Zach (left) and Chris (right) on their recent trip to Columbia.

Chris, from Norwalk, CT, is the President of the club tennis team, takes rock climbing and soccer for PE, is a member of the Microfinance Task Force, and is a TA for Engineering 79: Energy and the Environment. Zach represents Bainbridge Island, WA on the lacrosse field as a member of the Claremont Cougars men’s lacrosse team. He is also the Treasurer of the Claremont International Relations Society, a member of the Microfinance Task Force, a Research Assistant to Government Professor Taw and an Office Assistant for Frazee Faculty Center.

Not only are Zach and Chris extremely active members of the CMC community, but they are also pioneers of student involvement in microfinance. Their passion for microfinance and philanthropy inspired them to create MFI Connect, a website that serves as a connection and forum between microfinance institutions (MFIs) and students. Zach and Chris are on the forefront of student involvement in microfinance, and their goal is to make it easier for everyone to get involved. As well as their work with MFI Connect, they have worked in South American countries to gain first hand experience in the benefits of microfinance.

I had the pleasure to sit down with them on a sunny afternoon to talk about their recent work. To say I was impressed by what they had to share would be an understatement. I will let their interview speak for itself.

“The Six”

1. What are the top 5 most played songs on your iTunes?

Chris:

1. Walking On Broken Glass, Annie Lennox
2. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind
3. Bullet and a Target, Citizen Cope
4. Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin
5. Satellite, B.o.B

Zach:

1. I Got Mine, The Black Keys
2. Southside Revival, The Blue Scholars
3. Mykonos, Fleet Foxes
4. Clandestino, Manu Chao
5. Burden in My Hand, Soundgarden

2. What is your quirkiest quality?

C: Every time I look at a digital clock I automatically manipulate the numbers in my head to equal a factor of 10.

Z: I cannot remember the lyrics to a single song (not including “The Bear Necessities“).

3. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

C: One time, I fought off five enraged pigs with a large wooden mallet while pooping on a mountain in Peru.

Z: Refereeing an international lacrosse game between Austria and Slovakia without ever refereeing before.

4. What is something that you learned from your family?

C: You can’t live your life afraid of the avalanches. But you can bring a shovel.

Z: How to corral sheep.

5. If you could be a character from any book, movie, or TV show, who would you be?

C: Jason Stackhouse from the TV show True Blood.

Z: Sam Witwicky from Transformers.

6. What is your favorite unknown tidbit about CMC?

C: The crane is climbable.

Z: We are probably the only school in the world where the 4 by 3 can take place on campus.

First, let’s talk about MFI Connect. What exactly is it?

C: So basically what we have done is created a website called MFI Connect.com with the goal of connecting students to opportunities within microfinance. We connect them with opportunities for any type of involvement ranging from online microfinance classes to discussion forums to blogs to innovative fundraising campaigns and lastly to field trips.

Z: Actually, this April we are taking a trip to the 2010 Regional Microfinance Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. We just finished a scholarship where we’re funding two other students to go as well.

Chris had the chance to sit down with Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

C: In total, for that field trip, we have over 40 students from around the country who are attending with us.

Z: We are organizing all of the students at the conference because last summer at the 2009 Regional Microfinance Conference in Colombia, we were the only students. This year we are organizing to bring more students to Kenya. We’re planning field visits to local MFIs and a meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and creator of microfinance.

How did you guys get involved in microfinance?

Z: Well, we kind of have different stories but we met here at CMC. Chris, do you want to tell yours first?

C: Well, I took a gap year before coming to CMC and interned with Grameen Bank for the year and went to a couple different countries and worked in the U.S., Mexico, and Columbia. When I got back people kept asking me about my trips, and when I told them, they always asked, “Well, how do I get involved? What can I do?” So that was kind of where the basis of the idea was born – to provide other people with opportunities to get involved and to help out. It just kind of grew from that and it just made sense to try to create some sort of forum to make this happen. We have a team of seven people working on MFI Connect from around the country and actually one in Scotland, too. We have our weekly conference calls and 25 e-mails a day to organize everything.

