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.  

Again, I must start this post with sincere apologies for the long silence!

Much has happened: trekking, high holidays, a trip to Pokhara, and much language learning. Instead of a long monologue that most of you will skip over anyway, let's just get straight to the pictures...

me and my new boyfriend, he's my rock

(Dubar Square in Baktipur)

For those of you (gege) that love my scared faces: this is a moment after I got my nose pierced. No worries to you worry-warts, I saw the shop owner sterilize the tools with a flame-torch. Yes, it seems odd to me too that a flame thrower is a staple at most shops...

Musicians of the "musician caste" demonstrating traditional Nepali instruments for us in a small village near Pokhara. A few minutes after this was taken it turned into a full blown dance party.

Now, for a few shots from Dashain. Dashain is the biggest Hindu festival of the year, celebrating (to make a very long complicated story short) the mother nature goddesses triumph over evil. Now this is a holiday I can get behind! One of the main traditions is for each family to slaughter a goat on the 8th day. A few days beforehand, I went with my baa and uncles to the "goat bazaar" where there were literally thousands of goats tied up. In a morbidly similar situation to picking out the Christmas tree we chose a small tan and white fellow. He hung out in our backyard for a few days before being ceremoniously "cut." As far as I can tell this goat enjoyed a happy life (with my little brother playing with him up until the very end) and a very swift, painless death. I figured, if I can't stomach eating this goat then I should become a vegetarian. To my great surprise, I rather enjoyed the whole endeavor, and thus, will continue to eat responsibly raised meat.

Here is my action shot of the goat being killed... sorry it's a bit graphic. This guy makes his living killing goats, and he seriously knew what he was doing.

While the goat was being killed, my little sister shields by little brother's eyes.

A few hours latter, my Grandfather quite skillfully disemboweling the goat. We cut and ate every part of the goat, some of the more interesting pieces included: blood pudding, lung with onions, stomach, sucking out marrow, and the brains (which luckily for me only go to the eldest male)

Another important, less gruesome, part of Dashain is the Tika ceremony. Every one in the family gives everyone younger tika (or a large slab of red vermilion power mixed with rice on the forehead.)

This hasn't much to do with Dashain, but I thought this photo was quite adorable. This is my little spider monkey of a brother who seems to have permanently attached himself to my hip.

After the Dashain celebrations were over, we had a week off to travel as we wanted. I and fellow student and backpacking enthusiast, Phil, decided to trek for a week in the Langtang region of the Himalayas about a stone's throw from Tibet. We were led my Dogelji, the son of one of the men who work for the program. Dogelji, at 21, just spent 8 years as a Buddhist monk. He's full of philosophy and enthusiasm for the world, and made struggling through existentialism in Nepali quite worth it.

The three of us started our journey with my second near death experience here in Nepal (the first being the earthquake that, quite literally, rocked my world.) The 10 hour bus ride up to Langtang was on the worst road I have ever seen in my life. Every 10 minutes we would have to get out and walk and watch the bus pass through spots not more than an inch wider than the tires. This was made all the better by the 50 extra people on the bus. People were shoved like sardines into the aisles rocking back and forth with the rocky road. As I was saying my last prayers there was a woman's butt in my face and two crying babies in my lap... By some miracle we made it to Sebrubessi and started the trek in the morning.

This was one point where the bus stopped for a half hour while we watched the road being built in front of us. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

However, the drama of the bus was totally worth it. The 7 day journey from one small village to the next was in one of the most beautiful, untouched places I have ever seen!

Philji and Dogalji take a minute next to a tea shop after a 3 hour climb up a steep cliff on the first day.

The unique architecture of Gatlang (a small village a few days walk from a road) No cement was used to hold up the rocks used to build the houses. This night we payed the equivalent of 40 cents per person for a room and witnessed traditional singing the night before a young girls marriage (one of the many perks of being able to speak Nepali- the lodge owners would invite us in the kitchen and take us around town)

A bit of a red faced photo but captures the glory of the moment! Also, if any of you ladies are still hiking in pants I highly suggest you switch to the windy team.

