Year in Review

A year has passed since my great adventure in Nepal began.  My group of volunteers was recently asked to summarize our experience so far in six words.  "Climb up, slip down, move forward" was one statement I particularly identified with.   I, like many other individuals who have served in Peace Corps, tend to share with others only the high points, but, as another friend put it, "Peace Corps ain't fairytales and sprinkles."  Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been a bad experience.  As another friend shared, "frustration, failure, fulfillment are all inevitable."  There have been long periods of empty time as I try to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing here.  There have been agonizing days of frustration as I try to overcome my own weaknesses that stand in the way of me accomplishing my goals.  Too many of my days have been shadowed with the discouragement of failure.  And there are the days I just want to scream at the people around me and run away.  But then again, there are the breathtaking mountain views, the friendships I have developed with my Nepali family and community, the fact that I can actually have a conversation with them in Nepali, the confidence I've gained in my own abilities, technical skills learned, and a handful of homes that have been transformed by my helping them build improved cook stoves.  Here's a brief look at what the past year has brought me.

I have been warmly welcomed into two families and two communities

 I've celebrated dozens of holidays

 I've helped entertain hundreds of visitors

 I've attended a few too many weddings and funerals

 I've been on TV several times

 I got to spend a weekend with my brother

 I've been able to watch my new niece grow from a tiny newborn to a thriving infant

 I've picked thousands of tomatoes.  I've probably eaten thousands of tomatoes too.

 I've helped build and repair a few roads

 I've helped construct 21 improved cook stoves in my community and trained 26 new volunteers in ICS construction

I've walked to and attended dozens of meetings

 I created my own permagarden and was actually successful

 I've helped clear the underbrush in our forest to make room for a coffee plantation.  In the process I also got really good at pulling leaches off my ankles and learned that sandals really are the best type of foot gear in certain working conditions.

And I've seen my first host families new home transform from a nice pile of bricks into a bright pink mansion.

 No, it hasn't all been fairytails and sprinkles, but it has been good and I have high hopes and expectations for the coming year.

Roads Revisited

When people heard I was going to Nepal, their first response was generally something along the lines of "it's going to be so cold!"  After all, Nepal is home to 8 of the world's 10 tallest mountains.  It's also at a similar latitude as Florida and varies in elevation from 70 to 8,850 meters.  I'm in the middle part that has relatively moderate temperatures year round.  What they really should have warned me about was monsoon season.  Although it typically doesn't rain all day, it generally rains every day.  For three months.  It's been a little rough on the fields and roads.

If you're lucky and have enough money, a tractor will clear a landslide within a few hours and life will go on as normal.

The rest of the time... you walk more.   And life still goes on like normal.  Now that monsoon is starting to wind down, my villagers decided it was time to have a community work day to make the length of road between my village and the next village up drivable.  Landslides and erosion had kept it impassable since the beginning of monsoon.  I may have mentioned it before, but one of the things I love most about my community is their unity.  Representatives from nearly every household showed up with digging tools and a cheerful attitude and spent the entire day working in the hot sun to fix up the road.

 

 

 

One, two, three... Push!

Now what do we do?

While we were working on the road, I overheard a conversation that reminded me how fast conditions in Nepal are changing.  It went something like this:

"You know, if we were to have work days like this once or twice each year the road would never get this bad."

"True.  And even women can do this work.  It used to be a few of the old men would just get together and say lets go dig the road..."

I heard another conversation awhile back in a tea shop.  A group of people of mixed cast and ethnic groups were eating a snack and pleasantly chatting together after a meeting.  The shop women commented:

"Just a few years ago something like this would never happen.  You simply didn't talk to someone outside your cast.  Maybe you could get away with it with an older man, but no one else."

I recently attended a Gurung meeting, in which it was decided that intermarriage between Gurungs and Magars (two of the ethnic groups of Nepal) is acceptable (not encouraged, but acceptable).

The signs are subtle, but things are changing here.  From improving road conditions, to changing gender roles, to decreasing social class discrimination.  I am very curious to see the Nepal of 10 or 20 years from now.  I think it will in many ways be a very different place.

Rice Feeding Ceremony

In the Gurung culture, babies have a special ceremony the first time they eat rice.  For girls it's at 4 months old, for boys it's 5 months.  My niece just turned four months old.  The ceremony involves placing a tika on the infant and then feeding her a little rice.  There was some chicken there too, but no one actually tried to feed her that.

My niece was remarkably well behaved, for the most part.  I guess an infant can only handle people stikking rice on their foreheads and shoving food in their mouths for so long.

