RPCV Nepal (2012-2014) currently interning in Lusaka, Zambia with the State Department for the summer

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Re-defining normal


Proof time is passing faster: I literally thought I just wrote my last blog, but then I realized I wrote it right after my mom’s birthday, which was over a month ago. Woops. BUT, I did realize today is my 6-month anniversary of leaving home! Happy 6-months to me. Crazy to think I’ve been in Nepal for almost HALF A YEAR. I am happy to say in this blog that we have not lost any more members of N-199 since my last post, so that is good.

So what have I been up to? Lots! Agriculture wise, I’m making more progress. I went to my first agriculture meeting eklai the other day. Alone. It actually went fine! It was a short meeting and we talked about how far to plant tomato seedlings apart, and then some man took me on a tour of his ket, or vegetable fields. He had over 1000 cabbage plants…it was quite impressive. I am also in the process of making “compost tea” at my own house. Its basically small-scale compost in a bucket; you add a liter of water everyday and there is a small hole in the bucket where water drips out. You collect the water everyday and then pour it on the plants. I’m sectioning off a section of the garden to try it out on and see how it turns out. I’m really hoping there are visible results because then I can hopefully teach it to other agriculture groups around the area! I also attended another mushroom making workshop, where we planted mushrooms in wood. Last time we had planted them in plastic bags with straw as media, so this was a new method for me. And right now at my site, is what I would like to call the “great potato harvest of 2013.” Holy potatoes. My family is in the middle of harvesting our allu right now and I’ve just never seen so many potatoes in my life. My job is to be the “grader” and sort all of them into piles for selling at the market (thulo allu, or big potatoes), use for next seasons planting (biu ko laagi, or for seeds), and naraamro allu, or bad potatoes. We spent all day today doing this, and will spend all day tomorrow too. At the end of the day we carry them all home in dokos¸ which are these big wooden baskets with a naamlo attached. The naamlo is basically a woven strap with rope attached that you put across your head to carry whatever you are carrying. Well, I decided to be like “yeah family, I can most definitely carry those 50 lbs of potatoes on my head.” So they strapped it on and off I went….I made it halfway home and thought I was dying. My naamlo had slipped back too far and so I literally thought my entire neck was going to snap back and break. Good thing a neighbor came to the rescue. I’m scared to see how my body is going to feel tomorrow.

As I write this, I am struggling to remember what I’ve been doing for 4 weeks. I guess I’ve re-defined my definition of normal. Things that used to be weird just aren’t anymore. Except for eating random animal body parts…never going to get over that one. Oh, I did learn to public bathe though and its actually something I will probably continue during my time here…the water is so much warmer. Girls here basically wear a strapless dress made of cloth and you just bathe wearing that. It was hard at first but you get used to it. And its nice to be able to actually stand under a stream of water at the tap rather than bucket bathe.

My baby buffalo got loose today and was running around like a maniac in our courtyard and then spotted me and wouldn’t leave me alone. I had my hands full with things and was trying to run away but he wouldn’t stop following me. He knows I feed him everyday! Then I thought to myself, “theres a water buffalo running around my courtyard” and that was a small moment where I was like my life is weird.

I took a nice excursion with my family to 2 other districts nearby to mine a couple weeks ago. My sister and I were invited to Gulmi district by the ex-agriculture supervisor from my district for an ag program. However, after 85  hours of travel (actually only 7) and wayyyy too much vomit, we found out there wasn’t much of an ag program. I did get to tour a small village that used mouth suction to transport their water from a collection site to their own personal water tanks. Blew my mind..some of their tanks were over 400 meters away from the main pond. Oh also on the bus ride 2 Indian men tried to convert me to Christianity. And I thought to myself, “really? In a country that is almost all Hindu, you are going to choose the one white person you meet, who has a realllllly good chance of already being Christian, to convert?” Anyways, bad choice for them. They gave me a nice pamphlet and I pretended to read it, except my reading level is at the second grade level here and it was all in script, so I understood nothing. Thank gosh (for me) one of them men started barfing and so I could escape. Ok back to my story. Turns out there wasn’t an ag program, and I think the ex-supervisor’s goal in life was to cook me and my sister good food and let me watch TV. Because that’s what I did for 2 days. Somehow American VH1 was on the TV so I didn’t really move for 5 hours. And this man had a cook and so his cook kept bringing my sister and I popcorn in bed and all sorts of delicious things. It was awesome. Both my sister and I were a bit confused on why we were there though. We did also take a tour of a man’s farm who had amazing suntala (orange) trees. I think the orange guy’s goal in life was to feed me a million oranges but after I ate 5 my mouth started bleeding so I told him I had to stop, but I assured him they were delicious, which they were.  After a lovely 48 hours in Gulmi district, my sister and I went to Palpa, which is the district just below mine. My aunt and uncle live there so we spent the day with them. We went to Srinagar that day, which is sort of a big park that has amazing views of Tansen, which is the district capital of Palpa (see my facebook album for photos). The views were awesome and we walked around for a bit. Definitely someplace I’d like to go back to, as it would be a fun place to camp or have a picnic. My aunt and uncle have their own car, so as we were driving back to their house from Srinagar, my little cousin who speaks good English told me they had 1 English song in all of their music. I was excited to see what it would be…was definitely not expecting “My Humps” by Fergie to come on. I almost died laughing and my family couldn’t understand why.

My sister’s husband is coming back from Qatar in 10 days, so I’m excited to meet him. My village (along with most places in my district), seriously lack men from age 25-45. They simply just don’t exist. My village only has young boys and old men. They are all off in other countries working and sending back remittances. All of them stay for 2-year stretches and then come home for a period of 2 months and then repeat it again. Theres seriously a reason why all kids here are 2 years apart in age from each other. I actually had to say my first goodbye in Nepal about 2 weeks ago. My neighbor’s husband was returning back to Dubai where he works as a driver for an oil company. I had really grown to like him over the past 3 months, and he was always around if I ever needed anything fixed in my room. I don’t think I realized he worked in Dubai for a while, so it was sad to have to say goodbye, especially since I won’t be crossing paths with him ever again…I’ll be back in America when he next returns to Nepal.

I have my IST (In-Service Training) coming up in 4 weeks, which is around 8 days of technical and language training PC gives us after being at site for a while. It will be great to be with the whole group again, since we haven’t all been together since Christmas. Before IST however, I will be trekking and white-water rafting for 5 days! I got really lucky. I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but good family friends are coming to Nepal for 10 days, and they so nicely invited me along on part of their trip! I’m stoked to see people from home. My friend Shaeffer is also coming to Nepal next month and is coming to stay at my site for a little, which will be fun, as no one has visited me yet! We sort of met in Winthrop this summer (Shaeffer, I’m copying you on this one), but have been keeping in contact since we both found out each other will be here.

I’m currently trying to learn my Nepali numbers, as I can only confidently count up til 30. I never realized how easy English numbers are until I learned Nepali. Theres absolutely no internal pattern to the numbers…its completely necessary to learn each one. Strugglessss.

I’ll try and be a better blog-writer,

Alex