1 year

Ek barsa bhayo. 1 year done. Can’t believe a whole year has passed since I first arrived in Nepal, and now there are 27 new volunteers in country. My group, G-199, are the “old volunteers” now. Sixteen of us have made it this far, and im hopeful the 16 of us will all be together at our close of service conference next year.

Honestly, there were times I wasn’t sure I was going to reach the year mark. Then again, there have also been times when 2 years doesn’t seem like enough to get done what I want to accomplish. This past year has been filled with such highs and lows like I have never experienced. Its crazy to think what has become “normal” for me, and I feel like I struggle more and more to write blogs because my day to day life isn’t that crazy anymore! 

After spending almost 2 full weeks in Kathmandu last month, I was seriously ready to get back to the village. I loved eating awesome food and hanging out with my friends all day in the city, but I kind of missed the slow paced village way of things. I hadn’t read my book in over a week or really had a lot of downtime for that matter. After a week of American type foods, my stomach actually wanted daal bhaat, something it was used to. Most of all, I wanted to sleep. I do not sleep in Kathmandu. None of the volunteers do. I was craving crawling back under my mosquito net and sleeping a solid 8 hours. Kathmandu is extremely fun and crazy, but overwhelming, exhausting, and extremely polluted. This moral of this little story is that I missed the village. I think after a year in Nepal, and 9 months in my village, I consider it home.

I feel that my language still continues to improve, although quite slowly.  I still struggle with work related conversations, but day to day interactions are second nature now and I can laugh and joke with my neighbors quite easily. My clothes are definitely struggling however. A year of being handwashed on a rock and sun dried has left my wardrobe looking less like the REI/North Face store I brought with me and more like the homeless man on the street corner. Kidding, its not that bad, but they are definitely looking a little ragged and need to be swapped out soon when my parents come in November!

This year has definitely been quite a learning experience, not only about all things Nepal related, but about myself as well, and how this experience might fit into my future plans. Believe it or not, I think a lot of us are starting to slowly prepare for whats next. We’ve turned the corner and are heading into our last half of service and I think its finally dawned on us that this experience isn’t forever. The light at the end of the tunnel is approaching. Yes, we have about 14 months left, but compared to the 27 we started with, it isn’t a lot. Not to mention if the second year goes as fast as this first I’ll be home in no time. Us volunteers eventually have to join society as productive human beings eventually. Wearing the same clothes for 3 days and showering once a week just isn’t gunna cut it J I’m signed up to take the GRE the day before I fly out for India this December, and I’ll be finished applying to grad schools when I get home next winter.

Anyways, enough of this future talk. I’m supposed to be analyzing my last year here. Sometimes I look back at the last year and think “what just happened.” Seriously, sometimes I don’t know what I have done in the past year to make it pass by this quickly. Its like when someone asks me what I do each day here. I don’t know, but somehow I manage to pass the time. I think most of the people in my group (including me) don’t particularly like analyzing our last year here, especially since a lot of us don’t have a lot of work-related products to show for it. We have friendships and relationships with our community and host families, but no real “concrete” results that we Americans love to base our work worth on.

You know what I do have to show for 12 months in Nepal? A word document listing the 38 books I have read thus far, numerous empty peanut butter containers,  a bottle of flea medicine leftover from my 24-hour kitten, a closet full of very worn clothes, 10+ badges from agriculture programs I’ve attended, countless Pepto Bismol wrappers, long hair, a pierced nose, and what I feel to be a very good relationship with my community. And that I think, is what is going to keep me going. Knowing I have people who care about me here, want to know where I am at all times, want to know what I’m always up to. At times feeling like I’m stuck in a fishbowl, I realize my frustrations are based off of other people’s genuine concerns. I get frustrated with people because they care about me, and then I feel like an idiot. I cant say Ive really made a huge difference in Nepali agriculture practices here, but I do feel good about the relationships I’ve built in my community and with my family. I have to constantly remind myself that my community doesn’t hate me because I haven’t drastically changed their lives. I most likely wont, and theyre not expecting me to. I sometimes feel that they are expecting more out of me, but then I realize that most of them are very content with me just coming to their houses and having snack and talking with them, not furiously planting a new improved garden in their yard.