Z: Yeah, we have around 900 members and definitely over 50 campuses from around the country involved. My story is not as cool as Chris’: I worked for a nonprofit in high school, working for education for indigenous children in Mexico and they had a community-building program that focused on microfinance. I thought that was a lot more interesting than school so I kind of got into that and ended up partnering with Chris on MFI Connect last year.

For those that are not familiar with microfinance, can you talk a little bit more about what you’re doing with it and how it is impacting the countries you are working in?

Z: Microfinance itself is providing loans to people that live in poverty; specifically, it targets women and families/households where these people cannot get loans from banks because they have no collateral. So, microfinance addresses their lack of capital to start businesses, etc. There are a lot of aspects to microfinance now: there’s venture capitalist firms, there’s MFIs (which actually lend to poor people), and there’s Kiva, which is an online lending program.

C: On a broader scale, microfinance is an alternative to charity. I don’t know if you’ve heard the old saying “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Microfinance is the idea of empowering people to bring themselves out of poverty instead of just giving them the food and money they need. The people are still able to keep their own dignity and they are able to learn and climb up the poverty ladder. Microfinance is a pretty sweet thing that has been used worldwide now. It is something like 300 million people have been affected by microfinance throughout the world. It’s huge. And it kind of goes against the principle of conventional banking that you wouldn’t give a loan to someone who has no collateral, no credit. But, worldwide it still has a 98% repayment rate because the people receiving the loans actually recognize that this is their chance, their one option to feed their kids, send their children to school, and survive. Because of that, the repayment rates are extraordinarily high, which is pretty unbelievable.

What are the criticisms of microfinance?

Z: One of the things that people claim is a problem with microfinance is that you actually are charging interest on these loans that you are giving to poor people. People see it as “Oh, we shouldn’t be making profit off of development, why don’t we just give them the money instead?” But that kind of defeats the whole purpose. It goes against all the principles of microfinance and the empowerment it gives to those in need.

C: That is one of the concerns, that it should just be interest free loans. But then the problem is these companies can’t sustain themselves to continually give loans out and to reach more and more people. One of the best aspects of microfinance is that it is sustainable. Because of the interest that it charges, roughly 15%, it is able to keep itself sustained. We are also not advocating for microfinance as a cure-all poverty alleviation. There are a lot of other things that need to happen as well. There should be focus on microfinance as well as other programs.

What are your future plans for MFI Connect?

Z: We are actually working on a documentary for this summer. We are going to go to a rural village in Guatemala to do research on the financial instruments that people living under a dollar a day use. We will be looking at instruments such as microfinance, small loans, and even lending/borrowing from family members or savings and credit clubs. We’re just going to be looking at the different tools that they use to budget their money while living under a dollar a day. We are going to be living under a dollar a day as well. We’ll have a plot of land and be farming on it and shooting our documentary. So that could be quite interesting.

C: It’s in partnership with Whole Planet Foundation, which is the philanthropic wing of Whole Foods. They run a microfinance village in Guatemala so that is where we will be doing our research. We are going to take a microfinance loan at the start of the summer to purchase a quarter-acre plot of land and a small shack. We’ll be growing our own crop and attempting to pay back our microfinance loan and essentially live as if we’re in poverty, while conducting interviews. We’ll be constructing financial diaries of how people, including ourselves, are able to budget such a small amount of money. If we get $10 one week, we need to budget that $10 over however long. When living like that, it is quite difficult to prepare for emergencies and feed yourselves.

Z: Through this we are also trying to raise money by having people match us with how much money we would spend if we were just living here at home for the summer in comparison to how much we are actually spending there. Our goal is to raise $100,000 for Fonkoze, which is the largest microfinance institution in Haiti, because they need a lot of help right now.

C: There’s a lot of literature out right now about how they do not need any more aid, that they’re at their capacity for aid organizations, but microfinance still has infinite capacity to help. So this summer we’ll be trying to raise a whole bunch of money and hopefully don’t die!

How does it make you feel to know that you are helping these countries in need?

