Our time in India made a powerful impression, necessarily, on everyone who visited there—I don't think that's an exaggeration—and our one-day stay in Mauritius introduced most of us to a magnificent place we'd known little about. We have had since then slightly rougher seas, not too bad but unfortunate in their timing because we've had a couple of new arrivals, and because it's a challenging time for a lot of students academically.
As for the new arrivals: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize-winner and genuine hero of our time, has arrived with his wife, Leah. They will be with us until our next port, Cape Town. Heads turn towards them in precisely the way I recall seeing heads turn towards Jackie O when I was at an Alvin Ailey performance in New York with a teacher of mine years ago. Tomorrow is a No Class Day—these appear intermittently on the voyage calendar as breaks and study times—and the Archbishop will make his big public appearance for the voyage tomorrow afternoon in our one large room, The Kaisersaal, which fits all of us passengers at once. His words are eagerly awaited. I think I speak for many when I say that I find it deeply moving just to be in his presence. What might distinguish me is how much relief and pleasure I am deriving from the presence of another new arrival, Professor John Bugbee, who has arrived to take the place of the Religious Studies professor who left us early in the voyage because of a health matter in his family. I know Professor Bugbee to a brilliant teacher and scholar but share in everyone else's mild pity for his having to integrate himself into a community that has already shared so much. He'll be wonderful at that, I think.
As for the challenges: We have held yesterday and today the 16th meeting of each course on board, putting us 2/3 of the way through the voyage's classroom sessions. Lots of courses have had exams and/or papers due in these last few days. The exhaustion that comes from ambitious travels in the ports and time at sea does make it hard, sometimes, to rise to the academic occasions. But the faculty have been deeply impressed by how well and consistently the students on board have so risen.
We zip along, the sea a brilliant blue, with whitecaps frequent. Madagascar, I'm told, is somewhere nearby, though not, as far as I can tell, in sight: "nearby" is a very relative term in relation to the enormity of the seas. Tonight the crew will put on its talent show, one of the program's traditions.
