trekking, training, and being a tourist

The last 20 days have been quite the whirlwind of trekking, seeing friends from home, seeing PC friends, and spending 10 days receiving training in Pokhara. Now that I’m back at site I’m slowly adjusting back into my routine here and trying to process the last 20 days of essentially being a tourist and dealing with the difficulties that come after being away from my site for so long. I also found out about the Boston bombing 3 days after it happened which was shocking to say the least. Its never easy to find out big information like that when you are thousands of miles away from home. Sending all my love to friends in the Boston area, and am glad you guys are all safe now!

On March 31^st, I set off for Pokhara laden down with my huge backpack, prepared for almost twenty days away from my site. My family was sad to see me go, and I had to assure them numerous times I would indeed be returning. I arrived in Pokhara sweaty from my long bus ride and wearing a dirty backpack with red tikka all over my forehead and stepped into the Shangri-La. Let me tell you, the Shangri-La hotel is extremely nice by Western standards, and for me, it was like stepping into this surreal world I hadn’t been a part of for many months. I wasn’t meeting my family friends for a couple hours so after calling numerous PC friends spazzing out about being surrounded by so many luxuries I finally calmed down and got myself a latte at the coffee shop and read my book by the POOL. Yes a pool. I could barely comprehend that I had woken up in my village that morning. I met the Wathen family and their friends who I would be trekking with later that afternoon and we enjoyed a really nice dinner at the hotel getting to know each other. The group was very diverse: all of the dads had met each other and their spouses while working in Taiwan, and one family lived in Shanghai, while the other lived in the Phillipinnes. The next 4 days were nothing short of amazing. We started off early for our trek the next morning and reached our first lodge at about midday. The lodge was beautiful and situated right along the river. Our whole group spent the afternoon exploring the river, reading in our rooms, and of course celebrating happy hour precisely at 5pm (which would become routine for us over the course of the trek). The food, company, everything was awesome. It was exactly what I needed after almost 7 months in the village. Our second day we hiked over 1000 vertical meters to the trekking village of Ghandruk. The hike was fairly exhausting as it was mostly stone steps the entire way up, but the views were amazing. The trekking company we were using actually owned the rights to the trail we were on so it was nice to just have our group, but once we joined up with the main trail there were tons of other trekkers and donkey trains going by. The second lodge at Ghandruk had the most spectacular views of the Annapurnas I have ever seen. Especially since I cannot see any mountains at my site it was breathtaking to wake up to crystal clear views of Annapurna and Machapuchhre right in front of me. The third day we left Ghandruk and hiked down to our third lodge, and I’m not joking, I had my own building to myself. Since everyone else either had a sibling to room with or a spouse, the lodge must not have had any more double rooms available so I literally got the honeymoon suite. Besides the king bed I slept in, there were 2 other beds in the room. I had a hammock on my front porch and I spent my hours after trekking reading and napping and just generally enjoying being in such good company. The last day we trekked about 3 hours out from the lodge where we got bussed back to Pokhara and spent a night before heading out on 2 days of rafting. 

That night I got to see ANOTHER friend from home, Shaffer. Long story short, Shaffer worked in Winthrop this summer at the bakery I frequented everyday, and while we never got past coffee shop chitchat, he met my sister after I left for Nepal, who told him I would be in Nepal for 2 years. Well wouldn’t you know, he was traveling to India and Nepal this spring as well! Small freaking world. Would have been really  nice to know these things before I left as we would have had lots to talk about! Anyways, Shaffer came out with the Wathens and me and the Brooks and Buckeridges and besides finding an entire bee in my pasta, the dinner was great.

The next day I set off for 2 days of rafting on the Seti River. The river is fairly low now because it’s the dry season, but our guide told us that the 4 hours it took to reach our camp would take only 45 minutes during the upcoming monsoon season. The camp was beautiful…it was designed to look like tents but inside were full beds and hot showers. That was my last night with the group, as the next day they would all be heading to Chitwan National Park and I would be returning to Pokhara for my In-Service Training. We spent hours around the fire that night giving “down-downs” where you tell a funny/embarrassing story about another on the trip and it was a great way to end the past 7 days. So, thank you SO SO SO much Wathen, Brooks, and Buckeridge family for adopting me into your little family during our time together, and I look forward to seeing you all again (Wathens I’ll see you back in snowy little Winthrop in December 2014).