C: Right now our involvement is a little indirect because we haven’t made the documentary yet. Our website was created because we found a need in the industry that we wanted to fill. We are not working directly with the borrowers on the ground but what we do still needs to be done. We are always asking “What is our part?” and although we can’t be on the ground working with borrowers in these countries, we have found a different way to add value to the cause. Our website has become our niche in how we can help this industry.

Z: We really feel that students have been underutilized in the microfinance industry. We have all of this time and creativity to be used and we just need to harness it and focus it. We are just trying to figure out a way to make that relationship easier between microfinance and students.

Zach and Chris are as “CMC” as they come: utilizing their interest in finance to be the leaders of their field. Walking away from our interview, not only was my jaw on the ground, but I was incredibly inspired. These guys, in only their second year of college, have taken the initiative to contribute what they can to a global cause. While most of their classmates are using the same education to run investment banks on Wall Street, Chris and Zach are getting down and dirty to make their impact on a grander scale. If you’re feeling as galvanized from their story as I am, there are several ways to join their cause: First, please become a member of the MFI Connect community! Also, they are looking for people to help them with fundraising for their trip this summer to Guatemala. And if microfinance isn’t your thing, but you’d like to get involved, they are looking for someone to help out with the web design of MFIConnect.com. If you have any interest in making your contribution to alleviating poverty on the global level, contact Zach (zingrasci12@cmc.edu) or Chris (ctemple12@cmc.edu).

Ever since the days of Thomas the Tank Engine, I’ve been a train fanatic, and I get a huge rush from hanging out the car door, watching rural India fly by.

I have a bone to pick with Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. Most passenger trains run overnight, not during the daytime, because they have limited AC, and long distances between stations. Most of the shots in that movie are of trains chugging along in the heat of the day. Also, the film was shot in Rajasthan province, but Darjeeling is on the other side of the country.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I’m again hanging out the door in the dim morning light, watching Delhi come to life. The neighboring tracks, are a popular toilet for local residents, maybe because of their relative isolation. The squatters are utterly unconcerned about being naked in front of the 20-car-long train passing by ten feet from them.

I take a taxi across Delhi with two friends, who are leaving Seva Mandir for foreign shores. At least once a day, the price of something takes me by surprise. My 12-hour train ride cost $6, and the taxi across Delhi costs nearly as much.

One time I tried to take public transit from Claremont to UCLA. Door-to-door, the trip took 3 hours and 20 minutes. I’ve now ridden a private car, train, taxi, subway, and bus, and everything went smoothly. I get on the bus to Haldwani, a town at the foot of the mountains in Uttarakhand province, only 80km from my destination. It’s amusing that planning and taking a journey of similar length in my native country (and native language) would be a Kafkaesque struggle. The USA just doesn’t have the infrastructure, density, or quantity of poor people, for feasible public transit.

Bus travel is not romantic; there’s no AC, no legroom and people try to sell you things through the window when you slow down. Four hours in we stop at an out-of-the-way restaurant, in an arrangement that surely generates kickbacks for the driver and ticket-taker. Out of principle I refuse to buy anything. The highlight of the trip comes when a man carrying a goat sits down in the seat across from me. I’d love to ask him questions, like what he does for a living, where he is going, whether he had to pay a separate ticket for the goat, and most importantly why he has a goat with him, but the language barrier’s too large, so instead I just take a photo.

I debate quitting my seat and climbing onto the roof of the bus, where I can stretch my legs and enjoy a great view. Ultimately I decide that I am drawing enough stares as the only foreigner on a bus for locals; I don’t need to draw more by climbing up to the roof. After nine hours I get off the bus and stay overnight in Kathgodam, near Haldwani.

Early in the morning the proprietor wakes me up at 6:30 and hustles me into the back of a Jeep, where I’m squished in the back, as the twelfth passenger. I’m not sure why I have to get up this early; there’s only 70 kilometers to go, until we get two kilometers outside of town and I realize it’s going to be 70 kilometers up a narrow, winding mountain road. The road to Mukteshwar is sort of like the road up to Mt. Baldy, only more windy, twice as narrow, and with the occasional landslide blocking one lane. Sleeping or reading for the next three hours will be impossible. I used to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere until I notice that the woman next to me is fast asleep.