My map project, which I had thought would take 2 months max, has turned into a 5 months ordeal due to all the random holidays and exams the students have. Not to mention my being in Kathmandu a lot due to trainings. BUT, I reallllllly think we can finish this thing within the next month. My friend Kerry (also my closest volunteer-2 hours away), came down last week to help me re-do the grid on my map. We locked ourselves in the 7^th grade classroom for 6 hours and erased, re-drew, erased some more and drew some more until we had a satisfactory grid. I think we went through about 8 erasers and 6 pencils, ending with almost half an inch thick of eraser shavings on the floor afterwards. I realized the root of my problem the first time is that the school walls aren’t straight. You cannot assume anything built here is actually straight. I stuck a level against the wall and the little bubble was nowhere near the middle. The first time I based my measurements on the walls themselves which proved problematic. Kerry and I had to devise a plumb line using my room key and some of her yarn to find “true” straight and let gravity do the work. Once we had one straight line it was fairly straightforward after that, just quite tedious.

Anywho, grid is done, now its time to start drawing the countries! Unfortunately school is now out for another week due to exams and Teej, the upcoming women’s festival. The construction and planning of my villages collection center has also been put on hold for a month due to Teej and Dashain. I guess I’ll be doing a lot of GRE studying over the next month…

Want to finish this blog off by just saying thank you to all my friends and family who have supported me along the way, sending me letters, emails of encouragement, and American food! Ma dhanyabaad dina chahanchhu. I want to give my thanks. Couldn’t have done it without you guys. Looking forward to the next 14 months of service!

Love from Nepal,

Alex

the month of trainings

I apologize for the lack of posting this past month! I’ve actually been quite busy, sadly not with as many work projects as I would like, but mostly with traveling back and forth between Pokhara and Kathmandu for various trainings.

All of us volunteers and Nepali counterparts we identified attended a Project Design and Management Training earlier in July in Pokhara. It was a crazy 5 days jam packed with various sessions, but really helpful for designing potential projects we can implement in our villages. I brought my sister and we designed a collection center, or sankalan kendra in Nepali, for our village. Collection centers are where people can bring their vegetables and produce for sale, where they are then picked up for transport to larger markets. Currently, my village’s nearest collection center is a solid 45 minute walk uphill, where women and men have to carry their produce in large wooden baskets strapped to their heads. The work is exhausting and time-consuming, and they can really only sell as much as they can carry. By building a collection center in my village, agricultural outputs will hopefully increase since they will be able to carry the produce only a short distance away from their homes. Additionally, surrounding villages will also be able to use this collection center. The catch? The project costs roughly 8,000 USD. This is a small fortune in Nepal, especially in the village. So, I’m trying to work with my ag group and identify possible sources of funding and help them work on a grant when the time comes. Due to rice planting and torrential downpours, we were forced to start one of our ag meetings at 10pm the other night! By the end, at 1am, 2 small old men were full on asleep on the floor. Ridiculous. We also developed an entire proposal to take to our district agriculture office, and after 3 hours of travel to get there, were told we needed to hire an engineer to make building plans and an official budget and turned around after a 15 minute meeting. Lots of setbacks so far, but I’m hopeful we can actually get this project off the ground.

Some of you might be wondering what happened to the world map project? Its still going, but school just got back into session after a 40 day break, and I left 2 days after the re-opening to attend a training in Kathmandu. When I finally get back to the village, that is my number 1 priority! I  actually am inviting 2 other volunteers to help me finish the grid for the map when I get back; its slightly off scale (not surprised as I had a 12 inch ruler to work with) and I think it might be easier for us to just get the grid done in a day or two for the kids, so then they can just focus on drawing and painting. Still looking for a funding source on this as well…

making the grid

Currently in Kathmandu right now for training called TOT: Training of Trainers. All the new Language/Cultural Facilitators as well as 13 of us volunteers gathered in KTM this week for a solid 5 days of 8-5pm training at the PC office. Exhausting. Us volunteers had the opportunity to apply to be “resource volunteers” for the incoming volunteers, and I got chosen to teach on nursery development. We also got to see the full name list of the incoming volunteers for the first time and go over their resumes. We have 1 new volunteer coming who has been in PC THREE times before this! This is his 4^th country and 4^th service. Crazyness. 