I spent the next 8 or so days in Pokhara getting In-Service Training with the rest of my PC posse. I feel really exciting and refreshed after this training, as I feel like I have some concrete stuff to take back to site with me. We learned how to construct a solar food dryer, plastic tunnel housing for vegetables, how to make an improved cook stove (probably the coolest thing I learned about ), and all about micro-irrigation. Additionally, me and 3 other volunteers were chosen to serve on the Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) which basically means we help with communication between volunteers and PC staff, usually involving 3 or so meetings in Kathmandu a year. Since we’re brand new in Nepal, our first task is to design the bylaws for the upcoming VACs in Nepal. Anyways, with all the training we received and with VAC duties now, it should be an exciting next couple months! Our group will all be together again in July for a weeklong workshop in program design and management with Nepali counterpants. Besides training, us volunteers rang in the New Year (its 2070 now!) at a local bar, which was wild to say the least. We also randomly met up with SIT Nepal kids and it was awesome to talk to a couple of them because I did SIT Tanzania when I went abroad so it was cool to see where they were at in their program.

I left Pokhara feeling pretty refreshed but also a little anxious about returning to site, as I had been away for so long. I was excited to sleep in my own bed again and drink my family’s amazing tea though. Thankfully Shaffer came back with me for 5 days! It was so much fun showing someone around my home, and it was actually the first time anyone had seen my site. I enjoyed being a sort of tourist in my own home. The first day we went to a mothers group meeting and the second we hiked up to this temple that had amazing views of the valley I live in. Otherwise we spent our time playing lots of bananagrams, watching movies, and wandering around and just talking about everything. It was so nice to talk to someone who obviously understood my hometown and Seattle and who shared a love for the Pacific Northwest just like I do. It actually made me a little homesick! We got to witness some pretty crazy lightning/thunderstorms as well. A negative part of all this rain is that all the tarantulas are migrating inside, namely to my bedroom. Shaffer and I named a particularly large one in my bathroom Richard Nixon aka “Ricardo” so everytime we had to go to the bathroom we said we were visiting Ricardo. Anyways, if you know me at all, I hate spiders more than anything. Now that my mosquito net is up its ok but I can hear them scuttle across the newspaper that lines the walls of my bedroom. Theyre like freaking crabs and they all have these little things on their back that glow in the dark. Terrifying.  

Shaffer and I also walked down to the river, which I actually hadn’t done before, and I was so glad we did. There was a legit beach down there and we spent a couple hours just playing in the sand and relaxing. I’m really excited to have discovered a place where I could be alone if I wanted to and just go read a book or something.

Shaffer left yesterday, so I’m back to being alone, back to speaking pure Nepali. Its funny because having him here actually made me feel a lot more confident in my language skills as I had to do a lot of translation for him and my family. Its been raining almost straight for the past 24 hours so I’ve been hibernating in my room quite a book, reading a good new book, napping, and making posters for a presentation that I’m giving to my ag group tomorrow on micro irrigation. Making posters in Nepali script takes about 80 times longer than it would in English because my reading level is about 3^rd grade level, but I’m proud with how they ended up, even though my little sister came by with my permanent marker and added some giant big periods at the end of each sentence. Tomorrow’s presentation will probably be a bit of a hot mess considering it will be my first real presentation but I’m excited to see how it turns out. I’m planning on just introducing the topic tomorrow and explaining it and then seeing if theyre interested and the hopefully planning another time where we actually construct the thing! Wish me luck, I’ll need it.

