Returning to Nepal, in San Diego.

Well,

Obviously its been over a year since I have written on this blog. Much has happened; the anguishing return from Nepal and long readjustment to life in San Diego. Several quarters of wonderful, stressful school, the finishing of my honors thesis on (you guessed it) Nepal…and now I feel I have come full circle in a way, and its time to start writing again. I have recently begun working with a Bhutanese Refugee family through the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Although they are considered refugees from Bhutan they lived for the last 17 years in a refugee camp in Nepal and were booted from Bhutan because they were considered “ethnically Nepali” by an anxious Bhutanese government. I cannot stress how wonderful it has been to be a part of their lives even in these few short weeks Ive known them.

When I lived in Nepal it was the Nepali people who made my life so rich and wondrous. It was Nepalis who showed me their beautiful, complicated country and allowed me the space to fall in love with it. The help and inspiration I received from so many Nepali people continues to shape me life and I feel that working with this family in some small way enables me to reciprocate…and to create a better America by helping this family find a place within it. Although my position is at its most basic that of an English tutor, tutoring is a very small part of my interactions with this family. Although the IRC and the Alliance for African Assistance provide them with some ESL classes and financial literacy classes, they have very little resources at their disposal and have been essentially confined to their house and immediate neighborhood blocks for the past six months.  I want to help them gain the skills and confidence to make the most of living in the United States and San Diego. For anyone unused to the American bureaucracy and the difficulty of public transportation in Southern California, it can be overwhelming…but there are so many beautiful parks and beaches and wonderful libraries here that I think this family would love.

The family: a funny and energetic grandmother, Jitendra the father, Tulasha the mom and their four daughters (18yr old in highschool, next is in 7th grade, one in kindergarten and a tiny baby). They live in an apartment in City Heights..about a twenty minute drive south into the city from where I live. After our first introductory visit, I met with them again last Sunday and Jitendra and the three oldest girls and I went on an adventure fo Balboa Park. They were feeling soo cooped up and everyone got incredibly excited at the mere possibility of an outing I didnt have the heart to tell them to wait another week. We settled on Balboa Park since it was too cold for the beach. Everyone was very quiet on the drive over, peering out the windows at the new sights. As we got closer to the park we entered the rather posh 6th Avenue and I could tell this was the nicest place in San Diego they had been to. We drove as far into the park as possible, as Jitendra’s legs are very crippled from mosquito -borne illnesses and it hurts him to walk.  As we drove under the Museum of Man and through the center of the park the littlest girl chattered away in Nepali…but I could tell just from her tone of voice that she was thrilled to bits. Both the older daughters kept asking who’d built the park and if people lived there. Once we finally parked we were able to hear the large outdoor Organ being played, I had some trouble explaining it as I am not exactly sure how a concert organ works to begin with   We then strolled the promenade and watched the crowds and headed for the botanical building. The large koi ponds were a source of intrigue but the botanical gardens were very familiar with Jitendra proudly telling me he had seen most of the plants before…except the carnivorous ones, which fascinated everyone. Change thrown into fountains as well as fountains themselves were another discussion point, with all of us deciding to bring coins next time so we could make wishes.

I felt so proud to live in San Diego, to have this beautiful public space available to show my Bhutanese family. I sent out a letter to my friends and family asking for donations for their house: clothes, fabric (Tulasha used to be a tailor), children’s toys and a sewing machine and I have been overwhelmed at the positive response I have gotten from people I know. I feel very blessed to be in a position to help and allow others the opportunity to help. Once we returned to their apartment, Tulasha and Aama sat me down and gave me a tasty bowl of noodles and some dud chiyya!!! The chiyya tasted like Nepal…I breathed it in deeply. Even the chairs, although Im sure they were bought here, started to feel like the chairs in my Aama Radikha’s kitchen in Kathmandu. Maybe its the feeling of a close family that I associate with Nepal and I now have found with my city heights family. Perhaps it is the feeling of openness, of willingness to exchange experiences, desires and skills to create bonds and future that I lived through in Nepal and am now creating here in San Diego. Whatever it is, I feel that my time with this family somehow completes the months that I spent living in Nepal. I believe in cross cultural exchange but I believe even more strongly that this exchange can actually create a new cultural mindset, taking parts of two worlds and crafting global citizenship.

