At a Loss

This is not a particularly happy post.

It’s been a fairly unfortunate past few weeks. After returning from a family vacation to Cambodia, I was stuck in Kathmandu for four days due to bandhs (strikes) throughout the country. My host brother in Sindupalchok (where I spent my three months of training) died suddenly of a heart problem. An old woman who lives down the road from me, with whom I drank tea several times a week, passed away after failing to recover from kidney stones. The farmer with whom I constructed a plastic greenhouse was impaled and nearly killed by one of his own oxen, although he seems to be recovering well. My family’s chickens all died from a mysterious illness (ok, maybe I’m a little happy about that. Never has my garden enjoyed such peace from their relentless digging and defecating). More than any of these deaths, though, I have found this story to be the most troubling:

I’m in a shop in my village bazaar, trying to make sense of all I’ve just taken in. A middle-aged Nepali couple sits across from me. I’d met their son, Sushil, shortly after I arrived in my village a year ago, and we became fast friends. Two years my junior, Sushil was of medium build, quick to smile, and full of questions about the United States. He’d married not long before I met him, but he spent most of his days sitting idly at the counter of his parents’ shop and staring off into the distance.

Early on, Sushil told me that he wished to move to the U.S. to continue his education. His English was decent and he seemed to be a quick learner. With the sheer odds against his obtaining a student visa, however, he took his chances with immigrating illegally and had since been on the road for several months. Two weeks ago, Sushil posted a plea for help on his Facebook page, followed by a link to an article about a group of illegal immigrants who had been detained by the Panamanian police. Having bribed the police officers for his release, Sushil continued on his way. Any day now—even as we speak, his parents say—he will be crossing the border and entering the United States.

Around the time Sushil was arrested in Panama, his wife, Saraswati, had been due to deliver their first child. Saraswati had studied at the local campus and played on the girl’s volleyball team before her pregnancy had progressed to the point that she could no longer hide it. Just a few days earlier, Sushil’s mother tells me, Saraswati had gone into labor. The doctors anticipated complications, so Sushil’s parents rushed her to a larger, better equipped hospital. Saraswati miscarried in the taxi. Weeks later, she is still recovering from the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal.

Having little money, Sushil’s family had eaten sparingly on the road to and from the hospital. Nevertheless, between Sarswati’s care, transportation, water, lodging, and the occasional meal, they had spent beyond their means and their money had gotten very tight. A week later, Sushil’s mother is experiencing headaches and heart palpitations from the stress of it all. Speaking with a neighbor who has come to buy ginger, she laments at the family’s misfortune and wonders what they have done to deserve such bad karma.

Initially, I supposed this the end of the story. I wrote it up as part of an article and almost sent it to a friend of a friend to publish in a national Nepali newspaper, but I struggled to find a proper tone and theme. As a foreigner, praise of Nepal can come off as oversentimental and patronizing, criticism may seem ignorant and malapropos, and both can suffer from overgeneralization. Eventually, I buried it. The other day, however, more details came to light and I decided that it needed to be shared.

A few months later, after returning from a long vacation with my family, I am back in Sushil’s family shop. His father sits across from me, and I’m trying to make sense of all I’ve just taken in. A month prior, Sushil was been riding on a bus in Mexico when he and his two traveling companions were kidnapped by what his father describes as “the Mexican mafia.” They were bound, blindfolded, and transported into the jungle where they were kept in a shed until each of their families paid a ransom of $5000. After a week, when all the families had paid up, they were released.

Then, after many months of travel, Sushil finally made it across the U.S.-Mexico border—where he was shortly caught and put in prison. Between our language barrier and his family’s poor understanding of the American legal system, I’m having trouble understanding what will happen next. Sushil has a court date with a judge on January 26, by which time he needs to find a sponsor and something his father calls an “oyleck,” which will cost them an additional $3000. The family’s only contact with Sushil is the prison phone, which he uses infrequently because he is low on cash and, well, he’s in prison. His father asks me if there is work in jail, and says that if Sushil gets a job he can make $1 (an hour? a day? He’s not sure) with which he can call his anxious parents. I tell him I don’t know, having never been in jail in Texas.

Sushil’s father fiddles and stares off into the distance, even in extreme apprehension exhibiting the stoicism typical of a Nepali. I feel terrible. My stomach churns, battling its most recent bacterial tenant and digesting the knowledge that Sushil’s voyage has been (and perhaps always was) futile. I want to ask his father what he was thinking, sending his son across the world into such uncertain peril. I want to empty my life savings into his arms to restore their hope—no, not their hope, they still seem to hold on to some—my hope, maybe. I want to tell him everything will be all right, but I don’t think it will be. I want to do many things, but I do nothing.

