The road out of Pokhara towards Kathmandu is a narrow, one-and-a-half-lane road crowded with buses and decorated trucks, some of which sound like they have installed mini pipe organs instead of horns. It twists along the sides of the mountains - up to cross a pass, down to nearly touch the water, then up again. The mountains are not simply steep, but sudden, in their jump from roiling river waters to forested tops. As we got closer to the Kathmandu Valley and the day wore on, the heat increased, and we rolled into the noise and pollution of the capital city in the heat and humidity of midafternoon.
Coming back to the city I left in such a rush over a month ago, I realized that Kathmandu is a city of life - all the nasty parts of waste, filth, misery, and poverty mixed together with the wonderful and joyous parts of children laughing, brilliant colors, fruit stalls, the smells of roasting vegetables, God.
A man wheels a bicycle with four big bottles of fresh water strapped to the back around potholes in the road. Two women in brilliant kurtas chat as they brush flies away from their fruit and vegetable stand set up under an umbrella. A young man flies by on his motorcycle, barely missing a taxi and two buses. A woman in a red sari ties her goats in a small patch of grass and burning garbage by the side of the road. Colorful laundry hangs from a balcony against a sky of watercolor-smudge clouds. Two children in torn t-shirts kick a soccer ball back and forth over the head of a sleeping street dog. Taxis weave around a cow standing morosely in the middle of the road. Girls in blue and gray uniforms laugh as they walk to school, clutching their books to their chests. Old men with tikka on their foreheads sit quietly in their doorways, staring interestedly at everyone who passes on the street and regularly spitting into the dirt. Life is everywhere on display. The simple act of families eking out an existence for themselves in this world is nowhere more apparent or more miraculous.
In the few days I have left in Nepal, I've been volunteering at perhaps the largest orphanage in the city. Bal Mandir, which means "baby temple", was founded by a member of the royal family in the 1960s and housed in old palace. Now that grand beginning is all but gone - it is a non-governmental organization that struggles to find private donations, and the palace is now a testament to the dilapidated grandeur of chipping plaster and dry fountains - it is dim and crowded and smells of pee. Over 200 children, infants to 18, call this place home, and nearly three quarters of them are girls. Most were abandoned either at the hospital or on the street; when they turn 18 they must leave, but they are given money for further education or training, and a stipend each month for a year to help them become independent adults.
We work in the baby room where there are over 20 babies, infant to maybe 1 year old, and only three didis ("older sisters", i.e. caretakers). The didis obviously love the babies and do what they can, but there's only so much attention three women can give to 20 crying children. We hold the babies as much as we can, despite the remonstrances of the doctor who says that if we hold them too much, they cry too loudly when we leave - well, what does that tell you? these babies need the attention, and I told him so. We play with them, we feed them, we change their diapers. One baby is a premie who we think might be blind, one has large pus-filled welts all over her head, one has a terrible cough, many have dark spots or skin rashes all over their bodies. They all have bald spots or matted hair on the backs of their heads from lying in one position too long, and many aren't strong enough to sit up, even though they should be old enough. Some beg constantly for attention and bounce up and down in their cribs, but most are good-natured and calm. They are all beautiful. Unlike the other volunteers, I have not given any of them names. I don't want to think of them individually because I'm afraid that I won't be able to stop myself from crying in anger and frustration and pity that these children were abandoned and now lie neglected on an orphanage floor.
I've realized now that I never wrote about the orphanages associated with the organization I'm here with. This organization is called Nepal Orphans' Home, and it operates four houses within a radius of about a quarter mile of where I am staying. The first house is called Papa's House, and it is run by the organization's founder, Michael. A brother and sister, Vinod and Anita, run two homes - one for boys and one for girls. The last house is called Sanctuary - specifically for girls rescued from the kamlari system of selling girls into slavery. (Read the book Sold, by Patricia McCormick, if you want to know more.) Other girls have come here to escape poverty and get a chance at a decent education. Some of the boys are brothers of the girls, and some were sent here by their families to keep them safe from the Maoists. Whenever I have seen the children, they strike me as sweet and funny and smart and motivated and so good to each other. Michael has done amazing work building up this family, and yet he's a mystery man - no one seems to know much about his life before he came here, except that he was once a carpenter. Symbolic, no? More information can be found on their website.
12 August 2010
05 August 2010
Under Machhapuchhre's Shadow
Pokhara is about as different from Kathmandu as you can get. It feels like a very modern city - women dressed in Western clothes and driving motorcycles, flower nurseries, hybrid cars, waste bins on the main streets ("use me!"), even a blood drive in front of a bakery. It's smaller, cleaner, cheaper, less noisy, and easier to navigate than the capital. However, lest you forget you are still in Nepal, this modernity is mixed with unpaved streets, fruit sellers on the sidewalks, electricity cuts, cows and buffaloes grazing in empty lots, pedal sewing machines set up in shop doorways, age-old traditional dress, and dozens of small Hindu temples.
Manoj, the father of the house, acts as the volunteer tour guide, showing us the sites in the form of early morning walks. On the morning of my third day, he took the other volunteer, Josh, and I to a Hindu temple across the city. We walked past a sign with a picture of a cobra on it that Manoj told us meant, "Don't piss here: home of a snake god." We crossed a deep river gorge on a swaying suspension bridge made slippery by the night's rain. We climbed stone steps past men and women selling flower offerings and reached the temple - a courtyard complex atop a hill, though we couldn't see far because the rain that had started again. There were small stone carvings and offerings placed against one large central tree, all covered in red and yellow tikka powder, a table outlined with small unlit lamps, a small temple building with a holy man crouched under his umbrella near the door, a golden cow statue, and a stone corridor below the hilltop for animal sacrifices. My favorite: to one side was a small little guillotine for coconut sacrifices.
