Rain in Vain

The previous week was equal parts miserable and boring. As I was planning on traveling to Kathmandu at the end of the week for a weeklong Peace Corps training and to celebrate a friend’s birthday, however, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It would just be further away than I anticipated.

My bad luck began Monday morning with my plan to go into the bazaar. I intended to set out early, but my host family persuaded me to wait for the bus. After breakfast, I walked out to the bus stop and the bus soon arrived—right on time but filled beyond capacity. Not a huge deal, I thought, other vehicles would come. But as time went on, I watched as packed vehicle after packed vehicle passed by, while the mass of people waiting for transportation grew and grew. After an hour, I gave in and decided to bike. The humid heat of midday had set in—not the best weather to ride in—but it was imperative I get to the bazaar to submit a draft of a grant application.

The ride was strenuous, but I made it in about an hour. I completed my urgent business and even got some shopping in. As I prepared to leave, however, storm clouds were gathering. I would have to race them home.

I lost the race. At first the rain fell lightly, almost apologetically, on my helmet. Before long, however, it picked up. The rain wouldn’t have been problematic, if not for the stream I knew I would have to ford to get home. After a big rain a few days previous, a jeep had capsized while attempting to cross that stream. That morning the water had reached my knees, and I didn’t want to take any chances. I feared the rain would soon make the stream impassable, leaving me stranded on the wrong side.

I decided I would attempt to bike while holding my umbrella, with one hand on the handlebars. But it turns out, despite all my cycling progress in the past six months, I had not graduated to one-handed riding on rural Nepali roads. I should also mention that my bike brakes hadn’t been working very well, and the slickness of the road was rendering them even less effective.

As I rolled down a mild hill, a school bus passed me. After gaining some distance, it pulled to a stop front of a house. I considered the gap between the left side of the bus and the roadside, deeming it passable for me. But I forgot to consider that in Nepal, the driver sits on the right, meaning that the door is on the left. I reached said door just as a young girl descended the steps and alighted on the ground. I slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve off the road, but too late. I rammed into her side and was flung to the ground (none of my stories seems complete without a fall). My umbrella as crushed against the side of the bus, tearing a series of holes in the fabric. I got up, embarrassingly asked if she was ok, and continued on my way.

Now the rain was falling heavily, but I was just a few minutes from the stream. Once again (because I’m obstinate) I hoisted the umbrella in one hand and the handlebars in the other and promptly fell while going through a puddle. A very muddy me resolved to walk the last few minutes to the stream, which was halfway up to my thigh by the time I crossed. Once safely on the other side, I found a tree, parked my bike (ok, I threw it on the ground in frustration), and clutched my backpack under my umbrella, waiting for a break in the storm.

But the rain was relentless, and soon it began to get dark. I (because I’m really obstinate) decided to resume the umbrella-bike balancing act. After another fifteen minutes (and no more falls!), the rain ceased. I folded up the umbrella and, instead of putting it in my backpacks’ side pocket, stupidly hung it from the handlebars to dry. I almost went over my handlebars when the thing got stuck in my spokes, but it just broke. Lucky, right? The rest of the journey went by fine, but I arrived home muddy and cold.

Wednesday morning was only partly cloudy, so I seized the opportunity to do some much-needed laundry in preparation for my trip to Kathmandu. Unfortunately, it began raining in the late afternoon, forcing me to move my clothes indoors.

On Thursday, I was scheduled to build a cookstove. After my morning meal, the rain seemed to be letting up, so I mounted my bike and set out for a nearby village. Five minutes from home, the sky opened up. To compound my misery, my bike’s chain kept falling off, as did the several iron rods for the stove that I’d fastened to the back of the bike. Halfway there, I declared the day lost, called to cancel, and headed home. I was soaked through when I arrived, stripping off my clothes and collapsing on the bed in defeat.

The rain continued throughout the day, fluctuating maddeningly between torrential downpour and light sprinkling. Would my clothes dry? Would the road be passable the next day? Only time would tell. Before I went to bed, I prayed for the rain to stop.

I awoke early Friday morning to the faint roar of rushing water. Rising to the window and peering through the day’s dim first light, I could make out the stream down the hill from my house. The water was moving rapidly, the highest I had ever seen it—a bad sign. And it was still raining. Hoping for the best, I packed my bags (with some of the clothes still damp), stuck a nail in my broken umbrella to hold it open, and informed my host family I would give it a shot.

Considering the inclement weather and early hour, the road was bustling with villagers walking to and from the stream. There were rumors that several homes had been flooded the previous night, and some said a few houses along the riverbank had even been washed away. Each person I passed wanted to know where I was headed with such a large bag. Upon hearing I hoped to get to get to Kathmandu, they all said, “The stream is too big! You can’t go anywhere!”  Nevertheless, I wanted to see for myself.

