Untouchable

I had a spectacularly boring day today. I read all of David Sedaris’ “Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls” and ate 9 mini candycanes this afternoon for lack of other things to do. I have work projects going on right now (im starting a school library!), but they don’t exactly require me to spend every day doing them. While I was reading, I thought to myself, “its cold out, what would go nice with this book is a giant steaming mug of coffee.” So I jumped out of bed, got my little packet of instant Starbucks coffee and was halfway through the kitchen door when I remembered, I couldn’t go in the kitchen. Or touch any metal plates/cups/spoons/kitchen ware. Or wash my dishes in the sink. Or go down to the tap to shower or fetch water. Or sit on the same floor mat with a member of the opposite sex. And I definitely couldn’t heat up water to drink coffee. Why, you may ask? Because in Nepal, when a woman is on her period, she cannot do any of the above things. This includes me. I know this is probably a weird/taboo subject not commonly discussed at the dinner table during American family dinners but it weirdly is in Nepal. So since I accomplished nothing except reading an entire book and consuming massive amounts of sugar today, I figured I could accomplish part of Peace Corps Goal #3 (share host country culture with Americans) through this blog.

Periods are a weird thing here. They are openly discussed with all members of the family, female or not. For 4 days, women are untouchable. Literally, the verb used to express this means “untouchable.” In Nepali “Ma nachune bhae” translates to “I have become untouchable.” Which is what one must say during these times. I should also mention I am not speaking for all of Nepali culture here. This is largely a caste-specific thing. Brahmins and Chhetris (the two highest castes) are the strictest about this. I live with a Brahmin family and so must follow their cultural rules. Other female volunteers have no issues when it comes to that time of the month. My first homestay family I was with, Newaris (another caste), even let me cook. For 4 day in a Brahmin household, females on their period are not allowed to cook or fetch water. In a way, a lot of them like this time each month. It’s a decreased workload and they often sleep in because they are not allowed to do the work that normally requires them to rise at the crack of dawn. Normally, this doesn’t affect me that much. Since the arrival of my uncle’s new wife into our house, I have been doing practically no work. She has taken over all the cooking and cleaning. But come meal time, I am still required to sit on my tiny straw mat in the corner of our outdoor kitchen and eat, making sure not to touch any of the metal water jugs or other peoples plates. Even while being served food, others must make sure that we do not touch the food at the same time. The plate is put on the floor before I can pick it up. I must wash my dishes separately and set them out to dry in their own place. Male volunteer friends think a lot of this is demeaning, and I must admit it takes getting used to, but its mostly just very different from what we experience at home. At times yes, you do feel like a leper, when a family member mentions to a neighbor not to touch you, since you are on your period. When anyone comes over for tea, I must mention why I am sitting far away from everyone or why I am not partaking in chores. Its not even uncommon or weird for a visitor to ask “What day are you on?”meaning are you on your 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, or 4^th day of your period? Basically, how many more days of being untouchable do you have?

Additionally, women must shower on the 2^nd and 4^th days. Normally I don’t care about this, except for when it is winter. LIKE NOW. I have been showering once every 4-5 days because of how cold it is. Side note: I think Nepal and Mongolia may be the only Peace Corps countries forced to shower outside in cold water when its cold enough to see your breath. So as you can see, showering twice in four days becomes largely an issue of mind over matter, as I must force myself to dunk my body in freezing cold ice water in a concrete room. Sometimes they do heat up water for me, but I often feel bad for asking because someone else must perform the task for me. I actually even had coffee today, but I had to ask my little sister to heat up the water on the stove. I hate when people have to do menial chores like heating up water for me, so this is my largest complaint. I also can’t heat myself by the fire during these times which is also hard during the winter. Fire in Nepal is believed to house a god, so it is considered “sacred” in a way. So a lot of the winter here involves me hiding in my sleeping bag, crawling out for mealtimes, and going straight back to the sleeping bag. Normally I sit in the mornings by the fire and drink tea and or hang out after dinner but its too cold in my corner of the kitchen so I just make a mad dash upstairs and crawl into bed.