A gorgeous view from Tatopaani (translating to hot water and named for the hot springs we soaked in that night)

Let's play guess the 1960's musical??

The three stooges at the top

One of the best rooms we had, three sided view of the Himalayas from bed.

Hope all is well in the home front! As always, I'd love to hear from you all and about you're own adventures, so drop a line if you get a chance. I have a week and a half more in Kathmandu and then I head to the village. For 2 weeks I'll be with the group and then I head up to remote Shimigaun (meaning Bean-town!!) to study globalization's effect of traditional agriculture. It sounds quite  professional, but I am beyond excited to go get my hands dirty!

Sending lots of love!!

a view of my home from the "road" nestled in the rice fields

my baa (father) and hajur baa( grandfather) putting up corn to dry after we harvested some a few saturdays  ago

A view from the roof of my house. the room/second floor to the right is my room/princess palace. It has windows on three sides so I get to wake up the Himalayas.

Aamaa (mother) putting on my new sari for Tij, the women's festival where women fast for the health of their husbands. I fasted for most of the day until after puja when aamaa told me I looked faint and made me eat a banana... ahh well there goes my short carrier as a Hindu wife.

Tij!

back row: my sister Suraksha, my aamaa's little sister, my aamaa, me

front row: my little brother hamming it up, my little sister Sujata, and my cousin

my little brother saw me doing laundry and wanted to join in, so he washed his favorite "Ben 10" T-shirt for about a half hour. It was very cute.

We just spent the last week in Chitwan, the national park in the very south of Nepal. Riding elephants through the jungle was totally the highlight!!  

the whole crazy group plus one of our teachers, Sooja, in Chitwan. (my face is special birthday shout-out to Rachel)