I arrived at the entrance of my village, the right side of which had been completely flooded. People were trying to save what they could, lugging jute sacks and soggy cardboard boxes filled with their possessions to neighbors’ homes across the street. The street was so flooded with water that it was difficult to tell where the road ended and the river began.

I continued toward the bridge that spans the river. When I reached it, my jaw dropped—it appeared that half of it had been swept away. Later, I would learn that the stream (now a turbulent brown river) had swelled so much that it had carved a new path through the road on our side of the bridge. There would be no leaving today.

I walked down to the stream with some friends to survey the damage. Several rice paddies had been destroyed by flooding (even rice can only tolerate so much water). We spotted a drowned water buffalo lying on its side among the shallows, and heard tell of two human bodies that had washed up farther downstream.

A drowned water buffalo the washed up near my house.

Reports continued to come in all day of people who had drowned, houses that had been swept away, possessions that had been destroyed by water. The roads leading out of my district were closed. At one point, a helicopter flew overhead, with a small band of children chasing after in its trail. Peace Corps instructed us to remain at our posts until the water subsided enough for travel.

I have to stop writing now because the sun just came out, and I’ve never been so happy to see it.

Friday night it only drizzled for a few hours, meaning it might be possible to cross the river. Cautiously but desperately hopeful, I set out at 7AM on Sunday. In the road, I met my counterpart Neb, who offered to walk with me to the river and help me cross. The water had receded considerably since the previous day and already people were fighting the current to get across. In front of us, two young men helped an older woman get across. We traversed the river without a problem, and, after climbing up the bridge, I continued on alone.

 Prior to the storm, this rock wall had been preventing the river from spreading to the road. It was swept aside and now lies perpendicular to where it should be. 

The view from the middle of the river

Further along the road, I met up with another volunteer. Eventually, we reached a second river, which was more a series of rivulets than a single stream. Although the strap on my flip-flops broke in the course of crossing, we made it safely to the far shore.

At 10AM, after three hours of walking, we finally arrived in the bazaar. From then on, the journey went smoothly and we made it to Kathmandu the following day.

Now, a few days removed from the flooding, I realize how selfish it was for me to be more upset by my travel delay than by the damage in my community. At times, I feel like I have become more egocentric and entitled more since entering the Peace Corps, rather than less so.

All in all, the heavy rains wrought havoc on roads, fields, and homes throughout much of Nepal. A village just downhill from one volunteer’s home was completely swept away. Another had to cross more than a dozen landslides, over the course of six hours, to reach his bazaar. A third volunteer, while on a bus, spotted another bus that had gone off the cliff just twenty minutes ahead of him. Shortly after, a landslide occurred just a few hundred yards behind his bus, completely blocking off the road.

Read more about the flooding in Nepal:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/08/18/india-nepal-flooding/14249287/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/world/asia/scores-killed-in-flooding-in-nepal-and-india.html

Mistaken Identity

Upon meeting a Nepali for the first time, they inevitably ask me what in the world I’m doing here. It’s a legitimate question. Many days I myself am unsure of my exact role here, but like all Peace Corps volunteers I’ve prepared a brief spiel to explain my purpose (mine goes something like “I’m an American volunteer giving technical support in the sectors of health, sanitation, and agriculture”). With or without that statement, though, many strangers create their own theories to explain the presence of a young, white, Nepali-speaking man in a remote village in Southeast Asia. These common cases of mistaken identity have included:

·      A tourist – No surprise here, except that in the past eight months, no volunteer in my district has ever seen a western tourist in the area. We’re a little ways off the beaten trail for trekkers and adventurers, and Dang is famous for, well, not really anything. Beyond that, the fact that I’m speaking fairly fluent Nepali should be a pretty good indicator that I’m not just passing through.

·      A missionary – Nepalis often ask if I am Christian, and if Christianity is the only religion in the America (people almost always say America when they mean the US, and some even get confused if I say USA rather than America). In any case, I usually respond with no, almost every religion in the world is practiced in “America,” and I practice all of them (which is pretty contrary to the truth, since I’m in fact an atheist). Still, some people don’t accept that quaint non-answer; two weeks ago a local government representative insisted, despite my claims otherwise, I must be a Catholic. I used to tell people that I’m a humanist (in Nepali), which nearly always went over their heads. A friend experienced the strangest encounter with religion yet, an anecdote that requires some background. Walking along roads unfamiliar and not, we volunteers are often heckled by little children shouting cheerfully (even jeerfully) two English phrases that all Nepali children must learn in school: “What is your name?” and “Where are you going?” In a startling departure from these usual salutations, one little girl actually greeted a nearby volunteer, in English, “Do you follow Jesus Christ?” She did, but felt a little bit uncertain about diving into a dogmatic discussion with a small Hindu child.