It would be pretty absurd to think that you could get an idea of the “United States” in a short trip in one city. I am realizing that you could easily take six or seven two-week trips to India, and for all intensive purposes, be transported to a different country each time. Rajasthan, where I’ve been staying, is a dry desert; Uttarakhand is mountainous and relatively thinly populated. Two hours into the Jeep ride I catch a glimpse of the Himalayas; they are imposing, snow white and beautiful. If I weren’t so queasy I would snap a picture.

Finally, I arrive in Mukteshwar. At the end of a mountain road, and 7500 feet in the air, Mukteshwar is a place that you’d go to when you would like to get away from it all. It’s the high-altitude home of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, which according to its website, “conducts diploma courses in veterinary preventive medicine, animal husbandry, veterinary biological products, animal reproduction, poultry husbandry, medicine and surgery, zoo and wild animal health care and management, meat and meat products technology.” Some of the buildings here are holdovers from the time of British colonization. The landscape is out of a storybook. The hills are terraced and steep, and small homes dot the hillside. Everything smells like pine trees.

Whether to show off to their friends back home, to feel more exotic, or to try and show their tourist friends that they’re fitting in, Western tourists around the world love ‘integrating with the local culture.’ This is unfortunate, and to anyone who’s been around for a few months (or a local), it looks silly; it usually involves mastering the words “Hello” and “Thank You” in the local language, eating non-spicy, overpriced versions of the local food, and doing the same things as the locals do, like ride elephants, gain an intimate understanding of the Kama Sutra (again, ride elephants), or embark on all-inclusive overnight camel safaris. I wanted to fit in at the wedding, so before I left I went to a tailor and bought a knee-length, embroidered kurta and white trousers.

This backfires slightly when I look around and notice everyone at the wedding is wearing Western clothes: collared shirts, sweaters, and jeans or khakis. Out-localing the locals is a ridiculous idea and I leave the kurta in the bag, unmentioned. I’ll wear it next time I’m hanging out with other tourists, or back home.

This isn’t my first Muslim wedding; my cousin got married at our house a few years ago. As Rashmi introduces her family, extended family, neighbors and friends, I say “As salaam aleikum!” to everyone, and score points. The Khans are the nicest people on the planet; they’re trying extremely hard to make me feel comfortable, to the point that it starts to get uncomfortable.

Today, the first goal of the Khans is to successfully marry their eldest daughter. Their second goal is to feed me as much food as possible. In mid-afternoon we sit down to eat, and every two minutes or so someone drops more food on my plate, or refills my cup, despite my attempts to get them to stop. I resort to the little Hindi I know, or have heard, and plead, “Bas, bas. Nehi!” The server drops more lamb kebab on my plate anyway, but he stops coming after that.

Over the course of the afternoon I am introduced to Rashmi’s husband’s sisters. I can’t speak Hindi, and they can’t really speak English, so there’s an awkward pause. Each time, after about a minute, I’m asked by one of Rashmi’s brothers, “So what do you think?” “Of what?” I say. “My sister-in-law.” I’m not sure whether they’re serious about attempting a marriage to someone I met one minute ago, or just testing the waters, but in any event, I demur politely.

As a traditional Indian wedding, the women are in the Khan home preparing Rashmi’s dress and clothes and the men are outside talking to each other. I’m supposed to spend time with the men; I put aside my inner Andrew Bluebond, and decide to fight gender stereotypes another day.

Spending a long time talking to any group of people fills me with a sort of low-grade anxiety; usually I mitigate this by checking my phone, drinking heavily, and/or talking about basketball. As we’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s a Muslim wedding, and no one cares about hoops here, I’m in trouble. Only some of the guests speak good English, so I content myself by watching a mountain eagle and an osprey float lazily on a nearby thermal.

