As aforementioned (in David’s post), we were separated into four groups on Thursday. My group, consisting of Ariel, Ivan, Mrs. Clark, and I, junctioned off on our specified assignment.
In the form of a tram, we experienced Istanbul’s public transit for the first time. We were shoulder-to-shoulder in standing-room only. The little free space left was filled with a pleasant aroma, trapped and amplified by the walls in the confines of our car. The odor faintly reminded me of flowers.
You know, the ones that smell like fifty people sweating during a deodorant boycott.
After a few stops, my group transferred transits, from tram to ferry. We crossed the Golden Horn and disembarked at Kashimpara, a district in Istanbul. Once there, we made food our foremost priority. It was a while, however, before we ate. It wasn’t easy finding an open restaurant since it was Ramadan, the Muslim time of fasting. This would normally be no problem in the area of Istanbul that surrounded our hotel, but the district we were exploring could have been a different city; it was no tourist destination. Eventually, we were directed to a café that was still open. To order food, we had Ivan cross the language barrier with his international communications skills. A few hand gestures and animal noises later, we had our meal.
Pic 1. A man is very happy to model for a camera-touting American
At last, we were able to start our assignment. A pie, we worked our way through the streets of Kashimpara. We found row upon row of tightly packed housing. Loud graffiti and piles of trash were not in short supply. We got to see limp wooden shacks, once the homes of oppressed Romas that were finally forced out. Nowhere could we find the smallest scent of the grand, ancient relics that resided just across the water. This place had a separate culture from the tourist trap that surrounds the Haghia Sofia and its fellow wonders in another part of the very same city. As we looked up a hill, crammed with cheap, undesirable housing, Mrs. Clark commented “Poverty has the same face everywhere in the world.” We had no illusions about what we were seeing.
Pic 2. Sabri shows us the product he sells. He gave us some as gifts.It was obvious that the beauty can't be found in the shanties, nor the cheap ticky-tacky that made up most of the area; the beauty is in the people.
As we passed them, many people would toss us looks that seemed to say “What are you doing here?” But this was only a natural curiosity and none of it was backed by animosity of any flavor. We saw children playing in the streets and shying away when we looked at them. We watched the mannerisms of people in general, noting the differences between covered and uncovered women among other things. People were only too excited to have us take their picture. We saw so many people, each more interesting than the last.
We ended up talking to a man on the street. His name is Sabri. In no time, we were sitting in chairs in his office, glasses of lemonade and gifts busying our hands. All this before he even knew our names. First, we used his limited knowledge of English to communicate. As time passed, we progressed through pictures on paper and ended up using Google: Translate on his computer to have a complete discussion. We talked about Turkey, how much we liked it as students, and he in turn told us about how he worked in New York and his perceptions of America and its people. After a while, we had to leave, but not before Sabri had a chance to offer us dinner and a stay at his resort if we ever came back.
It’s hard to emphasize both how nice people there were and how valuable the experience was. We can learn theory and facts about a culture without immersing ourselves into it, but experiencing it firsthand is invaluable. As a young, immature student, I realize the naivety of both of these statements. Nevertheless, this is how I feel after even a brief stint here.
Pic 3. Wooden shacks in Kashimpara
While we waited for our ferry, we sat in a park and talked about how friendly and nice the people were. Eventually, all the groups convened from their ‘missions’ to have dinner together at one of the nicer restaurants, the tourist-oriented prices many times more than what you’d pay for in the district we had just left. We were at the restaurant for quite a while, so we were happy when we finally arrived at our hotel. Exhausted, many fell asleep right away. A few of us stayed up writing journals and ‘chilling’ that night, even though we knew that the sooner we went to bed, the sooner another exciting, educational (for the parents reading this) day would come.
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