18/1/14
Thoughts
of the Moment
This is the
second Saturday in a row that it’s rained all day. Since our courtyards are merely hard-packed
mud and bison dung, when it rains, they are unmanageable. We have to hop from the cement ledge around
the house onto the kitchen doorstep, but if we need to walk anywhere else,
things do get messy.
As Saturday is
the day that I run, shower and do laundry, rain really puts a cramp in my
schedule-and we all know how much I love my schedule!
I had my site
visit by the Peace Corps staff on Tuesday, which was a treat. It’s always nice to speak English and discuss
my concerns and hopes. Plus, it meant
the arrival of my new bicycle helmet and THREE packages from home!
I saved the
packages until I could be all alone in my room, then unwrapped them, opened
them to the smell of Christmas. I felt
very spoiled and blessed! So many
thoughtful gifts and candy and cards and love!
I cried from sadness and joy and homesickness. While packages from home are wonderful, they
do generally put me in a melancholy state-one, which is hard to drag myself out
of for days.
The fact that
this week was the largest Tharu festival-Maghi-didn’t help. I generally find the festivals here more
stressful than fun. Since they are not
my holidays, they just mean weird food (and lots of it), tons of people that
I’m expected to entertain, and more people than ever staring at me and talking
about me. People here would literally
take things out of my hands, or off of my body, to examine them-it can make me
feel extremely violated and suffocated.
My favorite part
of any festival, indeed, sometimes the only part that I enjoy, is the
dancing. During Maghi, groups of dancers
come by each house in the village-people gather in a semi circle, dance, play
the drums and have one or two people dance in the middle. I saw three groups of these dancers over
Maghi, but my favorite was the group with the cross-dresser (pictures on my
last blog post) He was adorned in red, with bangles and colored flags on his
arms-it was hilarious and beautiful.
As I mentioned
before, I’m starting to chafe at the amount of attention that my family gives
me. Not having an office to go to means
that I am home all day; with my family hovering over me-wondering what I’m
doing, or correcting me when I try to do a simple chore. I am hoping that once I start some new
projects, I will feel less frustrated. I
hate feeling this way, because I take it out on them, and they do not deserve
to have my frustrations vented on them.
This week I will
make compost tea, start work on finding supplies for my improved cook stove and
do as much work as possible on my Village Situation Analysis-a huge report due
in April.
I was lucky
enough to have visitors, this week, however.
It was truly a blessing to have Bora and Nikea come to stay-a break from
the same old routine. They came in the
evening, as there is only one bus into my village, so we didn’t have much time
to play. We did manage to wander down to
the river with Danny, then ate dinner and drank rakshi with my family. We were all exhausted by 7:30, but were
pulled out of bed, in our pajamas, to watch some dancers who had come by. Nikea and I were persuaded to do a little
dancing-we tried the Nepali dancing, but it’s really only one move, so then we
started to break out as many American dance moves as we could think of-we had a
great time, and were easily in sync, although I bet that the Nepalis thought
that we looked ridiculous!
Friday, as
always, I took my weekly trip into town.
It is my restoration-time away from the village, time to be in contact
with the outside world, time to eat different food! On the bus ride, Nikea and I sang American
songs-Nepalis have very little appreciation for Journey, which makes me re-consider many things about this country…
In other news,
Danny has become a real terror-I think he’s teething-do dogs teeth? He chews on everything and anything and when
he gets wound up, he’s startling in his ferocity. He snapped very close to my face, once, which
really scared me. This next week is the
beginning of his puppy-training! It’s so
strange-he can go from being frantic and playing to being sound asleep in about
15 seconds (as he is now…)
I am going to
try and fill this next week up, to keep me from going stir-crazy and making
myself anxious. I will work on those
three projects, plus buy my new bike, plus spend the night in the district
capital-so as to visit the District Agriculture Office (and for a little break
with friends, as well), and then, of course, my weekly Tulsipur trip!