Happenings

Wednesday night my pals and I headed out to have dinner at Ambassador Nancy Powell’s house with other students studying abroad in Nepal and high ranking State Department Officials. We arrived to find that it was actually a very very intimate dinner as there were only three other students besides the seven of us in attendance. Because most of us had planned to just listen and eat pizza and snacks there were some long and awkward silences for the first half an hour. But then things spiced up and I got to hang out with some truly amazing individuals. Frankly this dinner did a lot to raise my opinion of the State Department, at the personnel level anyways. I spoke at length with an anthropology major who now does economic research here for the State Dep..there is hope for my degree yet!

The house was gorgeous and the desserts were splendid. I abstained from taking pictures because i worried that the very jolly secret service guy might ask me to delete them or some sort or scene. On her piano the Ambassador had loads of pictures with well known politicians and upon hearing us comment that Condi Rice looked “unusually happy and pleasant” the secret service fellow informed us that she is  really kind and told us stories about her. It was very thrilling!

Only in Nepal is the international community small enough that the Ambassador invites you to her house and says “please give us feedback and tell us about your adventures and feel free to ask us questions”. A very wondrous night indeed.

Tihar

our puja table

Originally uploaded by talkingkrame
So for the past four or five days its been Tihar in Nepal (Depwali in India). Its the festival of lights but also includes inviting Goddess Laximi into your home for good luck and wealth, lots of caroling, lots of lights and candles , many pujas (ceremonies where tikka is given and received) and, in my family, many dance parties and a bbq. Below is a picture montage from Tihar..by far my favorite Nepali Holiday.

my house in Bishal Nagar all lit up

getting tikka from my Aama on the first night of Tihar

Pretty getting the oil lamps ready

Carolers at the house

Anna and the cousins with sparklers

Me, Anna and Pinkie just before the fantastic living room dance party!

End of School/Halloween/ISP

So yesterday was officially my last class. Its been an especially busy and insane past two weeks. On monday we went to the World Bank to chat with Lynn Bennett the head anthropologist there and partway through our meeting their was an EARTHQUAKE! The World Bank does not mess about so we were immediately evacuated from the building and had to have the rest of of our meeting beside a sawnky hotel pool. Never a dull moment. Then Wednesday was Halloween, an a delightful one! I was a Gypsy/Mystical Jew/Nepali Dancer and all of us students dressed up and held a halloween party at our Program House and invited the Cornell Study Abroad students to attend. My computer also finally arrived after a customs debacle and a very corrupt and questionable customs duty was paid–but just in time for a halloween dance party with students and teachers.Belowis the SIT Nepal Class of Fall 07 In Costume

I have finalized my ISP Project and will be presenting my official proposal on wednesday (!!!) to my academic director Christina Monson. I have decided to focus on Aarohan Theater group’s Kachahari Theater (theater of the oppressed) in Kathmandu as a case study of tactics mentioned by Amartya Sen and Nussbaum for successful and sentient Development. Sen and Nussbaum both emphasize increased local dialogue as one the most important aspects of Development and as a way of avoiding paternalism from outside organizations and countries. Kachahari theater is created by the Aarohan Theater Company in order to “sensitize” their fellow Nepalis as well as promote discussion and create solutions to a variety of social issues. They pick a topic, preform a short improv piece in a village or urban kathmandu and at the climax of the presentation they stop the performance and ask the audience what should happen next, what the protagonist should do etc etc. Audience members with solutions then come up on stage and take on the role of the protagonist and try and resolve the climax. I am very drawn to Kachahari also because Nepal is a society of castes and ethnicities and religions that are constantly at odds with each other so providing the opportunity for Nepalis to actively engage with and perhaps begin to associate or understand the “Other” within their own society hold tremendous potential. Research will involve extensive interviews withe members of the theater company, attending as many performances as possible and conducting brief interviews with audience members both before and after the performance, meeting with NGOs that have partnered with Aarohan in the past for projects and hopefully visiting semi-rural villages around the Kathmandu valley where Aarohan has done in depth Kachahari workshops and performances. Im very very amped and a little imtimidated from my initial interviews with Aarohan people but I guess thats all part of doing intense field research!

