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.

Roads

I live at the top of a long windy dirt road.

 The roads are often in less than amazing condition.

Recently we got the funding to bring in a tractor to improve the road.  Several men and boys would spend all day just sitting at the side of the road watching.

It was really exciting for a while, but then monsoon started and all that nice, freshly dug dirt turned into nice sticky mud.  Our local jeep still makes it up and down most days, only making people get out and walk or push occasionally, but I still try to travel as little as possible.

Hanging with my bro

By crazy coincidence, my brother got to spend a month or so in Nepal on  business.  We got together for a weekend in Pokhara.  Although I love my host family and community members and fellow volunteers, it was wonderfully refreshing to spend time with someone that I really know and who really knows me.

We really wanted to go sailing.  I've never been sailing before, but he did get the sailing merit badge 15 years ago, so it sounded like a great plan.  Maybe it was a good thing no one would rent us a sail boat.   We decided to go out in a row boat instead, hoping our boat was in better condition than some of the ones we saw...

Good news-- we didn't sink.

You didn't know Walmart had a trekking store in Pokhara, did you.  They probably don't know either.

My new neice!

I can't claim to be the most observant person in the world.  In a matter of fact, sometimes I'm down right clueless.  For example, I didn't realize my Nepali sister-in-law (who lives with me) was pregnant until a month or two before her due date.  In my defence, she really didn't show that much and how often do you really go around telling people "by the way, I'm pregnant"?

Considering my cluelessness, it was a bit of a surprise when my host dad told me early on morning that my new niece had been borne the night before.  She was borne within 20 feet of me and I slept peacefully through it.

It's been a mixture of a fun, frustrating, and very informative experience having an infant living with us.  Who doesn't love occasionally snuggling with a little baby?  Who doesn't hate having an 11 year old treat you like an imbecile because she's pretty sure she knows how to take care of a baby better than you do?

Here she is!

First bath with grandma

 

Taking a nap in the sun

Sitting with her very proud big sister

IST

Intermediate Service Training?  Intensive Seated Tedium?  Interesting Scholastic Teaching?  Peace Corps, like any good governmental organization, really likes its acronyms.  I admit it was a little confusing at first to be a PCT sitting in PST discussing the COAT with our LCFs, trying to figure out when we were going to meet with the PCMO...  You get used to it after a while, even if you never do figure out what all the acronyms actually mean.  Whatever IST really means, it's the first big training meeting all the volunteers have together after moving to their permanent sites.  It was a long, exhausting, informative week.

We built improved cook stoves (aka played in the mud).

Learned about nursery seed planting.

Built a plastic house (actually, I just watched-- It was really hot that day and I like to encourage men to work as much as possible).

Met a buffalo with really long toe nails.

Planted a field of tomatoes while learning about drip irrigation.

Built a solar food dryer.

It was an exhausting week.

Weddings and Funerals

I don't know what it is, but those two seem to go together somehow.

The day after arriving in Aarupata I attended a wedding.  I was able to identify the bride and groom because she was crying hysterically and he looked enormously uncomfortable.  "Love matches" are becoming more and more common, but many marriages are still arranged here.  I'm not sure which type this particular marriage was, but I'm happy to report that I've seen the couple since and they look wonderfully happy together.  It seems it is traditional for the bride to cry because it is hard for her to leave her family (after marriage the bride typically leaves her home town and moves in with her in-laws and becomes part of their family).

I've been to several weddings since then, some huge and fancy, most small and cozy.

They're nothing like American weddings.  Friends and family members give a white tika to the bride and groom and their attendants as a way to give their blessing on the union.  There's often feasting and dancing and they always end far too late at night.  I get really grouchy when I'm tired, so I'm afraid that has rather tainted my opinion of weddings. 

Funerals are a little more interesting.  Each cast and ethnic group has different death rituals.  Gurungs, with whom I live, bury their dead while most other groups use cremation.  Not long ago my host dad's elderly aunt died of cancer.  The experience was something you would expect to see in a National Geographic and I can't possibly describe it adequately, but I'll try.  Throughout the day people gathered at the diseased home to very loudly mourn her passing.  As evening started to approach, garlands of money were sewn together and other colorful decorations were procured.  The body was wrapped in cloth then festooned with these decorations.  Religious ceremonies and dancing were preformed, then around midnight the men carried the body up to the cemetery for burial.  For several days afterwards all the gathered family spent most of our time hanging out together and planning the big death party that was to take place 15 days later. 

"Death party" probably isn't the appropriate term for what happened, but It's the best way I know of to describe it.  Far more happened than I am aware of or understood or that I can describe.  This is a brief summary only.  The four day gathering celebrated six different diseased ancestors.  Family from far and near gathered to join in.  The school was turned into a temporary camp ground where people would hangout throughout the day just chatting or creating money and flower garlands that were used later.

Then manikins representing the diseased were carried into the village and placed on a platform in a tent constructed for the event.

The manikins were then dressed up and decorated.

A group of young men played drums and danced around the figures for hours and hours.  Their endurance was impressive.

Other religious ceremonies were also performed.

One night there was a special dance depicting the fight between good and evil.  A group of priests (representing good) and a group of "son-in-laws" (any male relative really, representing evil) chased each other back and forth across a field, but in the end good always won.

Unfortunately, that same night a man in the next village down who had had a bit too much to drink fell to his death.

 The party was a huge event.  Whether you were related or not, everyone in the area came to watch.

The main thing I learned was that death is expensive everywhere, even if you don't have to buy a fancy box or cemetery plot.

Christmas '12

For our first Christmas away from home, all of us volunteers gathered together in the city of Pokhara for a few days to celebrate.

We visited the World Peace Pagoda

Went on walks around the lake

And I even bought myself a new computer.

It was a pleasant escape from trying to learn Nepali and figuring out what I was supposed to be doing, but it was nice to head back home again afterwards.