Time, Money, Place, and Culture

Before living in Nepal, I was well aware that most cultures have a more laid-back attitude than Americans with regard to time. In many countries, meetings commonly start a few hours late. Delays are to be expected and aren’t worth getting upset over. Plans or projects often get pushed back a few days. All this, and more, is true here. Nepali time is also less linear. People might say aasti (“the day before yesterday”) when referring to any day in recent memory. Bholi-parsi, which literally means “tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” may as well mean “some day.”

I acknowledge that I could afford to be a little more relaxed when it comes to time, but occasionally Nepalis’ extreme lack of urgency makes life difficult for me. Nepalis are almost never in a hurry—the common Nepali sayings ke garne? (“what to do?”) and jivan este chha (“life is such”) reflect their fatalistic attitude that many things (like time) are out of their hands and not worth worrying about. An example: on New Years Eve day, rather than taking the day off to meet friends in the bazaar, I went to the office in order to attend my health center’s management committee meeting. When just one person failed to show up within the fairly large timeframe considered “on time,” the meeting was cancelled. When he did arrive (a little over two hours late), the other staff sort of shrugged and said, “We’ll reschedule it bholi-parsi.” Another time, I needed to get to my district’s capital where I would be meeting my supervisor, the health officer in charge of the entire district, for the first time. I was going to take a taxi (picture fifteen people packed into a jeep with barely enough space to move your arms), but my neighbor told me the bus was coming “ahile” (literal translation: now) and I should wait. An hour and 45 minutes later, the bus finally showed up. It was only a few minutes late, arriving just slightly later than my neighbor expected. After an unhurried bus ride replete with brief stops, I arrived in the capital and booked it to the district health office, arriving half an hour late but a few minutes before the meeting actually started.

In addition to their flexibility, it sometimes seems that Nepalis’ temporal indifference results in a skewed perception of time. In other words, I often find that people have no idea how long things take. When I used ask about the length of the bus ride from my PST site to Dang, I got responses ranging from eight to twenty hours. That’s one hell of a spectrum—the reality is closer to fifteen hours. Last week, after missing the last bus from Tulsipur bazar, I decided to see how long it would take me to walk home. I’m a brisk walker, but even walking at my fastest the trip took me a solid two hours. Considering how slowly most Nepalis walk (I have to consciously slow down to match their pace), I’d guess that the journey takes three to four hours for your average Nepali. My host family’s estimate? Two hours for a woman and one hour for a young man like myself. When I got home, my next-door neighbor told me it only takes her an hour and a half. I was so tired from the trek that I almost called her a liar.

In contrast, though very generous, Nepalis have an odd obsession with money. Literally any time I spend money on anything—whether it’s a bus fare, hotel room, shirt, bag of fruit, or bar of soap—my family and friends ask me how much I paid. Whether this stems from their curiosity about an American’s consumerism or a concern that I’m getting ripped off, I’m not totally sure. Since I’ve also been repeatedly asked how much my iPhone, laptop, Kindle, headlamp, and electric toothbrush cost, and more than one person has asked how much my parents make, I tend to assume the former. If they go further and inquire about my living allowance, which I reveal is a little over US $3 a day after rent (not much even by Nepali standards), they usually drop the subject.

Myself aside, Nepalis are cash-conscious in a weird way. People haggle on virtually everything they buy, regardless of how wealthy they are or how much they expect to save. Eggs, fruits, and vegetables, which add valuable nutrition to Nepali daal bhaat, are bought sparingly because they’re seen as expensive (despite being cheaper than the cigarettes and chewing tobacco so constantly consumed here). People made a big fuss when they don’t get reimbursed for things. The Nepali government often pays people who attend trainings, a practice that has made it difficult for other Peace Corps Volunteers to recruit Nepalis who have nothing but knowledge to gain.

Given the poverty here, most Nepalis should be concerned with their finances. But for a people so fascinated with wealth and with so little of it, it’s a wonder many of them don’t work harder. I’ve found Nepalis to be pretty self-depreciative, and one of their most common comments is that their fellow countrymen are lazy. This is a half-truth that seems to reflect a hierarchical and patriarchal society where, for most, time is not money. In contrast, often the wealthiest people do the least work.