Although we were busy all day with sessions, we also had time to relax and see a little more of Kathmandu. This place grows one me more and more everytime I come. I’ve drank more iced coffees than I can count, and I’ve eaten so much good food…Vietnamese pho, delicious veggie pizza, American beer (hellooooo Blue Moon), smoked salmon salad,falafel wraps with hummus, and we discovered this place right across from the US Embassy run by a Nepali woman who lived in New York for 9 years who serves the best food ever. We even ran into the US Ambassador one day there after lunch who invited us to Thanksgiving at his house!  Actually I think running into various embassy workers during this trip has really made me think more about what I want to do post-PC life. Can’t live the village life forever. Its been very interesting talking to our PC staff about how they got to their positions today, and I think it got the wheels turning for us. We’re about 2 weeks shy of our 1-year anniversary in Nepal, and I think a lot of us are realizing we have 1 year left and are starting to think about where we might be next Christmas. We were also fortunate enough to meet Rajeev Goyal, who is a an RPCV from Nepal from 2003-2005. He was in town on business and came by the PC office to give a talk and sign his book. His book is called the “Springs of Namje” and describes his PC service in a remote village in eastern Nepal, where he constructed a water pump system for his villagers who previously had to carry water almost an hour up a mountain. Rajeev was also responsible for lobbying in Congress and getting an almost 60% raise in the worldwide PC budget. He came out to dinner with us afterwards, and it was fantastic to be able to talk with him about post-pc life, graduate school, jobs and peace corps. Not to mention he has amazing fluent Nepali that left us all very jealous. He’s currently working on a biodiversity project in the eastern region of Nepal that focuses on environmental conservation in schools and cataloging the local biodiversity. Prettyyyy interesting stuff…wouldn’t mind asking him for a job post PC…

This morning my friend Tia and I got up early and headed to Durbar square to watch the US Embassy flash mob! The embassy had partnered up with Nepali Youth to do this flash mob to celebrate International Youth Day, which was last week. It was really fun to watch and we also met some another returned peace corps volunteers from other countries who now work for the embassy in Kathmandu.

Durbar Square

in the rickshaw!

Oh I also pierced my nose this week!  My Nepali family and friends are going to freak. In a good way. Most castes here in Nepal pierce their noses by the age of 10 (women only). I even got mine on the Nepali side, which is the left. Most people I meet here ask why my nose isn’t pierced, but now I can show them! One of my friends got it done with me and we found a very legitimate piercing/tattoo parlor in Thamel that pierced it for about $4. It hurt, a lot, but im really happy with how it turned out!

Headed back to Pokhara tomorrow and then back to site shortly after, but Im back in Kathmandu exactly a month from today for my Mid-Service Peace Corps training! I’ll write a blog then about how I feel at the 1 year mark.

monsoon season and my 24 hour cat

I’ve had a 102 degree fever the past 2 days. Getting sick here sucks. Not that getting sick in America doesn’t suck, but I think you automatically become a hypochondriac here. In America, a fever means the flu probably. Here, as I rifle through my handy “Where There is no Doctor” book, I question myself Do I have malaria? Is this typhoid? HOLY SHIT DO I HAVE SCHISTOSOMIAS? But this actually is a possibility as I spent 5 hours planting rice the other day in knee deep water with a nearby woman’s agriculture group and it turned into a full on mud slinging affair which ended in me covered head to toe in mud with rice seedlings sticking out of my hair. I did get to drive a tractor around in the mud though, which was awesome. Anyways, preeeettty sure I don’t have schisto but as you can see the mind wanders here.  So the past 2 days I have barely left my bed.I’ve mostly been watching tv and movies on my computer as I cant focus enough to read because my head hurts too much.  As with any minor illness, the fam here thinks I’m dying but they’ve been very sweet about bringing me water or food and checking up on me throughout the day.

Oh I also celebrated my 23rd birthday on the 8th! In Nepali fashion, I gave everyone candy and they gave me a boatload of tikka on my forehead!

Hanging out with aamaa

This past week I had some excitement…I woke up at 1am thinking I was dreaming of a mewing kitten, and much to my surprise I peered out of my window onto my balcony into the pouring rain and saw a real life tiny kitten mewing for all it was worth. The thing could have fit into the palm of my hand. After cursing myself for being me and not being able to ignore a meowing helpless animal, I climbed out of bed with my headlamp and grabbed a tshirt and went outside and scooped up the tiny animal into my shirt. I then sat on a bed outside my room wondering what the hell I was going to do with this small creature, when I looked up and saw a black shape slithering away under the other bed. I shined my headlamp upon it and my worst fear was confirmed: somehow a snake had made its way up to the second story and now inhabited a space 5 feet from my bedroom. Logically I started screaming for my grandma which went along the lines of “AAMA, SARPA SARPA!!!” who then practically fell out of bed by the sounds of it. I was also sitting in my boxer shorts and a tanktop with a kitten poking its head out of my shirt, but this was no time for being culturally appropriate. There was a goddamn snake among the potatoes we store under the bed. My grandma grabbed a large stick. My job was to hold the flashlight in one hand and this tiny kitten swaddled in my tshirt in another, while she whacked away at the snake, squashing many potatoes in the process. Once we had disposed of the reptile, my grandma then told me to chuck the kitten back out the window into the rain. Obviously this was not going to happen, so I put the little nugget up in my attic for safekeeping, who still kept me up for another hour mewing. To my surprise, the next morning I woke and opened my door only to find 3 more kittens running around my bedroom door! My nugget kitty was reunited with its siblings and they had taken up a space under a bed with a box full of clothes. I went to check on them later and got down on my knees to peer under the bed and mama cat almost ripped my face off.

