Last fall, I sailed around the world in a cruise ship converted into a college campus, visiting nine countries in South America, Africa and Asia.
Semester at Sea is not your typical study-abroad program.
Venezuela: The Presidential Debate
COLORFUL CARACAS, VENEZUELA, was our first port of call, requiring nonstop use of my Spanish minor as we explored the nation’s capital.
Arriving just weeks after televangelist Pat Robertson’s incendiary remarks about President Hugo Chavez, I was curious to hear what Venezuelans thought about their current leader and Americans.
Responses about Chavez were mixed. Wealthy citizens shopping and dining in the swanky section of Caracas expressed their displeasure with the president, saying they feared his socialist tendencies and hollow promises. Recipients of Chavez’s socialist programs in the outskirts of the city praised him for helping them find jobs and a better education for their children.
Though the running joke on the ship was figuring out how to say “I’m Canadian” in Spanish, our nationality never became an issue. Citizens wanted more to dissect Venezuelan politics than criticize American politics. Spanglish abounded as North and South Americans each tried to put into words their impassioned feelings on the subject.
Our four-day adventure in Venezuela was a headfirst dive into the land of the unknown — and that was only the beginning.
Brazil: Past Meets Present
IF VENEZUELA'S SCENERY looked picked from a crayon box, then the view in Salvador, Brazil, was from an Easter basket. The quaint pastel landscape of cobblestone streets and gilded churches date back to the 1500s, contrasting sharply with the many poor who reside there today.
The majority of these poor were middle-school-age adolescents called street children. Their attitudes reflected the harshness of a life spent on the streets. We gave a 12-year-old boy a bottled water after he begged for it, then watched as he spit it onto the ground and laughed. Needless to say, it was one of the more deeply disturbing moments of the trip.
The week sped by in an energetic blur. We took trips to a cocoa farm, a beach and a cigar-making factory. At night, we put our salsa lessons from the ship to use in clubs and joined conga lines parading through the streets. We attended a performance of capoeira, a form of acrobatic dance fighting brought by slaves to Brazil five centuries ago.
I left Brazil feeling captivated by the rich culture and a bit wiser for the wear.
South Africa: A Country Divided
I EXPECTED AFRICA to be the embodiment of charitable organizations’ commercials. I discovered how limited my ideas were as soon as we set foot in Cape Town, South Africa. A picturesque harbor scene reminiscent of colonial New England presented itself. We spent our first few days exploring trendy stores and drinking lattes at Mugg & Bean, a coffee hangout eerily reminiscent of Starbucks. We hiked the appropriately named Table Mountain, tasted wine at a sprawling mountainside vineyard and caught a performance of the opera “Carmen.”
Two days later, we volunteered at a kids camp about an hour outside of the city. The statistics for the youth of Elsie’s River, a northern suburb of Cape Town, were depressing. Roughly 80 percent of high school kids in the area used crystal meth, and three-fourths will drop out before graduating. Many of the kids we would be working with had AIDS; some didn’t even know it.
That was where Africa Jam came in. The staff was comprised of seven college-age volunteers, an American woman and her South African husband, all of whom shared the vision of using music to reach out to the youths in the community, offering them positive role models.
The camp was overwhelming and incredible. Kids flocked to the Semester At Sea volunteers, greeting us with hugs. I listened in shock as 200 kids screamed joyously after a counselor said that today their bread would come with peanut butter ¾ hope can manifest itself in places where it seems least possible.
Mauritius: Flexibility is a Virtue
APPARENTLY PIRATES STILL do exist — especially in large quantities off the coast of eastern Africa. The pirates and political instability in Kenya forced us to reroute to Mauritius, referred to by South Africans as the Hawaii of Africa.
Mark Twain described the tropical island nation this way, “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.” That pretty much sums it up.
We spent our days touring beaches and waterfalls, experiencing the island’s unique combination of African and Indian culture.
On our last day there, we hiked down a ruptured volcano filled with waterfalls and lagoons. I made the mistake of jumping off a 30-foot waterfall, rupturing my right eardrum. The ringing brings back memories of adventure and an exotic locale.
India: A Lesson in Diversity
CHENNAI, INDIA, WAS an explosion of people and colors. We met villagers hit by the tsunami, interacted with a remote community of “untouchables,” the lowest caste in traditional Hindu culture, some of whom had never seen white people before, and visited Hindu sand temples. It struck me then that we were half a world away.