(By the way, if someone asks you who your favorite cricketer is, it’s a loaded question. There’s only one correct answer: Sachin Tendulkar, the 5’6 legend who’s been thwacking sixes for more than two decades, who prompts fawning ESPN India commercials, and Hindustan Times op-eds wondering whether he should be knighted. If someone asks you who your favorite actor is, you have a little more latitude: you can answer Salman Khan or Shahrukh Khan. Maybe I’m biased, because I’ve stuck to small cities and only been here two months, but it seems like pop culture is much more homogeneous here; everyone listens to the same hit songs, the same two movies play in the theaters at a time, and the same actors and cricket players are popular amongst everyone. I have a theory that India, at least the parts that I stay in, is like the 1930′s US, with better technology. Salman Khan reminds me of Cary Grant.)

Finally, we get to the ceremony, which is short. Rashmi wears jeans around our dorm, and was wearing them when I talked to her that morning, so I’m stunned by her outfit; she emerges in an extremely fine dress, jewelry actually straining her neck forward, her face obscured by a beaded veil. Her soft-spoken husband, Asim, is waiting outside, wearing a traditional outfit, turban, and necklace of rupees, which brings good fortune. Traditionally, the bride goes to the groom’s house for two days and then returns home. Because Asim lives in Moradabad, over 250km away, this part of the ceremony is simulated; the couple walk slowly to the home next door, followed by a crowd, spend ten minutes there and then return.

Back in the home, the couple are now married, and everyone gathers around to give the couple their blessing. I’m outside talking when I see Rashmi’s brother walking quickly away from the house, with Rashmi over his shoulder. Did she get cold feet? but it turns out he’s only carrying her to the “Just married” vehicle. It turns out that once married, the bride’s feet cannot touch the earth until they reach their new home. That’s reassuring, because I was worried I would have had an awkward afternoon.

I spend the afternoon with local boys, walking around Mukteshwar, and going to the nearby cliffs as the sun sets. We discuss the usual subjects: the Backstreet Boys, whether Hollywood or Bollywood actresses are prettier, and the WWE. Twice Asim starts singing “Tearing Up My Heart.”

After the sun sets, it gets really cold; we spend most of the night back at the Khan home, warming our hands around a small fire. I explain that I’m going to travel for a few days after the wedding. They are concerned that I will get lost, or taken advantage of, and worry that I don’t have enough money. I tell them that I’m an experienced traveler, and then I try to explain real wages, and how prices and wages are higher in the US, and that you can earn $16,000 a year (about 800,000 rupees), and be poor in the US but have relatively lots of money here. I’m not sure that my point’s hitting home.

There are more stars in the sky than I have ever seen in my life. Sameer, Rashmi’s brother, asks if I want to go on a walk. He starts walking into the darkness with no flashlight; I simultaneously realize that, evolutionarily, it makes more sense that people can see in the dark, and there’s a reason why every phone in India has a built in LED flashlight. Sameer tells me he’s seen four tigers in Mukteshwar, one about thirty yards from his house. The tiger snatched a dog in its jaws and bounded off. We look out across the valley, which is dark but for a hundred flickering lights. Sameer says that three years ago, there were maybe one or two lights in the whole valley, and now everyone has one.

There isn’t a good reason to stay up late, so we hit the sack by 10pm, and get up early the next morning. Within ten minutes of waking up someone’s turned the TV on. Maybe our cultures are similar, after all.

By 9am I’ve had four cups of chai, but they don’t do much against the cold. I think of Rashmi, happy, in Moradabad with her new husband, and feel warm inside. I’m ready to head out to my next destination, a lake village called Nainital. The Khans have been the nicest people on the planet and I thank them profusely for their hospitality, the graciousness they’ve shown by welcoming me into their home, and letting me be a part of an important family ceremony. Halfway around the world, in a culture wildly different from the one I grew up in, we’re celebrating the same thing: a man and woman in love, determined to spend the rest of their lives together.

Last weekend was the festival of Holi, a two-day festival around the first full moon in February or March, according to the Hindi calendar. According to legend, the son of the king of demons, Prahlada, was a devotee of Vishnu (a good god), and as you may imagine, this development greatly displeased the king of demons, Hiranyakashipu. After trying and failing numerous times to take his son’s life, including poisoning him, trampling him by elephants and placing him in a room full of deadly snakes, Hiranyakashipu placed Prahlada on his sister’s lap, on top of a burning pyre. The fire burned his sister, Holika, but Prahlada was saved because of his devotion. Today people celebrate the festival Holi with fire and color.