So after the whole cat debacle, a couple days later I went to the bathroom and much to my surprise a live kitten was sitting in the toilet hole, unable to get out. So for the third time this month, I stuck my hand into my toilet and rescued the tiny creature. I put it back up in the barn but the next morning it was sitting with the water buffalo, mommy cat nowhere in sight. So of course I rescued it and spent the next 24 hours playing mom. Throughout the day I kept looking for mom kitty and the other kittens but they were nowhere to be found. I fed it milk, gave it a bath, and cuddled it. In the morning it sat next to the fire while I read and drank tea. After an hour of kitten wailing and several escapes from its box I placed it in, the kitten spent the night with me in my bed in complete bliss, cuddled in the nook between my ear and shoulder. I went to town the next day to buy bug medicine and a plastic tray for a litter box and I hurried home, eager to play with my new little friend. I got home and was cuddling my kitty when all of a sudden I heard a big cat meow from the other room. Before I could do anything, my kitten jumped off my lap and ran into the other room, where it reunited with its mother. Then the two of them scampered off together. And just like that, I was left kittenless, sitting among the litterbox and milk tray and blankets. It was quite upsetting. My kitten now lives in the barn with its mommy and 3 of its siblings and is quite happy. If it had been a little older I would have stolen it back but it really does need its mommys milk. So, thank you to the 75 people who liked my photo of me on Facebook with my kitten (who I named Biraali), but I sadly have no kitten anymore.

Random topic: My life here in Nepal is largely black and white. Anytime I meet a stranger and speak a little Nepali, the first question they ask is ”So you understand ALL Nepali?” Well no, I don’t. I understand a lot, but not all. Which is what I usually say to people, but its almost ridiculous how much I get asked that question. Here, you either understand all Nepali, or you understand nothing. Another example: a fellow PCV is coming to visit me at my site in a couple days. While talking with my family about what she liked to eat, my grandma asks “Is she fat or thin?” As far as I have learned, theres not really a word in Nepali to mean average or medium sized, in terms of weight. Here, you are either fat or thin. The response I told them was "Tik” which means “ok.” It is not at all offending to call someone fat to their face (as I have learned…), or ask them about physical differences. I came down from my room the other day to a stranger sitting on the porch with my family, drinking tea and talking. I had never met her and when I sat down she just started at me. And stared. And kept on staring. Then, she proceeded to start a five minute monoluge analyzying all of my physical aspects. Her hair isn’t black. She is fat. Her face is red. Her eyebrows are good. Why is her face red. She has very white skin. I like her earrings. All the while, I am sitting there, fully comprehending every word coming out of her mouth and wanting to leave. So that’s what I did. I straight up jumped up, dumped my tea in the sink, and ran off into the cornfields (in retrospect not the best idea as that is where all the snakes live).

                Enough of my emotional ranting. As for good news, the map project is coming along fantastically, and the kids are so excited. We’ve been working on the grid method lately. To draw the map (ours is going to be 6 ft x 12 ft) on a wall, everything has to be accurate and proportional. To do this, we use a grid. You divide the world into 18 sections and draw the map section by section, square by square. I printed out worksheets for the kids to practice drawing things larger while still keeping proportions the same. Over the past 2 weeks they’ve started from drawing a rabbit to a small section of the Alaskan coastline to six countries in South America, and a couple of days ago we “broke ground” so to speak, and started to physically draw on the school wall! I very much underestimated how painstakingly slow it would be to draw a 6x12 foot map into 6.5cm squares. Also we drew all of these lines with a 12 inch ruler. I supervised 2 groups of kids drawing grid lines who worked on either end of the map, and not surprisingly, the lines didn’t meet up in the middle. Problem.  The lines appeared straight, but over the course of 12 feet the lines deviated from each other. Also because the Hindu gods love me, school is now on a 40 day summer vacation so map progress is halted for the time being. BUT, the good thing is that the school finally realizes what I am doing. I think. The teachers all kept coming by and staring and the vice principal even got up and helped me brainstorm a new idea to draw the gridlines once school is back in session. I think once they physically saw the grid on the wall they understood how the students would go about drawing the map.

After my latest teaching session I stopped by a lady’s house who is in my agriculture group and I showed her all my materials and my plan for the map. I cant even explain how nice it was to hear from her that she thought what I was doing was great because it involved art and geography, something the kids don’t really learn a lot about in school. Tiny comments like that can lift me up for days on end.