That’s all for now,

Alex

Neha's morning walk

Neha’s morning walk. That’s what people in my village call my morning run. Every morning I get up and atleast 2 people are like “going for your morning walk?.” Yes sir, I sure am. I hope to god I accomplish something here in my 2 years that people remember me as more than just the crazy white girl who ran every morning. Even people I don’t know or have never seen before are like “oh yes, you are Neha…you run to Karmachor every day.” Karmachor is the village I usually run to everyday, but its around 5k away from my village, so its far enough away that people there don’t interact with me on a daily basis, so I usually get some weird looks. Whats also funny about running in Nepal is that most people think I am running to get somewhere, like I am running to town because I need to buy something there. So often times I will be running and people will be like “stop and rest and we will all walk back to Dimik together,” even though I explain im running for exercise. My favorite is when I’m pouring sweat and the sun is out and some old lady will tell me to come to her house to take a break and drink tea with her, even though its about 80 degrees out. Now that its full on summer here in Nepal, I’ve been restricted to running either before 9am or after 4pm. I tried running the other day at 1pm and it was horrible. I came back so red in the face afterwards my family wouldn’t let me sit in the sun the rest of the day. Anyways, that’s going good…I usually run for about 50-55 minutes each morning which is an accomplishment considering I did like 15 min my first day here.

coming back from my run on Holi day, where you get tons of colored powder thrown on you

I celebrated International Women’s Day last week with the women of my village. I went to a huge mother’s group program in a nearby village…there ended up being around 300 people there. It was pretty powerful to be around that many women giving speeches and chanting all at once. My village women and I trekked about 1.5 (all in saris, which are quite hard to walk in let me tell you) to get to the event, and we had drums and homemade signs and chanted the entire way there. I wore my sister’s sari for the event which attracted too much attention for my own liking, but everyone was happy that I wore it. I surprised the women of my village even further when I got up and danced with all of them while they were singing a song. This was a big deal for me. I hate dancing Nepali style, especially in front of that many people, but I decided to suck it up and just dance around like a fool in my sari. Then I gave a nice little speech in front of all these people, which surprisingly went fairly well. Let me tell you, anyone who is reading this blog who is thinking of applying to PC…you better get used to public speaking real fast. At least in Nepal, if you are white, you will be made to give a speech at every single event you attend. I’ve gotten used to it now, and I kind of have a little spiel I give, but it was really hard at first to talk on the spot to large crowds. Anyways, IWD was fun and I feel like I got to know the women of my ward a little bit better. Then I got home and realized I had the most awkward tan/burn lines from my sari.

Walking to the International Women's Day program

my ward at International Women's Day

Unrelated to this blog post, but I made compost tea at my site

my house!

Last week I got to run my entire Agriculture Service Center by myself! I don’t exactly know what my counterpart was thinking when he thought this was a good idea, but he assigned me the job anyways. He was away visiting his family, so I thought to myself “this will be fine, theres 3 other staff members at the ag center anyways, ill barely have to do much.” WRONG. No one showed up the 2 days I was there. Not one other staff member. The first day about 20 people came in asking me all sorts of questions I had no answers to, but I made quite a few new friends and a lady I met that day even called me that night to chat. Since I couldn’t give them answers to their ag questions, I decided to tell them my life story instead, which seemed to satisfy most of them. I also watched 5 episodes of Greys Anatomy in a row, leading to zero productivity on my Village Situational Analysis, which is the big report that is due to Peace Corps in 2 days.

Last week I was reading Oprah magazine on my bed (thank you US embassy employees) with my head facing the door and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and A MONKEY WAS IN MY ROOM. The monkeys here aren’t tiny cute monkeys either, they are large and furry and have big teeth. I almost shit myself. Sorry for the visual, but it was such a frightening thing. The most frightening part of this encounter was that the monkey hesitated before leaving; it wasn’t exactly super scared of me screaming my head off at it. It left, but now Im too scared to ever hang out in my room with my door open again. Then again, one of my friends here found a python in her kitchen last week, so maybe having a monkey in my room wasn’t so bad after all.

We had “English day” today in the Panthi (my last name) household. This consisted of my older sister instructing me to only speak to her in English, which is super entertaining because we will be walking along and she’ll be quiet and then I’ll hear from behind me “Oh god, oh god its raining” or “My hair is very black.” I think after 2 years we will be able to converse. English day also consisted of my 9 year old sister running around saying “Welcome to toilet! Welcome to kitchen! Welcome to house! Welcome to room!” all day long. We have a ways to go there…. Also my 11 year old cousin came to visit last week with my family and I let him listen to my Ipod and before I knew it he was singing the explicit lyrics of Enrique Iglesias’s “Tonight I’m F*cking You” at the top of his lungs around the house. Probably for the best that most people in Dimik cant understand English… I’ve also been attempting to teach a little geography to my younger sisters as I realized it needed some work when I asked my younger sister where Nepal was on the world map and she pointed at Australia…I’m also in the early planning stages of painting a big world map at the local public school, which I hope to get up and running after my In-Service Training in a couple weeks.