·      A doctor – This happens pretty much whenever I’m at the health center. Typically it’s an elderly person who hands me a sheet of paper and begins prattling unintelligibly until I point them in the direction of a health worker. I suppose I should be flattered by their gross overestimation, because at this point I’m really only qualified enough to give advice on healthy eating and hand washing.

·      An agricultural expert – I admit, I try pretty hard to pull this one off. When it comes to making compost, concocting organic pesticides, designing a kitchen garden, building a greenhouse, or cultivating mushrooms, I can talk a big game. Outside that, I’m pretty useless. I’ve been approached for advice on rice planting (something that even American farmers typically know little about), vegetable diseases (so far, mostly a matter of too much moisture), and tropical pomiculture (fruit farming, it might surprise you, was not my major in college). My host family has created a maxim that “everything Ben plants grows,” so I’ve got a lot to live up to.

·      A spy – Usually I just laugh and hope they’re kidding. A spy. Now that’s ridiculous…

·      An English teacher – I’ve now taught a few English grammar classes at the local boarding school, and have come to the conclusion that the resident English teachers are better equipped to teach English than me. It’s one thing to know how to speak English, but it’s quite another to how to teach it. Sure, my conversational diction and syntax are highly superior to the other teachers’, but grammar book smarts is mediocre at best (wait, should that be “book smarts is” or “book smarts are?” See what I mean?). Did you know that there are seven categories of pronouns? Or that there are four kinds of proper nouns? Teaching English in a foreign language is an additional set of challenges. Last week, I had a lengthy debate with an English teacher over the grammatical correctness of a passive interrogative present continuous construction (in other words, whether asking a question like “Is the TV being watched?” is kosher). I won (it is), but it was quite an experience to argue about my own mother tongue (in Nepali) based on little more than intuition.

·      A student studying to be a Nepali language teacher back in the US – Some Nepalis fail to grasp that a) there are very few Nepali speakers in America and b) Nepali is the 63th most popular language in the world. But it’s feasible, I suppose.

·      A student studying Nepali health and agriculture – Interesting from an academic perspective, but, seeing as the US is a few generations beyond plowing with oxen and treating tuberculosis outbreaks, such knowledge would have limited practical applications back home.

·      A potential husband – Many people, even those who know me well, continue to ask me if I’m going to marry a Nepali. I haven’t yet received a formal proposal, but with the dozens of people out searching for my potential bride I fear that the day when I’ll have to tell a poor, hopeful girl “I don’t” is rapidly approaching.

·      A way to move to America – Linked loosely to the role above. Others have proposed that I hire them to work as a servant, sneak them in, or simply tell the US government that we’re friends and s/he should be allowed to enter the country with me. And since I can never tell if people are kidding or not, I either end up missing the joke or leading them on.

·      A way to meet an American girl to marry and move to America – A surprisingly large number of Nepali men I’ve met think they have a serious chance of bagging a female volunteer. In a future post, I’m really going to lay into the gender dynamics in rural Nepal, and then you’ll see just why that’s so improbable. It’s gotten so bad that when people ask about my lady friends, I also add “but they really don’t want to get married.”

·      A bag of money – My least favorite of all. While I own some pretty fancy American gadgets (laptop, iPhone, headlamp, Leatherman), I currently make about as much as a Nepali schoolteacher —just enough to get by. If I’m going to conduct a training, people inevitably expect that I’ll provide an attendance stipend and refreshments—something that I can’t afford. It’s not really their fault—this practice has become practically institutionalized by the government and NGOs, which often gives things away (free medicine, free mosquito nets, free toilets). Of course it’s great that people can obtain essential things for free, but that’s not the Peace Corps’ approach to development—a capacity building, community driven methodology that I support. Still, it’s what many people have been conditioned to expect. One day, a slightly fanatical woman led me to the village’s temples and requested the equivalent of $4,000 to help them renovate one and build a new one. Others expect handouts, like the many people who, every time we meet, ask me why I haven’t given them any food from my garden or brought them anything from the bazaar. Giving such gifts isn’t uncommon in Nepal, but to expect it is pretty rude. If I aid someone, I’m inevitably expected to help everyone else as well.

As the months have gone by, more and more community members have developed a pretty good understanding of my abilities and limitations. But that’s what makes it so frustrating when a neighbor or friend does cross the line, urging me to get married or to give something away. I guess it just takes a long time to get someone to appreciate your identity, especially working across cultural and language barriers.

Fish Out of Water

The other day I biked to a nearby village where our health center had planned an outreach clinic. Nobody showed up to get checked out, however, so my day was left totally free. As I was sitting in a shop talking with a few guys, the shop owner, Ramesh, asked me question that would literally translate to, “Do you want to go kill some fish?”

