Paradigm Shifts

I really had to get used to a lot of things when I first arrived in Nepal. For starters, the living arrangements. When I arrived at the volunteer hostel for RCDP (Rural Community Development Project---the volunteer association I'm with here), I felt like everything was so dirty. The greasy table and dirt-smudged chairs we sat in at when we ate; half the time the silverware was still dirty, and maybe that's because we also didn't have soap to wash them with after our meals of greasy wanna-be Western food. I was skeptical of the beds, trying to not think about the last time anything was washed; my bare feet having to touch dirty floors (because you never wear shoes inside the house in Hindu/Buddhist culture). And then there was the worst of all---the toilet/shower combination bathrooms. I don't think I even want to relive those first impressions yet, or maybe ever. Don't I sound like the hugest snot? (Even though I tried to not verbalize all of this---in retrospect, I think most of the volunteers were trying not to---I was thinking that Nepal had outted this closet germophobe inside of me.)

After several weeks in the country, I returned to the RCDP hostel with 9 other volunteers from our village stay in Lamatar (on the disco bus!), and I was shocked to find how everything was so clean and nice! Even the walls seemed cleaner and the lights brighter. I didn't even hesitate to sit down to use the bathrooms ("sit-down" toilets are a special luxury here) of which I was originally NOT a fan. I barely noticed the smells I first found so reprehensible when I arrived in the country. I was ecstatic! When I shared my enthusiasm with my friend Grace, she didn't really think that that much had changed, but that it was me: I had changed from my few weeks stay in Nepal. Even reflecting back on how I felt, it seems crazy that I could have changed THAT much in such a short period of time.

It is funny, though, how much you really do change when the circumstances require it. For example, we simply sweat and sweat and sweat during our village stay in Lamatar and our jungle activities in Chitwan National Park. We'd go for days without showers wearing the same clothes. You just start to realize that you're not really smelling THAT bad, and that your clothes aren't THAT dirty (sure, it's the 8th time you've worn that pair of pants, but they still look pretty good, right?), and it's just not worth the trouble to get clean in a shower when you're going to be dirty all over again in 30 minutes.

Landing in Chitwan, Grace and I were delirous with joy at the ceiling fan that we had in our guest room. It was our first air conditioning in the country, plus the moving air kept all of the mosquitoes away. The bedroom even had it's own bathroom, which in turn had it's own bathtub and shower area, separate from the rest of the bathroom. (Most hostel situations have a shared bathroom for all the guests on a floor, and usually the shower is in the middle of the bathroom and there's just a drain in the floor, between the toilet (which is either sometimes a sit-down get-up or a hole in the floor) and the sink.) It wasn't until a day later that I noticed that there was a lot of dirt in the bathroom. When I asked Grace if our bathroom had been clean when we got there and she said no. I was so happy to have what we had, I hadn't even realized that it wasn't a clean (by general hotel housekeeping standards) bathroom.

One night when Grace and I were up late talking we started fantasizing about all the foods we would eat when we got home. I am constantly fantasizing about steak and Mexican food (food I can't get here), and especially anything Cafe Rio that would include steak as an ingredient. Not only am I at the point where I'm obsessively thinking about eating the forbidden holy cow, I could even it off the bathroom floor or the toilet lid and probably not be phased by it (Maybe even wash it down with some toilet water). That is how excited I will be to eat it, and also how much trust I have in the cleanliness of my bathoom at home.

Random Observations: Part 5

When Americans express agreement, we usually nod our head or say yes. Here in Nepal (also in India from what I've seen on television), to show agreement, the people kind of shrug, moving their head from side to side, and they don't say anything. For me, I'm used to this meaning "I don't know" or perhaps even a negative answer. I'm finally getting used to this after 5 weeks, but it took me a long time to get used to it. I remember several times repeating my questions when really my Nepali friends were saying "yes" the whole time.

The Venga Boys are also still extremely big here. (?) If you don't know this cheesy (and that's an understatement) pop group, you've probably heard their song on the Six Flags commercials with the old guy prancing around to "The Venga bus is coming. . ." Pretty annoying, but catchy---it's one of those songs that will definitely get stuck in your head for a week. The other day I went over to a student's house---she's so sweet---and I transcribed the lyrics for a Venga Boys song (as well as the Titanic "My Heart Will Go On") and I can still remember it all unfortunately.

Marijuana grows wild EVERYWHERE in the country. Supposedly there is a day here, like a festival or something, where they can smoke it legally.

