Nepali Summer

the guys

Eugenia hangin' with the guys

I can't remember what's happening in this photo, but it might have something to do with the heat

Awkward "family" photo

I have some good friends

So this is a bandh?!?

The barn Aya and I called home for a few days and the rats call home for life
Breakfast in the village

Attempting to plant millet
This is my only picture of rhinos - if you look really really close there is a spot of gray. That's a rhino. I swear.
Sunset in Chitwan
Crossing the river
Rice
Refreshments courtesy of PLA, 3rd Division
Little village along the border in Birgunj

Stories

I was going to write about getting caught in landslides and bandhs, pee puddles and rain. I was going to write about cockroaches, the Boxcar Children, and sleeping with rats. How leeches strengthen friendships. I was going to tell tales of rickshaws and third world carnivals and ferris wheels. How when Cecilia and I first got to Delhi we were asked if we wanted to join a group of people from the hostel and go to Citywalk and we thought we were going on a walk around the city, but ended up at a Hard Rock Café in a giant mall that could have been anywhere, USA in awestruck panic. I thought about issuing a formal apology to Nepal for calling it dirty because I didn’t know dirty till I arrived in India. And I probably still will.

But my grandfather died the other day, and now more than ever I don’t know where to start. Being half way around the world means I can’t be there for the funeral. Can’t be with my family. Can’t sit with them and tell stories about him. The ones about the life he built for our family, his days in the Navy, how he met my grandmother. The ones about this affinity for ordering infomercial products and giving them to all of us – the bagel guillotines and the flashlights you have to shake for an hour to get 5 minutes of light. How he made soap-on-a-rope, and handles for cardboard boxes out of duct tape. How he sent my brother and me Al Hirschfeld clippings so we could try to find all the Ninas, and taped episodes of Fraggle Rock so we could watch them when we went to visit. Stories about how all of these things he did were because he loved us. Because he wanted to share with us what he found interesting. Because he was generous. Because he was excited about creating and discovering. Because being able to share new things with us or things he knew we liked made him happy. We could reminisce about his love of Chinese food. Being that I’m in Delhi I don’t even know if I can eat Chinese food in his honor.

The thing that kills me, the thing that makes my heart ache, the thing that really gets me, though, is how much I was looking forward to sharing my stories with him. Telling him I ate Peking Duck in (the former) Peking. Telling him about the trains in China and India. I probably would have skipped the part about the people lined up along the tracks pooping. Skipped telling him about the overall stench, and the poverty, and the disease. Glossed over the politics. Probably avoided the one about Mao. Might have let slip the one about having tea with the chief of the PLA and going to the cantonment. I’m sure I would have mentioned the heat and the rain. It’s unavoidable since it shapes every experience here, but it would just provide a context. Just in the act of telling him, all the good stuff would have come out. The grime overshadowed, put in its place as the backdrop, not the protagonist.

I was going to tell him all the things I learned, about my place and the places I had been, about my research. How I learned that there is never enough time for things. How I learned there is only time. I would tell him about the food - about the dumplings in a bag and momos, about the yak noodle soup, about the endless dal bhat, about the paan. I would tell him about the Great Wall of China, Mt. Everest and the Taj Mahal. About zip lines. About riding and washing the elephants… although again I would have avoided the part about how I was surprised to learn elephants poop in the water, something I discovered while trying to swim out of the way of some as it came floating fast towards me. I would realize, as I am now, that I have a lot of stories about poop: animal, human, other. And pee.

I was going to tell him about the friends I have made. The people who made my summer what it has been. The people I laughed with, and who I wish I could cry with now. The people I wanted to introduce to him. I was going to show him pictures. Blow them up as big as possible, and even though I know he still wouldn’t have been able to see them I think he would have liked them. I could have shown him my pictures of rhinos. Neither of us could have seen anything in those other than a mess of green anyway.

As I sit here, trying to make sense of him being gone, I am also trying to make sense of my summer. Somehow my understanding of both are getting tangled up all of a sudden. I am learning a lot about myself this summer. I am learning that I have a remarkable willingness to do stupid things. I am also learning that I am not the same person I used to be. Nothing profound, nothing meaningful, but I am just different. I came to this realization as our group set out on a walk in the jungles of Chitwan in Nepal in search of wild animals. And I feel it becoming even clearer as I sit in this hostel in Delhi trying to decide what to do now. I have always been a fan of mud pies, was never a girly-girl. I thought the frozen mice we kept in our freezer to feed my brother’s snake were cool, and I enthusiastically used to show them to my friends. But I have been known to struggle with such things as deadly animals and a lack of emergency facilities and my propensity to establish escape routes and sleep in my shoes with a bag packed at the foot of my bed is no secret.