Stage 3, In the Family

Namaste!
  I have embarked on the next part of my adventure, and am living with a wonderful Nepali family! We are a brisk 50 minute/ 2.something mile walk from the program house, where we still have class everyday. Myself and 4 other students are situated in a gorgeous little village nestled into the hills called Jagata. On clear mornings I can see the Himalayas from my roof. My family is more liberal/modern than most, we have a dining room table and solar powered lights. However, I would still describe my experience as rustic. We shower only on Saturdays, the day off. And my family eat a vast majority of food that we grow. We have a fantastic array of vegetables and fruits and grains, most of which I have no idea of the English name, but to name a few huge crops of rice and corn, patches of pumpkins, sour gourds, the ever ambiguous "saag" or various kinds of greens, orange and guava trees, and many more. Thus we have wonder fresh food daily. However, this excitement is slightly diminished by the fact for health purposes everything I eat must be boiled. I can feel myself starting to slack on the health rules, but still haven't gotten sick yet.
   My family consists of hajur baa (translates to grandfather, in Nepal we call everyone by kinship terms, which is very consistent with the strict social hierarchical systems based on age and gender.) Hajur baa is 84 or 86 depending on who you ask (?) and can be found a vast majority of time sitting on the porch listening to Nepali talk radio at top volume. He's not too good at talking slowly or simply, so I rarely understand him, but he loves to sit with me and the newspaper and help me with Devanagari (Nepali script.)
    Next is baa (father.) He is incredibly enthusiastic almost to a fault (a bit like me...) He loves his children more than anything and has completely adopted me as one. Every day I come home from school he makes me tell him what we learned and then practice it with him, which is, in fact, quite helpful although quite honestly after an hour walk the last thing I want to do is go over Nepali grammar. Baa also loves his children to be first! Luckily I've been good grades so far so I get lots of high fives. In a shining moment that really made me love him, baa found me a dance teacher. I had talking about wanting to take Nepali dance lessons for a school project and asked him if he knew of a good place in Kathmandu. The nest morning I was awoken early (5 instead of 5:30...) only to find that baa had contacted an old family friend who is a "dance master" to come meet me. Now every morning this last week from 6 to 7 am before school, he comes and teaches me. It's been such a joy, I'm learning folk and classical, both very different from anything class I've ever taken, but I have a very good teacher.
  I've become closest with aamaa (mother.) She is a wonderful, patient, and gentle woman with hidden spice just like her cooking. Every morning and evening I help her cook and we have a wonderful arrangement where we jabber to each other half understanding and smiling. I feel so comfortable making heinous grammatical errors with her, so I am able to really practice just talking. We always try and talk about more in depth things than I actually have the vocabulary for (the election of the Maoist prime minister, or Hindu beliefs behind menstruation taboos, for example.) Phil pierced my ear the other day at school (don't freak out mommy, it looks really good and we sterilized!) and that night it was hurting, so aamaa helped me soak it in hot water for an hour. It was really painful and whole time she had my head in her lap, stroking my hair and talking to me. After she finished she looked me in the eye and made me promise that if I ever feel sick to wake her up. Nothing like a little mothering to make one feel at home.
  My oldest little sister, Suraksha, is 16, and your typical teen. She is cranky 90% of the time and the only really good interaction we've had is showering together the first time. Neplai's are never naked (a bit of an adjustment for me..) so we have to wear these sort of mumus when we shower, in a group obviously. I had a bit of an incident trying to clean myself under the mumu and may have accidentally gotten some Dr Bronners in the nether regions. For those of you who haven't had this experience it burns like hellfire. So I started screaming and trying to get water down there with out exposing myself. In my frantic efforts, I grabbed the tap the water comes out of too hard and broke it off. Water came pouring out. This of course made me scream more. The whole time my sister was laughing hysterically.  It was, at least, a bonding experience.
   My younger sister, Sujata, is 11 and a real delight. She loves to dance and sing with me, we teach each other songs. She's super sassy and always adds a hip swing to everything. Every morning I braid her hair like Burton used to do for me on my birthday.
   My little brother, Sushant, is 5 and has more energy than anyone I have ever seen. He runs laps around the house. But it is not an obnoxious energy, he entertains himself completely. Sometimes he needs a break and likes to come sit on my lap and read his book. He also has an unhealthy obsession with uno, however he cheats. His newest strategy is to hide the  plus 4 wild cards around the house and then during the game go take a "bathroom break" and gather them. 
   If you hadn't seen the pattern, everyone in my family is named Su- something. Thus, my new Nepali name is Suda.
   I'm really getting along with the family, but one small comfort is Phil, anther student and close friend, lives about 100 ft up the hill in my uncle's house. So we are cousins. In fact, our whole extended family lives within a block. It's great to have a whole lot of cousins running around. In particular I'm really getting close to Phil's sister who is 22 and helps me with my laundry (in the river.)
  Well I am about to be late to school, so I must stop rambling. But I miss you all muchly.
Love to the moon and back!
        Suda/ Emily


 

Orientation!