There is a lot of garbage lying around; I was walking in Thamel, the tourist center of Kathmandu just last week after a few days of a garbage strike and trash was piled up thigh high in the narrow streets, feet away from vendors selling vegetables and fruit. The Bagmati river that flows through Kathmandu and Pashiputinath (the most sacred Hindu temple complex in Nepal) is rank with the stench of being a public dumping ground. In stark contrast to this, however, Nepalis recycle and are very careful about their glass bottles. Most of the time you buy a soda, you get it in a glass bottle and they pop off the bottle cap with a bottle opener old-school style (like how I imaging in the 50's). It's a lot cheaper to buy this way rather than plastic (15 rupees, about 25 cents for the glass bottle; 35 rupees, about 55 cents for a plastic bottle) even though usually the shopkeeper won't let you leave the shop for fear of losing his bottle and you have to drink your soda there. After you're done, you give the bottle back to them and then they keep it to be picked up by the bottling distributor who will then take it back to the plant to be refilled. You just hope that the bottle is being washed in the meantime, but I've since learned to not over analyze sanitation in this country, otherwise I would have gone stark raving mad a few weeks ago.

Leeches and Mosquitoes

Leeches and mosquitoes are so smart.

Before this trip, I'd never encountered a leech. They were those things that I had heard about doctors using hundreds of years ago "to bleed people out." They are nasty little buggers.

First off, they look like innocent little worms. But they're not. They're after one thing: your blood! When they attach to your skin, they apply some kind numbing agent so you can't even feel that they're there. You won't even know that something's sucking your blood until you actually see them.

If you're lucky, they will only be on your clothes or your shoes and you can pick them off, but it is easier said than done. They just don't give up. They even fight to wiggle into the mesh of your shoes and they are real good at it.

One time I stopped on the trail to remove a leech from each shoe, only to see another leech fly from behind and attach to the back of my shoe again. How did they know that I was even there?
Does anyone know how they sense that blood is around? Body temperature?

Once a leech is on you sucking away, they put an anti-coagulant into the wound so that once you get them off, your blood won't clot. After I pulled one off my ankle (which you're really not supposed to do, you're supposed to put salt on it or burn it off---unfortunately our guide didn't have anything for us) it would not stop bleeding for a day! I was pretty freaked out, but I didn't have it a fraction as bad as 2 other volunteers on the hill hike; they had open-toe shoes (they were champions for even being able to make it up the mountain in the first place) and they got leeches inbetween their toes and on the bottoms of their feet! Disgusting.

Mosquitoes are pretty smart too, but not nearly so much as the leeches. They're kind of like Santa Claus in that "they know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake." You can be lying there on your bed for awhile and just when you're about to sleep, you hear them buzzing in your ear. But it's not until those final moments when you're drifting off and you're so tired. And then you get stuck and just can't fall asleep for a few more hours.

The mosquitoes like me most, unfortunately, at the host family's house. It seems that I've worked some kind of truce with them at night so that they don't bother me so much anymore in my room, but I've basically surrendered to them if I'm outside in the evening. I'm wondering if my ankles and feet will ever look the same again.

My Dream Honeymoon

So when I was about to leave for Nepal, there was always the inevitable question, "So why are you going?" When I tried several times in vain (and I could tell from the looks on my friends' faces that I was pretty unsuccessful at explaining) I started resorting to sarcasm and humor. "Because I'm single and I'm bored." Naturally. I even joked, perhaps a little too close to sacrilige, that this trip was my signal to God that I wanted to get married, and if he continued to keep me waiting, the trips and the countries would just get scarier and crazier.

If there's one thing I have learned, though, while I have been here, is that there is no way I can keep doing this scary stuff by myself. I have definitely got to get married so I can bring a husband on my trips to help kill the bugs and to just have a manly presence around, you know? You would be amazed at how differently I'm viewed when I am walking with a male, as opposed to being just by myself.

So I've already decided that I'm coming back to Nepal, but not in the monsoon season so I can go on a mountain trek. And I'm going to bring a husband. So here's the plan. Ideally, I'll get married and just have a short little honeymoon to nowhere in particular. We'll save our nickles and dimes and then like 6 months later, we'll fly on over to Kathmandu where we'll volunteer in an orphange for a week (this is negotiable, but it would be so awesome! The kids here rule.) and then we'll set out on the mountain trek of our lives for 11-14 days and then we'll fly to Thailand where we'll crash on a beach somewhere for a week. Isn't that like the most amazing vacation plan ever? It's just flights that kill you; once you get over here, everything is dirt cheap.

Look, I know it won't happen, but I can always settle for Hawaii.

Tourist Visa

I know that I should be writing down all the "adventures" and such, but sometimes it's these little conversations that really leave you with the most intense impressions. In the broken english which my host father speaks, he told me about his experiences with attempting to obtain a 2-month tourist visa to the United States.