Another morning Manoj led us to a large Tibetan Buddhist monastery atop a hill above the house. It was lightly raining as we climbed the steep hill, but inside the compound we forgot the rain. The main building was incredibly carved and painted in brilliant, breathless colors. The silk curtain over the doorway billowed in and out with the sounds of chanting coming from inside. In spite of our nervousess about causing a disturbance, Manoj convinced us to go inside the hall, where the monks, most very young, were sitting in rows and reading chants from traditional books of loose sheaves. Occasionally the monks in the center of the room would play enormous gongs and long low-toned horns that made the whole building with energy. To one side was a shelf of books, and in the center of the back wall was an enormous golden statue of the Buddha surrounded by neon lights flashing red, green, and yellow. The walls and ceiling were painted with scenes of nature and what I suppose were bodhisattvas in jewel-toned colors. Some of the monks stared at us in a very friendly way, and one gestured for us to sit. We perched on a pile of cushions in the corner, absorbing the sounds around us as they mingled with the early morning light.
Our longest morning outing began with a bus ride in the blue predawn light. We could see Machhapuchhre, the mountain called Fishtail that dominates the Pokhara skyline, rising palely, its snows almost purple. At the end of the bus route we climbed hundreds of stone steps up a green hillside until we could look down into the river valley below, where clouds came and went in white misty threads. We climbed up farther above the city, and we could see the shapes of distant mountains through the cloud, some edges touched with gold by the rising sun, and then the lake - Phewa Tal - and the lakeside strip of Pokhara beside it. At the top of the hill was the white dome of the World Peace Pagoda. Its sides hold four golden statues of the Buddha, four events in his life in four different places. The hilltop pagoda offers stunning , unobstructed views of the Annapurna Himal - or at least it would, if the world had not been blanketed in cloud. The clouds shifted fast in the early morning light and we caught glimpses of the snow peaks between the golden mist, but it wasn't until we were descending through thick forest towards the lake that the mountains really showed themselves. If only we had stayed on top a little longer! At the edge of the lake, sparkling in the bright sunshine, Manoj arranged for a man in a colorful canoe to paddle us languidly across the water to Lakeside, where a bus took us back home again.
During the day while the kids are at school, the other volunteers and I can do what we please. Lina, a young girl from Latvia, and I learned how to navigate the buses and together we explored the fringes of Pokhara. Our first destination was to the south: Devi's Falls, supposedly so named because someone named David or Mrs. Davis (depending on who you ask) once fell in and drowned. Upriver, you can see that the water has begun to carve a gorge, but here it cascades heavily under the earth into a cavern of black rock, sending up spray and glimpses of rainbows, and continues on invisible. I don't know where, if ever, it reappears on the surface. Next stop were two caves north of the city, Mahendra Gufa and Bat Cave (I never learned its Nepali name). Mahendra was nothing special: a narrow muddy stone hallway lit by electric bulbs. At the back was a stream sacred to Ganesh and a holy man selling tikka. Bat Cave was a little better because there were no electric lights and no pathway. We brought our own flashlights and climbed over the wet rocks looking for bats on the high ceiling; there was one small cluster of maybe 25 bats that hung motionless in the beams from our lights.
The International Mountain Museum is housed in an impressive building on large grounds, but the museum itself is not so good. The first gallery, on Nepali mountain peoples, had interesting photos and clothing displays, but little to no explanation. I enjoyed the comparative photos of Nepali mountain life and life in the Alps - children playing by a mountain stream, a man plowing with a wooden blade and an ox, women carrying tall baskets of cut stalks. There were hundreds of photos from different mountaineering expeditions, including an impressive display of the Hillary and Norgay ascent of Everest, but many of the other photos were badly faded or damaged. The yeti exhibit was atrociously funny with a model of the yeti that looked like a prop from a B-rated horror film.
On the last day at the orphanage, I bought the kids mangoes and the ingredients for pasta and banana lassis - we had a feast for tiffin before playing Bingo for chocolates. Then - "To the Magic Tree!" said the boys, and off we went on an evening walk. We stepped carefully along the thin walls between the flooded rice paddies to the east of the house, then up a steep hill and around a few houses to the tree - a branching giant sitting in the dip between two hills. The boys told me that if you put your right hand against the bark, bow your head and close your eyes, the gods are sure to hear your prayers. When we descended the other side of the hill, the tree, silhouetted against the setting sun, certainly looked magical. We climbed down into a green valley beginning to fall into the shadow of evening and waded through the water at the edge of the paddies until we reached a small temple on the edge of a swampy lake - the home of a cobra god. A black statue of a snake with red eyes rose out of the water. We raced past the temple and into one extended arm of the city, and as it was getting dark we hurried up the steep steps to another hilltop Hindu temple, where the boys ran in circles ringing the bells, and on to the gumba, the monastery. We reached home in the dark, a bit mud-splattered and bug-bitten but laughing at the speed of our evening tour.
Manoj, the father of the house, acts as the volunteer tour guide, showing us the sites in the form of early morning walks. On the morning of my third day, he took the other volunteer, Josh, and I to a Hindu temple across the city. We walked past a sign with a picture of a cobra on it that Manoj told us meant, "Don't piss here: home of a snake god." We crossed a deep river gorge on a swaying suspension bridge made slippery by the night's rain. We climbed stone steps past men and women selling flower offerings and reached the temple - a courtyard complex atop a hill, though we couldn't see far because the rain that had started again. There were small stone carvings and offerings placed against one large central tree, all covered in red and yellow tikka powder, a table outlined with small unlit lamps, a small temple building with a holy man crouched under his umbrella near the door, a golden cow statue, and a stone corridor below the hilltop for animal sacrifices. My favorite: to one side was a small little guillotine for coconut sacrifices.
