The monsoon season

Flying back into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, I felt like I was coming home. A week in Mumbai reeeeally made me appreciate Nairobi. My experience was a bit worse than the other students', but even with my bad luck taken into consideration, I don't anticipate ever returning to India for more than a short vacation. It just wasn't a place for me.

Kenya Airways royally screwed up my reservation, and I had to fight tooth and nail to get on the plane. Nearly missed the flight even though we'd arrived at the airport 3 hours early. The ambassador's son was traveling with us, though, and had his dad's secretary call the airport in a last ditch effort to get me on the flight. It wasn't necessary, but I was amused. VIP treatment. Haha.

Mumbai smelled like ocean and raw sewage, and the occasional whiff of incense. It was in the upper 90s and horribly humid, so I didn't feel properly clean until I got back to Nairobi. It didn't help that we were staying in a budget hotel for European backpackers. Suffice it to say our hotel room was not clean. The city itself was disgusting. Nairobi is dusty, but Mumbai is absolutely coated in filth and, for all that India is reputed to be full of bright colors, overwhelmingly brown.

Three of us girls stayed in Mumbai, taking the week slow, sightseeing, relaxing, eating, visiting temples, and shopping. The three boys and fourth girl went to Goa for a beach vacation. I had a really excellent time for the most part. Fantastic food that tore apart my taste buds, amazing architecture, beautiful clothing... it was also neat to be in a megalopolis with highway overpasses, traffic signals, streetlights, McDonalds softserve ice cream, and good roads. I took plenty of pictures. There were double decker buses (a delightful reminder of British rule), fleets of auto-rickshaws, packs of motorcycles and bicycles, and loads of old taxis, ALL of which honked, hooted, and rang bells obnoxiously twenty-four hours a day. It was hard to sleep the first night. At least once a day, a Bollywood casting agent asked us to be extras in movies, but we always had plans. Too bad.

We were there during Holi, the Festival of Colors, during which everyone throws powdered dye and water on each other. We made a friend who took us to celebrate with his family for a short while. They offered us beer (which we politely turned down, not wanting to put ourselves in any further danger), dumped dye on our heads, and poured water over us. There must have been 30 people standing around us, just staring at us and laughing along with us. We left the party that afternoon magenta from head to toe. It was highly enjoyable, and everyone who saw us walking back to the hotel got a huge kick out of us. My hair is still tinged red. I'm so glad we had that opportunity. It was a beautiful holiday to witness, as everyone was happy and splashed with color and in the mood to celebrate.

For every twenty men you saw on the streets of Mumbai, you would see only one woman. Wives stay at home caring for the kids and cooking for their husband. I've never been much of a feminist, but I was genuinely shocked by how badly women (especially white women) are treated in India. Reading about it is entirely different from experiencing it firsthand. Turns out I don't handle it too well.

I'm very much used to being stared at, but not the way Indian men stared at me. The other girls on the trip agreed that there is a huge difference between the innocent flirting stares we get in Kenya and the looks we got in India. After a few days of walking around the streets of Mumbai, I was sick of it. I felt offended and violated. This was compounded by the fact that I was physically groped on the streets on two different occasions (this only happened to me... hence me noting an element of bad luck). One afternoon we had a man try to follow us back to our hotel, but we ducked into a restaurant, attracted attention to ourselves, and had the staff drive him off. It was not a good experience.

I felt that we were more frequently (and more severely) exploited in Mumbai. Prices were higher and much harder to bring down, and people would voluntarily help you and ask for money afterward. There's a tremendous amount of poverty in that city. The slums of Mumbai look a bit different from those in Nairobi... shacks were stacked on top of one another and were hanging over the water in many cases. I can't imagine what happens when it floods.

The population of Mumbai is about 17 million, or half the population of Kenya. Streets were packed with people. In many areas, there were massive apartment complexes that looked dirty, old, and crowded. When I asked about them, our taxi driver said they were middle class homes. I asked where the lower classes lived and he said, “Nowhere.” Over the course of the next few days, I'd see lots of people sleeping on sidewalks, but I didn't fully understand what millions of homeless Indians meant until the night we left to return to Nairobi.

Our flight home was at 6 AM, so we left at 2 AM to drive across the city and negotiate my ticket all over again. There were families, extended families, and sometimes whole communities sleeping on sidewalks, on the corrugated tin roofs of shacks, on the steps of restaurants and businesses, on trailer beds, on top of cars, on top of carts, under overpasses, above overpasses, and in every other conceivable place. The Holi party we attended had been on the sidewalk of a street, which I suspect was a permanent home to our friend's family. Only a few people had a blanket to cover themselves. God only knows what happens during the monsoon season. I can't comprehend it.

I'm glad I took this trip after living in Kenya. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I had visited Mumbai after living in Overland Park and DC. Maybe I just wouldn't have understood it. I've sampled many of the slums of Nairobi this semester, visited Kibera, Eastleigh, Kawangware, Maathare, Kangemi, and seen what real poverty looks like... but honestly, Mumbai shocked the hell out of me. There's not really any other way of putting it.

Back to work. If I survive the next week of schoolwork, I can survive anything...