My new host family is a perfect case for examining time and money through the lens of status. We are Chetri (the second highest caste) and own a considerable amount of land. My older brother, the family’s only real breadwinner, is employed by a cable company but works only a few days a week (he is also chairman of both the boarding school and health center, although it’s not clear whether these roles demand much time). My sister and mother’s only work seem to be preparing tea and meals. Since they spend much of their time watching TV or just sitting around, we might describe them as lazy (as my friend’s host father did after visiting my house). We employ other people (mostly Tharus, an ethnic minority) to fetch water, gather wood, wash dishes, work the fields, and do much of the other work required to maintain a rural Nepali household. A young Tharu couple that has been building a new wall and buffalo pen, often works ten-hour days, while their six-year old daughter sits nearby watching their one-year old son. In exchange for their services, these laborers are paid (how much is unclear to me) and are often fed (after our family has finished eating). They also keep a portion of the crops they harvest from working our family’s land. If this sounds a bit like sharecropping, feudalism, or some other form of bonded labor, it is. Nepal is not far removed from slavery; until a few decades ago, many poor Tharus families indentured their children to Brahmin and Chetri households for life.

Further caste inequity can be seen in my office. In Nepal, office jobs are so highly sought after because they offer a comfortable salary and free time (some men, such as my brother from my first host family, even grow out a pinky nail as a sign of status connoting that they do no work with their hands). For these same reasons, working in the health center is a prized job. The staff of my primary health center is of mixed caste, but all four nurses, five health workers, and the lab technician are Brahmin or Chetri, whereas the assistants, peons, and sweepers are mostly Tharu and Dalit. Everyone gets along well and works a similar amount (which, many days, is very little), but the Brahmins and Chetri staff visibly hold higher rank and income than the Tharu and Dalits. Of course, their qualifications and duties are vastly different—the health workers and nurses have the difficult tasks of diagnosing and proscribing because they’re more knowledgeable about health. But does the upper staffs’ higher education stem from a biological or behavioral superiority, or a more structural inequity that perpetuates greater status and salary for those of higher caste?

Now reread the above section, and every time you see the word “caste” replace it with “socioeconomic status,” “Chetri” and “Brahmin” with “white,” “Dalit” with “black,” and “Tharu” with “Latino.” We don’t have castes in the U.S., but it’s well known that Latinos and African Americans are disadvantaged in many respects. When we discuss the caste system, Nepalis often ask me if blacks are the lowest caste in America. I usually just respond that America doesn’t have a caste system, but the real answer isn’t so simple. By no means does the rigidity and severity of American inequality compare to that of Nepal. Still, it’s important to remember that even in the land of opportunity, the way is easier for some.

As is true of many developing countries, the other issue holding Nepal back is the gender gap. To better understand community dynamics, volunteers are encouraged to record a typical daily schedule with different groups of people (i.e. men and women). The results are what you might expect, if not more extreme. Nepali women’s responsibilities include feeding animals, lighting fires, making tea, cooking, feeding their families, doing dishes, preparing their kids for school, doing laundry, sweeping, gathering wood, cutting grass, fetching water, tending the fields, and more; they have virtually no free time. In contrast, it is not uncommon for Nepal men to perform no chores whatsoever. After their morning meal, many go to the bazar to wander around, drink tea, play cards, and chat. Some men drink alcohol to excess, even midweek and midday, which significantly contributes to poverty and domestic abuse.

Though they run their households, Nepali women usually have little influence in financial or family matters. One of the men in my PST community bet a considerable sum of his wife’s own money that his candidate would win the election. He did win (which I suppose is lucky, but also reinforces his behavior), but if he had lost she would have been powerless to get the money back. There are exceptions, of course—men who play an active role in their families and limit their fraternizing when there’s work to be done—but the typical husband-wife dynamic is far from equitable.