Other things:
-I have developed
a great dislike for two fashion trends in Nepal:
1) Every type of
soap that you find here is “whitening”-it makes me very uncomfortable. Whenever I look at a magazine with my Bahini,
I try to re-iterate that in America, we think all colors are beautiful-somehow,
I don’t think the message is getting across…
2) Many young
men here grow some or all of their fingernails very long (think coke-nails from
the 80s) to show that they are not laborers-so they can afford the luxury of
long nails. It’s disgusting (considering
the wiping-with-the-hand thing), unattractive and classist-Ughhhh!
-I saw the
saddest thing yesterday, while waiting on the bus to return to my village. It was a goat, whose front leg had been
broken at the ankle. It was hobbling
around, with it’s front leg bending backwards and forwards, at the ankle, in a
way that made me want to cry. It was
amazing to me that people didn’t even seem to notice. I also wondered who the goat belonged to-did
someone just drop it off, since it was no use to them, anymore? Why not just kill it and eat the meat? So
sad.
Xoxox,
Zoop
25/1/14
Getting
Busy? Maybe?
It’s interesting
looking back on what I said that I’d do the week before. I did, indeed, start working on my VSA, but I
neither bought my new bike, nor looked into supplies for improved cook stoves.
I am feeling
very lucky to have my adopted counterpart, Om, to help me with, well,
everything! I talked with him about the
VSA and he did just exactly what I want people to do here-tell me exactly what
they need! He identified the need for hand
washing trainings(fairly easily done), to have women come to the hospital to
give birth(I’ll explain more later) and for the need for an ambulance for our
area. The nearest ambulance is two VDCs
away, and Om says that at least two to three times a week the ambulance is
needed, yet unavailable. Obviously PC
can’t provide an ambulance, but I can act as middle woman, working with NGOs to
either raise the money for one, or have one donated. This is just the kind of nearly impossible
project that I love working on-it’s getting me excited!
Let me explain a
little more about the hospital birth situation.
From my village the health post that Om works in is a 15-minute
walk. The government of Nepal gives
women 1,000 rupees to give birth in hospitals, and yet, the women from my
village are still not going to the hospital. Om doesn’t know why and neither do
I-but I’m looking at it as an opportunity to figure out the source of a problem
and work to solve it.
I have many more
people to talk to for my VSA survey, but I’m feeling hopeful about it, at the
moment. Of course, I haven’t started
asking the questions in Nepali, yet, so maybe I’ll feel more discouraged after
that…
This week I went
to Ghorahai for a break and also to visit the Regional Agriculture Development
Office, where my supervisor works. Of
course, it took Shayne and I forever to find it, and he wasn’t even there, but
we tried, right?
The rest of the
time, we just wandered around Ghorahai (I found cheese! And olives!) and
enjoyed our nice hotel room(hot showers! Fast Wi-Fi!)
It was a nice
break from the village and may be something that I do on a regular basis, if I
can afford it.
Yesterday I
spent four hours, round-trip, on a bus(with Danny-he was so good and calm) to go to Shayne’s house to meet his amazing
neighbor. I only got to stay an hour,
but in that short amount of time I was inspired. She disguised herself as a boy so that she
could go to school, has studied all over the world, speaks great English, and
runs an organization that sponsors girls’ educations and trains women in
organic agriculture! She seems really
excited to work with us and is also going to tutor us in Nepali, which will be
great!
I’m having some tooth problems-a cavity, I
think, and also maybe some problems with my two remaining wisdom teeth. I will have to wait for our In Service
Training to have them examined, so it may be a painful three weeks.
Today is a day
off, and it’s not raining, so I’ll do laundry, clean my room, go for a run and
shower. Plus, I’m going to try and cook
American food for the family, this afternoon.
They have never had cheese before, so I don’t know how they’ll like it,
but I’ll eat their portions, if they don’t want them-anything for variety!
Observations:
1) Kids play
hacky sac all the time, here, which I find amusing.
2) When we’re
all crammed on the buses here, and families are getting on, they will often
just pass their small children in through the windows of the bus, to have them
sit on the laps of strangers.
Xoxox,
Zoop
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