And…for anyone who cares I discovered that the monkeys in my village are both rhesus macacques (very common) and gray langurs. The gray langur that came into our courtyard the other day was no joke, the size of a saint Bernard. I had never seen one around before either. It left pretty quickly after 2 dogs came to chase it. Hoping the next monkey I find in my room isn’t one of those…

Right now I’m in Pokhara for my In-Service Training with all of the other volunteers. I just got back from an amazing 5 days full of trekking and rafting with family friends from home so I will write all about that in my next blog!

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

 

An accurate description of service

2 blog posts in 1 week! I'm really getting it together. just kidding, I actually was about to go to bed but then found the passage below on another PCV blog and felt like I needed to post it asap.

Quick note on my life the past week:
Its been a torrential downpour at site the last couple days, which has essentially left me stranded in my house. I was supposed to walk to town to meet my counterpart and discuss what I’ve been up to, but that wasn’t really an option with Hurricane Katrina raging outside my window. Makes me kind of wonder what in the hell I’m going to do during monsoon season, when it rains EVERY. SINGLE. DAY….one can only watch so many episodes of TV on their computer in a day (I admit, I watched 6 episodes of Dexter in one day). I did let my sister cut my hair though. All I can say is that I’ve made better life decisions before…

My grandma made kir for dinner tonight, and let me tell you, kir is absolutely delicious, but also terribly bad for you. You basically cook rice in pure milk and add a crap ton of sugar until it is a pudding-like mixture. And then my grandma poured melted butter all over it. And that, my friends, is the reason why I will have diabetes when I finish service here.

On a more serious note, in my spare time I like to read other PC blogs from all over the world; gives me an idea of what other PCV’s are up to and sometimes helps me out when I’m struggling with being here. I stumbled across a blog from a PCV in Tanzania, who had stumbled onto another PCV’s blog from Cambodia who wrote the following: (I take no credit for this, and like the PCV from Tanzania, I don’t feel like I could express what Im going through any better than this):

“Dear Person Contemplating Joining Peace Corps,

I imagine that you’re at a transition point in your life. Perhaps you’ve just graduated, perhaps you’re going through a career change, perhaps you have an itch for something more that can’t be scratched. Whatever the reason, here you are: contemplating joining Peace Corps.

But should you? Is it right for you?

Honestly, you might not know that until you’ve arrived. You can research by reading books and official publications or by talking with current/returned volunteers, but everything you read and hear will probably tell you the same thing: every person’s experience is different. Your Peace Corps life will be uniquely shaped by your country, program, and site.

I’d like to think, though, that there are a few things that are universal throughout the Peace Corps world, and those things tend all to revolve around how you yourself will change - for the better and for the worse - because of your time in Peace Corps.

‘Sanitary’ will become an obsolete concept. You will eat on mats that you know are saturated in urine. You will prepare food on counters that also serve as chicken roosts. You will not have consistent/frequent access to soap. You will eat street food that is undoubtedly questionable. You will be dirty, dusty, and sweaty at all times. You will have mind over body battles to force yourself to bucket shower in the winter. Bugs, lizards, chickens, ducks, and mice will crap on everything. These things will be ok. You’ll adjust. The sterile environment of the States will become a distant odd memory or a constant fantasy.

Your body, though, might not adjust as quickly. You will have parasites and infections and illnesses that you had never heard of before training. You will be constantly constipated. Or go the opposite extreme. I hate to say it, but you will probably poop in your pants at least once. You will learn to vomit over a squat toilet and into a plastic bag during a bus ride. You will discuss your bodily functions openly and enthusiastically with other volunteers. No topic will be taboo.