Sushil’s father offers me milk tea, and when I make an excuse that the dairy will upset my sour stomach, he suggests lemon tea instead. Apologetically, I start say that I have to go; he asks me to sit. A woman comes and asks to buy some rice, but he brushes her off, telling her to wait because he’s busy talking with me. He starts asking me countless questions, one after the other: how much does a police officer make in the U.S.? What about a teacher? Are there mountains in America, and do people live on them? Are oceans, and islands, and deserts? Are all the roads paved, or are some of them dirt like the one in front of us? How do taxes work in America, because he’s heard that some people don’t pay anything at all while others pay a lot.

I answer his questions as best I can, and, seizing a brief moment of silence, excuse myself. Before going, I tell him that if I were back in the U.S., I would do everything I could to help Sushil. He encourages me that when I go home in ten months, I should.

As I rise to leave, my gaze catches on Sushil’s name, scribbled in marker on the wooden cash drawer of his family’s little shop. Thus far, Sushil’s endeavor has cost his family $40,000—a considerable sum even for an American, it is his family’s entire savings. In fact, they recently took out an additional $10,000 loan to support him through his imprisonment. My guess is that, in a few days, he will likely be deported— and then who knows what will happen?

For me, this story speaks volumes about the Nepal I’ve come to know in the past sixteen months. First, it is indicative of some of the country’s greatest shortcomings: the scarcity of opportunity and employment that drives its young and talented men, its fathers and husbands and brothers, to abandon ship, at great risk and expense, for the pipedream of a perfect life abroad; young girls who, by choice or custom, forgo their personal and professional lives to start a family before they reach eighteen; a healthcare system that, despite great strides in recent decades, still struggles to serve the rural, most at-risk populations; countless families who scrape buy on petty margins and struggle to make ends meet in times of greatest need. The list goes on.

It is, in theory, my responsibility to work to beat back these trends: to instill youth with the skills and attitudes to succeed; to empower young women to seize control of their futures; to expand the outreach of health information and services; to build the capacity of small businesses and entrepreneurs. Easier written on a job description than done, of course. In reality, these seem like insuperable forces, especially the one repelling young men from their homeland. I frequently argue with Nepalis about the merits of going abroad, but it’s hard to contend with the veritable plenty of America compared to Nepal. Even after totaling up the costs and risks, the prospect can seem worthwhile.

My community members love to ask me, “which is better, Nepal or the U.S.?” I don’t think such a comparison is fair or worthwhile. My ambiguous but honest answer is both, and neither. I’ve come to appreciate the freedoms and plurality of the United States, but there are aspects of American culture that I don’t miss. As for Nepal: even after a year of living here, the sight of the Himalaya still takes my breath away, the slower pace of life is at times maddeningly laid-back, and people continue to astound me with their generosity. While life may indeed be healthier, comfier, and perhaps even better in the United States, the path rarely proves so easy, cheap, or true.

In each of our trimesterly reports for Peace Corps, we are asked to report the one thing we wish Americans knew about our country of service. Today, I wish you all knew how greatly Nepalis look to the U.S. as the road to wealth and happiness, and how dangerous a thing that can be. So many like Sushil would forfeit all their possessions, leave their families, and risk their lives just for the chance to live on American soil. It should serve as a reminder how much we ought to appreciate all the freedom and fortune we have.

Shreegaun on Shrooms

The mushroom craze has hit my quiet, rural Nepali village. These days, it seems like my every conversation and action is, in some way, influenced by mushrooms.

Let me clarify: we’re talking about oyster mushrooms, not the magical kind. Apparently one of the volunteers in Armenia was almost administratively separated (i.e. fired) from Peace Corps when staff overheard that he was growing mushrooms and assumed he was doing something illicit. In the past month, I’ve trained almost 200 people on how to grow mushrooms (which may have been irresponsible, in hindsight, as I had never actually done it until just now), and more are begging me every day. What makes mushrooms so great? Here’s a little background:

In many Nepali villages, a lack of year-round irrigation severely restricts agricultural productivity, thus limiting villagers’ daily access to nutritious foods. In addition, villagers who don’t own much land struggle both to generate income and to provide a well-balanced diet for their families. Moreover, as Nepali agriculture becomes increasingly feminized (that is, performed by women), an increasingly large burden is falling on Nepali women to both provide for and care for their families.

As a food rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals, mushrooms can provide many of the nutrients lacking in food-insecure households. Even on a small scale, cultivating mushrooms requires few resources and produces considerable profits (from around 50 cents of investment, a mushroom colony can yield up to $10 profit). And as an activity that requires a small investment of time and labor, it is suitable for rural women’s lifestyle.