I will be living with my family for the next month and will be the only SIT students remaining at their homestay for the ISP period. I hope that being with my family will not distract or keep me from my research but I honestly cannot imagine being in Nepal and not coming home to more food than I can eat every night and not having my family in my life. I hope that having my personal computer here will also lessen stress and mean that I can always stay up super late in my room, feverishly typing…

holidays

Dassain was fantastic. The entire holiday is at least a week but the best is the two main days of huge lunches and gaggles of family members visiting and tikka (red paste put on my forehead by my aamaa) and everyone gets little envelopes of cash–its the Nepali version of Christmas. That was also when I first heard about the fires in California. A family Uncle showed up and upon hearing that I was from California told me that OJ Simpson’s house had burned down. My family kindly turns the news to coverage of the fires every evening and UCSD and the La Jolla PD continue to send me bizarre text updates and news.

In other epic news the Constituent Elections have been postponed indefinitely..which is good for SIT students as we wont have to evacuate but a big of a mixed bag for Nepalis. One the one hand no one was registered and you can only vote in your home village AND few people had the time of inclination to go home and vote AND they couldn’t really organize because everything shuts down for Dassain AND the Maoists were still insisting that their Community Youth League should provide security for voters (bad scheme). On the downside Nepal has not had an elected government since the King dissolved the parliament in 2002. This means that no one has a mandate and nothing gets done. Every project that was underway be it urban beautification projects, government literacy programs etc had to cease and wont be able to restart until elections happen.

Tonight is our homestay family party. All the families and students are going out to a Chinese restaurant–it should be grand! The next two weeks are my final weeks of official classes so lots of Nepali language tests coming up. This coming friday we, Anil and the heads the East Asian UNICEF branches are going to Nagrakot for some exploring and chatting. Im very excited to meet the UNICEF country heads and interested to see what they add to class discourse.

I have decided to live with my Nepali family for the duration of the ISP Research Period (november and december). Not only is it the cheapest and tastiest option but my Nepali family is such a crucial part of my life here that I cant imagine being in Kathmandu without them. Plus my house has internet and the fantastic baby Anna and a prime location near a branch of my favorite restaurant…

Down From The Mountain

So i have just arrived in Naamche bazaar after trekking down from my village. Yesterday as me and my pal mark were walking back to our village from Khumjung it began to snow and then to blizzard. Probably the coldest ive ever been in my entire life. But as we reached our village the skies cleared and the mountains that surround our little shangri-la valley were finally completely visible. One of the most beautiful and silent and powerful sights i have ever seen. Until that moment, looking at Aama Dablam (my favorite mountain), i have never had the least desire to climb a mountain. But they just looked so amazingly appealing in the golden sunset light.

When I returned home my brother Tenzing was playing with homemade skis and frolicking in the snow. I alread miss my sherpa family very very very much. Tenzing gave me a necklace last night that he’d made so that i wouldnt forget him. This morning my aamaa told me that he loves me and will miss me very much because i am his only sister. Below are some pictures of my village (Kunde) and my family.

my nine year old brother Mingma-Tenzing Sherpa and his best friend Naamche

Me and Tenzing and my aamaa Ang-Pasang Sherpa.

tomorrow morning im trekking back to Phakding my myself and my porter pal and then the next day to Lukla to catch a flight to Kathmandu on the 20th.