Many Nepalis are aware of the caste and gender gaps. At a women’s group meeting, a Chetri woman proposed that the board ought to have a Dalit representative, which many women agreed with (unfortunately, no Dalit women were present at the meeting, so the point was moot). Men readily acknowledge how hard their mothers, sisters, and wives work, sometimes with a subtle smile that might suggest admiration, guilt, or conceit—it’s hard to say. And groups are working to bridge the gap. Government programs delivered through local women’s groups are encouraging women to stand up to their husbands for their basic financial and human rights. Victims of domestic violence have access to counseling services (at my health center, for instance). One of the NGOs in my community is dedicated to providing educational and career opportunities to disadvantaged groups, especially Tharus. Some things are changing for the better.

What’s lacking is a widespread awareness of the developmental constraints that gender and caste inequality have placed on the whole of Nepali society, especially in rural areas. There are a variety of reasons why this country remains so poor, but it seems to me that a considerable barrier is the ke garne-jivan este cha attitude. If all facets of life are simply accepted “as such,” there is little impetus for improvement. It’s not a coincidence that, at our counterpart conference, our government counterparts (whose jobs entail improving the state of agriculture and/or health in rural Nepal) deemed themselves way more activist than the rural Nepalis they serve. Like most Americans, they believe that problems are something that can be fixed. This is not the predominant, reflexive attitude of most Nepalis.

This leads to an important question for my work: is cultural change justified for the sake of development? That seems like a sticky question, to which our knee-jerk response is a resounding no! What is culture, though, but an aggregate of a community’s beliefs and behaviors? My work here, whether it’s diversifying vegetable production, building improved cookstoves, or giving nutrition training, requires that people change their behavior based on a belief that a new practice is better. Am I altering the culture by changing what people grow, how they cook, and what they eat? Completely. Like in so many cultures, food is an integral part of Nepali life: except for certain religious occasions, most rural Nepalis are unwilling to eat anything other than daal bhaat (or sometimes daal roti) morning and night. Nutritional change is so difficult because it is cultural. Even things like open defecation, the practice of relieving your bowels in broad daylight, have a cultural component: some Nepali women are reluctant to use latrines because they prefer going into the fields in small groups and defecating together. Latrines are clearly a more sanitary and aesthetic alternative, but given their busy schedules, Nepali women only have so much “free time” to socialize. Outlawing open defecation, as the government has rightly done, has eliminated something cultural.

The above may be a bit tangential, but my point is that often even the simplest forms of development require cultural change—this is why globalization is such a loaded term. If we think we can a country can absorb all the benefits of development while preserving its culture completely, we’re kidding ourselves. What we can do is be culturally sensitive by trying to limit our cultural impact whenever possible. Encouraging Nepalis to work across castes, supporting women’s empowerment—these are some obvious examples of cultural shifts necessary for desirable development.

In any case, this is what I think about in the hours I spend waiting for things: in the Nepali time equals money equation, place in society is a major confounding factor, and culture lies beneath it all. Until Nepal begins to connect, both in concept and in practice, hard work with economic advancement, it will continue to lag behind.

Christmas with Candy

Seven other volunteers and I spent Christmas in Nepalgunj at a sweet little hotel called Traveller’s Village. For the past several weeks, Candy, its loquacious and amusing owner, had been pulling together ingredients for a Christmas feast. She didn't disappoint. We dined on roast chicken, stuffing and gravy, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes, orange juice sweet potatoes, baked macaroni and cheese, warm bread and butter, and, to top it all off, hot apple pie a la mode. All throughout our eating and chatting, Candy shouted orders at her kitchen staff to refill the serving plates and at us to eat more off of ours. As expected, in the end we fell into contented food comas. If you ever happen to be in Nepalgunj and find yourself pining for some good American home cooking, Candy is your girl.

The other festivities included gift giving, spirits, singing, games, and relaxing, but all were far from conventional. We exchanged presents white elephant-style, with gifts including pickled mangos, freeze-dried scrambled eggs, and a baby doll. With no eggnog to be had for several thousand miles, we resorted to sweet wine and apple vodka-Sprite cocktails for Christmas cheer. A hilarious, five-hour game of Trivial Pursuit (1980s version) was sped to an early conclusion by just asking each other questions until one answered correctly. Holiday music was abundant, but for me the more memorable moments were the intense Eminem rap battles and passionate John Mayer sing-alongs. We ended the evening by kicking back and trading off giving massages. Even though there was no snow, stockings, tree, gingerbread, Santa, or any of the many other things that make up my typical Christmas back in the states, our celebration was one not soon to be forgotten.