It’s tradition to light bonfires and fireworks the night before Holi, and the collective noise turned our neighborhood into the auditory equivalent of North Philly for the night. We lit some fireworks that sparkled in place, turning our courtyard fluorescent green for ten seconds, and hand-held sticks that made a blue chemical fire, which we danced with until they died out and we’d light a new one. We lit some elaborate fireworks that could have been mistaken for those at your local July 4 party. We also set off some “bombs,” which didn’t light up but did produce a loud gunshot-like noise. We ate, partied, and danced around the bonfire late into the night.

On the morning of Holi, everyone buys packets of beautiful dyed powder and watercolors, and spends the morning throwing colors on everyone else, chaotically. The Day of Color would not be an enjoyable festival for an obsessive-compulsive. The correct way to apply colored powder to someone’s face is to pour some out in each hand, then smear it over the person’s face and hair like your grandma used to do to you when you were six. The other person then does the same to you, and you embrace. If things are going well, you can grab a bucket, add some water and colored dye and pour it on your opposite number. My face changed color from red to blue to purple as the day went on, as did everyone else’s.

Within about twenty minutes of waking up, the floor of our courtyard resembled a Jackson Pollock painting. Soon the courtyard was overwhelmed by the deluge of water and paint and, along with our clothes, turned into a melange of purple, red and brown colors. After an hour we were out of powder, so we walked to the corner store to buy more. During the course of a ten-minute walk, three cars stopped to put powder on us and wish us a Happy Holi.

No Western holiday brings out the raucous joy, fierce energy and community spirit of Holi. Lightness about fireworks aside, it was a wonderful holiday and I’m grateful for the experience.

Kris Brown in his natural environment.

Kris Brown is up to his elbows in chocolate. Surrounding him are bowls full of it, liquid chocolate, solid chocolate, chocolate covered utensils, chocolate covered everything.  At the center of it all stands the Seattlite, smiling, reveling in the environment, and only slightly less covered than the items within his grasp.

Brown is making truffles, melting down gourmet chocolate he buys in bulk and creating ganache from scratch.  It’s a weekly ritual, usually taking place on Sunday afternoon, with the CMC junior making a batch of nearly 150 truffles.  He sells these truffles through the Motley coffeehouse on the Scripps College campus.  Brown works as an independent contractor, splitting the proceeds with the Motley.  The results are both delicious and successful, with the small chocolates selling out at a dollar a piece in only a few days.  With finals week in full swing, the demand has gone up significantly, and Brown plans to make an extra-large batch to help fuel late-night study sessions.

“The most recent batch sold out in about 10 hours at the Motley,” says Brown.  ”People have always told me I should increase prices on these things, and seeing how fast they sell out it’s definitely ‘commercially viable.’  But the money isn’t a driving factor for me.  I want to provide good food without a high cost associated with it; I want to expand people’s horizons with what they expect out of a piece of chocolate.”

The flavors are perhaps the most notable part of the truffles, as a different trio of ganaches appears each week.  Certain flavors are given creative names, such as the “Peaches” truffle, a vanilla, cherry, and almond combination bearing the nickname of CMS’s All-American hammer thrower Taylor Berliant.  Says Brown: “If someone inspires the flavor of the truffle, I name it after that person.  They usually get free chocolate, too.”

Despite the truffles’ popularity, few know that they come from a CMC student, although they might not be surprised to hear it’s one with such a strong resume in the culinary arts.  Brown is the manager of  The Shakedown, Pitzer’s student-run restaurant and over the summer he interned as a prep cook at Seattle’s renowned restaurant Tilth.  For the fall semester, Brown moved off campus, allowing him to improve his cooking with a full kitchen.  Besides his culinary duties, Brown finds time to run cross country, competing for the Stags  during their successful fall run.