Friends and Family,
     I am sorry for it taking me this long to write, I know you will all be relieved to hear I have not, in fact, been struck down by Gyardia nor perished in a Maoist protest. I am alive and well, acclimating to life here in Nepal. As it turns out, there is an Internet cafe close to the program house (where we have been living during orientation) however, due to frequent nation-wide power outages, the long line, and the desire to catch up on sleep at every free moment; the Internet cafe may as well be all the way in Kathmandu.
     In any case, I am writing to update you on my adventures. I suppose I should start at the beginning: After a grueling 40 something hours of travel I made it to the Kathmandu "airport" (more of a slab of a cement that such friendly security they don't mind waving a few pretty girls through.) Along the way I met a middle aged Belgian who kept showing me pictures of the aero show he attended in Wisconsin where he fell in love with his mid-western host. I don't know if I was more surprised that there are actually festivals where people gather to look at airplanes, or that he found love in the mid-west. Either way, he was much more entertaining than the Bollywood movies being shown. As we landed in Nepal, "Blue Moon" started playing on the loud-speaker. As far as I am aware, they don't have much jazz in Nepal, so I consider it a coincidence meaning Daddy is with me on this adventure.
    Leaving the Kathmandu "airport" was a serious contender for most overwhelming moment of my life. Luckily, the Pitzer program director spotted my travel buddy Haley and I, jammed marigold wreaths over our heads and shoved us and our backpacks into a taxi. Nepal, as far as I can tell, has no road rules, no road barriers, and drivers crazier than Boston and Rome combined. I thought I was going to die several times. There aren't many cars on the road, just a few taxis, some colorful buses with young men riding atop, and about a million motorcycles, half of which was a sari-clad woman riding side-sattle on the back. After driving about a half hour we reached Balkot, where the program house is.
    Balkot has sprung up in the last decade (like much of Nepal) and is not quite as rural I would have hoped. However, I am ensured our homestays will be more out in the country (an hour walk away) and frankly after more inspection the village of Balkot is quite backcounty enough. The buildings are packed together like a game of badly played jenja, all at odd angles. They are separated by narrow dirt roads, which are more like glorified mud patties due to the daily monsoon rains. Our program house is a lovely little three story building with mud floors and a kitchen on the top floor. The meals are cooked by our fantastic kitchen staff, most of whom are from the idyllic village of Shimigau up in the Himalayas. They are an invaluable resource for practicing our language, and are good at "laughing with you." As repayment for my language efforts they remember to serve my morning tea without milk, I'm touched.
      The bathroom was another thing to get used to. Squat toilets are really an art form, especially in the middle of the dark night. Although we have minimal running water, we can't use it for anything other than the piercingly cold drip of the shower for fear of ingestion (all our drinking water must be boiled.) However, the real trick is getting under the water to rinse off the soap without opening o\your mouth in surprise at the iciness! My other favorite thing about Nepal is every one's name has a "ji" added to the end of it. I have become Eh-MAH-li-ji. The best one is our fantastic program director Margie, is known as Margieji.
       Another thing to get used to here is the ungodly hour of the morning everyone gets up here. Around 5:15 every morning I am awakened by the old woman next door doing poja (Hindu prayer) where she scares away the evil spirits by ringing very high-pitched bells and laughing in a deep stage laugh that is really quite disturbing. The old women here, besides practising laughing like witches at dawn, are quite overbearing. My aamaa at the house likes to sneak up on me while I'm on the porch and grab my shoulder and ask how much such and such item of clothing cost. Another girl in the group, Marge (I can't help yelling Marge Berstein every time I see her) was feeling sick one night so she skipped dinner to be alone and rest. Her concerned aamaa after getting response knocking on the door for 10 minutes, went around and stuck her head in the window.
   For the last 10 days we have been in the "orientation" period. However, I really don't think there is much that could actually prep us for Nepal, so they are content to attempt to teach us how to avoid heinously insulting our families. For example, what I thought would be a nice compliment to my aamaa (mother) at a meal "your rotti
   Today we had a day off in which a did a glorious nothing but relax in preparation for moving into my family tomorrow afternoon. I am equal parts excited and nervous for the experience and really hoping I have little siblings who can help ease the awkwardness of the moment I have exhausted my minimal Neplai dialogue. There is only so much you can say about the names, ages and birth places of your family members (this is made even more difficult by my suspicion that Nepali don't quite have a grasp of adoption, and my teacher told my group to say the same phrase for divorce and a parent dying...) Regardless of what I am able to convey in the first week, I look forward to cultivating a deeper relationship with a real family.

I hope this small novel makes up for my silence. I am missing you all very much!
A special shout out to those at Del Mar, catch a wave for me!

All my love, Em

Preparations

Hello Beloved Friends and Family,

    As I'm sure many of you know by now, from my seemingly endless banter on the state of affairs in the secluded, mountainous South of Asia, I'm heading off in just over a week to spend 5 months in the mystical land of Nepal! 

    I decided to start a blog for the duration of the trip to: first, make sure my mothers know I'm alive; second, make it easy to reach everyone at once so I'm not writing a million and a half emails every time I make it to a computer (you say lazy, I say try having an immediate family to rival Genghis Khan's); and most importantly, to share the experience of a life time (Uncle Dick, don't be too jealous when I break out the pictures of the Himalayas.) After all what would the joys in life be worth if we could not share them with the ones that we love.  

    So, I will be updating this page as often as I can, maybe once every two weeks, with photos and stories of life half way across the world. Tune in when you get a moment and let me know how the US is. 

    Missing you all already!

          Love Abounding, Emily