Another morning Manoj led us to a large Tibetan Buddhist monastery atop a hill above the house. It was lightly raining as we climbed the steep hill, but inside the compound we forgot the rain. The main building was incredibly carved and painted in brilliant, breathless colors. The silk curtain over the doorway billowed in and out with the sounds of chanting coming from inside. In spite of our nervousess about causing a disturbance, Manoj convinced us to go inside the hall, where the monks, most very young, were sitting in rows and reading chants from traditional books of loose sheaves. Occasionally the monks in the center of the room would play enormous gongs and long low-toned horns that made the whole building with energy. To one side was a shelf of books, and in the center of the back wall was an enormous golden statue of the Buddha surrounded by neon lights flashing red, green, and yellow. The walls and ceiling were painted with scenes of nature and what I suppose were bodhisattvas in jewel-toned colors. Some of the monks stared at us in a very friendly way, and one gestured for us to sit. We perched on a pile of cushions in the corner, absorbing the sounds around us as they mingled with the early morning light.
Our longest morning outing began with a bus ride in the blue predawn light. We could see Machhapuchhre, the mountain called Fishtail that dominates the Pokhara skyline, rising palely, its snows almost purple. At the end of the bus route we climbed hundreds of stone steps up a green hillside until we could look down into the river valley below, where clouds came and went in white misty threads. We climbed up farther above the city, and we could see the shapes of distant mountains through the cloud, some edges touched with gold by the rising sun, and then the lake - Phewa Tal - and the lakeside strip of Pokhara beside it. At the top of the hill was the white dome of the World Peace Pagoda. Its sides hold four golden statues of the Buddha, four events in his life in four different places. The hilltop pagoda offers stunning , unobstructed views of the Annapurna Himal - or at least it would, if the world had not been blanketed in cloud. The clouds shifted fast in the early morning light and we caught glimpses of the snow peaks between the golden mist, but it wasn't until we were descending through thick forest towards the lake that the mountains really showed themselves. If only we had stayed on top a little longer! At the edge of the lake, sparkling in the bright sunshine, Manoj arranged for a man in a colorful canoe to paddle us languidly across the water to Lakeside, where a bus took us back home again.
During the day while the kids are at school, the other volunteers and I can do what we please. Lina, a young girl from Latvia, and I learned how to navigate the buses and together we explored the fringes of Pokhara. Our first destination was to the south: Devi's Falls, supposedly so named because someone named David or Mrs. Davis (depending on who you ask) once fell in and drowned. Upriver, you can see that the water has begun to carve a gorge, but here it cascades heavily under the earth into a cavern of black rock, sending up spray and glimpses of rainbows, and continues on invisible. I don't know where, if ever, it reappears on the surface. Next stop were two caves north of the city, Mahendra Gufa and Bat Cave (I never learned its Nepali name). Mahendra was nothing special: a narrow muddy stone hallway lit by electric bulbs. At the back was a stream sacred to Ganesh and a holy man selling tikka. Bat Cave was a little better because there were no electric lights and no pathway. We brought our own flashlights and climbed over the wet rocks looking for bats on the high ceiling; there was one small cluster of maybe 25 bats that hung motionless in the beams from our lights.
The International Mountain Museum is housed in an impressive building on large grounds, but the museum itself is not so good. The first gallery, on Nepali mountain peoples, had interesting photos and clothing displays, but little to no explanation. I enjoyed the comparative photos of Nepali mountain life and life in the Alps - children playing by a mountain stream, a man plowing with a wooden blade and an ox, women carrying tall baskets of cut stalks. There were hundreds of photos from different mountaineering expeditions, including an impressive display of the Hillary and Norgay ascent of Everest, but many of the other photos were badly faded or damaged. The yeti exhibit was atrociously funny with a model of the yeti that looked like a prop from a B-rated horror film.
On the last day at the orphanage, I bought the kids mangoes and the ingredients for pasta and banana lassis - we had a feast for tiffin before playing Bingo for chocolates. Then - "To the Magic Tree!" said the boys, and off we went on an evening walk. We stepped carefully along the thin walls between the flooded rice paddies to the east of the house, then up a steep hill and around a few houses to the tree - a branching giant sitting in the dip between two hills. The boys told me that if you put your right hand against the bark, bow your head and close your eyes, the gods are sure to hear your prayers. When we descended the other side of the hill, the tree, silhouetted against the setting sun, certainly looked magical. We climbed down into a green valley beginning to fall into the shadow of evening and waded through the water at the edge of the paddies until we reached a small temple on the edge of a swampy lake - the home of a cobra god. A black statue of a snake with red eyes rose out of the water. We raced past the temple and into one extended arm of the city, and as it was getting dark we hurried up the steep steps to another hilltop Hindu temple, where the boys ran in circles ringing the bells, and on to the gumba, the monastery. We reached home in the dark, a bit mud-splattered and bug-bitten but laughing at the speed of our evening tour.
03 August 2010
Tahara Nepal
I'm sure you have been wondering, "What has Nathalie been doing these past two weeks? We're absolutely dying to know." Well, let me tell you. I am currently in Pokhara at a boys' orphanage called Tahara Nepal (check out their website; link on the right), run by a fabulous couple, Manoj and Sarmila. Manoj was a social worker before he and his wife Sarmila decided to start a home for orphaned/at-risk boys four years ago. The oldest is 16 and the youngest is 6, but most of the 11 boys are around 10 years old. It's a very well-run place, modern and comfortable and organized, with a constant stream of volunteers from all over the world playing with the boys, helping a bit around the house, and giving Manoj and Sarmila a break.
It's hard to imagine how Manoj and Sarmila do it. They must act as parents to 11 boys with different and often difficult pasts, run a functioning and stable household for them, and help support the volunteers. I'm not sure where they find the time and energy to go to work, let alone have a moment to themselves. But however they manage, they've really created a family. The boys love each other and look out for each other (as much as any brothers can be expected to). They do well in school, are clean and healthy and well-fed and happy.
Our daily schedule looks like this:
4.30-5 am: Wake up, have tea.
