Storm Clouds and Silver Linings

Monsoon season has come to Dang, the parching heat of the few months prior supplanted by persistent mugginess and daily rainstorms which, I’m told, will last for the next two months or so.

These past few weeks, most of my village has been busy plowing, planting, and transplanting rice, which many Nepalis consider their most important crop. Planting rice is unlike any other kind of agriculture. First, villagers wait until their paddies get nice and soggy from the rain. One paddy is designated as a nursery for the seeds to develop into seedlings; the others paddies are prepared for transplanting with a pair of oxen pulling a wooden or iron plow. Plowing is conducted in a seemingly random pattern, loosening the soil to allow better water absorption and root penetration rather than forming the neat furrows typical for other crops. Once the paddy fills with a few inches of water, it’s ready for transplanting. Armed with small bundles of rice seedlings, farmers moving swiftly from row to row placing the plants in the mud. After trying it yourself, you come to appreciate their speed and precision.

Rice is such a staple in Nepal that it takes some farmers weeks to plant. The harvest must suffice to feed a family for two meals a day for an entire year, until the next rice harvest.

These full days of back-bending labor mean that many Nepalis don’t have the time or energy for much else. We Peace Corps Nepal volunteers regard monsoon season as test of our endurance. On top of villagers’ busyness, which renders community involvement in projects difficult, the constant rain and mud make walking or working outside an unpleasant experience. As I learned this past week, the monsoon season can also encumber excursions away from the village.

To celebrate the Fourth of July and my birthday, I traveled with some friends to Pokhara, a tourist city in the center of Nepal. The fifteen hours it took to get there was well worth it. In Pokhara, I was able to treat myself to a massage, a nice beer, and a guitar (which I’m hoping will make for an excellent monsoon season pastime, if it doesn’t mold first). I got to watch the some world cup matches, play a game of pool, and have a little fun.

For all my complaints about Nepali transportation, my experiences have comparatively pleasant compared to those of some fellow volunteers. My friends have been spat on, peed on, pooped on, and vomited on while riding on buses in Nepal. On the way home, however, my relatively good fortune ran out.

Returning to site from Pokhara, the bus was making good time. We reached a bazaar three hours from my village by 10:30am, giving me an ETA of around 1:30. After the many hours spent on buses in the past week, I was keen on the prospect of an early arrival.

About an hour later, we reached the first river. I held my breath as we forded the murky water on an imperceptible road, and took this video.

A few minutes later, we approached another river and proceeded across in similar fashion.

And then the bus stopped. The other passengers glanced at each other with looks of mild concern. Then we started moving backwards. And then we stopped abruptly. As a foot and a half of water rushed up against the left side of the bus, mild panic set in. Passengers started talking, arguing, and even shouting. Nepalis began to gather on the riverside to survey the situation. People began climbing out of the windows and onto the roof, passing their babies and other belongings up to the waiting hands above. It’s very confusing to experience a crisis situation in a foreign country, culture, and language—I had no idea whether this was a common occurrence, how severe the situation was, or how to respond. I began asking Nepalis what had happened and what I should do, and in typical nothing-is-wrong, don’t-upset-the-foreigner fashion, they told me to “basnus” (sit and/or wait).

Unfortunately, my phone died in the middle of the incident, so I wasn’t able to take more pictures. Even more regrettably, it died because I’d drained the battery watching Marie Antoinette during the bus ride.

Eventually I was the only remaining passenger in the bus, at which point a young guy offered to help me evacuate. We hoisted my backpack and cardboard box containing my guitar (and some dirty clothes, which hadn’t fit in my bag) to some people on the roof. I climbed up, cautiously traversed the rooftop, descended the ladder at the back, and waded through the fast-moving water to the bank from which we’d come, guitar and flip-flops in hand.

By now, a crowd of two hundred or so had assembled along the river’s banks. Among them, I spotted a familiar face—an NGO worker who had visited my village a month earlier. With her was a young white woman, who I deduced was the NGO worker’s friend she’d mentioned on her visit. Originally from South Salem (which neighbors my hometown!), she had previously spent ten months in Nepal on a Fulbright and had returned to gather research for her thesis. The serendipity of meeting another American on the side of river in a remote part of Nepal almost blew my mind.

