Miscellaneous Spontaneous

In a departure from my usual attempt to be systematic and thematic, the following is a random collection of some of the more hilarious, exciting, fortuitous, strange, and memorable highlights from my first month and a half in Dang:

-Visiting the boarding school for the first time, I asked a group of men for directions.  An extremely drunk man staggered up to me, pulled me close, and kissed me on the cheek. He was so grateful that I was there, he said, that he would be my guide for the rest of the day. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we visited each classroom of the school together: I briefly introducing myself and explaining my role in the community; he commanding the children to “stand up”, “say thank you”, and “try again” (all said in English). Oddly, the teachers did nothing about this inebriated man berating their students. For the next two hours, this man physically dragged me along, his hand often painfully clutching mine, and forced me to drink cup after cup of warm milk. Eventually he asked that I teach him English so that he could go to America and work as a servant for my family. One of the hospital staff later told me he could visibly see how fed up I was by the whole encounter
-Celebrated a wedding in my village, with much singing, dancing, drinking and eating

-Spent nearly two hours making a beautiful community map with the 7^th graders at the boarding school

-Attended the 7^th graders’ Nepali language and culture class, and was totally lost the entire time

-Began regularly playing volleyball with the only girls’ volleyball team in the district, which happens to practice ten minutes from my house

-Clarified the definition of the word “virgin” to the volleyball coach, who thought it meant “unmarried woman”

-Made friends with a guy my age who’s moving to New York next year
-Wandered into the forest one morning with a few guys to cut down trees to decorate a shrine for a pujaa

-Watched and translated an evangelical Christian television program with some coworkers

-Watched (almost in slow-motion) a bundle of sticks fall off the roof of a bus and clobber a woman in the head. She walked away apparently unscathed
-Got a hands-on training from a local beekeeper, which included my removing frames full of bees from a swarming hive

-Shared a taxi seat with a very talkative elderly life insurance salesman, who now visits my health center every week requesting that I teach him beekeeping and pushing life insurance plans on the health center staff. The other day, he called me at 5:21 in the morning (I just let it ring)

-Observed a man having his stitches removed after a vasectomy, while the health worker’s five-year old son sat nearby chewing on a cardboard box

-Facilitated my first nutrition training with nine pregnant mothers, and saw their understanding transform right before my eyes. This might be have been my most gratifying experience yet

-Sat in on the counseling session of a man with a penchant for destroying Hindu temples. A few days later, happened to ride in a taxi with him

-In this same taxi, shared the driver’s seat of a crowded taxi with the driver, who had to reach over my legs to shift gears. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, when he wasn’t searching for the gear stick, the baby sitting on my other side (the temple-destroyer’s child) was constantly pulling on it. He later peed on me (the baby, not the driver)

-Declined, as politely as possible, boxing lessons from an aggressive Nepali guy

-Met a Nepali man who lived in Israel for four years and now owns a clothing store in Nepalgunj

-Had tea with an Indian guy who, following a messy divorce with his wife, moved to Nepal with his son to work in development
-Stumbled upon a group of dancing Tharu women who were stopping vehicles in the road and demanding that they pay in order to pass

-Explained to a Nepali woman why exporting rhinoceros and elephant horns back to friends in the U.S. is a bad idea (on oh so many levels)

-Did my laundry and bathed in a stream. Walking back, dropped the washbasin and had to wash half my clothes again

-Developed some pretty impressive blisters on my hands, which has become the talk of the town, from digging my garden. Eating hot, spicy food when you have open wounds on your hands is quite painful

-Cut down a forty-foot-tall bamboo stalk to make my nursery

-Planted cucumbers with my twelve-year old neighbor, while we took turns singing Nepali and English songs

-Taught my neighbor and five-year old nephew the “Cotton Eye Joe”

-Met a young Nepali guy living in my village who studied business in London and is just starting a small-scale goat farming operation

-Found a fish swimming in the water I use to clean my toothbrush and wash my face

-Danced barefoot in the straw in the dark with a drunk uncle during a massive puja celebration
-Got a puppy! My family gave me the honor of naming him, but after I chose the name Coco (which means “who” in Nepali), they renamed him Rocky. He looks like a miniature badger