A Nepali Village

You know they say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case it really would be but there won't be any pictures of Nepal till we get home. No pictures to show you the beautiful colors of the women's clothing or the color of the sky at dusk or the texture of a rhino's skin.
We are in a small village in western Nepal near Bardia National Park. The park is a stones throw away and has a total of 4,500 visitors a year so you hardly see a person there. It is a refuge for tigers, elephants, rhinos and dolphins and many species of snakes and birds. Some of these animals occasionally wander or rampage through the village. Sometimes elephants tear through and trample people or their livestock and homes. Our friend here has a theory that the elephants don't like people because they have a collective memory of the way they have been treated by humans.

We are on the outskirts of the village in a field on the savannah right next to a jungle. It's come as quite a surprise that the bugs are only bad in the early evening and early early morning. We have a cottage with a bathroom with cold shower but we mostly bathe from a bucket. Outside there's an enclosure with two mules who are retired after trekking across Tibet and a garden being newly landscaped. The fields around have people harvesting and weeding and carrying large bundles on their heads.

There is little to no traffic. There are very few motorbikes and only a few jeeps in the village. It's much more likely to see a cart being hauled by a couple of water buffaloes or cows or a family on a bicycle going by. There's a serenity that we tend to crave but can't always find at home.

The tribal women here wear a long ankle length smock of brightly patterned cotton. The rest of the women wear saris or long tunics with ankle length tunics in a rainbow of colors. Our friend who we're staying with decided that I should have one of the outfits. We went to market yesterday and all the ladies helped me pick out the material. It comes in co-ordinated packages of a gauzy scarf and cloth for top and bottom. Mine is dark blue for the top with red embroidery with mirrors. The pants will be a mustard yellow with sort of red dots and the scarf is mustard with red and a fringe of red beads. The materal cost 750 rupies, there are about 70 in a dollar, and the tailor will cost only 125 rupies.

In Kathmandu the prices are more geared to westerners, especially in the tourist area. Here the prices are real Nepali prices. For instance I sometimes go to the village and buy samosas or pekoras or doughnuts. The doughnuts are huge and cost 5 rupies, the pekoras are 1 rupie each and the samosas are also 5 rupies. Other things in Nepal are out of whack. A motorcycle here is roughly twice the price of other countries and a hat I bought in Cambodia for $1 would be 7 times that here. There is also speculation here like anywhere's else. Everyone thinks that Bardia is the next big thing in Nepal so the land prices have shot up because people are buying on speculation. Makes it really hard for the locals.

We've been volunteering in a local school which has been a joy because now wherever we go the kids know us. It's tough because they threw us right in to teach subjects and we didn't have a clue. They gave me grade 6 math and I refused to do it. That's because the kids were reviewing for exams and I didn't want to confuse them! Because the kids have already done the work i just do a quick review and then I play educational games with them. There are kids as young as three in the school so you can imagine how cute they are in their little uniforms.

We brought tons of school supplies and medical supplies from Thailand. Yesterday we spent the day dispensing non prescription reading glasses to mostly older folks. It was so gratifying to see people light up when they could see. Because of this contact we were able to get some fantastic pictures. We've found out that it's nearly impossible to send things here so we'll need to find travelers who are coming this way in order to send more stuff. We only had a dozen pairs of glasses and we could have had a hundred.

The kitchen is a seperate building with a clay stove with two ports for cooking. It's mind boggling how they can fire it up and boil water in a flash. All wood of course and sometimes really hot and smoky. We all take turns cooking. There are four teenage boys here who all help out and two of them love to cook. They're trying to figure out what foreigners like so they can make it for their guests. I am going to help them make a menu and come up with some stuff. Last night I made a meal that was a big hit. I bought kidney beans and they cooked them in the pressure cooker and then they ground some cumin and corriander into a paste and I made refried beans with garlic and onion. I made salsa with lime, garlic, chili, onion, some of the corriander and cumin paste, fresh tomato and corriander. The boys made chapatis and we grated some carrots and we had a feast of makeshift and tasty burritos.

The common and daily eaten meal here is called dahl bat. I probably didn't spell that right! It consists of a thin lentil soup you pour over rice and a curry of some kind. It seems to have either rice or chapatis and sometimes has curd (yogurt) and some pickle or hot sauce. When the soup is poured over the rice it is mixed up with whichever hand you don't use for the toilet and then it is eaten with the hand. The food is mixed up with gusto and gets all the way up to the top of the fingers. I don't know how they do it. More and more places offer spoons and forks to foreigners.

Electricity is iffy in Nepal. In the capital city, Kathmandu, we had power for only 2-3 hours a day. Here we have power all day which is not used and then come dusk it goes off for three hours! We are going to bed early and getting lots more sleep than we're used to.

Just one last thing. It's really hot here and getting hotter by the day but somehow it's ok. There's a breeze most days and always a shady spot to sit. I am drinking water like mad but peeing very little, it mostly comes out the pores......