I was overwhelmed by the love and support from home after my last rather emotional blog entry! You guys are great and I appreciate every facebook/blog comment and package you are all sending my way (plus the primary literature...thanks Beth!). Its really fantastic to know I am supported every step of the way here and it makes me that much more excited for the work I'm going to do here in the future.
Today our homework assignment was to buy and cook food for our families. We were given 10,000 rupees each, approximately $9, to buy our supplies. I was able to buy 1 kg of bananas, 1 kg of tomatoes, 1 kg potatoes, 1/2 kg lentils, 1 kg apples, 1 fruitcake, and 1 kg of chicken all for around $6 american dollars. Nepal is crazy cheap. It was hard to spend the money we were given! Getting the chicken was interesting....myself and 2 friends went to the corner store to get chicken. I was thinking they slaughter chickens each morning and then sell the meat throughout the day. WRONG. they straight up grabbed a chicken from their house and slaughtered it right in front of me. I watched them saw off the neck, pluck the chicken and disembowel the whole thing. Then I went home and cooked it...probably as fresh as it gets! I ended up cooking dhaal (lentils), baat (rice), kukurako maasu (chicken meat), and tarkari (vegetables: i used potatoes, green beans, and tomatoes). The amount of spices they put on everything is amazing...its literally 3 spoonfuls of salt, 3 spoonfuls of turmeric and cumin, and masala powder. They also add a mashed up mix of garlic/ginger and spicy peppers to everything. Not the best food for a weak stomach but it tastes delicious. Anyways, I guess it was a success! My fam asked me to cook American food next saturday for them! I think i'll try and cook spaghetti..easiest thing to cook with the resources I have.
All 20 of us trainees went on a field trip to Bhaktapur earlier this week!! Its about 20km east of Kathmandu. It was great to get out of Chautara for the day and explore such a historical city where both Hindu and Buddhist religious sites/art exist. Bhaktapur lies along the ancient trade route between India and Tibet and is dubbed "Nepal's Cultural Gem." We were able to see the citiies many temples and its famous Durbar Square. Durbar square has a 55-Window Palace, which served as the seat of royalty prior to 1769. in addition, i was able to eat pizza, a latte, and ice cream all in one day! Bhaktapur was swarming with tourists so the many restaurants there cater to their different needs. I posted an album on facebook with pictures if anyone wants to go look.
Earlier this week my fellow trainees in Chhap and I were able to successfully implement the beginning stages of our PACA activities! PACA stands for Participatory Appraisal for Community Action and is basically the methods we use to assess our community's needs once we're at our permanent site. Well we're basically doing "practice PACA" during PST so we know how it operates. Except instead of 4 months to gather information and resources, we have 3 weeks. BUT the Chhap trainees and I were able to hold a meeting last Saturday (at 6:30am no less) and 50 people showed up! It was great. (Side comment: we passed around a sign in sheet and the illeterate people used We asked them what they thought Chhap's resources were, what is weaknesses were, and what they thought Chhap needed most. After over 2 hours of talking (with the help of our LCF as a translator) with the residents of Chhap, we learned what they wanted most was agriculture training in order to increase crop yields....good thing we were fresh off of permagardening training! We assigned different community members to be in charge of bringing certain items for composting and 3 days later we watched as our plan was put into action! Our composting training was set for 2pm and all of us were nervous if people would actually show up and bring their supplies. Sure enough though once 2pm rolled around we watched as community members slowly trudged up the hill with their assigned bags of green leaves, brown leaves, charcoal, or manure. It was fantastic...we taught a group of about 20 how to make and maintain a compost pile. In about 4 weeks we'll actually start to make the garden, when the compost is almost ready. It made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something so early in training (my exact words were "wow I feel like an actual peace corps volunteer), which was great.
That about sums it up here from Nepal. Not too many crazy happenings this week. Dashain has started, which is a 10 day long festival (kind of like our Christmas I suppose) so I think I have a lot of extended family coming to visit soon. Dashain involves a lot of meat-eating and a lot of raksi-drinking. Raksi is homemade alcohol that they make here using rice and it tastes foul. Its gotten quite cold here in the mornings and at night, and excuse my language, but showering is a real bitch now. Not my most favorite activity. We also have our practice Language Proficiency Exam coming up so I'm really trying to study hard for that.
Namaste!
-Alex
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