This is also the time when a little girl starts wearing bracelets.  They were so small!  Good thing baby hands are flexible-- my experience with putting on similar bracelets (adult sized) was excruciatingly painful.

Honestly, I was really not excited about this ceremony.  Babies should be exclusively breastfeed for six full months.  My sister-in-law knew this, but it's hard to abandon deeply rooted traditions just because you know better.  I am very happy to say though that my sister-in-law kept the ceremony simply symbolic-- she is still breastfeeding exclusively.

Another Funeral

Weddings and funerals really do go together somehow.  A few days before my brother's wedding a near neighbor (an old man who had been ill for many years) died.  If it weren't for the fact that someone was dead and lots of people were sad, I'd have to say I prefer funerals over weddings.

 In Gurung culture there is lots of weeping and wailing by family members and close friends to show their grief at a loved ones passing during the first day following death.  The body is wrapped in cloth and decorated with garlands of money, flowers, cigarets, cookies and other assorted junk foods.

There is an hour or two of religious ceremony as holy men walk around the body and house chanting and playing drums.  I'm always morbidly fascinated by the guy carrying the freshly severed goat's head in his mouth.  It's not a job I'd want.

 Crowds of people hang out at the deceased person's house all day long.  Most are family and friends offering support.  Others, particularly members of different ethnic groups, I think come more for the entertainment value.

 Once the appropriate ceremonies have been performed, the body is carried up to the cemetery and buried.

The next day the funeral continues with a big feast.  It's like a potluck where everyone knows exactly what to bring (there isn't a lot of variety is the typical Nepali diet).  There's fruit and cookies and cell roti (ring shaped deep fried sweetened rice bread) and potato salad and prawn chips and other fried crispy snacks.  These offerings are divided up and served to everyone as a snack before the real meal of rice and lentils.  It's delicious.

Another wedding

I'm usually the last to know about things.  Either that or I just don't understand people when they tell me what's happening.  So I was really excited when my Nepali mom told me my little brother was getting married shortly after she found out, which turned out to be a full week before the wedding.  Of course, I thought the event she was telling me about was just my brother bringing his fiancee to meet the family and didn't find out it was the actual wedding until the day before.

The wedding was a fairly small event.  The ceremony took place in the early afternoon, which I am now convinced is the perfect time for a wedding-- you have all morning to get ready and then by the time you're exhausted and just want to have the house to yourself again people are going home.

I don't understand everything that went on, but I'll do the best I can to describe a typical Gurung wedding.  First, dung is smeared in front of the door.  There are two sacred water pots and a fire.  Then a chicken is sacrificed and the blood sprinkled on the stoop.

The bride and groom then approach the house, are greeted at the door and invited in.

Family and friends then take turns giving the bride and groom a white tika, pronouncing a blessing on them.

You don't typically see a lot of smiles during the ceremony, but I promise that they really are happy together.

And then we eat.  A wedding just wouldn't be a wedding if there wasn't food involved.

 

As soon as the ceremony was finished, the bride put on her working clothes and helped the other women with the feast and clean-up.

People and Parties

People  often want to know what I'm doing every day.  It's a hard question to answer because mostly I'm just hanging out with my villagers and attending community gatherings.  Here's a quick glimpse of some of our happenings.

 

This was at a meeting celebrating the donation of some chairs by the Magar group to the community.  Dancing is a very common fundraiser-- that's why there's money in her hair.

These are three of my little pals just being silly.

One day a bunch of us went to a big Gurung meeting of some kind.  We all got dressed up in traditional dress, marched around in the street a bit, then listened to speeches.  I have no idea what it was all about really.  I often don't.

My village is an hours drive from the nearest sizable town, so it was a pretty big deal when the ice cream man showed up on his bike one day.  A large group of us were gathered at the community building to build that fence you can see in the background and thoroughly enjoyed the snack break.

Groups often come to my village to check out all the agriculture development projects that have been done here.  In preparation for their arrival, long hours are spent in the kitchen preparing a feast for them.  They even let me help work sometimes now instead of just watch.

This is one of my favorite old women.  She's got a lot of spunk-- she's giving someone a piece of her mind in this photo while a group is hanging around waiting for some meeting or another.  She's also a cat lady, which is not normal for this culture.  Maybe it's a universal trait that comes with age.

I call this photo "Self Control."  That's fresh meat being divied up right infront of that dog and he didn't even try to steal any of it.

These kids were pretending to plow a field, taking turns being the cows and the herder.  The cows had a lot of fun being stubborn and having to be pushed forward, while the herder had a lot of fun hitting the cows with a stick and pushing them around.