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
