Travelling through geography
Jerry Jean Preston
A geography teacher should have a fund of travel narratives. These are stories about journeys to different places. Personal narratives certainly strike a chord with children and adults alike. They are a colourful tool to impress geographical details in the listener’s mind. How do you go about collecting travel narratives?
Well, the most obvious way, of course, is to travel!
And what exactly should be included in the travel narrative? If the teacher limits herself to mundane geographical details, the narrative will turn out to be just another flavourless geography class. Instead, she should seek out interesting ‘geo-trivia’ that will make the region’s geography worth remembering.
During the trip, the teacher should keep her eyes peeled for details that will illustrate the geography and will be lively. Don’t merely observe that the climate is . . . the soil is . . . the animals were . . . and so on. Compare this knowledge with that of your own region. Find patterns between human lifestyles and natural geography. Ask why? Why do they wear this kind of attire? Why the unique architecture for their homes?
For instance, people in Kerala traditionally wear white clothes – white mundu, white sari, whereas the people of Rajasthan wear bright colourful clothes. This may have something to do with the availability of water to wash clothes. Water is abundant in Kerala and so they can manage to keep their white clothes white! However, in Rajasthan, the scarcity of water demands a more strategic colour for their daily attire. Now, this is just a hypothesis – something not yet proven. However, such interesting titbits can go into the travel narrative, which will later be narrated in the geography class. After all, what is a narrative without a bit of cinnamon and spice? But, these bits will help to impress certain geographical details in students’ minds.
Here are some other examples of geo-trivia that can help enliven the travel narrative. These are given to illustrate how a travel narrative and thereby a geography lesson can be pepped up.
In Saudi Arabia, water is more expensive than petrol! Fresh water is difficult to source in the desert kingdom. Water is distilled from sea water.
Most homes in certain flood-prone regions in Kerala, like Muvattupuzha, keep an emergency boat ready. This is meant for rescue operations during monsoon floods. The local knowledge prescribes all families to leave their house doors open, in times of floods! Else, the flood water will stagnate inside the house, causing the walls to disintegrate and the house to collapse.
Day time train journeys allow you to examine the natural terrain of the intervening regions to your destination. During my trips from Kerala to Tamilnadu via Palakkad/Coimbatore, I notice a huge disparity in the levels of greenery. As soon as I cross the Palakkad border and enter Tamilnadu, the lush greenery is replaced by scrawny bushes. I have also noticed that the leaves of banana plantains are torn in many plantations in Coimbatore, unlike those in Kerala. This is due to local winds.
We often complain that Indian cities are so ‘dirty,’ while foreign cities are so ‘clean’. Have we ever wondered why? There is a geographical reason for it! India is a tropical country. The water and weather allows everything to grow in India – humans, mosquitoes, spiders, frogs, algae, fungi! All the plants, animals and humans add to the dirt and chaos. Also, the cities in India are fairly old. They did not foresee the large scale rural-to-urban migrations. Scientific urban planning – a fairly modern phenomenon – set in only recently.
Foods of a place can also be used as interesting talking-points to spice up the travel narrative. It is said that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was keenly attuned to the foods of the different regions of India. This was used by her as a resource to bond with the local people during her visits. Remember, how Enid Blyton heartened our childhood fascination for England with her descriptions of scones, pastries, and tarts?
Food descriptions can also whet a student’s appetite for geography. It helps if the teacher can make a visit to the market place of a region, during a trip, to study (and savour!) the fruits, vegetables, and natural produce. They can be yummy details to be used in
her class narratives later.
In this way, a geography teacher should be alert during her journeys, especially the unusual ones. She should be a hoarder of such trivia that interestingly demonstrate the geography of the places. And then, with a little bit of imagination, she can weave a memorable travel narrative for her class.
But, what if she cannot actually travel?
Physically travelling to a place can be expensive, especially to distant and foreign locales. This is where media can save the day. Television, Internet, and travel magazines are vibrant resources for the continuing education of the geography teacher. Channels like National Geographic, Animal Planet, and TLC give you the feel of visiting a place – vicariously. The scripts of the programmes and narrations by the presenters are usually geared up to be interesting. You can note their jokes and interesting descriptions to be used as trivia for your geography lessons and narratives.
If you cannot catch the programmes when they are being aired, you can see uploaded videos on their websites or YouTube.
Travel magazines or travel sections in magazines can also be educational resources. They will give you the main tourist destinations of a given region.
Movies are another means to get a vicarious visual feel of a region. For instance, the English movie Sound of Music gives you breathtaking views of the Austrian landscape (coniferous or Taiga forests) as Julie Andrews waltzes her way through them. As you watch Tintin’s adventures in Tibet, China, America’s Wild West, Congo and other countries, you receive an education in the
geography, dressing, and idiosyncrasies of these different nations. The geography teacher’s narration of these stories along with geographical descriptions of the regions will find a special place in her student’s hearts. So keep an eye out for such movies and animation movies.
Another uncommon way to get material for geography narratives is to read literature that describes the geography of a place. Amitav Ghosh’s Hungry Tide weaves a story set in the Sunderbans (mangrove tidal forests) of West Bengal. Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things narrates a story with rich descriptions of Kerala. It helps if the teacher can note down interesting details in the story as well as the geography. The story brings alive the geographical descriptions.
So, geography teacher! Be a seeker of geo-trivia by actual or vicarious travel. Spin out a travel yarn. Your students will remember you and your lessons for it!
The author is in the process of completing her PhD. She is interested in developing methods that will make the teaching-learning process a more interesting one. She can be reached at jjean960@gmail.com.