Many years ago, when I sulked my way across the United States with my family on our journey Westward, one of our destinations was Glacier National Park. The terror I felt at the idea of being attacked by a bear was pretty intense. I avoided the outdoors, was skeptical of open windows, and shook my bear bells with such fervor that I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the forest service had banned me from national parks for life. The idea of a deaf bear, that my dad and brother thought was hilarious, was horrifying to me. So I found it fascinating that recently, as an adult with free will, I chose to seek out tigers, sloth bears (not the cute cuddly kind, but the claw at your face and tear you to pieces ones), and rhinos. This is a fundamental shift in who I am. I am still afraid of everything. That hasn’t changed. But somehow the fear means something different. It’s not as scary as it used to be, and on balance it is more motivating than debilitating. Because I share this trait of anxiety and fear with my grandmother, I know that this change, even if it is just temporary and circumstantial, would have made my grandfather happy.

When I left New York in May and said goodbye to him I had a feeling it might be the last time I was going to get to touch him and I had a hard time pulling away. I thought about not going. It’s cliché. I know it. All that self-sacrificing crap that people talk about, knowing that the other person of course wants you to go, and of course wanting to go yourself.

So of course I went. I don’t regret it. I just wish I could have shared my experiences with the one person I know would have savored every detail. When I try to think about my grandfather, try to be ok with him being gone, I can’t really do it. Not yet. I know that he struggled and must have been so frustrated by how limited he has been for so many years but he was quiet about it. I know I have probably been more frustrated for him, thinking about all the things he would love if he could have seen or been able to move more freely. Mostly he would have loved the information that is floating in the world today. He would have loved the learning and the discovering and the access that so many of us so easily take for granted. It’s not that my grandfather didn’t want to die. I don’t think he ever would have framed it in those terms. He just wanted to Live forever. Capitol “L” Live. Or maybe I’m just projecting. Maybe I just wanted him to go on. Wanted him to want what I wanted in the way I wanted. I guess now that doesn’t matter. I guess for now I will just miss him. And as I sit here trying to decide where I want to be sad, whether I should go back to NY now or wait and return when I had originally planned, I can’t help but think that maybe the best thing I could do is have a few more adventures, a few more experiences, a few more stories to tell him.

Hey. Pssst. Nepal... You're Dirty

Some days Nepal is my friend. I enjoy its company and taking part in its life. Some days we share some poignant moments. If I can find the rhythm of the day I am happy. Those days filled with successful meetings, and crossings of the street. When I don’t overpay too much for a cab, or get dropped off by a tempo in just the right place. When I say something in Nepali and I am understood. When I try something new. When something, anything, makes sense. I don’t mind the load shedding. The rains, when they come, are a relief.

Other days I struggle with wanting to yell at it. Tell Kathmandu to be quiet, clean itself up, pull itself together. Walking down the street being trailed by a child trying to sell me a postcard or pulling at my arm as if my skin were a sleeve wears on me. The honking grates at my nerves, especially on those mornings when the city wakes me up before the birds get the chance to. The black exhaust that coats me when I walk by. The dirt, the poverty, the confusion. The lack of sidewalks or street names. These things sometimes culminate to a point where I want to bubble over and shake this country. Walking over the Bagmati River that smells like dying animals, lined with slums.

I live in an area that is overrun by NGOs, INGOs, IGOs (basically every .org acronym you could think of has set up shop here) but no one seems to be dealing with these simple things. There should be no reason that I can see for Kathmandu to have such a water problem. Yes, I understand that it is dry for much of the year, and the monsoons are an essential part of the health of this country. But there are so many rivers here, why no one is cleaning them up I just can’t understand. Yes, of course there's more to it than that. But still. Clean up the damn river. Make it an asset, not a liability. Utilize the resources that are here. Build capacity. Empower people. Educate. Do all the things that these organizations tout. In some ways Kathmandu seems primed to be at the cutting edge of the environmental movement. Based on the lack of clean water, many houses practice rain gathering. Because of the shortage of electricity many houses have solar panels. People compost. People walk and take public transportation. But there is a lack of infrastructure and more importantly the city seems to lack a plan. All of these simple things that are done out of necessity, stemming from financial and natural sources could, if developed into cohesive policy actually make a big difference in the functioning of the city. Or so it seems from the naïve foreigner's perspective who has only been here a month. I’m sure it’s more complicated. It has to be. Otherwise why wouldn’t things be different?