Additionally, when girls here first get their period, they must be isolated in a room for 3 days where “sunlight and men” (apparently the world’s 2 evils) cannot see them. They cant go to school or even outside. My family is lucky because we have a side building where we store chairs and mats, etc. Others are not so lucky. Their daughters often sleep in the barns because there is no where else for them to go. It sounds barbaric, and yes it might be a little, but its also their culture.  I had issues respecting it at first. Maybe not so much as respecting but I more just had issues with how demeaning it felt to me at first. I had shared with my sister that we don’t exactly share these things in the United States. I don’t go around telling my neighbors when its that time of the month. But now its weird because even if I was home alone and needed soap or water out of the kitchen, I still wouldn’t go into the kitchen to get it. No one would see me, but I realize how disrespectful that would be to my family and maybe even a little part of me has been brainwashed into thinking I am “impure.” I’m not surprised I guess…its been almost 16 months in this country.

Anyways, just wanted to share my experiences with this subject. I realize it’s a fairly uncomfortable subject but it’s a cultural thing I experience every month, so I figured I should share it with my blog readers. 

Heres a picture of me and baby goat from my first month in Nepal to look at if you are feeling awkward

Baby goat and I in Chaap, circa September 2012

Off to curl up in my sleeping bag and watch some episodes of House before bed. I am particularly unhappy with Biraalo right now. He escaped into my room and crawled up into my tarp ceiling but ripped through an entire corner and fell onto my mosquito net, which then collapsed and showered rat feces, rice, and dirt all over my bed. Guess I’ll be doing some cleaning tomorrow! I’m also going to my first Nepali “engagement” tomorrow afternoon. I’m mostly excited for the food. They make sel roti at these types of events, which is my favorite kind of roti.

Love from Nepal,

Alex

Christmas in India

I wish more photos would upload but this is all my internet will allow. You can check my Facebook for about a hundred more.

Trainin' it from Agra back to New Delhi

Taj Mahal with Tia and Voranan

Riding a camel in Agra

I sit writing you all this blog from my deathbed. Well not really, I’m exaggerating, but seeing as my toilet and I had about 25 dates over the past 48 hours with a 101 degree fever, I think I’m allowed to exaggerate. Welcome back to Nepal, Alex! At least this didn’t happen while I was in India, but maybe this is payback for the 3 different times I went to McDonalds while in India? Anyways, not the greatest past few days. And to top it all off, my Nepali grandma is leaving for AMERICA tomorrow. For 5 months! Her daughter lives in Maryland and just had a baby, so she’s flying over for a while to help out. Being in the already fragile state I am in, I will probably cry. I’m very excited for her but I seriously love this lady and will miss her a lot. I also thought Biraalo died earlier this evening but turns out his stupid furry butt got his front leg caught through his flea collar so he was unable to move. Small little brain in that one. The past few days have also been a lesson in how to teach a cat how to eat cat food. Which you wouldn’t think would be that hard but apparently Biraalo is a real Nepali cat through and through because he much prefers rice. So now he eats rice and cat food mixed together which I guess is better because cat food is really expensive in Nepal.

