Chennai, India (formerly known as Madras)(Personal)
As many of you know, India is one of the hardest places in the world for me to understand. Today has been no exception. To start out with, this country isn’t on a regular time zone, as the rest of the world. We had to change our clocks by 30 minutes. While it may be 1pm for you and technically 1am for us, it is 12:30am instead. I guess this isn’t as bad as Nepal, where they are 45 minutes off the rest of the world.
Anyway, a conflict started about a week ago when the ship’s medical department was told by the Indian Dept. of Public Health that all crew members had to have up-to-date yellow fever immunizations with documentation. All those crew members who were not up-to-date would have to get an immunization by the Indian authorities, at the ship’s expense. No prices were mentioned and we didn’t even know if they actually had the vaccine, or were just going to inject saline, as they do in many African countries. This was not being required for any of the paying passengers. I went nuts because there is no medical indication for a yellow fever shot for the itinerary we are currently on. We have not visited any ports where there is yellow fever and will not for the rest of the cruise. Because of this, the yellow fever vaccines had been removed from the ship prior to the voyage.
The ship asked for documentation of their reasoning, the Indians threatened the entire ship would be delayed in docking (meaning passengers would be angry because they would miss their shore excursion), and the argument continued. The medical team and I all worked on the yellow books, trying to figure out how many people needed shots – taking hours just to compile the data. Finally, the crew doc decided to call the Seattle office and ask for help. Sally, the director in Seattle, wrote an authoritative e-mail to the Indian Dept. of Health, quoting the WHO’s (World Health Organization) recommendations and called their bluff. As of this morning, we weren’t sure what was going to happen.
We entered Chennai Harbor and had to wait about an hour longer than expected to dock because there was a crane that needed to be moved out of the way. (At least that was the excuse.) Then their immigration officers came on board. I happened to be downstairs when they came on and was able to direct them to the lounge they were meeting in and they were down right rude to me. I was just being helpful and polite, but they acted as though they owned the ship. It ended up that each passenger and crew needed to be issued a “landing card” before anyone could be disembarked. The ship had to prepare all the cards, but each one had to be stamped by an Indian official. This took about an hour, delaying all of the shore excursions that were planned. The passengers were agitating.
Finally, those cards were issued and people started to get off the ship – but once off there were frequent glances back to the ship – feelings of “What am I doing here?” The dock was filthy and smelled of rotting materials. It had rained several hours before and the entire surface of the dock was glistening with an oily-muddy slime. There were 3 very poor women trying to move the water with grass-like brooms. They had their saris hiked up between their legs and they were barefoot as they moved the sludge around. I watched the crew who had on white shoes and white pants as the sludge slowly climbed up their clothes. I’m sure the laundry will be busy tonight.
In the mean time, the crew who were selected to get the yellow fever shots were sequestered in a room. If the shots were going to be given, there was no indication of time and there was the concern that any delay would impact the clearing of the ship. These poor people had to wait until 11am and then were dismissed. Nothing was said by the authorities and no one from the ship asked about it. I guess Sally truly called their bluff.
At the moment, we are waiting the sail-away, but there is a delay because the Indian authorities have now required that each passenger present him or herself in person to them along with their landing card and passport. Many of the passengers are disabled and even when we did the temperatures on everyone before Hong Kong, the nurses went to their rooms. Honestly, these people didn’t get off the ship, and most certainly aren’t the ones who are going to want to jump ship and seek asylum in India. I have a feeling this is just another way for India to make a little extra money. Each minute we are docked costs money, so they are making this drag out.
So my question remains: What is India thinking? They are alienating so many first time visitors and re-enforcing the ambivalent feelings many people have had over the years. Many old timers are concerned that Chennai has deteriorated since their last visit several years ago. This place is hard to understand…..
Labels: Personal
posted by Hills @ 8:34 PM
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