As for the how, mushroom cultivation is relatively simple. Straw, which is in great abundance after the rice harvest, is cut into small pieces, washed, and steamed to kill off any microorganisms that might interfere with mushroom growth. Then, plastic bags are filled with alternating layers of the sterilized straw and mushroom spawn, forming a beehive-like structure. After the bags are tied off and holes are poked in the sides for aeration, the colonies are placed in a dark room protected from the elements and pests. After a few weeks, the bags must be opened, given light, and watered a few times a day. The colonies begin producing mature mushrooms within 30 days and up to 90 days, yielding as much as 3-5 kg of the tasty toadstools.

A few villagers had been cultivating mushrooms on a small scale, but there was great demand—especially among the women of my village—to learn. So I worked with my village’s women committee to develop a grant that would provide materials, training, and construction of two mushroom cultivation buildings. The women established six small collectives throughout the area, the members of which would share responsibility for the mushrooms’ production, care, and sale. A fantastic Nepali women’s rights NGO, WOREC Nepal, provided a technician to deliver a training. Together, we taught the 37 women who attended about nutrition and cultivation, as well as conducting a practical session in which they performed all the steps (described above) for preparing the mushroom colonies.

Kicking off the mushroom training with Dipa (right) and Jhuma (middle)

Cutting straw

Packing the mushroom bags

I had just accidentally torn a pretty sizable hole in this bag

At the training’s conclusion, the collectives received bags and seeds to make their own colonies, which five of the six collectives produced by the following week.

I had some extra bags of seeds after the training, so I went to a nearby government school where the teachers and students had asked me to give a mushroom training. All the students brought straw from home, and over two days I taught the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders about mushroom nutrition and growing. Together, we made 23 colonies. Not all the kids were interested, but a fair number were determined to do every step of the process. The school will use the proceeds from the sale of the mushrooms to fund a class trip.

Each student brought a bag of straw that they'd precut

Washing the straw

Steaming the straw

My enthusiastic teacher-helpers

I spent much of the next few weeks running around between the mushroom groups and giving any assistance I could. In total, the women produced over 350 bags of mushrooms, which could generate up to USD $2,000 worth of mushrooms in just two months.

We constructed a “mushroom cultivation center” in the village bazaar, which we hope will be a model for good mushroom cultivation practice for the collectives. If desired, the center operators can experiment with different mushroom varieties and growing conditions to diversify and optimize production. Following harvest, the center will serve as a platform for advertising and sale of the mushrooms. Finally, as the capacity and output of the collectives grow, we hope to convert it into a collection center, where the various mushroom producers can amass the mushrooms for transport to a larger bazaar nearby, where the demand and price for mushrooms is even greater.

Putting up the frame of the mushroom house

Using local resources

We also built this mushroom house, using money from the grant.

Not every group constructed a mushroom house, but we're making do (although the setup below is pretty absurd.

I’ve also met and fostered a working relationship with a guy from a nearby village who spent three months doing mushroom production in Kathmandu. He’s made about USD $1,000 (which is more than the average annual household income, in my village) just from growing mushrooms these past four months.

He seems to have been successful at producing his own mushroom spawn, which could be huge for the women's groups.

Lately, he too has been visiting the collectives to give advice to the women.

A few weeks later, the collectives began harvesting the mushrooms to sell locally and in the nearby bazaar. The women are tracking the sales of the mushrooms, setting aside a portion of the profits to purchase materials for the following year and dividing the remainder amongst the collective members.

One of the groups brought a basket of their mushrooms (about 12 kilos in all) to our weekly farmers' market, which they sold out.

The mushroom colony above won first prize in our category.

So what if it was the only entry. The women were thrilled.

Because fresh mushrooms spoil quickly, in the coming months I’m hoping to train the women on how to construct simple solar dryers. Drying the mushrooms in this way will enable them to preserve the mushrooms for later sale or consumption, with minimal loss of nutrition. So far one of the groups has built a solar dryer, and I'm experimenting with the drying protocol.

This only took me 10 hours to build!

At this point, all the collectives intend to continue production in the future, and several are already discussing constructing mushroom houses for next year. “Mushrooms are healthier and cheaper than meat,” boasted one of the women in an effort to sell the mushrooms to another villager. “It’s much less work than rice farming, and you can earn much more money,” commented another. As mushroom farming continues to spread, its nutritive and financial benefits will benefit the growing population of Nepalis involved in their cultivation, sale, and consumption, and the women running the collectives will be ever more empowered. In the words of one of the women, “This is money that we will have earned ourselves, for us to use as we like.”