5-8 am: Either take the boys to their karate lesson, or go on a long walk to cultural site with Manoj (more about these later).
8 am: Chores - sweeping the house, carrying water, doing dishes or laundry with the didi Sarita.
8.30 am: Breakfast of dal bhat.
9 am: Walk the kids to the bus stop down the road, and see them off to school.
9.30 am-4 pm: Free time. Walk to Mahendrapul to use the internet or get some food, visit a cultural site, hang out.
4.15 pm: Tea with the boys.
4.30-5.30 pm: Help the boys with their homework (which for me usually means helping the youngest, Shiva, with his multiplication tables and his English spelling).
5.30 pm: More chores.
6-7 pm: Play football or other outside games,or if it is raining play Monopoly, limbo, or a simplified version of Mafia.
7.30pm: Dinner of dal bhat.
8.30 pm: Bed time.
The boys are very friendly and outgoing, and because of the volunteers, they have an amazing understanding of foreign geography and culture. They love to play Bingo, which we do every Saturday and on every volunteers' last day, and they want the us to be involved in every part of their daily life - doing chores with them, walking with them, sitting with them to watch a movie, helping them with homework. Sometimes it gets to the point that they fight over who can hold our hands!
It's hard to imagine how Manoj and Sarmila do it. They must act as parents to 11 boys with different and often difficult pasts, run a functioning and stable household for them, and help support the volunteers. I'm not sure where they find the time and energy to go to work, let alone have a moment to themselves. But however they manage, they've really created a family. The boys love each other and look out for each other (as much as any brothers can be expected to). They do well in school, are clean and healthy and well-fed and happy.
Our daily schedule looks like this:
4.30-5 am: Wake up, have tea.
5-8 am: Either take the boys to their karate lesson, or go on a long walk to cultural site with Manoj (more about these later).
8 am: Chores - sweeping the house, carrying water, doing dishes or laundry with the didi Sarita.
8.30 am: Breakfast of dal bhat.
9 am: Walk the kids to the bus stop down the road, and see them off to school.
9.30 am-4 pm: Free time. Walk to Mahendrapul to use the internet or get some food, visit a cultural site, hang out.
4.15 pm: Tea with the boys.
4.30-5.30 pm: Help the boys with their homework (which for me usually means helping the youngest, Shiva, with his multiplication tables and his English spelling).
5.30 pm: More chores.
6-7 pm: Play football or other outside games,or if it is raining play Monopoly, limbo, or a simplified version of Mafia.
7.30pm: Dinner of dal bhat.
8.30 pm: Bed time.
The boys are very friendly and outgoing, and because of the volunteers, they have an amazing understanding of foreign geography and culture. They love to play Bingo, which we do every Saturday and on every volunteers' last day, and they want the us to be involved in every part of their daily life - doing chores with them, walking with them, sitting with them to watch a movie, helping them with homework. Sometimes it gets to the point that they fight over who can hold our hands!
27 July 2010
Mountain Adventures
Saturday is the Nepali weekend - no school, no work - and halfway through our stay in Dolpa, Hillary and I decided to take the opportunity of a day off from teaching to hike down to the Bheri River in the valley below Juphal. It's perhaps 2000 feet down by my estimate, and being the smart hikers that we are, we chose the paths that went most directly down the mountainside. Fast, sure, but not exactly easy on the legs. We were rewarded with a very different vista from what we had grown used to in Juphal: the river is wide, freezing, swift, wild, and very muddy because of the monsoon rains. We sat by the bank in the roar of the water and waded a bit - the first time our toes had touched water in days. Down the river a quarter mile or so, we found a suspension bridge and crossed to the other side, where we said hello to some grazing buffalo. It was disappointing to see that from this vantage point, the walls of the valley did not look nearly so impressively large as they did from the roof of the lodge. We were too close, and their tops were hidden from view. Slowly, and a bit painfully, we made our way up the mountain again, in our infinite wisdom still choosing the steepest and shortest route, and the mountains grew again into cloud-shrouded giants.
This same Saturday was the first day of the fourth Nepali month, Shrawan. Just as it was beginning to grow dark, at about 6.00, our host Tarak called us outside onto the mud roof. His mother was lighting small piles of fragrant wood all along the edge of the roof, and looking around, we saw little glowing flames jumping from the roofs of every house in the village. The air was soon full of pungent wood smoke, and the darkness was lit by hundreds of fires like little stars outlining each roof. We could see the other villages, too, sparkling up and down the valley. Tarak instructed us to grab a bit of burning wood and hurl it off the roof as far as we could; with this gesture, we were throwing away our illnesses. Slowly the fires died and the families clustered on their roofs drifted inside for dinner, leaving the village only a bit smokier than it had been before.
On our last day of teaching, afternoon classes were canceled for our farewell ceremony. After tiffin, the three of us volunteers were given seats of honor next to the principal, and with a few words of thanks, he put tikka (red powder) on our foreheads and a white scarf and a garland of marigolds around each of our necks. Two of the school's founders (including Tarak), the town's postmaster, and the teachers followed suit. Then each student came forward and gave us a flower, and as it began to rain, the older students also gave us tikka with our flowers. Soon we were dripping with red powder and flower petals. Some of the students sang and danced for us, and we were asked to join them. I'll always remember that one Wednesday in July, covered in tikka and thick with marigold garlands, in a schoolyard high on a mountain in Dolpa, we had a dance party with Nepali students to a traditional song sung by the school's principal.