So here we are, it’s the 4th of July, and I have to admit I am completely uninterested in doing anything particularly American. Not that I think there is anything wrong with celebrating, and I thought that I would be much more interested in doing something quintessentially American on this day, but it turns out that I'm not. Everyday in Kathmandu I walk around with an overt understanding of being a foreigner. My foreignness is undeniable, and while on first glace I may be pegged simply as just being white I am constantly aware of my Americaness. For this reason, today I did not feel the need for any further patriotism. And since everything feels so latently coated with meaning I don’t think I could set off fireworks to celebrate independence day in a country that continues to struggle to define itself as a state in a fragile political climate. With the news of the Prime Minister’s resignation, and the need to establish a new government within the next three days, eating apple pie in the rain just doesn’t seem like something I want to do.

All that said, I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else this summer. In many ways the same things that are challenging or overwhelming are what make this experience so interesting and fun. Those moments of frustration never last, and at the end of the day the satisfaction of a day spent learning and being exposed to new thing makes it all worthwhile. I can handle the constant state of being overloaded with stimuli if it means I get to feel like I am enmeshed in a novella, complete with tales of love, death, intrigue, tradition, family, conflict, and mystery. I mean, really, let’s face it. How often does one get to live fiction?

**this post is one that I put up on our group blog which is worth checking out http://rememberkathmandu.blogspot.com

Conversation overheard on the tempo this morning*

Little Old Man hits the roof of the tempo, “let us off here.”
Tempo Driver, “I will let you off in a minute.”
Little Old Man, “I said let us off here.”
Tempo Driver, raising his voice, “we are in the middle of the road on a bridge. I will let you off on the other side.”
Little Old Wife, also with voice raised, “we can’t get off here. We will get hit by a car. Why must you always be so obstinate?!”
Little Old Man, “nothing will happen. Let us off.”
Tempo Driver, “I can’t, in good conscience, let you off. Pay now and it will be faster when we get to a place that I can safely stop.”
Little Old Random Passenger Woman, “Listen to your wife and the driver. They know best.”
Little Old Man, “I will jump.”
Little Old Wife, “Geesh. Good Riddance. Trying to get me killed. If you do jump have fun making your own dahl bhat tonight.”

Traffic starts moving again, Little Old Man huffs, and we drive to the other side of the bridge where they slowly climb down from the tempo and hobble on their way.

*The entire conversation was in Nepali so I don’t actually have any idea if this is what was said but I find comfort in thinking that little old couples are the same the world over.

Wedding Season

I am quickly learning that the best thing for me to do while here in Nepal is to just go with the flow. And by flow, I mean doing whatever it is that my host mother suggests I do. I was nevertheless pretty excited to learn that I was going to have the opportunity to go to wedding festivities during my stay here. Last week, the same evening that I was presented with my dance slippers, I was informed that I was not to make plans for Monday or Friday as there were two weddings for me to attend on those days. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go to a Nepali wedding yet, but I sensed that it was not so much an invitation as it was an announcement of how I would spend those evenings and I didn’t feel comfortable saying no. Don’t bite the hand that force feeds you an unnatural amount of food in a single sitting is what I always say.

I came home at 5:30 on Monday as instructed. I wasn’t told very much about the wedding, and didn’t really have any idea what to expect. All I knew was that I could choose my own outfit and that the wedding was of a somewhat distant relation - my host mother’s sister-in-law’s nephew’s aunt’s brother’s son’s ambidextrous lactose intolerant agoraphobic third cousin twice removed. Or something like that.

The car that was meant to pick us up was late, and as my host mother and I sat outside waiting I tried to ask questions that would give me a clearer sense of what to expect. Somehow the entire conversation seemed to be misinterpreted on both sides and by the time our ride came I was even less sure of what I was walking into. Five minutes after leaving we pulled up to a house where a well dressed family of seven was standing by the side of the road. They all seemed a little put off by my presence and when I realized that they were all planning on getting in the car with us I understood why they might be irritated about the unexpected extra body that was taking up precious space in the car. Somehow we all managed to get in: two people in the trunk, a child on a lap in the front, and four and of us and a toddler in the backseat.

The reception was being held a little out of town, and for the first half hour or so I enjoyed the view of Kathmandu from the window. We drove out past Pashupatinath and the burning bodies. Maybe because it was so hot and I was already starting to feel a bit clostraphobic sitting scrunched and contorted to the point where my shoulders almost met in front of my body, between two middle aged women sweating on me, and the constant stream of drool that was falling into my lap from the toddler who had fallen asleep in the arms of my host mother, but I felt a little overwhelmed.