The Lion King was on!

Plus, on the ride back to Dang, we saw an elephant!

A belated happy Hanukah, merry Christmas, and happy New Year to you all!

Sick

After three and a half months of feeling invincible to the smoke, dust, food, water, and other things that have plagued the health of other volunteers, my time for illness has come. It started with some chills and weakness, followed by a stomachache, extreme gas, and some runs. Normally I’d be a bit more self-conscious about sharing that information, but everybody here seems to know, so why shouldn’t you.

It’s hard to say exactly where it came from—it could have been the flies that hang around my toothbrush, or the strange preserved radish dish I keep getting served, or that every day I see countless sick patients in the health center, or that for the last few days I’d been handling manure right before eating breakfast with my hands (don’t worry, I wash them very well with soap). My Nepali family and friends have their own theories: that I got it from doing work in the chilly mornings; that I carried too heavy a load of laundry; or that I bathed in the stream.

Nepalis have an interesting understanding of health: certain foods and drinks are considered hot and should not be consumed when one is feeling very hot; the same goes for the cold. Often these beliefs coincide with biomedicine. My family members have encouraged me to drink hot water, not to eat spicy or sour foods, to keep warm, and to get lots of rest—all advice any American would agree with. Other times there’s a serious disconnect. It’s hard to explain to those with a different mindset of disease (let alone in another language) why tea and milk are not good for an upset stomach, or why taking medicine to stop diarrhea is not a recommended treatment.

Thankfully, all Peace Corps Volunteers are equipped with a well-stocked medical kit, so I’m free to self-medicate—but only much as my concerned family lets me. As a result, I’m currently treating this bug with pepto bismol, antacid, and a pouch of medicinal herbs tied to my stomach.

Food Security for Dummies

Having spoken with some others in my group, I consider myself very lucky to be as busy as I’ve been. While my counterpart (a staff nurse) has little time for the sort of community outreach my job is supposed to entail, I’ve become friendly with a number of people very active in the community, including teachers, community health workers, doctors, and farmers. When I don’t have anywhere else to go, I always have my office, where I can shadow the doctors, talk with patients, and just hang out. But there’s still a lot of down time.

One day I was bored and decided I should start my own kitchen garden. This sounds very quaint, but making your home garden the Peace Corps way takes something like a hundred (wo)man-hours of labor. Feel free to skip the next section if homestead food production doesn’t tickle your fancy.

How to Make Your Own Kitchen Garden (And Other Time-Consuming Projects for the Home)

First you need compost, which requires an entire cubic meter of green and dead leaves (note: leaf piles, and even rakes, are not a thing here), so this means going to the forest to gather ten sacks of leaves. Break all those leaves up into little pieces to aid in the decomposition process. Then you need twenty liters of manure—in contrast, this is rather easy to come by. After mixing up the green leaves, dead leaves, manure, and 40 liters of water and assembling the mess into a giant leaf cube, you can let it sit for a few weeks.

Now you need seeds! A 45-minute, very very cramped bus ride takes you to the nearest city. You find most of your seeds without a hitch, but can’t seem to locate potato seeds anywhere (note: you’ve been parading around like you know a lot about agriculture, but really you’re a health volunteer. You don’t yet know that potato seeds are really just potatoes that have sprouted). Eventually a young man takes pity on you and brings you to a potato salesman, who sells you five kilos of potatoes when really you only need two. You take another cramped bus back to your home.

You could plant those seeds now, but a lot of them won’t sprout or go well if you don’t develop them in a nursery first. You clear a small area and to fill your polybags with soil and compost, placing two seeds in each. Then you construct a mini green house out of bamboo and plastic tarp. Water daily and protect from the elements, and you’ll have some sprouts growing within a few weeks.

Back to the garden. After clearing a 5x5 meter area, you have to build berms (embankments) all around to slow the water and dig swales (channels) on all sides for rainwater collection, with holes at the corners. Ideally you should plant some perennials in the berms (to prevent erosion and provide medicinal or additional edible plants), but you haven’t been able to locate any aloe, sweet potato, or papaya saplings thus far. To keep the chickens out, you construct a sort of fence out of sticks.

