5 months in

Hello loyal blog readers (aka mom).  Sorry I’ve been MIA the past month, but lots has been happening! Also the fact that I have internet at site makes me semi-lazy because I feel a lot more connected with the world so my blog has been suffering. Anyways, this is going to be a long one. Also I wrote this blog about 2 weeks ago but I realized I'm about 4 days away from my 5-month anniversary here in Nepal!! Time really has flown by.

So lots has happened since I last posted, which was right after New Years. This month has certainly had its ups and downs. N-199 isn’t doing so hot right now…we’ve had 2 volunteers ET (Early Terminate in PC lingo) in the past 2 weeks. Sadly, these 2 people were also people I was very fond of. Statistically, 20% of PC volunteers don’t finish the full 27 months of service, and for a group as small as N-199, who started with 20 volunteers, we’re halfway to fulfilling that statistic. Because we are such a small group, any one person leaving affects us all, as we all got very close during pre-service training.  I didn’t think them leaving would affect me that much but it really messed with my head for a good week and a half. My friend who left is back in the states now, and sometimes I just catch myself thinking like “hey, I could be back in the states too.” Like 2 weeks ago she wanted to go home. And 2 days later she was. I hadn’t thought about leaving at all until she left. We all know as volunteers we can terminate service any time we like. Yes, we took oaths to do this experience for 2 years, but when it comes down to it, I could be back on a plane to America tomorrow if I wanted. This experience isn’t for everyone, and although I DO feel that this experience is for me right now, it was strange to see someone take that option of terminating service early. It reminded me of how easily I could just go home. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on that much at home; at first I was but now its different…When I feel homesick its not like I really want to be home, but more a place where I can actually have real conversations with people. I don’t have that craving to be in America quite as much anymore, which I think is good? Anyways, Peace Corps staff came to my site for a visit right after all of this happened, which was very helpful as they also brought all of my Christmas packages from home! I probably consumed a pound of chocolate that week they visited. Also, my 2 friends who are back in America now…if you are reading this, I miss you both greatly and wish you luck!

Work has slowly been picking up here in my village and I actually have days where I feel like I’m not completely worthless. I think that is the hardest emotion for me to deal with here: feeling worthless. Just because you have those days where you feel like shit about your language and you just think ‘how the hell will I ever get anything accomplished here?’ But then I have days like yesterday which were simply fantastic. My sister and I met my counterpart at a training he was giving about mushroom cultivation. My village had recently undergone some training about it (I had blisters for a good week after from chopping up media for the mushrooms to grow in), so I got up and spoke about what I had seen and learned. It was half in English/half in Nepali, but I still felt good about it. My sister and I have also been going around to different farmers groups and giving trainings about making seedling nursery beds. We’ve been planting different varieties of gourds, squash and cucumber. Yesterday we spent almost 4 hours with one village and started with a giant pile of dirt and plastic and ended up with a neat rows of plastic bags filled with dirt/fertilizer and seeds that we then covered in mulch and plastic to let them grow. I also attended a meeting in my district center (districts are sort of like counties here) at the District Agriculture Development Office and met up with the other agriculture volunteers as well. My counterpart wanted me to speak so I gave a short speech about who I am, what work I am doing, and what I have learned so far. It was all in Nepali and I hate public speaking even in English but it turned out ok. Its honestly the simple achievements here that can make a day so much better.

The other day I was home alone with my grandma who had gone off to cut grass for our water buffalo, so when I received a call from my sister telling me to go to town, I simply left as I had no way of telling my grandma where I went. Well, on the way home with my sister, she decided to play a joke on my grandma/neighbors and call them and pretend not to know where I was. My poor grandma was on speaker phone and started crying because she said she lost me! My sister was peeing her pants laughing and when we hung up I had 5 missed calls from neighbors. I got home and my poor grandma said she had looked all over for me and because I had left my water bottle at home (which I rarely do, but I forgot), she had absolutely no idea where I could have gone for 5 hours. I then got lectured by my neighbors about how I need to let people know where I’m going from now on. Anyways, good to know my family and community cares!!!

Others happenings: our water was shut off for 2 weeks so my family and I were making multiple trips to the nearby water tap for bathing/washing purposes. Even though the water tap is down a very steep hill, my house is very close and I felt bad for the other families who trekked halfway across the village just to fill up their buckets.