Sadly though, the supply of truffles is in jeopardy for the spring semester.  Brown will be abroad in Nepal, cultivating his palate for exotic spices, and therefore unable to contribute.  As of now, the duties will be falling to Harvey Mudd freshmen Kate Crawford, who will continue the tradition in the spring.  Nevertheless, this week is your last chance to try Brown’s special recipe, which he bills as “sentimental chocolate.”  The final batch will go on sale in the Motley sometime Sunday evening.  Best to be there early, they’re sure to go fast.

A short interview with Miles T. Bird:

Alex: So you were in Bangladesh this summer. What were you doing?

Miles: I interned with Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization. There were a fair amount of other foreign interns in Dhaka and I spent a lot of time traveling Bangladesh’s surrounding area with them.

Alex: Sounds fun, tell me a little about the kids you met in this clip we’re about to watch.

Miles: These kids are literally out of the movie Slumdog Millionaire. There were ten of them, presumably orphans, and they all took care of one another like a family. There was one slightly older one who took a mother role, shepherding them around and passing out some bananas we gave them. All the kids were super dirty and scratched up, some with unhealed broken bones. They were incredibly nice kids though. For example, they offered me their bundle of newspapers to sit on – one of their only possessions besides the clothing on their backs and a bag of empty bottles.

Alex: How did they convince you to get on the train?

Miles: They didn’t really convince us, they were actually really surprised we followed them up. They are “untouchables,” which means they aren’t respected and discriminated against in Bangladesh.

Alex: So you just climbed up to the top of a moving train?

Miles: Yeah man, as the train left the station we climbed out of the window and pulled ourselves up. The kids rushed over to help pull us up, which was pretty cute.

Alex: Damn, how fast was your heart beating?

Miles: Fast. The train ride was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. The train was moving about 60 miles an hour and these kids were doing cartwheels and jumping from car to car.

Alex: Crazy, how long were you up there?

Miles: About an hour and a half. We napped for a little bit.

Alex: What did you do when the train came to a stop?

Miles: (Laughing) Several hundred people flooded the station and everyone was yelling in rapid-fire Bengali. When we got down, we were hustled into the conductor’s room. There were a handful of police screaming at us and we just apologized profusely until they let us leave.

Alex: Word. Video time?

Miles: Yeah.

So this is what Miles did last summer – sorry you can’t be as cool.

Filming and editing done by Miles Bird.

So hi, hello there — it’s nice to meet you. We’re the Forum. Which is odd to say, sure, since it’s a website, not even a newspaper, let alone a person. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasure to meet you, since, well, we’re here to do pretty much whatever you want:

Deliver the news you need? Check.
Give you the hipster cred irony you want? Check.
Offer the political banter you should want? Check.
Do your laundry? Sorry, no.

Ok we’re here for some things. Mostly, we try to be an useful tool for life at CMC — a way for you to answer “what’s going on.” We’ll let you know about upcoming events, alert you to pressing issues, and even clue you into what’s happening outside the Claremont bubble.

This all may sound cool and impressive — probably not — so just in case, we should clarify one thing: all this stuff we say we do, you actually do. The Forum is built, produced, and developed by CMC students, and most importantly, its content — from the links and tips to the posts and comments — is completely user-driven. So get involved: send us something or comment on something else. When you stop participating, the site stops functioning, and Cara Daley gets very sad. Don’t let that happen.

By the way, we’re a bit proactive in that discussion too. We will be teaming up with the Ath to host two events this semester — Debate Night and Idea Night. At the first, students will debate a campus issue, and at the second, you’ll hear about interesting work happening on campus. Consider the events an opportunity to say what you have been saying online in the real world. Again, you’ll be deciding on the topics and speakers, so if you’re interested, stayed tuned.

Other than that, we have a few options for addicts — those of you who can’t get enough. Follow us on Twitter.  Buy and sell stuff with Yard Sale.  Check out our photostream.  Read up on CMC students studying abroad. Or do something crazy: go outside and hang out with actual people.

Yours always and forever,
Abhi and Emily

But that’s not what study abroad is all about. I haven’t learned anything special about the Mideast peace process just because my classroom happens to be located on the front lines. More importantly, this isn’t my area of expertise, and others surely could write more informed articles on that tangled mess than I ever could.