Now that you’ve protected your garden, you can dig your bed for planting. After you dig your bed, dig it again—this time twice as deep, so your plants can really stretch their roots. Add your compost, throw in some ash and charcoal, and fill it up. Do all this again for the second and third beds.

Finally, you can plant. Instead of going in a line, you do this in a triangular manner (to maximize space) and, taking advantage of the mutualistic relationships between different certain crops, plant two or three crops per bed. For example: corn (a stalk and heavy feeder), potatoes (a root and a light feeder), and soybeans (a climber and a heavy giver). The nutritional and space requirements of these plants allow for close spacing without depleting the soil.

Congratulations! You’ve just completed the ultimate kitchen garden, with all the boons organic fertilizer, nursery development, and permaculture have to offer. You’re where I hope to be in a month.

Compost pile (a bit smaller than it should be, but I got lazy)

The beginnings of a permagarden

If the above reads like a complaint, I can assure you that I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t enjoying it, and if it weren’t useful. Initially, I had intended to wait a little while before developing a garden at home. A conversation with the agricultural veterinarian, however, accelerated my plans. “You want to teach people new agricultural techniques, like a kitchen garden?” he said (in Nepali). “Then you should build a kitchen garden at your house! And then everyone from the community will see your garden, and see your results, and will want you to teach them how to do the same thing in their homes.” I almost hugged him.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to be successful at this job. Our food security project has a clear framework and we’ve received all sorts of language, cultural, and technical training to aid us in promoting changes in behavior that will improve agriculture and health. But in practice, as an outsider who barely speaks the language, who knows next to nothing about the community, things are a lot hazier.

There are a lot of ways I could try to be of assistance. One is to look at the problems in the community, devise a solution, and convince people it will work. Sometimes this is tempting, and in certain cases it might even work, but this not what Peace Corps wants us doing.

Another is to meet people, question them about their problems, and ask how I can help. When I did this at a farmer meeting, the farmers told me that their biggest problem was soil quality, and that they really want to start using more organic fertilizer. So I’m doing a compost training with them next month, which I’m really excited and nervous about. But this method also has its downsides. Often, when I ask how I can help, people say I should teach them English. When I ask why they want to learn English, they often don’t have a real reason.

I've found that a third and often more fun way is to do things that get people’s attention and make them wonder. This is what the agrovet was getting at. As another example, my first week here I started “tea” composting. Essentially, this entails filling a drum with kitchen scraps and manure (with small holes for aeration and a larger one for drainage), adding some water, and waiting a few weeks as your concoction decomposes. Then, every other day you add a liter of water and collect the “tea”, which after being diluted makes a nutritious snack for the plants. My family had previously been discarding kitchen scraps around the garden, which was an eyesore and seemed like a waste. They thought it more than a little strange when I brought home a brand new drum and proceeded to poke a bunch of holes in it, but after I explained the method to the madness, they jumped on board. Now my host mom dumps all her kitchen scraps in the bin.

Word about my odd behavior has also been getting around the community. People sometimes come to my house just to look at the compost tea drum and uncompleted permagarden. Doing things that Nepalis find odd makes for both a great icebreaker and a teaching opportunity (e.g. Nepali man: what the heck are you doing with that thing? Me: it’s a composting technique that will improve the soil quality and increase agricultural production). Yeah, conversations like that are how I get my kicks these days.

The hardest question people ask me (and which I get on a daily basis) is what I’m doing here. I usually say that I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer working on a food security project, and that my job is to give agricultural and health technical assistance. That job description is so vague, but it is rightfully so. The truth is I really don’t know what I should be doing here, at least not yet. I don’t know if a hand-washing lesson will be redundant for these children; if a beekeeping training will be relevant to these farmers; if an HIV/AIDS program will be over the heads of these mothers.

So for the moment, I’m a trainee again, and I feel like a dummy. I’m learning countless new things every day: how to ride the public bus; in which season the mangoes ripen; who has an alcohol problem; who are the most respected members in the community; what services exist for victims of domestic violence; and, most importantly, which shop has the best tea.