My agriculture group is making a hot pepper nursery bed this upcoming week, and in 3 weeks when the seedlings are large enough, we’re going to transplant them to a larger area and I am going to give my training on micro-irrigation. I’m really crossing my fingers for no rain, as we haven’t had a meeting in 2 weeks due to monsoon. I couldn’t leave my house for 3 days straight as it rained so hard (going to the bathroom also sucked as it involved putting on a rainjacket to make a mad dash across the slippery courtyard and up the mud stairs to the toilet). The road from my village to the main paved road is completely washed out. There were 3 different landslides and a massive tree is blocking all passage on the road, so only motorcycles are able to get to town. The Terai, which is the southern part of Nepal that borders India, has had massive flooding and whole towns and houses were completely swept away in the rivers. I can see the Kali Gandaki from my house (the river near me) and thank gosh I live uphill from it. Its so swollen and muddy and I can see its already overtaken some residences alongside its banks. Last week I watched 5 TED talks, 2 full-length documentaries, and The Hobbit in one day. Monsoon season really needs to end if any productivity is going to happen.. However, the rains have also brought a proliferation of mangos on the tree outside my house, as well are these small fruits called litchis which I eat by the dozen. The corn fields are all above my head now, and we had roasted corn the other night for dinner. I didn’t even know how to control myself since we weren’t eating rice. Then I ate 5 ears of corn in a row and soon found out that does nothing good for the intestinal tract.

the world map project

My world map project has been birthed and is now slowly crawling along. Throughout its infancy I have also realized I will probably be bald at the end of this project due to tearing all my hair out, which ya know might not be terrible considering I also haven’t cut my hair in 9 months. I’ve had a lot of setbacks at the beginning, namely due to the staff deciding to let me know the day that I’m supposed to come to the school that theres no school, when I’ve been preparing for a week or more. Really REALLY frustrating at first, but after the first couple times I just kind of dealt with it. I’m not in a hurry to get this done immediately; theres no timeline on this project, so I’m just slowly chugging along. Like most of my work proposals in Nepali, I’m usually greeted with blank stares until I repeat it all over again and then finally someone understands what I’m trying to say. The school staff seemed a little confused on why I wanted to do the map (even though 3 months earlier the principal explicitly told me he wanted me to paint a map on the wall…) and I told them I would get them more details about prices involved to see if the school was able to chip in a bit of money for the project.

Quick note basically WHAT the world map project is....its a pretty popular PC project that has been done all over the world. Communities or schools get together with the help of the PCV and physically paint a map on a building or wall, etc. Its a really great way for kids to learn about geography and for them to work together as a team on a project where they can produce something to be proud of. Its also a long lasting project..for years to come the map will be there as a resource for the kids.

Hopefully it turns out like this....

I went to town last week and inquired about paint prices and brush prices and prices for anything associated with paint. I think the shopkeeper wanted to hit me after I sat there for a half hour interrogating him  about prices and then telling him I wasn’t actually going to buy anything. I then randomly saw a white couple walking along the street in Galyang and almost got hit by a bus trying to run across the street to talk to them. They were from New Mexico and were just stopping by. I returned to the school a day later and gave the invoice to the principal who said they would discuss how much money they ccould give me for the project at the next board meeting. The total came out to be around 3700 rupees, which is around 40 dollars or so. I have no idea when their next meeting is, but I am guessing I wont have an answer for a while.. Which is ok because I’m first doing a month of education with the kids on geography! I decided to do this project with the 7^th and 8^th graders, and yesterday I went to the school at 2:30, the time I was told to come when the 7^th grade would have social studies. I walked into the class room and said hello and asked if it was social studies. “no, this is science class now” one of the students said. Me: wellllllll, today we are going to be learning about geography! Put away all your books.”  I then proceeded to ask the kids to do their best to draw a rough map of the world and see if they could label any of the continents. I told them they would be drawing another of these after we did the big map project so we could gauge their progress. Fifteen minutes later I received 12 maps and only one student could name any 1 continent, which ironically happened to be Africa. Not Asia, the continent they all live on. So we have a ways to go.  Oh I had also drawn a rough map of my own in my notebook to show them after we were done and one of the other teachers came in and took my notebook and was trying to show the class all the continents, except that they were holding the notebook upside down….

The rest of the maps were just blobby squiggly shapes scattered across the paper. I was then pumped to teach the 8^th grade class the next day, only to find out it was a random holiday (swear to god Nepal has a holiday at least once a week). So that was a bit annoying, as I’m going to Pokhara and Kathmandu for a week for Volunteer Advisory Council training, and wont be back for a while.