I had been to northern India eight years before. Comparing southern Chennai to 
northern New Delhi would be like comparing Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. Buddhism was replaced by Hinduism as the majority religion. The food was strictly vegetarian, with a completely different set of spices used.
I foolishly thought I could use my two words of Hindi to communicate. A taxi driver speaking Tamil quickly dashed my hopes. Even the weather was different; landlocked New Delhi was much more arid than tropical Chennai, located off the southeastern coast of India.
Eight years ago, I thought I knew India. I know now that I only have experienced two small pieces of a very large pie.
Myanmar: To Go or Not to Go
OUR VISIT TO Myanmar became an ethical question. Myanmar’s ruling military regime has been charged with some of the worst human rights crimes in history, for which the United States and the United Nations have imposed economic sanctions. Our group of about 800 students, faculty and staff would be the largest number of Americans to visit Myanmar in more than 20 years.
We were hesitant at first, but Kevin McGrath helped convince us to go. A former U.N. official in Myanmar and our interport lecturer, he told us that you cannot care about people as passionately until you have met them, interacted with them and seen a face that embeds itself in your memory.
After my four-day tour of Bagan, the “city of 10,000 thousand pagodas,” I have a profound respect for the people of Myanmar. Riding through verdant fields in a pony cart and observing the brick Buddhist shrines, I was extremely thankful that I didn’t miss the opportunity.
Vietnam: Trying to Make Sense of It
I WAS CURIOUS to see Vietnam, having studied the war in history class, but feeling no closure toward it. While there, I saw graphic pictures of napalm victims at the Museum of War Remnants and crawled through the Cu Chi Tunnels.
In Vietnam, the war is referred to as the American War. It is viewed by many as another failed imperialistic attempt to control Vietnam.
Yet Communism appears to be a thing of the past. Only about 2 percent of Vietnamese citizens still wholeheartedly support Communism. Capitalism and tourism are booming; just ask any Ho Chi Minh City market seller. The name, it appears, is all that is left of the once-commanding Communist leader.
Instead of bringing closure, the experiences brought understanding. As Americans, we must accept, embrace and try to understand our nation’s strong and weak political choices in order to move forward.
China: People and Places
THE GREAT WALL of China was the first thing I thought of when I thought about China. I knew months in advance that this was the big trip I wanted to invest in. Having heard that Peking University was the Harvard of China, I picked it as my host school, caring not so much about that as getting to see the historic landmark.
The Great Wall was amazing. We hiked the alternating steep stone steps to the top, out of breath but enjoying the view of the mountainous countryside. We heard rumors of a Starbucks and a giant slide further along down the 4,000-mile wall. We bought bright red T-shirts saying “I Climbed the Great Wall of China” for two dollars at the entrance. Yet I wondered if I placed a little too much value in an inanimate object.
Our stay with the Peking University students confirmed this idea. Playing telephone and other camp-like games with the students resulted in hysterical laughter, creating a much more vivid memory and place in my heart than the Great Wall. China will now be associated in my mind with those students who were so willing to give their time and energy.
Japan: It’s Been a Wild Ride
IN JAPAN WE used bullet trains, part of a 300-mph train system, to catapult us into Hiroshima, Hijemi and Kyoto.
Sixty years after the atomic bombing, Hiroshima has been completely restored, resembling New York City. The heart of the city is the Hiroshima Peace Museum and Park, a Central Park-like area with a flame that will burn until all nuclear weapons are destroyed.
Hijemi’s claim to fame is the Hijemi Castle, one of the world’s largest wooden structures, which was built more than 400 years ago. Entering the gates felt like a transportation to the time of warriors several centuries before.
Due to our lightning-fast schedule and lack of planning we spent a night on the streets of Kyoto, meeting hip hop dancers about our age preparing for a competition. We also met an American computer scientist working abroad in an Internet café who explained to us that the hotels we tried to stay in were not full, but simply did not accept customers after 10 p.m. Feeling sorry for us, he managed to arrange a room for us at 5 a.m. We slept for two hours and got up to see all that we could in the little time we had left.
The experience seemed a fitting end for our voyage of adventures.
The End Result
AS OUR SHIP pulled into the San Diego port, the magnitude of the experience hadn’t yet hit me. Now, months later, the trip still has not completely sunk in.
From the experience, I learned that the world is a complex, dynamic, ever-evolving place that inspires and excites me. The people who make the world this way are minute reflections of a greater whole.
