Day 96 - Shukranagar

We made it safely to our final farm, though we went a little too far on the bus and the subsequent cab driver we relied on got lost and took two hours and a phone call to find the farm. The Bhattarai family is incredibly nice, warm and welcoming. When we arrived there were four other volunteers (3 from France, 1 from Norway), so quarters were a little cramped. There are two rooms for volunteers in a small building detached from the main house. The girl from Norway graciously gave up the room she had been staying in to allow Laura and me to move in, and she squeezed in with the 3 French girls. It made sense considering that one room has only a single bed while the other has two.

The work has been fine and the schedule incredibly volunteer-friendly. There are two meals a day and Balram, the head of the household, does not want volunteers working without eating. The first meal, however, usually falls sometime between 10 and 11, so we could theoretically sleep until then no problem. Usually, though, we wake up between 7 and 8 and just hang out, wander into the village, or read until breakfast. Sometime after we’ve eaten (with no particular emphasis on time) we begin work. The first day we irrigated the mustard fields. The second day we broke down haystacks into a giant pile of hay in front of the house (which the village children spent hours playing in). The third day we dug four holes, making a square, and put logs in them. The fourth day we built a giant haystack in the area with the freshly placed poles. The fifth day we dug up some grasses and replanted them along the irrigation channel (the grass, which grows in bunches to be quite tall, is used to feed the buffalo). Then, it was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and we were allowed to rest and celebrate.

All six of us volunteers decorated a small tree out front as our honorary Christmas tree. We prepared meals based on foods our respective countries eat (though the French girls stole Mashed Potatoes so Laura and I made hashbrowns with eggs and corn-on-the-cob). We exchanged small gifts. We sang Carols in three different languages. It was nice.

The other four left the day after Christmas, though two of the French girls say they will be coming back the first week of January. There were two things the French girls were excited for: harvesting honey and seeing the pregnant buffalo give birth. Both have happened since they left. The day after Christmas (just one day too late to rightfully name the baby buffalo Jesus), Laura and I ate freshly roasted corn kernels and watched a live buffalo birth. It was surprisingly less disgusting then I anticipated, and the mama buffalo handled the whole thing with incredible ease and strength. Neither Balram nor Dorga (the matriarch of the family) intervened until the baby had plopped onto the ground from three feet in the air. Laura and I continued to watch and shout encouraging words as the baby attempted its first steps. We christened her Janeane Garbuffalo. Laura calls her Buffy for short.

Today we helped harvest honey. It was slightly nerve-wracking having bees flying all around while Balram stole the honeycomb frames from the box-hives and brought them inside the net (which was riddled with holes that let bees in, not to mention all the bees that clung desperately to the frames of honeycomb). Dorga scraped the layers of wax off the frames with a knife so that Laura and I could load them in the cylindrical machine, which is operated by spinning a handle and uses centrifugal force to spin honey out of the comb against the walls of the cylinder. The honey (and any hopeless bees that remained in the comb) oozes down the sides, eventually finding the hole in the bottom and oozes out a pipe into the waiting strainer and bucket. It’s amazing we didn’t get stung. Balram, on the other hand, with no bee suit like you see in the movies, gets stung hundreds of times invading the hives. He says stings are good for your health. I don’t think Macauley Culkin’s character in My Girl agrees.

Tomorrow we harvest more honey. Stay tuned to hear how that goes. Hope you all had the happiest of holidays. And Happy New Year if I don’t get to post before then.

Day 84 - Boudha

We leave Kathmandu in two days for Chitwan and our next farm experience. There is no guarantee that we'll have much internet access, so I figured that I'd update now while I have the chance.
Boudha is still very calm and relaxing and I've taken the opportunity to do some reading. Now that I'm out of school, my reading list seems to all be political/historical non-fiction. I read a book by Noam Chomsky and another one by a Pakistani historian about the history of Islam in the Middle East. I also read a book Laura bought about a Tibetan Tulku that fled to India after Chinese occupation. It's been good. The Omnivore's Dilemma is next, but I'm not supposed to know about it because it's my Christmas present.
I've been getting spurts of homesickness as it gets closer to Christmas. It will be hard being away from my family for the first time. I've missed watching holiday movies while drinking hot chocolate, or listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And, I will definitely miss Christmas Eve board game night.
The seminar ended last week, but there was a three-day retreat (kind of an extension of the seminar) at a place called Nagi Gompa, a nunnery just a little ways up in the mountains. I didn't go, but Laura did. She said it was beautiful and I get the sense that she's glad she went. I really enjoyed the seminar and learned more than I probably realize, but I'm glad I opted out of the retreat. It would have been a little much. We've made friends here with many of the students at the monastery so I had to people to hang out with. The monastery has a program on Buddhist Studies through Kathmandu University and the students are from all over. A few nights ago I went out for some Tongba with a few of them. Tongba is Tibetan beer. It's a rather sizable brown barrel (not quite as big as a Big Gulp at 7/11) filled with fermented millet that you poor boiling water over. You drink through a metal straw and it's actually quite good. It gives off the aroma of freshly baked bread and goes really well with Wantan soup. After, we played Texas Hold'em (poker) in an Indian restaurant...Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and the US were all represented.
Other than that, not much to report until we get to the next destination. I've had a lot of downtime here and hence have bought way too many bootleg DVDs. They're just so cheap! Oh well, now I'll have something to do when I'm unemployed back in the states.
Happy Holidays everyone!

Day 70 - Bouddha (Kathmandu)

Just a quick post. I didn't end up finding anything going on for World AIDS Day here but I did read an interesting article in the paper today (The Himalayan). It was a brief article about how poor Nepalis, especially in the Western region, are going to Voluntary Counseling and Blood Testing (VCBT) centers and trying to pass as HIV positive when in fact they are not. I don't know if they bribe the testers or try to skew the results somehow, the article didn't say. Ultimately, people are trying to fake positive tests so that they can get the money the government gives to HIV positive people for health costs. It's surprisingly common and on the rise. The article interviewed a widow who has been successfully passing as positive and using the money to feed her family. It's hard to imagine that people live in such a desperate state as to pretend to have a fatal disease that kills millions worldwide and is still rising in some areas due to lack of proper information and access to healthcare. The article said that nearly 1,000 people in the region are thought to actually be HIV positive. What effect will the people faking positive results have on these people who need medication? When pretending doesn't work anymore, how far will they go to get that positive test result?
Perhaps not the most uplifting blog post, I'm sorry. The article just struck me today and I felt like sharing.
We just ate some delicious Momos with Sangey, a Tibetan monk that Laura's parents met while they were here last year. He and his family have been so kind to us, showing us around some places and making sure we are alright. I had a bit of a stomach illness a few days ago and I think Sangey has asked me how I'm feeling every day since. It's nice to spend time with him and talk about the state of Tibet, the situation with the Maoists here in Nepal, or even just the weather or how much we like Momos.
There's not much else to report. Bouddha is very relaxing and we've had a lot of time to explore some interesting places, but mostly we just read in the garden of the guest house while drinking warm drinks. Hope all is well for all of you.