Thoughts and experiences from the end of April to mid-May.

Rain:

My roommate in on a three-week trek on some enormous snow capped mountain; I’m alone in the house. I lay awake at night scared and irritated. It’s like I’m stuck in a 3D surround sound box.  Flashes of lightening and booming thunder play tag with eachother outside my window. The pessimistic wimp in me starts to think of flooding, earthquakes, etc. And, more importantly, how I will escape such disasters: Should I open the door now so I can have an escape route?- If a quake starts to rumble I’ll go for the ‘triangle approach’ because I have serious doubts about my doorframes’ sustainability. It’s with these thoughts that I finally drift off to sleep to the sound of pattering rain. The next morning I’m in the bathroom battling worms. The rain has brought them in droves. I maliciously whack away at them with the squeegee and then finish them off with a squirt of bleach for good measure. When I was in college I’d be late for class every time it rained because I couldn’t bear to walk by all the drowning worms so I’d pick them up and bring them to drier ground. Oh how living in this city has changed me.

Puppies:

As I was walking to work, taking in the view of garbage meandering down the grey, foamy Baghmati River, two fat liquid spats hit my arm. Having lived in Kathmandu for 8 months I instantly thought “ Ah man! I just got spit on…again” But I soon realized it was beginning to rain in typical pre-monsoon fashion of brief but violent downpours. I whipped out my umbrella and continued ‘round the corner. It was legitimately raining at this point and I past a small puppy slowly walking down the road, head down and teetering. I was a few paces past him when it started to hail. I stopped and turned to watch if the thing was hustling towards shelter; he was slowly crossing the road and then fumbling on his front legs as the hail assaulted him. I sped over to give him some umbrella shelter; he got up and started walking again. His leg looked mangled from the inside and he had a pusing sore on the outside. I walked with him hoping he was trying to go somewhere in particular but before getting much further he collapsed in a grassy puddle and whimpered pathetically. At this point I knew he was dying so I sat in the mud getting drenched and gave him what I could, my umbrella, because I’m a coward and didn’t want to touch it for fear of ‘oozing dog leg syndrome’ or the likes. I can’t even make it through a National Geographic special without chocking up when the lion catches the gazelle, and now I have to watch a puppy die in a puddle? Kathmandu is beating me to an emotional pulp these days. Why am I here? Before I had time to rouse my courage towards something more proactive a young boy rounded the corner and peered through the raindrops, curiosity blooming with each step. When he reached us he clasped his hands behind his back in the fashion of an old stooped man and gave the situation a good review. I looked up at him and said  “it’s dying, what to do?” in my fumbling Nepali. He didn't answer, instead he poked the puppy, recoiled, waited 5 seconds and then gingerly picked it up and troted away saying he’ll put it under cover. And that’s it. I got up and I finished walking to the office. I spend the rest of the day looking up funders for our HIV/AIDS prevention program on the computer in wet clothes and don’t mention the puppy to my 9-5 coworkers.

For the past few months as I’ve been tied to this city by work and school I've been becoming increasingly unhappy.  My days tend to be cursing people instead of enjoying them: their selfishness, rudeness, how ugly they make the world. But on this day that kid restored a drop of my faith in us.

Trees:

It’s spring in Nepal. This statement makes about as much sense as saying it’s spring in Vermont in April- every New Englander knows it’s far more accurate to say ‘mud season’. So, let’s say it’s ‘pre-monsoon’ in Nepal. I’m convinced that Dr. Seuss must have visited Kathmandu during this time because as I walk the crumbling, polluted streets I’m smacked in the face with the view of these incredible, branchy trees furry with the most ludicrously colorful blooms. The leaves have all fallen just days before the flowers burst out in bright lavender, magenta, and jock-o-lantern orange. They help to remind me that the world still has delightful treasures to show me at a time and place where I have to search long and hard to recognize even glimmers of beauty.

February 23rd, 2011

I’ve waited too long to post and now many quirky and mundane stories have past by without documentation!  Each day gets harder and harder for me to write because what was once new and unknown has become my everyday life. That’s not to say that everyday doesn’t present me with something new or strange-I’m fairly confident that even if I choose to spend the rest of my life here then I'll simply be old and wrinkled and thinking “why are they doing that? What is that used for? What’s that smell?!”  

A quick update: I’m still living in KTM, taking a university course in Nepali language, working at a new organization, volunteering for ICDR when time allows, and adventuring whenever possible. My initial plan before coming to Nepal was to stay for 9 months and then go to Cambodia to teach English but, I’ve decided to stay in Nepal for the rest of 2011 and then reassess from there where next to take my life.

Sometime amongst the holidays and somewhat tedious hours at the government office I decided I just wasn’t getting enough out of my current position with ICDR. Yes, the title is nice- “Regional Director” but without a team to work with and government workers always dodging our meetings I was left feeling like I could be doing more for myself and others in a different position. So fate perfectly timed an email from a representative of an organization I had emailed a few months back about volunteering. The email stated that an assistantship had opened up in the Nepal office and my experiences were well suited for the position and I was urged to apply. I threw my hat in the ring and was interviewed for a technical assistant position at a development organization based in the UK with a branch office in Nepal. I was either the only applicant or I wowed them because the job was offered to me a few days later! I am the Technical Assistant for Fundraising and Partnerships at Restless Development on a 6 month contract. (Thank you Katy Neas for your reference letter!) It’s a for-youth; entirely youth-led organization that strives towards domestic youth led development. So far so great, except the ludicrously excessive use of acronyms that my dyslexic tendencies have great slippery difficult with. I’m very happy with the professional environment (all meetings are met, hoorah!) and I’m beefing up my skill set and contacts for future use. Another difference is the nature of the work, ICDR is near and dear to my heart but the cause, Dalit Welfare, is far removed from my reality and I feel more qualified to contribute to youth-led development…naturally J

Right, so as for the perks: I get a stipend towards an apartment which I’m about to share with a fellow American who’s in Nepal for 6 months doing research.  I also get to eat all the Dhal Bhat I want at the office.

I’m still working with ICDR in my free moments, in particular the Alternative Break that’s coming in June from American University. In January I took a field visit to rural Nepal to assess old ICDR projects and create a need assessment report for this upcoming trip to base future projects on. This trip was hard. I haven’t spent too much time outside of KTM these past few months and the places I have managed to visit are well known to me All those statistics about Nepal being one of the poorest countries in Asia with unimaginable living and health conditions had been pushed to the side of my mind but they became bleakly obvious on this trip. This isn’t to say I’ve been living or visiting clean, well off neighborhoods. Many of my friends in Badare are poor (in fact all of them are if you compare them to American standards). Take my friend Pampha for example. She lives in a one-room home that she shares with her two sisters and two nieces. The home contains two beds and one shelf that holds cooking supplies and cardboard boxes hold their clothing. In the corner they’ve built a mud fireplace to cook from. Outside is a Nepali style outhouse. They collect water from a community tap and take showers in a stream nearby. But by comparison Pampha looks upper middle class compared the villagers I met with. It’s just so mindboggling how different our lives our. One of the project’s ICDR had supported was a livelihood project for girls from a largely Dalit community. These girls are married when they’re babies but live with their maternal family until 18 when they move into their husband’s house. They don’t receive education or training for anything beyond house life. The project was a tailoring training scheme to allow them to earn a small income for themselves before and after marriage. You guys are probably bored to death of me saying this but damn I’m just so frequently blown away with how lucky I am. America has its educational problems but at least there was never any question of me being able or allowed to go to school. Not to mention that at 23 I am still happily unmarried to the man of my choice.