The way you communicate will completely transform. Learning a language from scratch through immersion is a powerful experience. You will learn to have complex communications though expressions, gestures, and basic vocabulary. You will learn to bond with another human being through silence. You will answer the same basic questions over and over and over again. You may never achieve the ability to discuss ideas and concepts. You will develop a new English language which consists of pared down vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will actively think of each word before you speak. Your speech patterns will slow. You will have to define words whose meanings you had always taken for granted. You will learn to listen.

Your concept of money will entirely alter. Paying more than $1 for anything will cause you to pause and question your purchase. You will understand value in the context of a different economic system. You will learn to barter, even on cheaper items. You will consistently feel as though you have been cheated on the price. You will be enraged by all prices upon returning to the States.

You will embrace the thrilling dichotomies of thrift versus splurge and ration versus binge. No one knows how to budget like a Peace Corps volunteer. And no one can binge like one.

You will be discontented with your work. You will wonder – and scream to the heavens – about the benefit of your presence. You will feel lost in unstructured expectations and crushed by promising ideas fallen to the side. Your expectations will fade into an unexpected reality. You will learn to celebrate small victories. You will look at mountains and see mole hills. You will try to tackle the impossible. Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll just pick yourself up and take aim at another impossibility.

You will learn to do all of this through pure self-motivation. You will be the one to drag yourself out of bed and out the door. You won’t have anyone holding your hand or pushing your forward. Just you. You will become a stronger person for yourself, by yourself.

You will be a celebrity in your community. That status comes will hardships and benefits that will ineradicably change you. You will be the exception to the societal rules. You will be the foreigner, the one set apart. You will receive privileges and have special attention/status because of your nationality. You will always have eyes on you. You will have joined as an agent of culture exchange and understanding, but you will still find yourself falling into an ‘us versus them’ mentality. Use it. Consider it. Contemplate the value we place on people because of arbitrary characteristics. You will come away from your experience more attune to your own merits, to those that are deserved and to those that are given.

Your culture of personal space, one that maybe you have always taken for granted, will be challenged. You will wonder why you need an entire room to yourself while no one else even has a bed to himself. You still won’t want to give your room up. Privacy will be a privilege or a rarity, not a right.

You will lose all control of your emotions and be on an unpredictable roller coaster of extreme ups and downs. You will go from happy and confident to sullen and tearful by things as simple as ants in your candy or yet another child saying ‘Hello!’ Your highs will be high, but they will be fragile. Your lows will feel inescapable. Your family and friends in the States probably won’t understand this. Your isolation will force you to become your own support system. You will become aware of yourself in the context of solely being yourself.

Your government-issued friends will be your reprieve. The love and closeness you share with people back in the States won’t change, but it will be your fellow volunteers who understand. They will be friendships forged from necessity, and they will be deep and fervent.

You will witness a whole new way of life, and you will question your notion of necessity. You will consider your personal wealth, and people will constantly remind you of it. You will discover what your ‘needs’ are to live a productive, satisfied life. I hope you will remember that when you return to a culture of plenty.

You will be the biggest product of your Peace Corps work. You will change. And you will bring that change back with you.”

I’ll leave you to ponder the above passage, blog-readers! I personally feel that it sums up my experience thus far in PC Nepal.

And to end this little blog, I am proud to say that I haven’t pooped my pants yet, but I fear the day when that time will come.
Also, who follows my blog from Mexico???

Peace,

Alex

 

 

pictures!

helping feed my baby buffalo!

 new picture of my room

my favorite little nugget sitting by the fire (Aastha)

sunset in my village 

 almost finished seedling nursery bed

 only picture of me riding a camel!!!! 

 my sister Bishnu and I on the ferris wheel

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

my first holiday season in Nepal

Happy New Year everyone! Today is not only January 1^st, but also marks the end of my first full month at permanent site. I survived! 1 down, 23 to go J  Nepalis do not celebrate the New Year, as they are on a completely different calendar than us (it’s the year 2069 here and the 15^th of the month), so I watched some Lord of the Rings, ate a little peanut butter, and passed out by 9:30. Such a party animal. Anyways, looking forward to what’s in store in 2013! I have my first visitors coming to Nepal in March from my hometown (hello Wathen family!) and am very excited to see some familiar faces while they are on their spring break here.