During my first days in Nepal, I made a few rules for myself, one of them being “never decline an invitation.” So far it’s proven fruitful in various ways. Like last night, when it led me to a neighbor’s house to eat seared pork and drink homemade rice wine to celebrate the completion of rice planting.

Killing fish. My past few weeks had been a bit uneventful, and I was feeling due for a little adventure. I gladly accepted the invitation.

A few minutes later, two of the neighbors, Debraj and Amar, arrived bearing slender bamboo poles with strings and hooks attached.

Debraj and his son

Ramesh checks his line

After completing a final sale, Ramesh left the store in the care of his wife and the four of us set out toward the Bawai River. The day was perfect: a few puffy clouds punctuated the clear blue sky and a light breeze blew through the glistening, freshly planted rice fields.

After about twenty minutes of walking, we stopped to dig for worms beneath a great bo tree. Hindus regard bo trees (pipal rukh in Nepali) as an incarnation of the god Vishnu, the preserver of the universe. Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha, achieved enlightenment sitting under such a tree. Under this particular bo tree, the soil had eroded so much—and all in the past sixty years, according to my companions—that one could walk amongst its roots. We borrowed a hoe from a neighbor and began sifting through the loamy soil in search of bait.

After bagging a bunch of worms, we moved on. As we approached the river, we met several boys crouched on the bank of a side channel who were trying to snag some dinner.

The river itself was about fifty feet wide, its rapidly moving water cloudy with the dirt swept away from recent rains. These would not be ideal conditions for fishing.

“We’re going to go over there,” said Ramesh, pointing to the far side. “You should take your pants off.”

We pulled off our pants and prepared to cross. Ramesh and Amar set out first, drifting slightly downstream as they fought against the current. In a minute, they had reached the other side. Debraj, who is a bit shorter than the rest of us, said he didn’t think he could cross. Instead, he’d remain behind to try his luck in the side channel. I, however, felt pretty confident I could do this. Clutching my pants, flip-flops, umbrella, and water bottle above my head, I descended into the muddy, swift, tepid water and began my traversal. Soon the water was up to my chest, pulling me downstream with considerable force. “Slowly, slowly,” urged Ramesh, which is the advice I always seem get when doing something difficult.

I arrived on the bank without a hitch, invigorated by the thrill of the task, and the three of us continued walking upstream. The path led us into a scrubby jungle and soon grew slippery, uneven, and difficult. Still holding me bundled belongings, I almost fell more than once. Finally, we arrived at a sandy embankment where the water was calmer. We unwound our lines, affixed our bait, and cast out.

Pants-less fishing is the way to go 

I had learned how to fish in Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes, sitting on a paddleboat with my grandfather while he told me about the important things in life. Like, well, fishing. But I had forgotten how boring it was—especially without food, drink, or conversation. We just stood around, putting out our lines and waiting. Amar spotted a snake in the water, which he dispatched with his bamboo rod. A man shepherding his water buffalo passed, warning that he’d seen a crocodile in that very spot a few days earlier. I began to feel uneasy, with the jungle to our back and the murky water to our front. After about a half hour of unsuccessful fishing, Ramesh announced that the spot wasn’t any good and we should try a spot back the way we came.

Returning through the jungle proved even more difficult than coming. I stepped in some muck that pulled off my flip-flops, which the current almost whisked away. My rod got stuck amidst the forest foliage. I lost my balance twice. When I had to climb up to a ledge, the root I was standing on collapsed, causing me to fall and cut my leg. Just when I thought I was in the clear, I slipped on some and fell flat on my back, caking my pants with mud. My friends chuckled at each mishap and lent me a hand whenever possible, asking me if I was upset and reassuring me that, at the very least, it was an experience.

We re-crossed the river without incident, meeting Debraj at the side channel. His luck had been marginally better than ours, having one small, eel-like fish to show for his efforts. While Amar and Ramesh took their places next to Debraj, I washed my pants in the stream. Having laid them out to dry on the grass, I picked up my pole and sat. And sat. And sat. Once, I felt a nibble, but when I pulled in my line the worm was gone and nothing had taken its place.

After two more hours of silent angling, we decided to call it quits. Debraj hadn’t caught anything after that first fish; Amar managed to bag four little wrigglers; Ramesh and I had nothing to show for our efforts, although at one point he did snag his hook on his shirt. He actually left early, going off to snack on okra in a nearby field.

We were done for the day, but I was in for one last misstep. As we walked along the narrow path leading through the rice fields, I lost my footing on a slippery patch and fell, landing on all fours in a soggy rice paddy. Now I was a mess. When we later met Ramesh on the road, he said, for the dozenth time that day, “It was an experience.”

And it was. Spontaneous excursions in Nepal always seem to be underwhelming in some ways and overwhelming in others. Like the photo below, you rarely get what you expect.