’s most illustrious graduate as apparently Prime Minister Stephen Harper also went to Leaside. However, I’ve never heard anyone outside of the high school confirm this and he seems to believe he was raised somewhere in the general vicinity of Calgary. Also how pathetic is it that the race for most illustrious graduate at my high school encompasses two of the absolutely least charismatic public figures in Canada. I can’t think of a single Canadian outside of the prison system who I would really like to hang out with less.
In my day, I’ve been accused of irrationally hating only two things. Those things are Margaret Atwood, and Belgium. Margaret Atwood went to my high school and I think that it’s understandable for anyone to hate their high school’s most illustrious graduate. Especially when that graduate wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which was inexplicably on the Grade Thirteen curriculum. And even more especially when questioning the inclusion of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the grade twelve curriculum instead of “1984” or “Brave New World” gets you told to sit down and stop asking questions.
My hatred for Belgium however, is completely different from my hatred for Margaret Atwood. Because while I was predisposed to hate Margaret Atwood, I really expected to like Belgium. Two years ago on a drive from Switzerland to Amsterdam, I visited Belgium right after Luxembourg (which is natural, as they are situated next to each other last time I checked). Luxembourg would probably be a really nice place to go for a roller-skate or some other leisurely recreational activity, but my entire time in Luxembourg was spent getting excited to leave and explore a country whose existence I could actually understand and explain.
Unfortunately for myself and my two travel-mates, some transport-minister in Belgium had decided that it’s highways required late-night construction. This wasn’t just any late-night construction either. This was the type of late-night construction that makes you regret traveling with a man who punches people when they try to change the music. Apparently when Belgians do construction on a highway they don’t post signs warning you that your car will literally not move for three and a half hours. Apparently when Belgians do construction they insist on using trucks with flashing lights that beep when they move backwards. And apparently the one thing Belgians don’t think they need to construct on or near highways is restaurants. This ensures that when you get out of your three and a half hour traffic jam and start thinking about breakfast, Belgium makes you suffer that much more.
So needless to say I was not pleased that my flight to India involved a stop-over in Brussels. This time I guess I should take some responsibility for my experience, as I had decided to take sleeping pills roughly an hour before landing so that I could avoid spending any waking-hours acknowledging where I was. However, that does not change the fact that not only would the Brussels airport not convert my Canadian dollars so that I could buy a bottle of water, but for some reason all of the water fountains were turned off. What kind of airport turns off their water-fountains? That’s the sort of thing that jail-wardens do when there’s a prison riot. Or corrupt dictators do when their country's citizens have a general strike. I was literally stuck eating the box of 20 euro chocolates I bought at the Duty Free for four and a half hours, hoping that I could suck some of the milk out and regain my body’s ability to produce saliva.
If those two experiences aren't enough to push a man to resent a country, I don't know what is. I’ve got nothing against the people of Belgium, most of whom I’m sure could write a better book than Margaret Atwood, but on my list of top ten worst places I’ve ever been Belgium comes in at a close second behind Brampton, Ontario.
****By the way It’s debatable whether Margaret Atwood is actually my high school’s most illustrious graduate as apparently Prime Minister Stephen Harper also went to Leaside. However, I’ve never heard anyone outside of the high school confirm this and he seems to believe he was raised somewhere in the general vicinity of Calgary. Also how pathetic is it that the race for most illustrious graduate at my high school encompasses two of the absolutely least charismatic public figures in Canada. I can’t think of a single Canadian outside of the prison system who I would really like to hang out with less.
For the record
I finally have internet access and I am going to begin to post a backlog of blog-entries that I have written over the last month. They will all be dated as being between October 5th and October 7th, but I will also include the dates they were actually written at the top of the post. Thanks for your understanding.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
First things First
The first thing you need to understand if you are reading this blog is that there will be no "Welcome to the Jungle" references. Except for that one, but it was only made to illustrate the point that any reference to that song would be lame. As far as I can tell that song has nothing to do with living in my jungle. It is true that we do have fun and games in the jungle where I am currently residing (I play a lot of Clue), but I doubt they would be the sort of fun and games that Axl Rose was referring to.
Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure whether my jungle would bring anybody to their "shun,n',n',n',n',n',n'n' knees", and unlike Guns N' Roses I do not want to watch you bleed. So if you are looking for Guns N' Roses references you are in the wrong place buddy. Apparently bloggers associated with GN'R get arrested (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DACA,DACA:2006-32,DACA:en&q=guns+n%27+roses+blog) and I'm not trying to get locked up. Danny's Jail Blog might be fun for the reader, but I don't think your reading-enjoyment is worth the sacrifice on my end. So I'm sorry, but Jungle it is, Guns N' Roses it's not.
All of that being said, this is my blog about living in a jungle in India! Technically, this "jungle" is more of a rainforest. A "shola" rainforest more specifically. But my feeling is that if your average Canadian was exploring near where I live, they would say "It sure is amazing that I am walking through this jungle", not "Wow, it sure is amazing that I am walking through this shola rainforest". So for the sake of keeping it simple for my Canadian readers, I will say I live in a jungle.
On September 12th I packed my bags and got on a Jet Airways flight from Toronto to Bangalore, and 4 days later I began my life living in a hut in Southern Karnataka. This is my blog about that experience. Hopefully you, my loyal reader, will not be too demanding and expect posts every day. If that is what you are expecting, you clearly do not have much understanding of internet connectivity in remote Indian rainforests. In which case, you are probably the exact person who should be checking my blog regularly and learning what it's all about.
On another note this blog likely won't be entirely about living in a jungle. At some point, I will have to switch it up and keep it fresh. So you may be subjected to long posts about soccer, and my favourite team (Arsenal) in particular. Other possible topics include Bollywood Film reviews, and the things I would do for some beef.
So there you have it....here's my blog. Enjoy.
Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure whether my jungle would bring anybody to their "shun,n',n',n',n',n',n'n' knees", and unlike Guns N' Roses I do not want to watch you bleed. So if you are looking for Guns N' Roses references you are in the wrong place buddy. Apparently bloggers associated with GN'R get arrested (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DACA,DACA:2006-32,DACA:en&q=guns+n%27+roses+blog) and I'm not trying to get locked up. Danny's Jail Blog might be fun for the reader, but I don't think your reading-enjoyment is worth the sacrifice on my end. So I'm sorry, but Jungle it is, Guns N' Roses it's not.
All of that being said, this is my blog about living in a jungle in India! Technically, this "jungle" is more of a rainforest. A "shola" rainforest more specifically. But my feeling is that if your average Canadian was exploring near where I live, they would say "It sure is amazing that I am walking through this jungle", not "Wow, it sure is amazing that I am walking through this shola rainforest". So for the sake of keeping it simple for my Canadian readers, I will say I live in a jungle.
On September 12th I packed my bags and got on a Jet Airways flight from Toronto to Bangalore, and 4 days later I began my life living in a hut in Southern Karnataka. This is my blog about that experience. Hopefully you, my loyal reader, will not be too demanding and expect posts every day. If that is what you are expecting, you clearly do not have much understanding of internet connectivity in remote Indian rainforests. In which case, you are probably the exact person who should be checking my blog regularly and learning what it's all about.
On another note this blog likely won't be entirely about living in a jungle. At some point, I will have to switch it up and keep it fresh. So you may be subjected to long posts about soccer, and my favourite team (Arsenal) in particular. Other possible topics include Bollywood Film reviews, and the things I would do for some beef.
So there you have it....here's my blog. Enjoy.
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