Indentured Labour: A connected classrooms project

This is a link to our storymap, worked on by Bliqees, Viktoria, and Lilac.

The first picture here is an image of one of the women depicted in the Irish Famine memorial, on the docks where the majority of Irish emigrants would have left Ireland. I found this sculpture really striking in light of having completed this project because the woman here is similar to the way the Indian women in the opening of The Swinging Bridge are portrayed, as women carrying and wearing everything they can before they leave their homelands. The second picture is the entirety of the Jeanie Johnston , a replica famine/coffin ship that Lilac has discussed already.

 Lilac: Items forbidden on  the Jeanie Johnston I thought the workout was very informative and enlightening and allowed a great deal of reflection. Beginning with the famine memorial and then the Jeanie Johnston, they gave a great insight and direct understanding of certain themes we covered in this module. I had already read Eveline in school, but I really enjoyed going through it again and standing where she was standing in Joyce's story. The tour of the port was very enlightening as I knew almost nothing about that area. Finally, I enjoyed the creative writing exercise at the end, but I would have liked more time to explore that further, and maybe in a more ideal place.      Faye: Emigrant advice on the  Jeanie Johnston I really enjoyed the walkshop as it was a different mode of learning than what im used to in college. We started out at the famine memorial on Custom House Quay, which was interesting for me as ive never seen it before. We then carried on...

For our final reflection, we all wrote a paragraph each to summarise our general thoughts and experiences on the project. Why we chose this topic, how we worked as a team and the progress weve made over the past few weeks. Bilqees: As an Indo-Trinidadian young woman whose great-grandfather was an indentured labourer from Bihar, having arrived to work in Trinidad in 1873, this was the most illuminating project I've undertaken as it relates to Indo-Caribbean history. I think society is generally given a brief, reductive outline of what indentureship was in the context of the Caribbean. There is a disconnect between our idealized tropical modern-day reality and the harsh history that its backdrop. Little Indo-Trinidadian people know the socio-economic state of British India that even led to the indentureship programme (or, scheme) that brought hundreds of thousands of Indians to the Caribbean. In working on the excerpt from Espinet's "The Swinging Bridge", I was able...

This week we had another zoom call to check up on eachothers progress and address any questions we had. We wernt sure what type of referencing to use, as UCD and UWI mainly use two different types, so we planned to ask our lecturers during the next class to see which one theyd prefer us use throughout out project. We all agree that meeting up weekly on zoom is helping the project run smoothly and in a timely manner, giving us time to complete our goals and add any ideas or changes we deem necessry along the way.  Even though it is not mentioned in The Swinging Bridge, we decided to include Mauritius because, when talking about indentured labour, it is one of the most important locations. It was the first location that Indian indentured labourers were brought over from India by the British, to work on the plantations. It is a very important to acknowledge Mauritius, and in fact, the Aapravasi Ghat has been declared a world heritage site .  This week was quite quiet in terms of ...

This week we all met up on Zoom to check in on eachothers progress in completing our parts in the group project. Everyone is working together efficently and were all putting in an equal amount of effort. We all are equally interested in the topic that we chose, and we are enjoying learning new things and expanidng our knowledge on the topic. The bones of the blog was made today and is working after having some technical issues last week. We created a google doc to keep progress on whos working on what. We have split the work up evenly throughout the five of us to complete an adequate story map and blog that expands on the Kala Pani and the Swinging Bridge. When researching the two Canadian locations mentioned in The Swinging Bridge (Montreal and Toronto), it was hard to find information on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, particularly related to Ramabai Espinet.  We have all decided to call again next week to check up on eachothers progress. Its quite challenging to find a day that s...

23rd March  We had our first major technical issues today, with making sure everyone has admin privileges for this blog, but we were able to find a solution, and learned a little bit more about this platform too! As we have split our group into two sections, one working on the blog page and the other working on the storymaps page, those of us working on the blog had our first look at the storymaps, which looks incredible so far! The page looks so professional, and I found it really interesting to see the distances that future indentured labourers had to travel while still in India. The storymaps put into perspective, for me at least, the huge sacrifices and choices made by those groups. In Ireland, our narrative of indentureship and emigration is tied together, and the length of the sea journey across the Atlantic is a key feature of stories of Irish emigration, so it was fascinating to put an even longer and more harrowing journey into its proper context, and I can't wait to find ...