I also received 3 boxes from home last week! Best day ever!! You guys are the best. Thank you to Beth/Morgan, Celeste, and Jenni for sending me wonderful American things. The glow bracelets were a huge hit in Chhap and I have been thoroughly enjoying the peanut butter, granola bars, and chocolate you all sent me!!!
I got back from Indiviudal experience days a couple days ago! Quite the adventure...basically half of my friends missed their bus so there ended up being 6 of us in one hostel room; thankfully we had our own beds, but our room was a bit on the moldy side and everything was just slightly damp. Not too enjoyable to wake up and realize my face was all snuggled up in the blanket. However, the hostel had tato paani (hot water!), which was fantastic. The town I went to was called Melamchi, and it basically seemed like every mentally ill person in Nepal lived there no joke..we watched these 2 men dance and hit sticks in the middle of the street for about 2 hours, almost getting run down by buses or cars every 5 seconds. It was the most bizarre thing. Melamchi didnt have a ton to offer that was different from Chautara, but it was situated right next to a big river, which was fun to explore. It's also situated along a trekking route, so we saw a lot of white people, which is actually strange to see after being here for 2 months and only seeing other volunteers. Our second day in Melamchi we decided to visit some other volunteers and ended up walking 20k, which resulted in my foot having about 5 blisters. Peace Corps really does eff up your feet. The day we left Melamchi we had great luck in getting a bus to Zero Kilo, which is the town where we switch buses and get on another to Chautara. To give you an idea of how slow these buses are/how bad the roads are, it took 2 full hours to go 23km, which is around 15 or so miles. Our bus wasnt crowded though so we all plugged in our ipods and just relaxed. We got off in zero kilo and got some snacks and waited for our bus to Chautara. After an hour of waiting our bus finally came but it was smashed full of people. There were already around 15 or so people on the roof of the bus, which gives you an idea of how much room there was inside (hint: none). Peace Corps doesnt allow us to ride on the tops of buses (not that I would enjoy sitting on the roof of a bus anyways) so we all squished inside with the 40 or so other people standing in the aisleway. For the next 3 hours we all stood in the aisles, hanging on to the luggage rack for dear life every time the bus went around a sharp turn, which was often. Then it started raining for some odd reason (monsoon season is over), so the 20 odd people on the top of the bus came inside and thats when my feet proceeded to go numb for the next hour, as I wasnt entirely sure they were on the floor, more like squished between 10 other people and their bags. Atleast no one vomited into the aisleway, which is what happened to other volunteers. Two hours into this wonderful ride we stop to help another bus and discover my friends Voranan and Nick sitting on the side of the rode, as their bus had blew a tire. We helped them and eventually made it back to Chataura, where we discovered it was now the arctic. Chhap has been freezing cold recently and compared to Melamchi (which was oddly warm), it was brutal. I'm typing this now with sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a United Airlines blanket wrapped around my head/neck like a strange turban.
Right now Nepal is in the middle of Tihaar. Tihaar is the second biggest festival in Nepal, and it is also called Dipaawali or Diwaali. Tihaar literally means "festival of lights," so most of Chhap is decorated with colorful sparkling lights on all the houses. It reminds me a lot of Christmas! Chautaura is super crowded and the shops have been devoting all their time to making various colored khajaa (snacks), so they are overflowing with various colored biscuits, cookies, and crackers. There are 5 days of Tihaar, and today was Laxmi pujaa, where cows are garlanded and worshipped. Cows are sacred animals in the Hindu religion, so all of my family's cows were given a garland of flowers to wear and had rice and red paint sprinkled all over them. See facebook for some photos. Also there has been a baby goat explosion in Chhap and its great because tiny baby goats are running around everywhere!
The fourth day of Tihaar is where you worship your own body. all of my extended family and I got together (about 25 people in total) and gave each other tikka and flower garlands. We all sat on the floor in a big square and in front of each person were a couple candles and twisted string soaked in oil, which we then lit on fire. THe whole room was aglow and it was a really cool to watch, not to mention the heat given off by the tiny fires was a nice reprieve from the freezing cold concrete I was sitting on. That night we also did this thing called a "Dausi" (i still dont know exactly how its pronounced or what it was, no matter how many times i asked). Basically the youth club in Chhap raises money by going door to door in Chhap and singing and dancing in front of the houses, and in return, the houses bring out platters of food and money and raksi and its all donated to the youth club. However, the youth club sings the SAME ONE VERSE over and over and over for like 3hours so after a while I went to bed because I couldnt dance in a circle for that long. It was also about 9:45 pm and my bedtime is normally 9 at the latest so i was struggling. My sister also decided to do my makeup that night for the dance and let me tell you, our version of what makeup is attractive in america is not the same as in Nepal. First, my lips were lined in black eyeliner pencil and then filled in with this brownish lipstick (i rubbed the lipliner off as soon as i could). Next my eyes were lined in jet black eyeliner. I wouldnt let her fill in my eyebrows, because the previous day she busted out the pencil and complely colored in my eyebrows in black and then I had to go to class like that. I looked like a clown. However all the women here thought it was amazing because I got a lot of "dherai raamros" which means "very good/beautiful." WRONG.
Today was the last day of Tihaar...its called Bhai Tikka, where sisters worship their brothers, and vice versa. Again, see facebook for photos, but basically all of the girls worshipped the boys first, which included dumping mass amounts of flowers on their heads along with putting colored paint on their forehead. We then gave them gifts, which mostly consisted of fruit, candy, flowers, and other nuts/snacks. I gave my brother this chocolate/nut snack pack that are very popular here for Tihaar and a pack of cards. Since my brother also has 2 other sisters, he received a lot of gifts. In a strange way, today reminded me a bit of christmas, exchanging gifts and whatnot. Afterwards the boys worshipped their sisters and my brother gave me material to make a new kurta surwhal with!! All of the girls also received money from all the male family members and we were given multiple flower garlands to wear around all day. My sisters also gave me a pashmina scarf and a hat!!! I think its because I'm always freezing my butt off here. Same sex siblings dont usually exchange gifts on Bhai Tikka, so I had nothing to give them in return...I'm going to need to get my family a really great gift before I leave Chhap next week :(
Ive been able to process permanent site placements over the past week and I am feeling a lot better about my situation. I was very overwhelmed at first at being so isolated and far away from everybody, but I think that the town I am placed in definitely has its perks. My village apparently built me my own office because they waned an agriculture volunteer so badly, and I get to learn about beekeeping! Apparently my town is fairly advanced in terms of agricultural methods, and use hydropower in order to water their potato fields, which they then sell to major markets in Pokhara. The village also has a very active women farmer's group, which my host mother participates in. I'm only a 45 minute walk away from Internet and a fairly large market, which is better than some other volunteers being 4 hours away. My town is also only 3km off a major paved road, which should make transportation to Pokhara for training/visiting other volunteers fairly easy. I'm getting excited to move there and settle down, but I'm also terrified of permanent site. I'm also getting really sad to leave Chhap!! My family has been fanastic and I dont think I could have asked for a better site for pre-service training.
Well, next week will be my last blog entry from Chhap! :( Then its off to Kathmandu for the week (just found out our hotel has hot water and wireless. hallelujiah) Thanks for following along so far!
-Alex
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