It's taken the equivalent of one year's salary for my host father's 2 interviews for a tourist visa at the US Embassy in Kathmandu. And in case you're wondering, each interview is a non-refunadable $131 US (so we can guess that his salary is about $260, comparable to figures I've read and heard). In addition it also cost him money to collect all the financial documents for presentation at the interview. For example, it costs 1000 rupees (only about $6.75 US, but that is a substantial amount of money here, so much so that if I have a 1000 rupee bill, I have trouble spending it because it is such a large bill they can't make change for it) to get a simple bank statement. Sadly, when he brought the papers to his interview, they rejected him without even looking at them.

He is applying for a non-complicated tourist visa to visit some of the many US and Canadian volunteers that he has hosted at his house through the years and would legitimately come back to Nepal. He is not trying to sneak over illegally. He has a wife, three children, a home, land, a job in Kathmandu, and a shop---he's not going to just cut and run. Plus he just loves Nepal.

The first time the interviewer gave him the visa interview in Nepalese and so naturally he answered in Nepalese, only to be denied him a visa because they said his English wasn't good enough. The second time they denied him for I don't know what reason, but he said he was so mad that he almost punched the interviewer right there. He said 3 or 4 officials held him back. I don't think he's planning on trying again anytime soon, but I know that if had punched the interviewer he definitely would never set a foot in the US.

We always joke around and so I thought that he knew I was joking: I said that since I'm an American citizen already, I would go down there and punch their lights out (I mean, really, look at me. . . who's going to be scared of me coming? So he would have to know that it's a joke, right?). I would actually probably get arrested for assault of a federal official, but my host father was like, okay, we'll go down to the embassy and I'll show you who to get. Ha ha.

I understand that the United States has to be cautious of who they let inside their borders, but this to me was beyond ridiculous. I mean, I've only known the man for a few weeks, but I know him well enough to know that he's not going to leave his family behind. And that he's definitely no threat to national security. And he was rejected without even a full appraisal of his application. I love America, but the conversation left me troubled and disheartened.

He did say that he could buy a visa for what I think what he said was a million rupees but he said he wouldn't do it. He doesn't have that kind of money (though he is okay financially, he is definitely NOT rich: he pays a lot of extra money for his children to go to good schools, and medicine for his wife). I asked him if it was illegal and he said no, but he said it wasn't good to do that and that he wasn't going to.

Letters to Nepal

So I'm sending this out to all the students (past and present) to whom I have access through the internet, and I know that a few of you are checking this blog:

I'm starting a penpal program for my Nepali students who are really interested in making American friends about their same age. I also want them to be able to practice using their English with native speakers. Most of my students' written English here is absolutely fantastic so you shouldn't have too much problem understanding them. (The difficulty will be in them being able to understand you, but I will be here to help translate.)

What I need you to do (or anyone you know who is interested, from about age 10 on up to 18, but ages 10-15 are probably the best) is email me a simple letter all about yourself and asking questions to a Nepali student to whom you will later be assigned.

You can start the letter with "Dear Student,"

And then I need your letter to include the following:

Your Name, Age, Grade
Street Address
Email Address (though few of these students know how to use email or have access to a computer; I am hopefully going to teach them how to use email and set them up with addresses)
Talk about your family (how many brothers and sisters, etc.)
Talk about classes you take at school
Talk about your interests, hobbies and talents
Talk about what you like
Ask them about their family, classes, interests, talents, what they like, etc.

IMPORTANT:
Please type clearly, without chat or IM abbreviations and with as little slang as possible
(If you want to teach them some slang, that is terrific! Go ahead, just don't throw something random in there and expect them to understand.)

Try to send these letters as soon as you can, like within the next week, so I can help them get responses to you soon! Their letters back to you will probably be sent through the mail and I will take pictures of them that we can include in the letter back to you.

Please send your letters only as a message (not on my Wall) on my Facebook account or to my email address camille.kingman@gmail.com. Do not send letters to my school email address or through PowerSchool because I cannot access those accounts in Nepal.

I know that this seems pretty simple (I think it should only take you 10 minutes maximum to do this) but it will be a GREAT act of service to these students here! Thanks guys!

Greatests Hits from Last Week

Hey everyone, I'm still alive, I just haven't been able to update anything for awhile because I was gone for week exploring the country. Let me give you the greatest hits: hill hiking (hills here are pretty much mountains though) and catching a spectacular glimpse of Mt. Everest, only then to be attacked by blood-sucking leeches; walking through beautiful terraced rice fields in the country; rafting down the river (I'm definitely doing this again!) on my way to Chitwan National park, where I bushwacked through jungle and 8 foot high rhino grass on foot and then later on elephant also. Then I returned to Kathmandu where I got sick sick sick (that is just part of being here), but luckily I am on the mend. More details to follow!