Hyderabad: Day 2

The campus is beautiful. I expected the Telletubbies to pop up and roll down the hill at any moment. After a wonderfully spicy breakfast, everyone met at the prayer hall (that dome down there) for Devotion. Cate asked me to sing a song and help her lead the devotion. She chose some lines from the I Have a Dream speech and I sang We Shall Overcome with the help of the rest of the student’s and faculty. They do Devotion everyday and the students/visitors lead.
After Devotion, we met up with two other women who were there for a separate conference. Ester is from Holland and Jacinta is from Papua New Guinea. This was the first time that I’d met someone from Papua New Guinea and I’m still amazed that all those Black folks completely skipped South East Asia and Australia and are in full effect on the other side of Indonesia. It’s arguable that the Aborigines of Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, and some Indians are Black, but there’s a huge difference. Jacinta and I have the exact same hair type!!! Perhaps this is only exciting to me…hehehe.
Anyway, I had been told about he traffic and roads in Hyderabad but I guess I didn’t quite expect it to all be 100% true…but it was. WOW! We caught the bus and an auto rickshaw and putt-putt-honk-bump-honk-thump-honk-vroooom-hongk-sputter-honk-screeeeched into town. What an adventure! This picture does no justice when it comes to showing how much space we DIDN’T have in the auto rickshaw…let’s just say that they are designed for 2 small to medium people and they had stories about riding around town with 6 full sized folks...hehehehe. Our first stop was Charminar. From the top, we got a good panorama of the city. Then we walked around to do some shopping.
It’s amazing how cities in the same climate zone look so much alike. I’m sure the Arab influence in Senegal and India also contributes to how similar the cities look. There are also just as many beggars. I hadn’t exchanged money yet so I just browsed and tried to get a feel for the city. I felt bad telling people that I didn’t have any money…a foreigner, with a purse, in a shopping district, with no money…so I’m sure half of them didn’t believe me. This guy thought it was a good idea to follow us for 30 minutes... with Cate telling him off every 8.3 minutes or so! Every time we would stop to talk, he would stand there and nod as if he was part of the conversation. He finally left us alone after two separated sets of men yelled at him for following us. The area around Charminar is famous for its glass bracelets. Thank God that I didn’t have any money because I would have shopped up a storm, and then I would have been disappointed later because the bracelets break so easily!!! Two things amazed me while we were out…the brilliance of the colors this flower vendor was wearing/carrying and the fact that people actually eat these HOT deep fried peppers…brings jalapeño poppers to a whole new level…try eating an Indian chili popper!!! Looking at them, all I could think about were the words of my father…”HOT going in, HOT coming out!”