Last week I sprained my ankle walking home. I fell in the mud down a hill with my backpack on that happened to be full of oil, sugar, rice, and soap. I got stuck and had to have my sister’s husband rescue me and then I attempted not to cry but kind of failed in that department. Later that same day I also dropped my cell phone into our toilet hole into a pile of someone elses shit. Really unfortunate, but after furiously scrubbing with soap and letting it dry for 10 hours, my phone works again. These little plastic phones are hardy. Oh and the next day I dropped my room key into someone elses toilet, which this time was only full of water thank god. Apparently I’m super challenged and make sure to empty my pockets everytime I go to my toilet now.

My uncle is getting married sometime in the next 2 weeks, except he doesn’t have a girlfriend and they haven’t found him a girl yet. They are “searching” right now.

I’m writing this blog from Kathmandu right now. I’m here for 2 days for Volunteer Advisory Council training. Right now, Im sitting here in the air conditioned luxury of the Peace Corps office kitchen, eating a slice of pizza and drinking a cold fizzy citrus drink surrounded by marble floors and a 6 foot high razor-wired fence that surrounds the manicured lawns of the PC office. I had to get buzzed in to the office through a peephole in a metal door, give the guards my ID card and then get a nice lanyard with another ID card that must be worn at all times inside the building. It makes you feel really special. After utilizing PC resources (aka printing an 86 page document..woops) I walked 5 minutes down the road to buy my lunch at Bhat Bhattenni (aka walmart from one of my earlier blogs) and walked around in some more air conditioning while calling another PCV on the phone asking what I should purchase for food, since I apparently cant function inside a well stocked grocery store anymore. Last night I gorged on an amazing hummus plate at an Israeli restaurant in the tourist district of Thamel and spent the rest of the night hanging out with Shaffer (he left today to go back to Seattle) on the rooftop of our hostel drinking beers. Couldn’t be further removed from my village surroundings. As much as I almost get hit by a car every 35 seconds and my eyeballs are constantly itching from all the pollution and grime in them, Kathmandu is kind of fun, although I still think I’ll stick to my twice yearly visit to this city.

Oh, I also passed the US Embassy on my way to the office this morning. I actually would have missed it as I was looking down at my phone except that my taxi hit an unusually large pothole and I smacked my head into the side of the window and discovered the stone/brick fortresss that is mini America staring back at me. I have this weird desire to go in and just walk around (is that even allowed?), so I might attempt that today.

Other news…we lost another volunteer last week L My good friend Alida decided to return back to the homeland and discontinue service. We all miss her dearly and wish her the best back home!!! Down to 17 now.

Love from Kathmandu,

Alex

Manakamana

           Yesterday my family and 2 other families visited a temple near Kathmandu called Manakamana. The temple dates back to the 17^th century and is one of the most popular temples in the Middle Hills region of Nepal...its also reachable by a cable car! The day started out really early: we woke up at 3am and like any other normal (aka dysfunctional) family, we didn’t end up leaving until 5:30am. Thankfully we had reserved a mini van for all of us, so we got to ride the 5 hours in comfort. I shared the front seat with my little sister and one of her friends and was able to just plug into my ipod and relax/sleep the whole way there. Unfortunately the rest of the bus was not so lucky. As I think I have said in earlier blogs, Nepalis are almost notorious for their motion sickness. I may have been 2/14 people in the car who didn’t vomit literally the entire 5 hours. My poor 11 year old sister must have thrown up at least 15 times. We arrived at 10:30am and found that the place was packed. I’m talking Disneyland packed. Nepali families and the occasional white foreigner were all over the place, trying to form the semblance of a line to get tickets, except that it ended up just being a mass of hot sweaty bodies fighting to get ahead. We ended up waiting in line for 5 hours. Thank the lord above I had my umbrella with me because I would have been a lobster otherwise. The dads of the group were such troopers and stood in line the whole day while many of the moms and kids and me sat in the shade and ate ice cream. My 11 year old sister and one of the other younger girls actually never stopped throwing up the entire day unfortunately, so we all took turns running around trying to find plastic bags for them. They were such little troopers…my normal reaction when I am nauseous is to cry unfortunately, so I would have been a bawling mess if I was them. 