My extended family came for a 5 day visit last week and like any family reunion, it was chaos. There were 12 people in my house at one point and because we cant all fit in my kitchen, we had to eat in shifts. Because of this rotational system somehow my 9 year old sister forgot to get fed which was actually hilarious because I feel like it was a Home Alone type of story. She came wandering into the kitchen at about 9pm saying she was hungry and everyone just looked horrified because somehow she never ate. We also slaughtered a chicken one night and had a huge chicken roast. We marinated the meat in a garlic/ginger mixture and I helped fry it in a huge pot of oil. It was delicious and when I was able to get pieces of chicken that were actually meat, it tasted like chicken from home! I’ve still been getting a lot of goat meat at various events I go to and I swear to god I had a windpipe on my plate the other day, so when I am able to eat actual meat it’s a very good day.

Besides helping wash dishes and clean around the house, my new favorite chore is feeding my baby water buffalo every night! He makes cute little buffalo sounds when he sees me coming with his milk. Because we use the milk for our own cooking purposes, he’s not allowed to nurse when he likes it so he gets very riled up around feeding time. I also learned how to make milk tea the other day which makes me feel that I can help out a little more, considering we have tea about 4 times a day.

Spent 2 days in Pokhara with friends last week as well, which was exactly what I needed after my first rough couple weeks of the month. I essentially spent 48 hours consuming pizza and beer and lattes but it helped recharge the batteries and I came back to site feeling very refreshed. It’s a blessing and a curse that Pokhara is near to my site. Its still 4 hours by public transportation so its far enough away I cant go for the day, but close enough for a weekend trip. Its bad because I spend so much money when I go, and for someone who makes the equivalent of around $150 a month its rough. Sometimes you just need pizza and beer though.

Think the 3 week cold spell at my site is over…back to being cold in the mornings but around 65 degrees during the daytime. When PC came to my site they told me im only at 500m above sea level…so much for my adventures in the mountains of Nepal! It explains the monkeys/hiding tigers though. Also saw a scorpion the other day which was disturbing as I was hoping those creatures didn’t live here.

This past week I attended a wedding and a Nepali fair!! Unfortunately, one of the days at the wedding was without a doubt my worst day in Nepal thus far. My sisters and I had started our small family vacation with a nice 2 hour bus ride with my little sister barfing up cabbage the entire way there. 3 of us slept in a bed that night, and it was one of those nights I wasn’t entirely sure I actually slept at all. I woke up with a raging head cold the next day at 5am and spent the entire day getting asked to dance by Nepali women. I was exhausted and freezing cold and was sick and tired of telling people I didn’t want to dance over and over again and its really hard to explain but it was just an overall shit day where I wanted to be as far away from Nepal as possible. I told my family I had a headache at 7pm and went to the room where we were staying and crawled into bed. Unfortunately, every single lady at the wedding who had a baby had put their children in there to nap, which was fine until one of the 2-year olds fell out of the bed it was sleeping in and started screaming. So I picked it up and headed back to the wedding in the pitch black and had to run around asking every single Nepali whose child I was holding. I eventually found its mom but then I got captured by the women and got force-fed rice but I eventually managed to escape and slept maybe 3 hours that night. FORTUNATELY, bad days are generally followed by good ones, which is good for me to remember here. As shitty as one day can be, its never permanent and I know I will feel better soon.

 And today I got to go to a Nepali fair!! It was like a normal carnival in the states, except without any sort of safety regulations whatsoever. I thought to myself instead of Peace Corps making rules about how we cant pierce our ears during service or ride a motorcycle, maybe they should make a rule that we aren’t allowed to ride on carnival rides. This one ride was a giant swinging hammer and people were standing and hanging on to the metal bars while it swung higher and higher. Naturally, I went on this ride 3 times. I also saw a Nepali magic show and was boggled because I seriously couldn’t figure out how this dude managed to make someone disappear 5 feet from my face. The best part about this whole carnival is that I GOT TO RIDE A CAMEL. Instead of normal pony rides, they had camel rides! I randomly ran into another volunteer at the fair and I made her ride the camel with me. It was awesome. I really wanted the camel to get rowdy and start running around but sadly we just walked, and had to duck our heads every 5 seconds so we didn’t get strangled by electric wires. It was super fun though and I also got to eat ice cream so it was a good day.

Alright, I realized I actually have a lot more to say but im going to save it for another post, hopefully which will be written sometime in the next week or so!

Namaste,

Alex