The day after our farewells at the school we made the short trek upriver to Dunai. We passed over mud and sand and packed earth and loose rocks, through hamlets and past steep green mountainsides and under an ornately painted chorten. We passed the junction to Phoksundo Lake, of The Snow Leopard fame, and rounded a bend in the river to see before us a low town hanging with colored flags. Dunai felt like a true metropolis in comparison to Juphal. While it is also devoid of all wheeled vehicles, it boasts streets paved with flat stones, dozens of shops, even a money exchange. It is also muddier and darker, clustered tightly on the banks of the river with the mountain rising steeply less than half a mile from the churning water. Across the river from the town is a small stupa strung with prayer flags. Walking up to it means coming out of the chaotic world of the town and into the pure air of the mountains themselves, even though the sounds of the town can still be heard below. Inside the stupa are two gold Buddha statues, butter lamps, dishes of marigolds, and shelves of books wrapped in cloth and silk. These are Buddha-relics, the Buddha's teachings, sacred words. I was honored to be allowed to step inside to see these treasures. It was so clean and beautiful, in such a contrast to the town itself - a tight, dark, muddy, sad place, it seemed to me. But at sunset, as Hillary and I sat beside the water and watched the sun dip between two mountains to the west, and the moon rise slowly in the east, I thought that perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps this town had just as much mountain splendor as the monastery, in a truly alive kind of way.
Next morning, it was back to Juphal - slowly but surely we moved through the heat and up the steep mountainside. We took a break at a small sandy beach and put our feet into the water, feeling Himalayan stones beneath our toes and listening to the roar of the river drown out every human noise. This was our last taste of nature's pure noise, for back in Juphal, the sound we most hoped to hear was the growl of the airplane, signaling that the weather was good enough to allow us to leave our hillside home. Luckily, on Saturday morning we packed our bags into the nose of the tiny plane and found ourselves flying between the arms of the valley once again.
This same Saturday was the first day of the fourth Nepali month, Shrawan. Just as it was beginning to grow dark, at about 6.00, our host Tarak called us outside onto the mud roof. His mother was lighting small piles of fragrant wood all along the edge of the roof, and looking around, we saw little glowing flames jumping from the roofs of every house in the village. The air was soon full of pungent wood smoke, and the darkness was lit by hundreds of fires like little stars outlining each roof. We could see the other villages, too, sparkling up and down the valley. Tarak instructed us to grab a bit of burning wood and hurl it off the roof as far as we could; with this gesture, we were throwing away our illnesses. Slowly the fires died and the families clustered on their roofs drifted inside for dinner, leaving the village only a bit smokier than it had been before.
On our last day of teaching, afternoon classes were canceled for our farewell ceremony. After tiffin, the three of us volunteers were given seats of honor next to the principal, and with a few words of thanks, he put tikka (red powder) on our foreheads and a white scarf and a garland of marigolds around each of our necks. Two of the school's founders (including Tarak), the town's postmaster, and the teachers followed suit. Then each student came forward and gave us a flower, and as it began to rain, the older students also gave us tikka with our flowers. Soon we were dripping with red powder and flower petals. Some of the students sang and danced for us, and we were asked to join them. I'll always remember that one Wednesday in July, covered in tikka and thick with marigold garlands, in a schoolyard high on a mountain in Dolpa, we had a dance party with Nepali students to a traditional song sung by the school's principal.
The day after our farewells at the school we made the short trek upriver to Dunai. We passed over mud and sand and packed earth and loose rocks, through hamlets and past steep green mountainsides and under an ornately painted chorten. We passed the junction to Phoksundo Lake, of The Snow Leopard fame, and rounded a bend in the river to see before us a low town hanging with colored flags. Dunai felt like a true metropolis in comparison to Juphal. While it is also devoid of all wheeled vehicles, it boasts streets paved with flat stones, dozens of shops, even a money exchange. It is also muddier and darker, clustered tightly on the banks of the river with the mountain rising steeply less than half a mile from the churning water. Across the river from the town is a small stupa strung with prayer flags. Walking up to it means coming out of the chaotic world of the town and into the pure air of the mountains themselves, even though the sounds of the town can still be heard below. Inside the stupa are two gold Buddha statues, butter lamps, dishes of marigolds, and shelves of books wrapped in cloth and silk. These are Buddha-relics, the Buddha's teachings, sacred words. I was honored to be allowed to step inside to see these treasures. It was so clean and beautiful, in such a contrast to the town itself - a tight, dark, muddy, sad place, it seemed to me. But at sunset, as Hillary and I sat beside the water and watched the sun dip between two mountains to the west, and the moon rise slowly in the east, I thought that perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps this town had just as much mountain splendor as the monastery, in a truly alive kind of way.
Next morning, it was back to Juphal - slowly but surely we moved through the heat and up the steep mountainside. We took a break at a small sandy beach and put our feet into the water, feeling Himalayan stones beneath our toes and listening to the roar of the river drown out every human noise. This was our last taste of nature's pure noise, for back in Juphal, the sound we most hoped to hear was the growl of the airplane, signaling that the weather was good enough to allow us to leave our hillside home. Luckily, on Saturday morning we packed our bags into the nose of the tiny plane and found ourselves flying between the arms of the valley once again.
25 July 2010
In the Land of Dolpa
Two weeks in Dolpa... what an experience.
The bus ride from Kathmandu was not as long as expected, a mere 12 hours to Nepalgunj (which the other volunteers, Hillary and Mackenzie, and I have dubbed "Purgatory" for its oppressive heat and humidity) and then a half-hour plane ride into Dolpa. It is a stunning flight: the little 12-seat passes between steep forested hills and past stark snow peaks, then lands without losing any altitude on a high strip of grass just barely long and wide enough to be a runway: the only airport in Dolpa, the largest district in Nepal. The village of Juphal lies just below the airport, clinging to the steep mountainside at 10,000 feet, 5 days from the nearest road. Several thousand feet below runs the Bheri River in a steep, narrow valley that is as dry, pine-covered, and beautiful as Colorado. When the clouds part, snow peaks show their white noses to the west.