I have promised my Sherpa family ill come back with my family but I cant imagine even going an entire year away from Kunde. While I wont miss being freezing cold every single waking second Ill miss my family a great deal (especially dancing and playing with Tenzing) and yak cheese and yaks and wild ponies and hot days climbing small mountains to look at larger ones and sunny days that suddenly become blizzards and Ill most definately pine for my daily dose of Everest Bakery’s astoundingly delicious Apple Pie.

mountains

After two days of trekking im at 3340 meters in Namche Bazaar. Its uinbelievably amazing and calming being here. Alas internet costs ten rupees a minute so Ill have to ration my time and do another update tomorrow. Needless to say its been an epic week which included meeting the US Ambassador at a Nepali Female Rocker concert (she invited us to her house to chat) and being offered many tibetan mastiff puppies when trekking (very hard to turn down). Life is magical up here and in our last lecture we discussed Buddhist philosphy and the concept that the World you experience is only a reflection of your own mind..so ive been ruminating on that as ive been crossing deadly swinging bridges and scoping out frosty peaks..

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Hi Gang,

As many of you know my mom is running the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco October. She is an amazing human being as well as a stellar mom. Here is her marathon mission statement and site and it would mean a great deal to me as well as to her if any of you could donate to her team. The son of one of our close family friends whom I’ve known since preschool, and who is a very kind and gifted fellow, was diagnosed with lymphoma this past year and this moved my mother to become an athlete.

This past week my group went on a walk with one of our teachers, Anil, in the ancient city of Patan. it was no ordinary walk however, because Anil is no ordinary fellow as I have mentioned many times before. Because he has headed such projects as digitlizing maps of kathmandu, preserving historic public spaces and spearheading a project to fortify kathmandus drainage systems and move them below ground, it is impossible to walk anywhere with him without A) meeting a million people who have worked with him or benefited from his work and B) Learn a TON. Patan has been inhabited for over 2000 years and Anil showed us how this vibrant city has been able to sustain life for so long. One reason is its ancient but still effective water piping system which keeps the water in constant motion which keeps it from festering. There are also many public spaces in Patan which serve community purposes. There is a large green square for weddings, hanging out and family parties. There is another space for religious purposes. All of these spaces are for and maintained by Patans residents. Its really quite astounding and pleasant.

Friday after class (one lecturer was a Fullbrighter who was studying child soldiers and mental health, the other was his wife who worked as a Project manager for CARE Nepal–very awesome duo) ten of us decided to go up to Nagrakot for the night. We all stayed in this little cabin at The Hotel At The End Of The Universe and ate delicious food and got drenched in the monsoon rains. It was great to breath fresh air and be away from the Kathmandu hubub.

Aarti and I returned early Saturday morning to attend the Prashant Concert at St. Xaviers school. It was pouring rain and the sports field was a muddy swamp. It was pretty wonderful to see mud covered and soaking wet Nepalis dancing and laughing and having a blast but as we got muddier and colder it became harder to dance and more than a little bit frustrating. A nice fellow dancing next to me remarked that “this must be what like woodstock was like” before comparing his mud soaked shoes to mine. “Mine are more ruined than yours!” to which i replied “well im wearing hiking books so mine of full of mud. At least the mud leaks out the sides of your sandals!” Prashant was awesome and truly has a very simple and kin demeanor. I hdnt really understood all the time when Nepalis or Darjeelingers said they loved him because he was “a simple person” until i saw him sing live. There is no superstar air about him, he is very gracious and shy and tremendously kind. Whenever someone shouted something ( i assume something along the lines of “we love you prashant”) he never failed to respond with kind words and acknowledge the shouter. Aarti and I then decided that we should meet him and thank him for making our trip so delightful–but getting backstage at a Nepali concert proved impossible. Despite wearing matching Prashant shirts and referring to ourselves as “The Foreign Friends of Prashant, Americas #1 Prashant Fan Club” we we not admitted backstage, but we learned a valuable lesson: if you are a Nepali policeman you can show up to a nepali concert, when you are really supposed to be on duty, and demand to be let backstage and no one will stop you. So despite needing to spend the rest of the afternoon bundled up in layers trying to stave off the chills, the Prsahant concert was very interesting, the crowd was happy and not at all deterred by the elements and Prashant managed to re-wow us with his kind and simple demeanor as well as his spectacular singing.