Ok so to recap my past couple weeks..I think I last wrote when my parents left. Shortly after they left my friend Andrea came to my site to visit! We both went to Bucknell together, but she graduated a year ahead of me and we actually didn’t know each other that well while at school. However, we have a mutual friend in common and when she contacted me and told me she was coming to Nepal, I jumped at the chance to have a fellow Bucknellian here with me! She came to my site for 2 nights only and unfortunately I had 2 meetings during that time, but I think she actually got to witness my most productive meeting yet. Small tangent here: the meeting was about the collection center, which actually feels like its going to happen! I’m applying for a grant right now through Peace Corps. Its 56 pages long so its taking me quite a while but its really good experience. The hardest part has been organizing meetings and also translating hard grant-language into Nepali. I lucked out though and there is a man in my village who can read English really well and has experience in these things, so he was a very large part of the writing process. I then met with Peace Corps to go over it before I left and I think my village and I can turn it in within the next couple weeks, hopefully by end of January! I just have to track down our budget, which is harder than one might think because our group only has one copy, which is currently (hopefully…) 3 hours away in our district capital. It’s a work in progress but I feel really hopeful about it. Once I can actually get out of my bed I need to get myself a bus to the district center to go  collect the budget.

Anyways, Andrea got to witness this lovely but probably pretty boring meeting, and then we were off to Kathmandu…her to return back to the states, and me to India! Oh and before I left for India I also took the GRE which went pretty well. Mostly just glad its over with and I can get back to reading actual books instead of Math. Currently on my 50^th book since getting to Nepal.

  India was a whirlwind of a trip and one pain in the ass getting there. I went with 3 other volunteers: Tia, Chad, and Voranan. Our original plan was to fly Kathmandu to New Delhi, New Delhi to Mumbai, and Mumbai to Goa. And because nothing ever works out, we missed 2/3 flights that day. Basically our first flight got moved later, and our second flight got moved earlier so we basically landed in Delhi knowing we already missed our other 2 flights. We then proceeded to spend the next 3 hours yelling at Air India for a refund (which we got thank gosh) and wandering around the magicalness that is the New Delhi airport. I’m not even being sarcastic here, I felt like I was back in America. It was a REAL aiport. With Starbucks, Coffee Bean, sandwiches, McDonalds, and the Body Shop. Also if you have ever been in the Kathmandu airport you know it is literally a brick waiting room for all flights (and I also don’t think earthquake safe, no matter what people say). we eventually made it to Mumbai at 9pm after eating my second round of paneer (Air India only feeds people paneer, I swear). Then we found out all flights to Goa the next day were booked so basically we were screwed. So we ended up hiring a private car to take us the 7 hours to Goa. Our driver didn’t speak a lick of English so when we said to take us to American food we found ourselves on a classy downtown street in Mumbai at McDonalds at 10:30pm. I ate chicken nuggets for the first time in 10 years I think (Also, one might think I am a supporter of McDonalds here, which I am NOT but I didn’t have a lot of choices and sometimes chicken nuggets are really good). Fast forward 14 hours later and we finally reached Goa. I’m surprised our driver didn’t die. The poor man didn’t sleep for 14 hours. We left Mumbai at 10:30pm and got to Goa at 12pm. It was terrible and obviously did not take us 7 hours as expected. However, our hotel in Goa was a little slice of paradise, as was Palolem Beach, where we were staying. We had beach cabanas about 50 feet from the ocean, there were tiny puppies everywhere, we got to see dolphins and drink delicious things out of coconuts…it was great. I did however get the nickname of “Alby” while on this trip due to my skin resembling that of an albino. I didn’t even disagree…I haven’t seen sun since I left the states.  Goa was basically what we all needed after a year in country. It was beautiful weather, really good food (I treated myself to an $18 lobster our last night, oops), and it was great to just relax.

We left Goa all wishing we had booked another week there, but were excited to get to Agra. We flew back to New Delhi where we met Voranan’s sister and then all of us headed to the New delhi train station for our overnight train to Agra. We definitely got hit smack in the face with “real” India in the train station. Never before I had ever been so aware of my white girl status as then. Goa was India yes, but it was also the beach and there were tons of foreigners. The train station was what you think of when you think of India, and to quote an RPCV “a tasty assault on all 5 senses.” Our small group was the only foreigners in the entire station, there were people sleeping everywhere, it was dirty, smelled of urine and feces because people open defecate on the tracks, and there were rats everywhere. We had no idea where to get on our train car but a nice Indian lady helped us. That’s another thing, Indians speak very good English! Just random people on the street would turn out to speak almost fluently. It was really helpful because Nepali and Hindi are very different. They have some phrases/words in common but we essentially couldn’t communicate, which was very frustrating.