Also, I now have internet!!!! Yes, the rat bedroom has joined the 21^st century. I bought a small internet USB stick that I use to check email and facebook now. I load minutes onto the sim card just like my cell phone here. Its both a blessing and a curse, mostly because I fail at having any sort of self control while on the internet. Its also hard seeing what people are up to and not being able to partake in any of those activities back home, but its been great at keeping in better contact with people. I can even Skype on it! So…send me some emails and I will respond to them!

I spent Christmas in Pokhara with the other volunteers and like my internet stick, it was both awful and great. Awful because Christmas day was really shitty. All of us were extremely homesick and I didn’t expect to get that upset about not being at home. I skyped with my family and started bawling when I saw my dog. Star and I were best friends earlier this summer when none of my friends were home yet, so I got very sad when I saw her with her cute Christmas collar on. For an animal lover like me, its hard not to have a dog and a cat in your bedroom at all times like I did at home! However I’ve come to realize I have essentially no control over my emotions lately, so I let myself cry on the phone with my parents and then had a celebratory Christmas dinner with the other volunteers (I ate enchiladas). We did a small white elephant gift exchange at dinner and I ended up with 5 rolls of toilet paper. Whats sad is that I stole that gift from someone else. Other gifts included a tree branch (good job Chad), a “no-pooping” sticker, mint tea, a hat and some kama sutra playing cards.  Christmas eve was fantastic though…I got to go horseback riding and have amazing views of the Annapurna mountain range. Pokhara is beautiful…its Nepal’s tourist destination and outdoor adventure hotspot. Its situated right on a lake so at the end of the horseback ride, the nice Nepali man who took us let my friend and I canter our ponies along the shore and it was so much fun. I could barely walk the next day however. I was happy I was even able to go horseback riding though, as my first day in Pokhara I was about 90% sure I had gotten giardia and spent my day eating saltines and drinking oral rehydration salts and making 45 trips to the bathroom (no shame about these things anymore). Nothing about 25 pepto couldn’t fix though! Anyways, Pokhara was filled with lots of pizza and pasta eating, beer drinking, and lots of quality time spent catching up with the other volunteers. We also rented a boat on Christmas eve and rowed it across the lake and hiked up to the World Peace Pagoda. It was an hour straight up of stone steps but the view at the top was amazing. I put pictures up on facebook. Leaving Pokhara was sad because we wouldn’t see each other again until April for our In-Service Training, but each of our districts are still trying to get together every six weeks or so.

Going back to site after a couple days of speaking pure English was a bit rough but after about 2 days I settled back into the small routine I have developed. My water buffalo had a baby while I was gone so we have tons of fresh milk and I drink about 7 cups a day now. I’ve been busy going to lots of farmer’s meetings and have started speaking a bit at each one now that my Nepali has gotten slightly better. Each day I understand more, but its still hard because people talk so fast. Highlights of the week include: learning to carry about 30 lbs of firewood on my head! I had eaten shit down a mountain trail the week before so while my sister and her friends carried about 50 lbs of firewood down the mountain, I wasn’t even allowed to carry the knife because they thought I would kill myself if I fell again. And there they were with 50lbs strapped to their back. But, after much persuasion they finally let me carry a small load the other day and it made me feel very accomplished.

Not much else to report! The things that I once thought were strange or unusual are getting more and more routine here. Its weird that its January 1^st. I’m sitting in a t-shirt. Its like living in the friggin’ desert here. So cold in the mornings and at night but it gets to about 70 during the day. I want me some snow. Peace Corps is coming to my site in 10 days for a visit and I’m super pumped to get mail from the past month and get specific language questions answered. Its weird because sometimes I get very frustrated when I cant understand people here and I just want to yell at them to speak English or I magically expect English to come out of their mouths, but then I realize they cant and then I have to make myself really concentrate on what they are saying. It takes up so much of my brainpower especially when I go to Nepali programs where people are talking so fast. Its definitely getting easier though .I also love my family so much. They are awesome..I feel that I really lucked out. I stupidly realized the other day that my grandma actually lives with us and wasn’t just visiting for the past month…it was very confusing because my aunt has been here the past 2 weeks as well but she lives in the district south of me so I thought that my grandma did too. Nope.

Happy Holidays! (which I guess are now over)

-Alex