winning

Firstly PRASHANT WON INDIAN IDOL!!! Sunday night I cooked a big pasta feast w/home made tomato sauce for my family to celebrate the Indian Idol Finale. It went great, largely due to the fact that i live five minutes from the best grocery store in the country. Apparently on Saturday the nepali cell phone companies somehow made it so that nepalis could send texts to india that would be counted in the indian idol vote, just my cousin sent in 250 votes. The total votes cast in indian idol…70 MILLION!! So at 6pm one of my nepali uncles called, apparently he was at the live recording of the finale and he said Prashant had won! I couldnt truly believe it though so decided to watch the finale with my family …which turned out to be nearly FOUR HOURS LONG and ended around 1am. it was pretty insane. lots of famous Hindi singers wearing some pretty spectacular outfits. Needless to say i was greatly relieved when i saw the official announcement. Fireworks went off in my neighborhood and people danced in the streets. one fellow also decided to drive his car up and down the alley honking and screaming “praaaaassshhaaannntt” late into the night. Luckily i am an ear plug devotee so i slept better than the rest of my family.

Below is one of my favorite moments from the trip so far, standing atop a hll covered in a prayer flag jungle in Pharping during the first week. Below me in the hill are the caved in which Guru Rimponche achieved enlightenment. The view is of the nepali countryside. When you look at it you realize that Nepal is not a poor landlocked country, but an underutlized, landlinked, vibrant place. nepali hills are one of my favorite places in the entire world

in other news i am officially doing my Independent Study Project on the roles of artists in development here in kathmandu. One of my teachers wives runs a nonprofit called Crafted in Kathmandu and can hook me up with lots and lots of local artists as well as NGOs involved in both development and the arts. Im still fleshing it out a bit but I am incredibly excited to start interviews and research and all that jazz!

in about fifteen minutes a group of my fellow SIT students and I are gong to go get tickets to this saturday’s Prashant concert… a jolly time will undoubtedly be had by all!

Darjeeling/Kathmandu AND A PICTURE AT LAST!

So im back in K-du now but here is a brief overview of the rest of my Darjeeling trip:

We went to Selimbong, an organic tea plantation so scope out development issues in the darjeeling area–i am also not in possession of The Best Tea In The Entire World. No joke. I bought as much as i could afford because i am now addicted to Mineral Springs Organic Co-op Black Darjeeling tea..considered the best on the planet. Ill be bringing lots home too so tastings will be held!

I also got food poisoning which was a huge bummer but recovered in time to have High British-style Tea at the Windermere Resort with some pals. We ate so much food that they cut us off. Who knew there was a limit of how many finger sandwiches and cream biscuits one could consume at tea!

The day we were to return from Darjeeling to Nepal there was a bundh (strike) in the Terrai, the part of Nepal we needed to cross into to get to the bhadrapur airport. Our fearless leader Prakash (who was also a famous movie villain in loads of old Nepali and Hindi movies!!!) arranged for us to jeep down the mountainside at 4:30am (bummer) and then take BICYCLE RICKSHAWS from the nepali border to the airport. Bicycle rickshaws are generally used for like 5 minute rides..certainly not 1.5 hour ones. Our group was like a hilarious parade of white people in rickshaws since there were no other vehicle on the road due to the strike. Crowds turned out to cheer us on. To make matters more intense my friend Andy, who is a physical fitness fiend decided to pedal his own rickshaw and had the driver sit in the passenger spot. I am not sure if this has ever been done in nepal before but judging by people’s reactions it had not. My rickshaw driver subsequently challenged Andy to a race..which meant our rickshaws were speeding at an ungodly rickshaw speed far far ahead of the rest of the gang. We got cheers and clapping and whistling and hordes of kids ran behind us–quite a sight.

We made it to the airport without running into any Madhesi Separatists (they called the strike) and my family welcomed me home with a momo (tibetan dumpling) making party! it was awesome, even though the momos i made looked like rats according to my cousin.

I have picture capabilities!

Below is (left to right) My older sistey Pinkie, our helper-girl Pretty, me, my Aamaa, my cousin and Pinkie’s two year old daughter Anna (Annapurna)..i absolutely adore my family

Ill upload more pictures tomorrow after i get my ISP Proposal written!