Our train ended up being really fun! I had never been on a sleeper train, and we all had our own little bunks and I ended up sleeping for a while. We reached Agra at 1am and the 5 of us crammed ourselves into a tuk tuk and passed out for 5 hours before waking up. We spent Christmas day seeing the Taj Majal and the Agra Fort. The Taj Mahal was breathtaking. We had a nice sunny day to explore the grounds, and the Taj Mahal is always one of those places I’ve thought would be amazing to visit, but never thought I’d actually see.  We took a camel taxi (yes those exist) to the Agra Fort, a little over 2km away. Our camel was straight up on the highway and I rode him for part of the time so it was a little bit frightening.  The Fort was beautiful, but I wish I knew more of the history behind it to fully appreciate it. Afterwards we may or may not have gone to the golden arches for lunch, and then it was time to hop a train back to New Delhi. Our train was delayed and so we got back to Delhi at 10pm, starving and exhausted. Everyone else passed out but Chad and I were starving and decided to find food. Which was an adventure because nothing is open at 10pm on Christmas day. Our tuk tuk driver, who had a bad case of road rage and who we think may have been slightly inebriated, dropped us at a hole in the wall Dominos where we had a veg pizza and coke for Christmas dinner. Fail. Then I attempted to skype with my family at 2am but the Clayton family was experiencing some technical difficulties in both Switzerland and Washington so we called it quits and I passed out.

We only had 1 full day in Delhi to see things so we decided to book bus tickets on a HO-HO bus (hop on hop off bus.) We had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (I swear to god I don’t eat this way in the states on a daily basis) where I got to eat a bagel for the first time since leaving the states. It was great. All of us were majorly struggling from sleep deprivation over the past week so even after I chugged a latte and an americano, I still fell asleep on our bus. We did get to see some cool stuff though, including: The Red Fort, Rajghat (cremation site of Mahatma Ghandi), the India Gate, Humayun’s Tomb (Chad and I opted out of this one because we were starving and found a vendor selling chips instead), and the Lotus Temple. Our last night in Delhi I also got to meet up with an old friend from high school! I don’t think I had seen her in about 5 years, but it was great to reconnect and talk about the Methow together.

We flew back to Kathmandu early the next morning and were greeted with the usual chaos that is Kathmandu. It was weirdly nice to be back and to be able to speak the language and not get ripped off over a taxi. The disparities between Nepali and its neighbor to the South are extreme though. New Delhi/Mumbai are about 30 years ahead of Kathmandu, in terms of infrastructure. I think all of us wondered if Kathmandu would ever reach the point of having overpasses or skyscrapers. Personally, I felt that Kathmandu is more chaotic than New Delhi. To me, Delhi felt like any large chaotic city. The traffic was bad and horns were blared unnecessarily, but it had nice wide paved roads and sidewalks. It was also unnerving seeing so many American luxuries and stores that I haven’t seen since September 2012. I think that also maybe having lived in Nepal for over a year now somewhat “lessened” the effects of India upon us. Not saying it wasn’t crazy or stressful, but I think all of us were more prepared for India, having lived in Nepal. And now, I’m back in village where all of that is so very far away and my biggest concern is getting run over by any water buffalo that get loose.

Side note, how is it already 2014? I leave Nepal in 2014. When I left the states in September 2012, I thought 2014 would never come. I think every PCV  gets excited when they enter their COS (Close of Service) year. I’m almost in the single digit month countdown. Less than 10 months seems like so little time to accomplish the things I want to do.  I also think I may have reached the point where going home seems more scary than exciting, if that makes sense.

Happy New Year and sorry for the longest blog ever!