We turned down a hill and followed a road into an area where none of the houses were completed. Dozens of homes were scattered about with metal beams extending out of concrete poles, and it appeared that construction had been halted some time back. It soon became apparent that we didn’t know exactly where we were, and somehow the hand drawn map that had accompanied the invitation wasn’t helping us very much. We pulled over and asked someone on the side of the road for directions. “Straight” they told us, pointing, and we continued on. A few minutes later we pulled over again, and again were told to continue straight. We repeated this process a number of times, always being told to go straight. The road went from being reasonably well paved to a little rough and a little narrower to gravel and about the width of a single car till we were driving along a dirt “road” that was really only suitable for ATVs.

Eventually, although I still can’t totally figure out how, we found ourselves in the middle of a field face to face with a cow that stood chewing its cud and eyeing us suspiciously as it stared into the front window of the car. The driver slammed on his breaks, and it was at this point, 45 minutes from when we had asked for directions the first time, and after the map had been passed back and forth in front of my twisted body countless times, that my host mother turned to me and quite seriously said “we may be a little bit lost.” I bit my tongue and nodded. Two teenagers hanging out listening to music in the field finally pointed us in the right direction. Apparently the place was in fact on the main road, and had we stayed on it, what took us 45 minutes would have taken about two.

When we finally pulled up to the entrance of what appeared to be a converted barn we pealed ourselves off of each other and the upholstery. I guess I hadn’t zipped my bag because as I climbed out of the car its contents spilled out all over the ground, leading to another round of sideways glances from my companions, especially those still in the car who now had to wait even longer before getting out. It was then that I realized I didn’t know how to say I’m sorry in Nepali.

The rest of the evening was pretty awkward, and I definitely stuck out, but it was still an interesting experience. I spent most of the evening just trying to figure things out…. Who were these people and whose wedding was this, who touches whose head, who was I having my picture taken with, were the bride and groom happy, how do I politely back away from the dance floor before being forced to dance to another song, how does all that red paste stays on the brides forehead and how many bobs of her head would it take before it started falling off, how do I successfully get a french fry off the tray and onto my toothpick and if I get that far do I dare try dipping it in ketchup. This last one I never really figured out. If all my food was brought to me in tiny pieces on trays carried around by children who appeared to look down on my inability to get anything to stay on a toothpick long enough to get it to my mouth I would probably starve to death. This method of serving food adds a certain level of pressure and inefficiency to eating that fascinates me, but also makes me feel a little panicky. With every failed attempt at stabbing a fry or momo I felt a combination of frustration and that specific form of embarrassment I get when I wave at someone I think I recognize only to realize that I don’t in fact know the person and have to quickly draw my hand to my head as if I have hair in my eyes. Except with the food this process was on repeat, and I felt like I was much less able to pretend to be doing something else. I don’t think I was fooling anyone that, despite the aggressive stabbing motion I was making at the tray, in the end I was really only interested in the toothpick because I had something stuck in my teeth.

The wedding on Friday was for a closer relation, and I was told I would be wearing a sari to that one. Putting on a sari is a somewhat intricate and complicated process, and from the looks of it takes a lot of practice to get it right. By Friday I had been wrapped and unwrapped three times already, each time having to give up any sense of modesty, and each time holding my breath as cloth was being pinned to me at a frighteningly quick pace. Because I am completely incapable of putting a sari on by myself I think my host mother got the general impression that I also might struggle with taking my clothes off and so took on the task of handling all things clothes related. And because my will to argue has been weakened by the heat, and because she came at me with a fist and mouth full of open safety pins I let my arms be lifted above my head as she took my shirt off. While I was a little taken aback the first time, by the second time she told me to take my skirt off I was less resistant. I did draw the line when she came at my chest to fasten all the clasps on the under shirt, saying I could get it. Turns out I was wrong, and it didn’t take long before I was admitting that I needed some help.


It took me awhile to adjust to wearing the sari, but after a few initial trips and stumbles I was managing ok. The only thing I was uncomfortable with was the bindi that was stuck to my forehead before I could figure out what was coming at me. I tried to devise a plan of how to make it fall off somewhere, getting it wet and practicing wiping sweat from my brow so that it would be lost somewhere in the shuffle. But those things have surprising staying power. In the end I just told my host mother the truth and took it off before leaving.


I don’t know if it was because of the sari, that people were just generally friendlier, that Cecilia and other foreigners were there, or because I had been through one wedding already, but I felt so much more at ease at the second one, and I even found myself enjoying parts of it. I still couldn’t manage to successfully skewer a french fry but I still have a few more weeks and a few more opportunities to master the art of appetizer eating. In the meantime I will practice my dance steps, study the family tree, and accept that I will probably find myself in an endless number of awkward situations before I leave Nepal but should take it all in stride because chances are that in the end they will make my best memories.