Goodbye beautiful Vientiane, a million young Nepali men with a million flat-screen TV's
The next day we made the easy ride back to the KL airport and flew on one the strangest, unruly, and male dominated flights we may ever see. On a jumbo Airbus filled to capacity you could count the number of women on two hands!? The men all were dressed similar and even seemed to know one another. They paid little attention to the directions from th flight crew and one guy even tried to go to the toilets only minutes before landing as we made our final descent. It was like a plane full of Chiara's preschool students.
No matter everyone made it safely to the ground and we soon found out why we were on the international flight equivalent of a frat house. While freezing our baguettes off for over an hour as one piece of luggage came at a time out into the very old airport arrival lobby the same men were picking up flat screen tv after flat screen tv from the same belt. Apparently it is more cost effective to fly to Malaysia and purchase tv's and bring them back then it is to buy one in Nepal. Foreshadowing of what await in Nepal...we shall see? For now we were exhausted, cold and needed to get to the guesthouse. Luckily all else went smoothly and we were in bed in short order. Though the cold we had been looking forward to had come with impunity. Kathmandu, Nepal is at 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) elevation and we felt every meter climbing stairs and doing basic activities. We only spent two nights before we hopped the Nepali version of a Guatemala chicken bus to the village that we were going to spend a week volunteering.
After an epic 8-hour bus journey over some very bumpy roads, we disembarked in the village that we would be spending the next week or so, in Kahare, Nepal. And to say the route we traveled was 'bumpy' may be the understatement of the year. To illustrate the quality of the bone jarring terrain we actually witnessed a side window crack during the journey just from the normal rocking and rolling that the road entails. Not an uncommon phenomenon by looking at the number of Windows taped over with baggies, cardboard or any other bit of scrap the workers could muster. Initially we planned to spend some time planting the bamboo that mutual travellers that we had met in Japan and discussed in earlier blog posts, Eleanor and David, had planned to use to help the village rebuild their homes and buildings that had been destroyed by the April 2015 earthquake. Alas, our young local guide, Namaraj, told us that the planting was not going to be possible as the land that the village had planned to use to plant the bamboo belonged to the school and they would not allow it to be used. Therefore with a surprise agenda change we spent our first day in the village getting to know our surroundings, meeting Namaraj's wonderful father and mother, who were a very traditional couple that had been farming the land for their whole life. They, as with almost everyone in the village, we're living in a temporary house that they had built of wood and tin, as their house had been completely destroyed in the earthquake. Matter of fact, almost every building had been destroyed; businesses, barns, schools, everything. We were given the option of having our own quarters above the oxen or staying in with the family, and we choose the space above the oxen mostly because things in the small home were cramped before we arrived. Namaraj's mother was a terrific cook, and served us gut-busting amounts of the traditional Nepali food called daal bhat. This staple consists of a never-ending buffet of rice, spiced lentils and varied curried vegetables, served twice daily. It was chillier in the village than we had been a custom to this last 6 months with temperatures averaging 70-75 F in the day but down to the 40s at night. We had some nice warm blankets to ward off the cold and we generally turned in very early to snuggle underneath covers and read or do crossword puzzles. That is of course after we filled our bellies full of daal bhat while we watched the HBO movie of the night (yes, it is true that even in villages served by almost no driveable roads and where homes are shanty at best they have tv with HBO at no cost...seriously!?)
The valley that our village was in, Namaraj's ever-smiling mom, Namaraj and his father
Bruce in our bedroom above the oxen, washing clothes and bodies in the river,
A half-destroyed house and the tin shack that's its owners are now living in, shacks on the way to the school where there were once houses.
Namaraj thought our time in the village would best be served at the school so after a day of rest and oxen/goat grazing, we went to the school to see what we could offer. The principal welcomed us warmly and we started right off. The school had also been completely destroyed and was also housed in a temporary structure, again built of tin in what once was the courtyard of the school, and it was a very loud, dusty place. The teachers and principals told us how most of the school's materials were also ruined in the quake, and how lucky it was that there was no school that day 9 months ago (it occurred on a Saturday, the only day of the week they have off of school) as there would have been many more fatalities in the village then there had been. The first day volunteering was a little chaotic as the first classroom we went into the English teacher turned to me and said, 'OK, teach them something'. But the days mellowed out and I ended up spending almost all my time in the nursery/1st grade/2nd grade, as the nursery teacher had recently gotten married and taken leave and the school had combined the classes, so the teacher had around 20 children ages 2 and 1/2 to 8. There were few materials to use save the small notebooks, they called 'copy' and pencils that the children brought to class the former of whichever usually ended up torn and crumbled on the floor and the latter more than not were sharpened to nubs and then chewed endlessly by the snotty nosed little monsters. I spent most of the day's singing, drawing, and writing, and I think I taught my entire repertoire of pre-k songs. No one could ever have imagined the sheer pandemonium that could result when a classroom of school children insist on singing B-I-N-G-O. Bruce spent more time with the older children teaching their English lessons and playing games with them. Hangman, anyone?
With the kids in the classroom, the teachers and kids had a ceremony for us the last day
We spent our last day going among all the different age levels playing some word games and handing out candy that we had brought with us from Kathmandu. Apparently we were quite a hit with teachers and children alike, as we were asked to come back next year.
Bruce also spent a day talking with and visiting the local village doctor and his clinic. At some point in the future he hopes to help secure some supplies for the clinic through his hospital. This however will require some logistical maneuvering that is yet to be worked out...to be continued.
We absolutely loved our time spent in the village and with the children specifically. Life in Nepal is particularly challenging at this point all be it with the earthquake and now a border blockade by India preventing fuel and other supplies crossing the border. Still, thus far our time spent with the people of Nepal has been wonderful and meaningful and we look forward to our upcoming cycle to visit other parts of the country.