Finally, after an hour and a half, a truck arrived to pull the bus out. It seemed that some of the bus’s machinery had gotten wet, which prevented it from starting. As vehicles resumed their traversal of the still-rushing river, a police officer directed me to climb into a truck to take me across. The truck’s cabin was already occupied with four police officers and a man in handcuffs, who all smiled at me as I took my seat with my bulging backpack and guitar case.

The truck dropped me off a few miles from Tulsipur, the closest bazaar to my village. I hopped another bus, which, stopping every thirty seconds to let passengers on or off, finally reached the Tulsipur bus park around 3:30, with time to spare to catch the 4 o’clock bus to my village.

Except that the bus park, which is usually bustling with buses and jeeps, was practically empty. I asked around about the buses and learned that none of the westbound buses were running that day—in fact, the heavy rain from the past few days had flooded the road, which had prevented any buses from even leaving from the villages that morning. So I headed over to the jeeps, which would be a bit more cramped but would get me home. The drivers there told me the same story—there were no jeeps going even remotely near my village that afternoon. I wasn’t alone, however—a group of Nepalis was also searching for rides home. They began lobbying the drivers for someone to take them westward, offering to pay extra. After a few minutes, a jeep arrived with a driver who consented to the deal. I hastened to the car, but arrived too late. The jeep, my only ride home, had already filled up.

By now it was after four, and if I’d have to walk the two and a half hours to get home, I’d need to leave immediately to reach home before nightfall. Seizing my bag, guitar box, and the two kilos of bananas I had stupidly bought, I set out. On the road, I ran into one of my hospital coworkers at his medical shop, who informed me that the flooding in the road was so great that I might need assistance in getting across.

Thankfully, after twenty minutes of walking, a bus approached and offered me a ride (where it came from, with the bus park deserted, I’ll never know). But I’ve never been so happy to squeeze into the last vacant space on a Nepali bus.

Because the main road was flooded, we would have to take a considerable detour along roads not designed for buses. Several times, we encountered another vehicle coming towards us and were forced to back up to a point wide enough where it could pass. The ride was extremely uncomfortable. Standing in a semi-crouched position (I’m too tall to stand up on the buses here) with hefty load on my back (no room to put it on the ground), I was sweating buckets with the heat and humidity in the packed bus. Every few minutes, a bag of my bananas would fall from the overhead compartment and hitting a man in the head. A Nepali woman kept scolding me for bringing my bulky bag aboard, but I feared what would happen if I put it on the roof. At one point, the bus suddenly swayed perilously while crossing a small stream, causing some of the items on the roof to fall off. I really hoped that my guitar, which was up there, wasn’t among them.

We had almost made it to the main road when a tractor approached from the opposite direction. We moved aside to let it pass, but when the driver put the bus back into gear, the wheels spun. We were stuck in the mud. Everyone exited the bus to assess the situation. The male passengers pushed the bus, dug out the wheels with shovels, and tried everything to get the bus going, but they only succeeded in getting it more stuck. I rounded the side of the bus and was alarmed to find a pair of my shorts dangling from the metal bar on the window. The cardboard box with my guitar and dirty clothes had been torn to pieces—but somehow, aside from the hanging shorts, everything had remained inside.

Forty minutes later, a passing tractor driver agreed to pull us out, and we were off again. The rest of the ride was mercifully uneventful. I strolled into my house just after 6:30, way later than I had anticipated. All told, the trip was full of unexpected challenges, but I also caught a bunch of breaks along the way.

As the storm clouds set in for the next few months, I hope for the ability to see the light that lingers at their edges, because there is a lot to be glad about. Rereading my past few reports, I realize that my tone has been a bit negative lately. The truth is, despite the many downs, I’m actually quite happy here. I’ll aim to make my next post(s) more upbeat to reflect it.