Beginning of our wait in line

The Austrian-designed cable car

Ok, so fast forward a really hot sweaty 5 hours and we finally reached the cable car! Its an Austrian-designed gondola and even has a special gondola car for the goats that are taken up to the temple to be slaughtered. Looks like any other gondola you would see at a ski hill or something. Nine of us crammed into a car and off we went! The ride in total took about 10 minutes and we went over 2 hillsides before getting to the top. My 9 year old sister started out the ride politely being like “Neha didi, nachalnus. Malaii dar laagyo” Neha didi, don’t move. I’m scared” After 5 minutes of the gondola ride I had to shift my weight and it it turned into a screaming “NACHALNUS!!!” DON’T MOVE!  My bad. My other sister and her friend continued to throw up into their little bags the whole way.

Cable car fun

Manakamana Temple

Unsuspecting people with a monkey over their heads

So we finally get to the top and we greeted by a little tourist village surrounding the temple. We took a family picture in front of a backdrop of the temple and when I saw the result, lets just say I’ve taken way better pictures in my life. Also everyone kept saying how pale I looked.  Not my fault. We reached the temple and proceeded to do puja, which is basically a worship of the temple. I kind of hung back and took in the scenery, mostly because there were so many people there but also because incense was so thick I could barely breathe, trash littered the ground, and goat/chicken/pigeon blood was splattered everywhere. The scene was awesome to watch though and the temple was just filled with massive amounts of people ringing bells and sprinkling rice everywhere. 

Our gifts for the temple

We visited on a Saturday, which is also Nepal’s holy day, so the temple was extra crowded with people sacrificing their animals. After snapping some pictures and receiving tikka (red rice on our foreheads) we grabbed some food and headed to the cable car to rejoin another impossibly long line to get back down the mountain. My little sister and her friend threw up all the food five minutes after we had eaten so 4 of us were able to cut the whole line and get back down early so she could rest. During this process, I got yelled at by a bunch of angry people and was confused because I was like why the hell cant I understand what you are saying, and then I realized they were speaking Hindi. So I just ran away.

Aastha and I at the end of the day

      Cue to 7pm and we finally leave the temple. Thus began one of the worst bus rides of my entire life. An hour in my stomach really started to hurt and I was like noooo this cannot be happening we have 4 hours to go. Long story shot, I made my bus pull over 3 times so I could avoid shitting my pants. Two of those times we stopped on the side of the road where my available facilities were a ditch and leaves. Woops, too many details there.  We finally got to Pokhara where we stopped for food and I sat curled up in a little ball of agony on the restaurant couch while everyone else ate. I finally took some medicine I forgot I had and managed to make it the 3 hours home without major disaster, and instead spent my time with my head out the bus window because I thought I was going to throw up. We got to town at 1am and then had to walk 45 minutes home and I really wanted to die. Our whole group was a mess. My little sister Aakirti had to be carried the whole way back because she hadn’t eaten anything the whole day, and all of the other women in the group had thrown up the whole way back. We were a sorry sight to see. I got home and passed out hard in my bed. And that was my trip to Manakamana! It was honestly a really great day spent with my family, except for the being ill part on the way home.

May happenings

All ive eaten the past 2 weeks is rice and potatoes. Good thing I take a multi vitamin everyday or else I would probably be dead. Also now that I’m 8 months in I’ve calculated ( subtracting 3 weeks approximately for time spent outside site) that I’ve eaten around 460 servings of rice so far. Disturbing.

Today while bathing at the water tap I looked up and this giant grey monkey was just staring at me. It was alone, and it continued to watch me bathe for the next 20 minutes and not move. It was creepy, and its like when your dog stares at your while you are naked. Having an animal twenty feet up in a tree peering down on you is unnerving. Also the snakes are out in full force..I came across a five-footer in the path the other day and immediately ran away. The beginning of monsoon season is slowly beginning and my family says that sometimes they even come in the house. So grateful I live on the second floor. Now, people who know I worked at Reptiland the summer before senior year may wonder why I am a scaredy-pants when it comes to snakes, as my daily itinerary at reptiland included holding lots of snakes, feeding snakes, and cleaning snake enclosures. But for me, theres something about the uncontrollability of the situation that creeps me out when you see a snake in the wild. Its not my choice to encounter it and so it’s a shock when you come across a particularly big one. At reptiland it was a controlled situation. If I wanted to hold a snake I could. But here I almost run into them and it scares me. I like watching them from distances and I still would love to see a python in the wild, but I would really like to not encounter them in the courtyard of my house.  

Its also gotten so humid and hot here that just moving around makes me sweat and running makes me feel like im breathing in soup. Also I realized all I do is complain about the weather in my blogs. Sorry friends. Bought myself a fan in town last week which is fantastic, except that every other night we have no power so then I just lie in misery. (Ladies formerly of 211 3^rd St, its like the bucknell summer of 2011 when we all thought we were going to die in our house even with our fans).Today I flagged down a car going to town to get a ride and I was pleasantly surprised when it had air-conditioning!

