A kick-a-bout in Kochi
Drinking a coconut in Kochi
Such an unmistakable smell; we had definitely arrived in Kochi, India. The old black and yellow rickshaws were waiting for us. Passing through that gauntlet of brisling moustaches offering tours and rides brought back my old memories of India. Too bad it was only for a day. We began with a local ferry to the mainland of Ernakulum and sat down for chai and masala dosas at the Indian Coffee House. I checked out some markets, bought an orange dhotti, and sat on the road side drinking a freshly machetied water coconut. The Shiva Temple wasnt quite what I remembered it and the smell of raw sewerage down that part of town bought back more memories.
Kochi and Peace Boat soccer teams
I took a ferry back across to Fort Kochi, the area of most interest to tourists and checked out the Chinese fishing nets. I filled my belly with a delicious mutter panneer curry at a roof top restaurant and headed down to the parade grounds. I didn’t have a chance to take a backwater cruise because I had booked onto a soccer tour against the local Kochi team. The Peace Boat plays local teams in a few ports and it had never beaten Kochi in 5 attempts. A good sized crowd and the local TV station gathered around the half grass, half dust pitch to watch the spectacle. Kochi probably had more chances but I managed to round a few defenders and scored the only goal of the game. Katta! After the ‘serious’ game we mixed up the teams for a friendly, and then gathered in their hall for a presentation. Hardly anyone could understand the president’s thick and flavoured Indian accent, but we were all smiles.
There wasn’t much time left in the day; just enough to inhale another vegetable curry and jump on the internet for 20 minutes. Kisen Limito hangs over our head at every port – the deadline for staff to make it back to the boat – or face the consequences of being set an even earlier one for the rest of the voyage. We piled into a rickshaw and flew through the night.. just in time.
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Since Kochi we’ve had quite a 9 day stretch at sea with few sightings of land. There aren’t always 24 hours in the day. At midnight every second or third day there are 25 to catch up with the time zones we pass through. We make the most of the long nights at the bar, or head onto the front deck to lie under the stars. Often enough there is a themed party, lately Indian and Arabic and an okama (drag queen) party. October 16th was World Food Day, which you probably have never heard of. A few of us marked the day by fasting for 30 hours. The point was to highlight the fact that many people in the world don’t have the choice to eat or not. On the boat I’m usually the one finishing everyone elses food. This was my first small experience of what it is like to be starving; I couldn’t think, I couldn’t function. We held an event titled ‘If the World was 100 People’. Imagining that the world was made up of only 100 people, 75 would have some food and shelter and 25 would not. 15 would eat a lot (me), 25 enough, and 60 would go hungry. 1 would die of starvation… the same number as those in the world that own a computer. We looked at myths such as ‘there is not enough food in the world’ or ‘there are just too many people’. The fact is that there is enough grains, cereals and rice produced right now to feed 10 billion people 3500 calories a day, and thats not counting meat, fish and vegetables. The right to food is a basic human right.
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