What Next?

During our first three months at site, we’re encouraged to focus on integrating into the community and on beginning to identify potential problems, resources, and solutions—in other words, to gain an understanding of our community and our place in it. In practice, this means attending local meetings, visiting important community institutions and events, and just making our existence and intentions known.

We arrived at our sites on Friday afternoon, so Saturday was a day off. I spent the day studying Nepali, doing laundry, wandering around the community, and becoming better acquainted with my family. The next morning, after breakfast, I walked to the health center for my first day of work. Following a brief introduction to the staff, I mostly sat around studying Nepali. My only real “work” that day was to help determine if the center’s HIV/AIDS blood test was suitable for a first detection—a task for which I am definitely unqualified, but, being best able to understand the English directions, fell to me.

The health center, which is between a hospital and a health post in terms of size and services, serves a number of communities in the area. About twenty people are on staff, including medical assistants, nurses, a counselor, a midwife, a medical student, a lab technician, and a gardener. It offers a free clinic, outpatient services, an emergency department, family planning, HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, psychological assessment and counseling, prenatal and antenatal care, a pharmacy, and basic laboratory testing. But some things are definitely in need of improvement. The center doesn’t have enough storage space for its equipment. The autoclave and x-ray machine are currently broken, and there is no running water at the moment. They also want to expand their programming and outreach.

In the afternoon, I went with a medical assistant to the farmer’s market, not realizing that today was the inaugural ceremony. A large crowd gathered around a tent as the master of ceremonies called representatives from farmers groups, NGOs, and the local government up to sit near the guests of honor. When the medical assistant was called, he pulled me up with him. After a few speeches, tikaa, some songs and dance, and more speeches, the MC invited me to say a few words. I’d been warned that this sort of thing might happen from time to time, but on my first day? I was pretty unprepared, but seeing it as a great opportunity to tell the community of my presence, consented. Before around 500 people, as well as a news camera, I introduced myself and explained the sort of work I hope to do (all in Nepali). At least I hope that’s what I said—I immediately blacked the whole thing out. My coworkers assure me that it was pretty good for my first time.

The rest of my first week, I met with a WHO representative, the local agricultural veterinarian, a women’s counselor, the police, the postman, and several teachers; visited the hospital’s vegetable garden, an agricultural NGO, a farmer’s cooperative, the local public and boarding schools, and the police station; made two maps with the community; and began composting at my home. Still, I have considerably more free time than I did during training. Here’s what my new schedule looks like:

6:30  Wake up, eat roti with hot milk

6:30-10:00  Exercise, study Nepali, spend time with family, make plan for da

10:00-10:15  Eat breakfast and leave for office

10:30-3:00  Spend time in health center, visit someone or someone related to my work, or just wander around3:30-6:30  Play volleyball, write up notes from day, eat snacks and spend time with my family, call friends

6:30-6:45  Eat dinner

6:45-8:00  Watch Hindi soaps with the family, and when that gets old go to my room and read or watch a movie

10:00  Sleep

Planning on buying an internet modem soon so I can stay in touch a little better and keep this update. Til then, Namaste.

Dang! This Is Great

Dang (which is actually pronounced “dong”) lies toward the south of the second most western region of Nepal. In stark contrast to the endless hills of our PST site, my new community sits in a very flat valley between two mountain ranges. The climate is temperate at the moment, but it apparently gets very hot in the summer. I live with my host mother (her husband died from lung cancer) and an older, unmarried sister. I have four other sisters (two of whom live in America) and an older brother (whose family lives nearby). The health center’s ambulance driver lives immediately next door with his wife and two sons. There are also a number of young women who help with the housework. My new family was hesitant to talk to me the first few days, but after teaching each other some Nepali and English, watching TV, singing Nepali and English songs, and just joking around, they’re warming up to me.

I live in a large, high ceilinged room on the ground floor. The room has a large bed, shelves, wall hooks, and carpeting. The kitchen is in a separate building next to the house; my family cooks with gas (as opposed to the wood stove) and eats meals at a table (instead of on the floor). Several small gardens surround the house, as well as a number of rice/wheat paddies in the backyard. There are mango, guava, and lemon trees abounding, with gourd and pumpkin vines weaving their way through their branches. Our family has a number of goats, chickens, cows, and water buffalo, as well as a kitten. We fetch our water from a well in the backyard, or from a stream a mere stone’s throw away. In terms of amenities, it’s definitely an upgrade from my last home.