My sister’s husband came home from Qatar last week and its been really fun having him around. He’s definitely lessened the workload for my sister and grandma, and he speaks a bit of English which is helpful. Its also the first time for me since coming to permanent site that we’ve had a male figure in the house for any extended amount of time. I admit I was a bit nervous before he came, mostly because men here often act very superior to their wives, and I did not want to watch my normally independent sister fall into the dutiful housewife role, but its been a nice surprise having him around. He also kills all the spiders in the bathroom for me. Ricardo is now dead but his millions of offspring seem to have inhabited the toilet now.

So, I’m 8 months in, 19 to go! I felt like all of these things just fell into place recently. That isn’t to say I still don’t think my language sucks or wonder occasionally what in the hell im doing here, but I feel like I have some things going for me now that I didn’t have before. I also knew that after IST if I didn’t start some sort of project or begin some sort of work I was going to go crazy. Anyways, my introduction of micro-irrigation was a success! I gave my presentation with my posters tacked up on the side of a charpi, or latrine, and it was raining the whole time but it went well! One of the men in my group had been trained long ago in the subject, so he will be useful for when we install the system, which is set for next week. Everyone seemed legitimately interested, which helped calm my fears that they weren’t just humoring me and letting me present something they didn’t care about. Additionally, the other day my agriculture group was tying up our tomato plants to bamboo poles for stability, and 3 women approached me about teaching them how to make compost tea. My aunt is in the ag group and had seen my bucket of compost tea at my house and was telling them about it, and they wanted to learn how. Hello legit work! I was so excited and I of course eagerly agreed, so we are hoping to do that this month after the micro-irrigation is installed.

Otherwise, not too much coming up in the next month or so, just staying at site and trying to get work done. My friend Chad is going back to the states for his sisters wedding in a week, so all of us volunteers are busy ordering things online to send to his house for him to bring back. My list: world map, map of the US, and about 40 lemon luna bars. I’m meeting another volunteer tomorrow in a town an hour away from me and we’re going to try and search for someone to make us the wooden stencils that are needed to form bricks for the improved cook stoves we are hoping to make sometime during our service. I’ll be in Kathmandu next month for Volunteer Advisory Council training and I might be able to sneak in a visit to Chautara and see my old host family as well! My sister got married since I’ve been gone, and I would love to see her and meet her husband.

This past week I was kind of in a funk. Anytime I feel down or just not myself, I really try hard and identify what the root cause of my issues are. Generally, theyre small things that would be inconsequential in the states, but here theyre blown massively out of proportions. Seriously, small things like missing snack can put me out of whack. My wise friend Voranan, a fellow PCV, stated what I was feeling in a way that I couldn’t form with my own words: “At times I feel that PC is changing me for the worse, but I realize how its not necessarily that. We’re constantly being pushed to the limit here so it brings out a side in us we haven’t seen or experienced before. We have to take it for what it is. At times we can ignore it and at times we can’t, but we have to be okay with that. Moments by moments.” She summed it up in a way I couldn’t, but I realized that was exactly why I was in a funk. PC really does put you in situations I would never have experienced at home, and so your personal reactions to scenarios are surprising. We haven’t seen these sides of ourselves, and it unsettling because oftentimes I don’t like how I react when Im pushed to my boundaries. But we can only accept our reactions, and hope to alter them slightly the next time. I also feel that I’ve become more comfortable in my surroundings and have started feeling more independent, which actually leads me to be a little more withdrawn from my family than before. Its all about a balance between your own down time so you keep your sanity, and pushing yourself to really get out there. Still figuring that one out. Additionally, I have found myself with way more free time than my first couple months at site, which I think is leaving me with too my time spent inside my head pondering everything and anything. For example, I read Ken Follet’s “World Without End,” which is over 1000 pages long in 4 days (fantastic book, I highly recommend it). Today I spent about 3 hours watching Nickelodeon in Hindi, as BBC has mysteriously disappeared from my tv. Its very strange to watch Dora the Explorer in Hindi while she teaches you Spanish. Having it be around 85 out each day doesn’t exactly make one want to jump up and starting hoeing in the fields either. Most of this free time is because the usual ag meetings are on hold for a bit while everyone gets their corn planted and whatnot, but things should pick up again soon and then I will be busy again!

Also I really want to get a puppy. L I miss my doggy from home. And my cat L I might have to settle for a baby goat, but I really would rather not become the crazy volunteer who took her goat everywhere with her on a leash, because that’s exactly what I would do. Which is why I need a dog, because its less weird to have a dog follow you around.

Andddd that’s the end of this post. I miss everyone from home!

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