Catching up: February 26, 2009 Kathmandu

Now that I am about to leave for Narti, more people have arrived at the volunteer house, but I still get my own room. : )


Eric is a graduate student at UC Berkeley and he is here for a week, but he isn't actually a volunteer. He works for a professor who is doing some sort of weather/climate project. They are setting up sensors in different countries around the world and creating a website where the data can be aggregated and manipulated. It is intended to be a free website that anyone can use to obtain information and compare countries. Honestly, I don't fully understand the purpose of the project, but the professor got a boatload of money to send kids all over the globe to set up these sensors. Apparently, it takes only a few minutes to set up the sensor, but Michael invited Eric to stay for a week.


Ethan and Ashley have also arrived -- or, more accurately, returned. A young, married (I think) couple from Oregon, they are in Nepal for six months. They've already spent some time teaching English in a village where Nepal Orphans Home supports the school (though they said that there were so many holidays that they didn't get to teach as much as they would have liked), working on some kind of environmental project, and trekking Soon friends of theirs from home will come and they will all go on a trek together. Ashley looks something like a friend of mine, so I keep wanting to call her "Karin".


If I remember correctly, Ethan had a job doing some kind of product of design and he lost it when the company went under. The company was subsequently bought by a larger company and he had the chance to get his job back. By then, however, he and Ashley had already planned this trip and he decided that he would rather travel. After they return to the states, Ashley is going to study some kind of natural medicine (I forgot what she called it -- something like nautal homeopathy). This cross between western medicine, nutrition, and natural remedies sounded interesting.


Today, Papa's House 3 is being set up. The newly constructed beds were finished and placed in the rooms; sheets, pillows and blankets were laid on every bed, and curtains have been hung. I went over to help, but when I arrived, almost everything had been done already. Timing is everything, eh?


We leave early tomorrow morning for Narti. We will be taking a private bus because Michael and Anita are going to pick up 25 ex-kamlari girls to bring them to Kathmandu (Note: On March 21, I learned that, on the way back, 2 extra girls stowed away on the bus because they also wanted to move to Kathmandu. I hear that Michael didn't have the heart to send them back to Narti after they showed such ingenuity and determination. So if anyone would like to help support these girls, whose private school education and other expenses obviously were not included in the budget, please make a donation on NOH's website at www.nepalorphanshome.com). The private bus is good news for me as I understand that the public buses are very crowded and the 12 hour ride is not only long, but also often uncomfortable. This doesn't bode well for my return trip, but I'm not going to worry about that right now.


Yesterday, I bought a lungi to wear when I bathe in Narti. Basically, a lungi is a large piece of fabric (some of my readers might know it as a "schmata"). After buying the fabric for about $2, you walk over to a man sitting outside at a sewing machine and pay him about 8 cents to sew two sides together so that you have a rectangle with holes at the top and bottom. You put it over your head, pull it tight, and then tie the two ends at the top together at your chest. I don't quite get how you wash yourself when wearing it, but it is apparently essential for bathing in the river in Narti because you are out in the open where anyone can see you. When I asked Sushmita how one washes with a lungi on, she showed pointed to my exposed head, shoulders, arms, and lower legs and said you just wash there. When I asked how you wash the areas that are not exposed, she said "you don't". Hmm. I sense embarrassing bathing stories in my future.


Swastika asked her uncle whether I could volunteer at the National Human Rights Commission (where he is the president). Unfortunately, he said that you have to apply for an internship 3 months in advance. So I'm out of luck, unless I want to come back to Nepal some other time. I asked whether I could at least meet her uncle and she said that she will try to set something up when I return to Kathmandu.

I am now thinking about going on a 5-day trek near the Annapurna Circuit. I will be able to see the mountains, but I won't actually be climbing them and I don't need any special equipment, so it is a wimpy trek, not a real trek. Afterwards, I want to spend a few days at a lodge in the Chitwan forest, which is supposed to be a lot of fun. Suddenly, two months doesn't seem like enough time and I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in everything that I want to do, but Michael says not to worry because everything always works out. He's usually right (except about the weather), so I'm going to relax and just go with the flow.

And now a word about child safety . . . .

Papa's House (the girls' house) has several flights of concrete stairs with no railings. A little scary for a house with lots of children running around. When I told Michael that he would be asking for a lawsuit in the U.S., he told me that when he raised the issue of railings with the contractors, they reacted as if he was completely crazy. Nepal is a little different, he said. The boys' house does have railings, by the stairs, but they also have a walkway at the top of the stairs (like at a motel or my sister's apartment apartment building in California). Apparently, simply running up and down several flights of concrete stairs is perfectly safe, but if you add a flat walkway to a staircase, then it becomes a hazard.

Ironically, the volunteer house, where no children live, has a lovely wooden banister going all the way up the 2 1/2 flight stone staircase -- even without any dangerous flat walkways in the house. At first, I thought that it was odd that the top 1/2 flight of stairs leads to a wall. Did the owner run out of money for a 4th floor after the stairway was already partially built? Did the U.S. government allocate money to Nepal for a stairway to nowhere project that Sarah Palin forgot to quash (perhaps because she can't see Nepal from her home)? Then one day, I peered around the corner and saw that the landing at the top of the stairs is an alter.

Moving on, when I wrote about transportation the other day, I forgot to discuss children. I'm sure that it will come as no surprise to anyone that the roads here are not croweded with SUVs filled with child safety seats. I'm sure that most Nepalese do not even know that child safety seats exist. In fact, most Nepalese families cannot afford cars at all, so they transport their children via motorcycle. Nevermind safety seats in cars, children on motorcycles in Nepal do not even wear helmets! I noticed that, in general, drivers wear helmets, but passengers do not. Ashley told me that this is because drivers are required to wear helmets by law, but the law does not extend to passengers! I have seen as many as 3 children on a motorcycle with their father at one time without helmets (Note: Manooj recently told me that he sometimes drives with 5 or 6 children on his motorcycle at one time!). Does it make any sense to require drivers to wear helmets, but not passengers -- especially when the passengers are children????? I don't think that there is any culture on earth where parents take precautions to protect themselves against an accident which might kill or seriously injure their children.

The motorcycle situation seems to be one of the bad things that comes from the meeting of the east and the west (or perhaps just developed countries meeting developing countries). Motorcycles have improved life here, but I'm sure that the crazy traffic patterns and lack of appropriate safety regulations result in many deaths and bad injuries. Another example is the water bottles and other packaged goods that developed countries have brought here. The people are glad to have these things, but there is no infrastructure to deal with the garbage. Trash is a problem in developed countries, but in countries like Nepal, where there is no such thing as a trash collection service in most places, it translates to litter being thrown everywhere. It is rather depressing to see beautiful scenery marred by trash scattered all over the ground.

I hope that my landlady uses her alter to pray for all the Nepalese children who live without railings and helmets.