Another side of Nepal

For the last couple of days I have been preparing myself (mostly mentally – travel + heat) for a trip to Dang, a region in Nepal very close to the Indian border. Dang is a day’s bus ride away from where I’m at and my organization has an office there. I hear it is beautiful there.

I was planning to spend a few days getting to know the staff, the office, and the programs. I’ve been feeling excited about going somewhere new again, and learning more about COSAN’s work with rural women in this area.

I received word today that my trip is cancelled, however – indefinitely for the moment – because of a banda (strike) that is planned for May 1st. It could be a relatively peaceful day long strike. Or it could be three weeks. We’ve been advised to stock up on food, just in case.

It’s a tenuous and critical time in Nepal politics right now. For folks who don’t know, Nepal was a Hindu kingdom for thousands and thousands of years and is only recently has adopted a secular government. The first free elections in Nepal were held in May of 1991, and there have been struggles for power and stability since. One of the main contenders for power over time has been the Maoist party, which currently holds seats within the parliament, but is also threatening a general governmental take-over.

The current government is under the wire right now to meet a deadline for the creation of Nepal’s constitution. The thinking is that if this constitution is drafted, there is a chance for real longer-term peace and some stability in Nepal. Or at least movement in that direction. But while anything could happen (and I’ve seen incredible things happen last minute here Nepal), the general sentiment seems to be that people believe the government won’t meet this deadline. And if they don’t, it’s hard to know what will happen.

I hear snippets of opinions and thoughts here and there about the political situation, but generally shy away from talking anything remotely political. For two reasons. One, VSO discourages (to put it lightly) volunteers from talking politics with anyone (for several good reasons). Second, I don’t have a firm grasp on the historical and current political situation here. Who is who, what is what. I feel like it is wise for me to generally just be quiet and watch how things unfold, gathering information how I can from the papers, the internet, and every once-in-awhile, from a friend who works for the UN. They are also careful what they share, though, of course.

It is hard for me to convey what it is like to live in a country where there are such frequent strikes, in combination with a general threat of strike at any time. Ironically, a strike day often means a day of quiet and peace. At least for me. Banda directly translates to closed. Everything just shuts down. There is absolutely no travel on roads allowed. Nobody, nowhere. Unless you are an ambulance. All stores and shops are closed. No restaurants. No shopping for food. The streets are totally quiet. Everyone stays home. Unless you can walk to work or bicycle to work, and if that is the case, you can go to work. Obviously, it’s hard on businesses.

While I generally envision strikes as peaceful days, here and there I encounter whiffs of violence. Some of my friends were in a café one day and were unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time, for instance. They got quite a scare when all the windows were smashed in by a group of young men with baseball bats. But were all luckily just fine – if not a bit shook up afterwards.

And when Brian and I were traveling back from our trekking trip to Kathmandu we watched the Energy Minister (so we were told) pass by on the road. Followed by a group of Maoists (not a homogenous group, by the way, a point I should make right here) running, waving black flags, and throwing rocks at the vehicle. Followed very closely by the police chasing right behind them. It was quite a sight.

I should mention at this point, however, that the only way to be unsafe during a strike is to a) enter into a big, angry crowd, b) to drive your car on the roads (it will likely get set on fire) or c) to have your business open when it’s supposed to be shut.

Since I walk and bike everywhere, live in a town that is known for being peaceful and safe, and don’t ever see angry crowds (let alone walk into them), strikes for me (and most) are just inconvenience.

There’s a strike somewhere, for something, almost every day in Nepal. Not always the Maoists, but often. I read a statistic that – out of 365 days last year – there were something like 357 days of strikes in 2009. While I can’t remember the exact number, I really am not exaggerating. While many of the strikes don’t affect the whole population (currently, for instance, all private schools in the area are shut by the Maoists for at least several days, because of disagreements about tuition raises), there are plenty of days when there are country- wide strikes.

People are nervous right now. It’s not am open topic of conversation in the Nepali circles I run in, but I can feel the nervousness. I can feel the anticipation of not knowing what is going to happen as the government approaches it’s big deadline. And I can feel that most people are worried about how it will go.

