The village, Independent Study time, and comments on crutches

Dearly Beloved,
Much has happened since I last wrote. If you couldn't tell by my internet access, I am not, in fact, in the village studying agriculture. Ke Garne!
As most of you have probably heard from my facebook updates and the frantic emails from my mother, I fractured my ankle up in the remote village we were staying in and after a week had to be carried down in a basket Nepali style. This means the basket was on the back of a very wonderful, strong man and attached by rope across his forehead. In Nepal, the head is more muscle than our tender lofty minds.
Once safely to Pokhara the first doctor I saw told me I needed surgery asap. Luckily we saw another doctor this morning in Kathmandu who happens to be the best in the country who said a huge caste and rest should do the trick. So I set up camp on the first floor of the program house and tried to salvage my independent project. I have been taking taxis around Kathmandu and interviewing produce sellers, business people, shop owners, ect. in a two minute walking radius about the place of agriculture in the urbanizing city. It has actually been fascinating.
That being said I am excited to be done with the program a week from today. I have no doubt I'll be back to finish my adventures, but as of now, a comfy couch and paved roads sound quite accommodating.


Unfortunately, the cyber cafe near the program house doesn't let me upload pictures and since I am too lazy, or let's go with unable to walk, I thought I would share I a paper I wrote about the expereice. I know that most of you will scoff at the idea of me as a patient person, but injury and boredom sometimes change a person for the better...

Anyway, Much love to all of you and for those in Boston: see you on the 11th!
Love, Em

How I Found My Patience

            While Living in Nepal there have been many situations where I’ve had to “suck-it-up” and do things the Nepali way. Inevitably, I have learned important lessons from experiences where I’ve been forced to shed my American skin. However, these experiences have not always been easy. The prime example of this was learning to move in Nepali time with patience in the aftermath of fracturing my ankle.

            I have always been an over-active person with next-to-no patience. I like to get a million things done quickly and on my own time. Nepal, as it turns out, is quite the opposite. From the moment I stepped off the plane it became clear that Nepali time runs about three chiyaa cups behind. The mentality seems to be along the lines of “Why would I answer a question directly without discussing every family member and the weather patterns from the last five years?” It seems I was unable to slow down enough to appreciate the gold mine of knowledge that is the slow, circular way of getting things done until I was moving just as slow on my crutches.

            It all started in the picturesque village of Tangting. I was using my village interview assignment as an excuse to run around Tangting and hike “maathi” every day. Unfortunately, scrambling up mud-slick, steep, paths does not always end well. After falling on my ankle I sat in the mud in utter disbelief willing my ankle to be okay. It took me an hour, practically being carried by my pint-sized Didi, to get back down to the village. The soundtrack the whole way was me calling out between grunts of pain, more to myself than anyone else, “I’m fine, just need to ice it for a minute!” Even unable to walk, I was unable to admit I might need to slow down.

            For the remaining week up in Tangting my ankle continued to change shape, size, and color giving any sane person the impression that something might be seriously wrong. However, I refused to give up my ISP plans to work in the fields in another small village, Shimigaun, a week away and a treacherous day hike up. Even if was sprained, I reasoned with myself, it must be a minor one and I would be fine by the end of the week. It took a strong talking to from two close friends to convince me to slow down and stay at my family’s house for the remaining days and exams. Thus, I passed the next five days in the stillest and calmest body I have manifested probably since infancy. The first couple days resulted in such severe boredom I started embroidering my hiking socks dreaming up trekking adventures. However, after I had reorganized my exam notes four times there was nothing left to do but sit.  

The older aamaas of Tangting, while everyone else was in the fields, spend much of the day drinking cups of chiyaa with each other in silence watching the rice dry. As I tried to emulate this lifestyle, I found I rather enjoyed the slow sense of purpose. My aamaa set me up outside next to the rice drying on rolled out thatched mats equipped with a thermos of chiyaa and a ten foot pole to fend off from the rice. Older aamaas would come and perch themselves on the rock next to me and ask about my swollen appendage until I poured them some chiyaa. Then we would get down to watching the rice, or the himals, in tandem meditation. Occasionally, I would ask questions of rice drying or village life and the woman would happily answer but no one seemed bothered when the conversation again turned to comfortable silence.

The true test of my ability to stay still came when it was time to trek down to Pokhara and I was still unable to walk. As the only solution, I was perched in a doka and carried the five hours down on the backs of the two strongest men the village could muster. I was instructed that if I moved even the slightest and shifted the load attached around the men’s heads by ropes, he might tumble down the steep rocky path. So, for five hours, I was a statue of my former self. The Emily of seven days prior would have been twitching around trying to see everything at once and asking for a pee break every half hour. But, despite even my own reservations, I sat calmly.

Still convinced my ankle was just sprained I went sweeping through the Pokhara City Hospital exclaiming to every doctor and x-ray technician: “I’m going to Shimigaun!” right up until the doctor gave me the diagnosis: a fracture, small, but serious. Luckily, the second doctor we saw in Kathmandu decreed surgery was not necessary and than I should be fine in an enormous cast for two months.

For a few days, I lost my patience. As I lay in the little room so carefully set up by my new Program House family I felt utterly lost. I sat crying and trying to plan a new project with a performance that if not quite Oscar worthy should at least have made my high-school drama teacher proud. But soon enough, as in Tangting, I eventually had nothing to do but find my patience. So I settled into the slow pace of things for my ISP.

After learning to stare at rice for hours in Tangting, relinquishing walking didn’t seem that bad. I traded in my farming ambitions for a flashy bright blue cast and conversations with taxi drivers. I grew to appreciate the five minutes it took for the Nepali I was interviewing to get to the point, as I took just as long to put down my crutches, sip my tea and settle myself.  

In the end, I can’t say I’m happy I fractured my ankle or that I wasn’t able to spend my last weeks in a remote village, but I also can’t say that I did not have a unique experience in which I was finally able to slow down enough to get something out of my interviews. I also can’t say I don’t have a great story.