A Baer Abroad

Mauritius -- March 11 Pack your bags!   I’ve found paradise.   Well, probably not, if I looked a little closer, but it sure seemed like it during our one day in this small African country, an island near the eastern coast of the continent.    Since it was a fueling stop, we were only scheduled for a one-day stop.   I suspect 900 of us descending on the island for more than one day would have been too overwhelming anyway. Everyone had to be on either a field class or a field program in order to leave the ship. Field classes are trips that faculty run for their classes and are organized around a theme of the class. Each class has 1 in one of the ports on the trip. Only students in the class are allowed to attend and this trip is included in their overall fees.   Field programs are trips that SAS organizes and participants pay to join.   There were a total of 23 trips of about 30 people each flowing through the island country. Tomorrow...

Cochin, India February 28 - Arrive in Cochin During orientation, we had a wonderful class by the Intercultural Specialist faculty, Julia Khrebtan-Hoerhager, examining the fallacies of creating a “single story.” Many of my friends and colleagues would recognize this as a variation of “FACT v. STORY” and humans' inclination to assemble facts into a story adding interpretations and judgments, believing that this augmented version of the truth is The Truth. Similarly, we can create a single story that over-simplifies complexities or erases co-existing polarities that, if unexamined or not confronted, can distort our views and understanding of the world.   One of the examples Julia had us process was to generate what notions we had about Africa.   She mentioned how frequently Africa is referred to as if it were a country rather than a continent; for example, referring to China, India and Africa as if one is referencing 3 countries.   We were all able to generate ...

Yangon, Myanmar   -   February 19 If you look at a map, Myanmar looks like a kite with a tail. It has about 52 million people with 14 ethnic states and divisions. Its culture, language, and food has been heavily influenced by its neighbors of India. Once again we are coming to a country that was colonized by the British. Their trip to independence was not straightforward but finally occurred in 1948.   Suffice it to say that the name Myanmar (myan = active; mar = strong) is the original name for the area, reinstituted in 1989, and preferred over the British term, Burma. Burma referred to the majority ethnic group in the central region of the country, but in fact there are 7 states and 7 regions in Myanmar. The predominant language, Burmese, apparently evolved from Sanskrit and consists of beautiful flourishing symbols.   Other ethnic groups in Myanmar have their own languages and there are 2 ethnic areas that use English letters for the written form; English...