In this town of 1,000 people, prayer flags flutter from tall poles and men lean on intricately carved and painted balcony railings. The bells of a pony train tinkle from the main path, a rooster crows, children shout to each other as they kick around a soccer ball. The wind carries the smells of wood smoke and pony dung, which is refreshing after the cacophony of smells that filled the streets of Kathmandu. Up here in the mountains, the air is fresher and cooler, days are slower, there are no motorcycles or even bicycles to harass walkers.
Tarak Shahi met us at the airport and took us to his parents' trekkers' lodge, where we stayed in a very comfortable room; "very comfortable," in this case, means whitewashed clay walls, sporadic electricity, running tap downstairs, squat toilet rather than hole in the ground, no bedbugs, and not too many giant spiders - my standards of cleanliness and comfort have drastically changed since coming to Nepal. (Actually,, in my eyes, a squat toilet is preferable to a Western one. With a squat toilet, you need not worry about touching any unclean toilet parts, and the utter lack of toilet paper is made more bearable.)
My daily routine in Juphal looked like this:
5-6am: Wake up, write in my journal or read as the fog clears out.
8am: Breakfast of tea and chapati with jam.
9.30am: With Mackenzie and Hillary, begin walking down the impossibly steep hill to Dolpa Educational English School, about 5 minutes, then wait with the children until assembly.
10am: Assembly. The 60-70 students stand in straight rows as the principal calls out "Attention!" "At ease!" "Turn left!" etc. and the teachers make sure that all students have clean hands, teeth, and uniforms. They sing the national anthem, recite a prayer, and march back inside.
10.15am: First class begins. We taught all subjects (except Nepali) to Nursery class (age 3) up to class 2 (age 7 or 8). I mostly taught math, and one class of "Rhymes." It was extremely difficult, since only the older kids understand enough English to communicate, and my Nepali is limited to counting to 10, asking your name, and "basni!" (sit down!).
On the first day, the principal assigned us to classes and then pushed us out the door, saying, "Go teach." The first half of each class consisted of merely ascertaining what the students were supposed to be learning, and trying to figure out how to control them, let alone discipline them, in a foreign language. The normal teachers were of little help, in part because they did not speak very good English and in part because they didn't know any better than we did. They expected us to bring in some flashy American teaching methods that would revolutionize their school (or perhaps just lure more parents into enrolling their children at a prestigious English school that had Americans), and it was difficult to explain to them that we couldn't do that, especially not within the existing Nepali teaching style, which relies on copying and memorization rather than concepts and creative learning. In spite of all that, though, the students were very sweet, and it got easier with each passing day to make teaching fun and effective.
1.15pm: After four morning classes, we hastened back up the hill for tiffin (lunch) of dal bhat - rice, watery lentil soup, mushy curried vegetables. Occasionally we were treated to a steaming bowl of ramen soup. The food was less than ideal, since the lodge's cook had left to accompany a big trekking expedition. We all felt undernourished and thus treated ourselves to one small handful of gorp a day (it had to last us two weeks), a few coconut biscuits every three days, and a Frooti mango juice - mostly sugar but maybe a touch of vitamin C - once a week.
1.45pm: The three afternoon classes begin.
4pm: Afternoon assembly. The best students in each class are asked to stand in front of the school and recite a lesson, tell a joke, or sing a song. We taught them a few songs, like Old MacDonald and The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and they loved to dance.
4.30pm: Up the hill to the lodge, where we rested after our exhausting day at the school. Tarak would often ask us to help him with a computer problem or tutor his 5-year-old son Sogan; other times we would walk around the town or play with some of the kids from the school.
8pm: Dinner of dal bhat.
8.30-9pm: Bed time. The electricity was often out, so we would read for a few minutes by flashlight before falling asleep.
The bus ride from Kathmandu was not as long as expected, a mere 12 hours to Nepalgunj (which the other volunteers, Hillary and Mackenzie, and I have dubbed "Purgatory" for its oppressive heat and humidity) and then a half-hour plane ride into Dolpa. It is a stunning flight: the little 12-seat passes between steep forested hills and past stark snow peaks, then lands without losing any altitude on a high strip of grass just barely long and wide enough to be a runway: the only airport in Dolpa, the largest district in Nepal. The village of Juphal lies just below the airport, clinging to the steep mountainside at 10,000 feet, 5 days from the nearest road. Several thousand feet below runs the Bheri River in a steep, narrow valley that is as dry, pine-covered, and beautiful as Colorado. When the clouds part, snow peaks show their white noses to the west.
In this town of 1,000 people, prayer flags flutter from tall poles and men lean on intricately carved and painted balcony railings. The bells of a pony train tinkle from the main path, a rooster crows, children shout to each other as they kick around a soccer ball. The wind carries the smells of wood smoke and pony dung, which is refreshing after the cacophony of smells that filled the streets of Kathmandu. Up here in the mountains, the air is fresher and cooler, days are slower, there are no motorcycles or even bicycles to harass walkers.
Tarak Shahi met us at the airport and took us to his parents' trekkers' lodge, where we stayed in a very comfortable room; "very comfortable," in this case, means whitewashed clay walls, sporadic electricity, running tap downstairs, squat toilet rather than hole in the ground, no bedbugs, and not too many giant spiders - my standards of cleanliness and comfort have drastically changed since coming to Nepal. (Actually,, in my eyes, a squat toilet is preferable to a Western one. With a squat toilet, you need not worry about touching any unclean toilet parts, and the utter lack of toilet paper is made more bearable.)
My daily routine in Juphal looked like this:
5-6am: Wake up, write in my journal or read as the fog clears out.
8am: Breakfast of tea and chapati with jam.
9.30am: With Mackenzie and Hillary, begin walking down the impossibly steep hill to Dolpa Educational English School, about 5 minutes, then wait with the children until assembly.
10am: Assembly. The 60-70 students stand in straight rows as the principal calls out "Attention!" "At ease!" "Turn left!" etc. and the teachers make sure that all students have clean hands, teeth, and uniforms. They sing the national anthem, recite a prayer, and march back inside.