What you gain from study abroad isn’t academic. Instead, you learn how it feels to live in a foreign country far removed from the bubble that is CMC. How it feels to walk down the streets of Jerusalem late at night: that’s something I could have never learned in an ivory tower. So in truth, it’s the day to day existence and not the politics of Jerusalem that I’ve become well versed in.

Deciding where to begin a description of Jerusalem might be the hardest part. Ironically, this city’s most defining characteristic is that it has none. Each neighborhood is a world unto itself, completely different and separate from its surroundings. Walking just few blocks can transport you thousands miles and hundreds of years.

I am most familiar with the district where I lived—Arab East Jerusalem. This portion of the city really could be located anywhere in the Middle East. The women are veiled, the men smoke cigarettes, and the call to prayer comes from Mosque mounted stereo systems. When you’re in East Jerusalem the name of city even changes. You’re in Al-Quds now, forget all about Yerushalayim. If you’re a girl and you walk through this neighborhood wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans, expect to be gawked at. But don’t worry. They don’t mean any harm, you’re just a novelty.

East Jerusalem

If you walk just a few blocks to the west, you’ll find yourself in Mea Shearim—Jerusalem’s orthodox Jewish neighborhood. In this neighborhood one could easily begin to believe they’ve been transported back to 18th century Poland. At least until the 90 degree heat brings you back to reality. All the men have long beards, black coats, and solemn faces. But most importantly, the residents of Mea Shearim take the commandments of the Torah to their literal and logical extreme. Even ambulances get stoned if they drive through here on Yom Kipper.

Directly adjacent to Mea Shearim is Jerusalem’s Old City. A visitor can’t help but be immediately overcome by the imposing 16th century Turkish walls surrounding the oldest section of Jerusalem. Inside exists not only an area of untold religious significance, but also what is perhaps the most fought over square mile in world history. Whether you’re leaving a prayer in the Wailing Wall, visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, or simply admiring the Dome of the Rock, even the most callous atheist can’t help but feel little a moved. Only the storekeeper trying to sell an overpriced souvenir reminds you that you’re still in the 21st century.

However, as much as I love the Old City, my favorite part of Jerusalem is located about a half a mile to the west. The world famous Ben Yehuda Street, once the site of numerous suicide bombings, today has become a veritable party plaza. Here both a hookah and a shot of vodka come complementary with your first drink. The Discotheques are wild and bring back memories of my time in Germany as a 17-year-old. There even is a gay club, with the humorous name Bonita. Why it’s in Spanish I’ll never know.

Now I undoubtedly could keep going on and on. I’m sure there are plenty of neighborhoods I did not explore during my six months. Jerusalem is one of the most varied and diverse cities on the planet, and a person could spend their whole life here without seeing it all.

Yet, the same diversity that makes Jerusalem so fascinating is also what tears this city apart. The neighborhoods I have just described truly are separate: the people who reside in one neighborhood know nothing of the people in the others. When I spoke with an attendant at the Arab supermarket where I sometimes shop, he had no idea it was Yom Kipper, though the nearby Jewish streets were closed. On the other hand, my Israeli relatives were completely unaware of the ongoing celebration of Ramadan, despite the holiday lights strung along the vacant Arab store fronts. This lack of knowledge comes as little surprise, though: the city is so divided that the Arabs and Jews even have separate busing systems.

This brings me back to politics. You can talk forever about whose right, whose occupying whom, and who started what, but in my opinion all these questions miss the crux of the problem. The Arab-Israeli conflict will never come to a conclusion so long as both parties attempt to completely compartmentalize themselves and avoid all contact with the other side. Only once Arabs and Jews engage in conversation and commerce will an end to this conflict be in sight. And I’m not talking about the politicians; I’m talking about the everyday people on the street.

What disheartens me most about this place is that the average Arab and the average Jew seem quite similar to my western eyes. Both speak a Semitic language, and both share relatively similar values. Even the extremes are no more different than an atheist and an evangelical christian, two groups who manage to coexist quite peacefully in America. Yet these two sides—Arab and Jew—seem cursed to fight forever because of proclamations written in books published thousands of years ago. Sometimes I get so frustrated it makes me sick.