The location of my new house couldn’t be better. Just down the road is a large community of Tharus, a disadvantaged ethnic group with it’s own distinct language and culture. Two schools (one private, one public) are within a half hour on foot. The primary health center is just a five-minute walk from my home (many other volunteers are several kilometers from their offices). There are a number of small shops a short distance away, and just beyond the health center is a farmer’s market (haatbazaar). A half hour bus ride brings me to Tulsipur, the largest city in Dang.

Mahj-Gone

Our departure from Mahjgaun, where we lived, learned, and loved for nearly three months, was a sad moment for all. On our final afternoon, our cluster went for tea and snacks at each of our houses. My host mother had left for her maiti (parents’ house) that morning, and we were both in tears as she got in the bus. My sister and grandmother were the next victims, crying the next morning as they gave me tikaa and maalaas (garlands). Like many cultures, gifts are an important expression of gratitude in Nepal. I had given my family a new kettle, an herbal tea mix, a photo album, and handwarmers from the states. My mother gave me a scarf (she always worries about me being cold), and my sister gave me her necklace. My host father, who had stayed up the entire previous night sitting vigil in honor of his dead father, choked back tears as he led me up the hill, making me promise that I would call and come again. My language teacher’s family also gave me maalaa and a gift: a leather-bound journal with a ridiculous gel pen. All three of them, as well as my language teacher, wept as our cluster headed up the road to Chautara. For full disclosure, I should mention that I was crying for all these goodbyes.

It took us two days to get to Nepalgunj—thankfully, we had a very nice bus with plenty of legroom. The third biggest city in Nepal, Nepalgunj lies just a few kilometers from the Indian border. The Lonely Planet guidebook describes it as a “gritty border town” that “many travelers consider a necessary evil on the way to better things.” While our first impressions were mixed, Nepal 200 is now pretty content with Nepal-“grunge” being our meet-up spot.

The next morning we met our counterparts, all of whom are government employees working in either the agriculture or health sector. Each volunteer lives in his/her own Village Development Community (VDC), which is comparable to a small county. For example, I live in the district of Dang (out of 75 districts in Nepal), in the VDC of Shreegaun (out of 39 VDCs in Dang), and in ward 2 (of 9 wards in Shreegaun). My counterpart was supposed to be a medical officer, but the primary health center in Shreegaun currently lacks a doctor, so I’m working with the staff nurse for the now.

Many of the counterpart conference’s sessions were review for us, but must have been very useful for our counterparts, who previously knew little about Peace Corps, our project’s framework, or working with American grassroots organizers. The conference spanned two full days from 8-5, and definitely wore on everyone’s patience. One volunteer’s counterpart up and left during the second day—the volunteer was quickly reassigned to another counterpart in another VDC.

The evening of the second day, a few of us decided to go to Candy’s, a favorite hotel and restaurant for expats and development workers. I hopped on a rickshaw with two others and we wound our way through the hectic streets of Nepalgunj. On the way we passed a rickshaw carrying three Nepali transvestites. Traveling pretty far into the outskirts of the city, we finally spotted a dimly lit sign for the restaurant. Our group took up most of the tables in the quaint upstairs room. After a long wait, we dined on salad, bacon cheeseburgers, French fries, real ketchup, and carrot cake—the first truly American food we’d had in three months. Afterwards, we met Candy herself. A Minnesotan expat who had married a Nepali, she’s lived in Nepal for almost three decades. Given her delicious food and Midwestern hospitality, we’re set on spending Christmas there.

At 6:30 the next morning, we said our sleepy and teary goodbyes to one another. Many of us have become very close friends over the past three months, some seeing each other every day in our clusters. The next time Nepal 200 will be together as a group is at our In-Service Training in mid-February. Then three other volunteers and I loaded all our belongings onto a public bus and set out for our new home, Dang, with our counterparts.