10.15am: First class begins. We taught all subjects (except Nepali) to Nursery class (age 3) up to class 2 (age 7 or 8). I mostly taught math, and one class of "Rhymes." It was extremely difficult, since only the older kids understand enough English to communicate, and my Nepali is limited to counting to 10, asking your name, and "basni!" (sit down!).
On the first day, the principal assigned us to classes and then pushed us out the door, saying, "Go teach." The first half of each class consisted of merely ascertaining what the students were supposed to be learning, and trying to figure out how to control them, let alone discipline them, in a foreign language. The normal teachers were of little help, in part because they did not speak very good English and in part because they didn't know any better than we did. They expected us to bring in some flashy American teaching methods that would revolutionize their school (or perhaps just lure more parents into enrolling their children at a prestigious English school that had Americans), and it was difficult to explain to them that we couldn't do that, especially not within the existing Nepali teaching style, which relies on copying and memorization rather than concepts and creative learning. In spite of all that, though, the students were very sweet, and it got easier with each passing day to make teaching fun and effective.
1.15pm: After four morning classes, we hastened back up the hill for tiffin (lunch) of dal bhat - rice, watery lentil soup, mushy curried vegetables. Occasionally we were treated to a steaming bowl of ramen soup. The food was less than ideal, since the lodge's cook had left to accompany a big trekking expedition. We all felt undernourished and thus treated ourselves to one small handful of gorp a day (it had to last us two weeks), a few coconut biscuits every three days, and a Frooti mango juice - mostly sugar but maybe a touch of vitamin C - once a week.
1.45pm: The three afternoon classes begin.
4pm: Afternoon assembly. The best students in each class are asked to stand in front of the school and recite a lesson, tell a joke, or sing a song. We taught them a few songs, like Old MacDonald and The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and they loved to dance.
4.30pm: Up the hill to the lodge, where we rested after our exhausting day at the school. Tarak would often ask us to help him with a computer problem or tutor his 5-year-old son Sogan; other times we would walk around the town or play with some of the kids from the school.
8pm: Dinner of dal bhat.
8.30-9pm: Bed time. The electricity was often out, so we would read for a few minutes by flashlight before falling asleep.
08 July 2010
Orientation here at the Volunteer House consists of short language lessons in the morning (tapai ko nam k ho? what is your name?) and visits to cultural sites around Kathmandu in the afternoon. Kathmandu is rife with history; legend has it that the valley was once a lake, and a Nepali hero sliced open one side of the lake and let all the water drain out so that he could build his capital city. About twenty sites all over the Kathmandu Valley are together classified as a World Heritage Site, and this valley is one of the most holy places for Hindus and Buddhists alike.
On the first day, we went to Swayambhu, or the Monkey Temple. This Buddhist stupa is crowned with a golden spire and sits atop a hill absolutely draped in prayer flags. Worshippers (both Buddhist and Hindu) mix with athletes who have just finished running up the 425 steep steps to the top and with the occasional camera-toting tourist. There are multiple smaller shrines and stupas around the main dome, some with Hindu gods and goddesses painted on them, and all have prayer wheels inscribed with the mantra "om mani padme hum" around their bases. As worshippers circle around the shrines, they spin the wheels, sending the mantra into the universe and gaining merit for the community. Hundreds of stray dogs and thousands of pigeons and monkeys (hence the nickname) scramble for scraps of food, sit around or atop stupas, and pose for the cameras. I've heard stories of monkeys trained by beggars to steal people's purses and cameras when the curious tourist gets too close.
The next day, we visited Durbar Square, the ancient main square and palace compound of the city. Just as everything else in the city, the buildings are slowly but surely crumbling away, but it is still obvious that Durbar Square was once a jewel. Dark, intricately carved wooden window screens and lintels adorn each building, and brightly painted shrines are set out in the wide boulevard. (Fake holy men sit on some of these; they've realized that by dressing up in orange, painting their faces, and getting tourists to photograph them, they can make some extra money.) In one of the buildings lives the Kumari, a living goddess. The current Kumari is about four years old, and lives in perfect luxury inside her palace, only showing her face one day a year during her festival. Once she reaches puberty, a new Kumari will be found.
Another major Buddhist stupa is Boudha, much larger than the monkey temple. There are no attendant stupas or shrines here, only a tiger belching incense and a dark room with a massive prayer wheel constantly spun by worshippers. Travelers can climb partway up the stupa and walk around it (always in a clockwise direction), admiring the dome above and the shops of the square below. This stupa has become the Nepali focal point for Tibetan Buddhists in exile.
Last on the list was Pashupati, holy to Hinduism, Nepal's majority religion. This temple complex is predominantly a cremation ground. It extends on either side of a shallow, muddy river, with one bank rising up a hill in well-worn steps flanked by small shrines, and the other bank a line of cremation platforms. It's very moving to see a family light a marigold-encrusted pyre with the wrapped body of of their father or mother atop it. The whole riverbank smells of smoke, and it comes as a shock to realize, as Mackenzie put it, that by breathing in the smoke we are actually breathing in people.
This morning I'm leaving for Dolpa, a very remote village in western Nepal. Transportation to this village is characteristically long - a 15-20 hour bus ride (if all goes well), then a short plane flight. There are no roads leading in and out of Dolpa. Along with two other volunteers, I will be teaching English to young elementary-age students for two weeks.
05 July 2010
First Impressions
Traveling around the world is not fast. I had dinner over New Jersey, breakfast over England, lunch over the Black Sea, and the next day's dinner over Afghanistan.
Looking out the window as we flew over India was surprising. The entire landscape is shaped by people - small towns and villages surrounded by a haphazard patchwork of fields, broken only by muddy rivers. No empty space, no forests, no wild fields. Soon, though, the landscape got a little greener, patches of forest appeared, and hills started to rise up. We must be over Nepal. I looked to the other side of the plane, and there - there! - were the Himalayas. Huge cliffs of snow rising in jagged peaks and ridges out of the bank of clouds. It was not a complete range; individual peaks, or small groups of peaks, rose far, far above the surrounding cloud, which hid the lower mountains. Looking straight down again, we were flying over steep green hills and valleys with small houses perched on the slopes. The houses became more and more numerous, and then we were in the Kathmandu Valley. The valley is an open plain surrounded on all sides by steep hills. Over two million people live in this relatively small area.
I've now been in Kathmandu for almost 32 hours, and every hour it gets easier and more comfortable. Still, it is so radically different from what I am used to that simply walking down the street is exhausting. Nepalis do not pay attention to rules of the road in any capacity. They have no concept of "yield", and even though officially they drive on the left side of the road, even this basic rule is adhered to at best 75% of the time. The roads are a mess of microbuses, normal buses, cars, taxis, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, and cows all trying to get where they need to go as fast as they can (with the exception of the cows, I guess). It doesn't help that many of the roads are narrow, twisting affairs, jumping over hills and jogging around houses. (Another thing Nepalis have no concept of: city planning.) I won't even try to estimate for you how many times we came within half an inch of a terrible accident. Drivers assume that the more they use their horns, the more likely it is that the driver/cyclist/pedestrian in front of them will get out of their way. There are so many horns in constant use, though, that no one pays any attention. The city is very polluted, and it is thick with the smells of exhaust, dust, open sewers, rotting fruit, burning trash (trash cans are one more thing Nepalis don't have), cooking food, incense, and many many people. Piles of trash, muddy holes, and tight rows of corn or other crops line the roadsides, and the weeds are munched by goats, cows, and chickens. Stray dogs bark from every front step. Buildings are in every imaginable state of repair or disrepair, from shiny new glass structures (rare) to heaps of crumbling brick (common).
But don't assume that the city is ugly. Shrines and stupas, gilded and painted bright colors, seem to be on every street. (Several large temples, such as Swayambu and Pashupati, are actually complexes of religious buildings in a haven from the noise and pollution of the street - but not from the crowds of people. More about them later.) Women do their shopping in brilliantly colored saris and kartas (sp? Nepali costume of long shirt, trousers, and scarf). Fruit stands spill apples, mangoes, pomegranates, coconuts, and several foods I've never seen before. The top terraces of houses are covered in potted plants, and the terraces themselves have intricately carved balustrades. The weather is lovely (though somewhat humid for my tastes) - clear skies and bright sunshine until late afternoon, when torrents of rain pelt the streets for half an hour. Then the clouds dissipate again, and the puddles dry up. Everyone's face is graced with a smile. While Kathmandu is not a city I would want to stay in for any long period of time, it is certainly an incredible - and overwhelming - place to visit.
Looking out the window as we flew over India was surprising. The entire landscape is shaped by people - small towns and villages surrounded by a haphazard patchwork of fields, broken only by muddy rivers. No empty space, no forests, no wild fields. Soon, though, the landscape got a little greener, patches of forest appeared, and hills started to rise up. We must be over Nepal. I looked to the other side of the plane, and there - there! - were the Himalayas. Huge cliffs of snow rising in jagged peaks and ridges out of the bank of clouds. It was not a complete range; individual peaks, or small groups of peaks, rose far, far above the surrounding cloud, which hid the lower mountains. Looking straight down again, we were flying over steep green hills and valleys with small houses perched on the slopes. The houses became more and more numerous, and then we were in the Kathmandu Valley. The valley is an open plain surrounded on all sides by steep hills. Over two million people live in this relatively small area.
I've now been in Kathmandu for almost 32 hours, and every hour it gets easier and more comfortable. Still, it is so radically different from what I am used to that simply walking down the street is exhausting. Nepalis do not pay attention to rules of the road in any capacity. They have no concept of "yield", and even though officially they drive on the left side of the road, even this basic rule is adhered to at best 75% of the time. The roads are a mess of microbuses, normal buses, cars, taxis, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, and cows all trying to get where they need to go as fast as they can (with the exception of the cows, I guess). It doesn't help that many of the roads are narrow, twisting affairs, jumping over hills and jogging around houses. (Another thing Nepalis have no concept of: city planning.) I won't even try to estimate for you how many times we came within half an inch of a terrible accident. Drivers assume that the more they use their horns, the more likely it is that the driver/cyclist/pedestrian in front of them will get out of their way. There are so many horns in constant use, though, that no one pays any attention. The city is very polluted, and it is thick with the smells of exhaust, dust, open sewers, rotting fruit, burning trash (trash cans are one more thing Nepalis don't have), cooking food, incense, and many many people. Piles of trash, muddy holes, and tight rows of corn or other crops line the roadsides, and the weeds are munched by goats, cows, and chickens. Stray dogs bark from every front step. Buildings are in every imaginable state of repair or disrepair, from shiny new glass structures (rare) to heaps of crumbling brick (common).
But don't assume that the city is ugly. Shrines and stupas, gilded and painted bright colors, seem to be on every street. (Several large temples, such as Swayambu and Pashupati, are actually complexes of religious buildings in a haven from the noise and pollution of the street - but not from the crowds of people. More about them later.) Women do their shopping in brilliantly colored saris and kartas (sp? Nepali costume of long shirt, trousers, and scarf). Fruit stands spill apples, mangoes, pomegranates, coconuts, and several foods I've never seen before. The top terraces of houses are covered in potted plants, and the terraces themselves have intricately carved balustrades. The weather is lovely (though somewhat humid for my tastes) - clear skies and bright sunshine until late afternoon, when torrents of rain pelt the streets for half an hour. Then the clouds dissipate again, and the puddles dry up. Everyone's face is graced with a smile. While Kathmandu is not a city I would want to stay in for any long period of time, it is certainly an incredible - and overwhelming - place to visit.
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