In the coming days I will prepare for a longer strike, just in case it happens. But, as I have experienced several times already, the strike could just as easily be short and quick, or be called off all together (even that morning). We’ll see. I, personally, am hoping for a simple, one day strike. That way, I can still travel to Dang next week, just in time to make it there before the rainy season starts…

Symbols of Buddhism in Langtang Valley, Nepal

From top to bottom:

1) Rocks piled carefully one upon the other.
2) Writing in a stone: each stone in sometimes small, sometimes long walls had intricately carved writings. Om Mane Padme Hum was most common. Sometimes there were circles that are representative of the life cycle. Sometimes a buddha figure. One walks around these walls clockwise - to the left as you walking up or down the mountain.
3) Large view of wall with stones
4) Prayer wheel within a small water hut that generates a small amount of electricity, I believe.
5) Water hut
6) Burial ground of the people from this region. People are buried beneath piles of stones.
7) Prayer flag pole. Prayer flags were everywhere. And often on hillsides that were far above any place I could imagine getting to myself.
8) Chorten above the monastery. We only saw two monasteries on our trip, but many chortens - a place for prayer and reflection.
9) Chorten along the way - with mountains in the background.
10) Tantric buddhism. Found in a beautiful stone altar to the side of the path on our first day of trekking just above the river.

At 4,600 meters

Right now I am sitting in my kitchen in Hetauda. Which is only at 500 meters. There is thunder and lightning outside. And it isn't raining, but the air is so thick that - even though it's only about 70 degrees outside - I have to keep my shawl close by so that I can wipe the sweat off my forehead every few minutes.

At some point this evening it will rain, and even though just for a bit, it will come fast and furious. It is like the land and sky here is preparing for the big rains to come. Slowly working up to the monsoon. The long shawls that belong to the kurtas here seem superfluous in the heat, until I realized how useful they are when I am sweating (and I'm certainly not the only one).

It is the 5th night in a week we've had thunder storms. I absolutely love thunder storms. I have this vivid memory of first moving to Eugene for graduate school and being new, and alone, in my apartment. One of the first nights I was there I was visited by a huge thunder storm. I sat in the living room working on an art project for hours, just watching the sky, thinking that it seems appropriate that thunder and lightning accompany big change.

Last night I had dinner with my Hetauda Nepali family, feeling frustrated again that my conversations are inhibited how much Nepali I know. So, after signing myself up for language classes today, I'm celebrating with Omar Faruk Tekbelek, some of my favorite music from home, and pancakes. My parents used to bake pancakes on our heated wood stove when I was little. They are comfort to me tonight.

I have several interesting pictures from my trip to Langtang Valley, so I figure that I'll post them a few at a time with some stories.

At first, I considered starting at the beginning. But in a way, the top is the beginning. The destination the start of the trip.

I made it up to 4,600 meters (15,200 feet), which, for me, is both higher than I've ever been before in my life, as well as higher than I ever imagined I'd make it to - even two weeks ago.

Our trek followed the Langtang river along a valley - and up, and up. We started around 1,400 meters with forest, rhododendrons, and monkeys. Ended up - well - here. At an ancient and very-much-in-use monastery just a few miles from the Tibet border. The monestary sits surrounded by rocks, horses, yaks, and peaks on all sides. Brian and I made it up one peak on our fourth day of the trek. The picture with the mountains and the river (at the very bottom) was taken along the way up just after 5:00 in the morning. Early starts are good, as the wind picks up something fierce in the afternoons.

Entering the monastery felt like entering into a swirling circle of prayers, hopes, dreams, focus, intention, anger followed by release, frustration followed by peace. Candles to carry what was most important to the visitor as she placed what was most precious or weighing in her mind. And paintings that felt so sacred there was no way I even dared to ask if it was okay to take pictures. They were intricate, explicit, light and dark, vibrant, of this world and other worlds, complex. The stones that made up the building protected the space by the harsh winds up so high.

Being in this place I felt like I was somewhere truly different, foreign. As in a place that I have never, ever been before and could have never imagined or dreamed up no matter how I could have tried. Maybe it was the flocks of birds that were so close to us. Or the circles of stones - either to shelter a small crop from wind and animals, or as a base for a house that will be inhabited at a later time this year. I think it was the stones that make up the mountain, the cold from the wind that isn't forgiving, the difficulty of taking in breath. The stones, they have a different feel, they house old stories. Stories I've never heard before.

It seemed that - for me - I was welcome here in this place for 2 days only. After visiting the peak and the monastery I was happy to move back down. Back to trees, to water, to full breaths. Brian got altitude sickness pretty bad. He threw up four times our second night at the top after going to the peak. I didn't feel great myself, but was okay.

What an amazing experience to do something I never imagine I could have. To put one foot in front of the other, moving towards the altar at the top of the mountain, moving quicker than I thought I could have, with more determination than I thought I had, and with more ease than I had anticipated.

Funny that it's sometimes the things I think will be easy that can be the hardest. And the things I think will be hardest or impossible that come to me with ease when I least expect it.

In the time it took me to write this, the rains did, indeed, come. And I have a light show outside since the electricity has also gone out. And so I transport myself mentally back down to this elevation, breathing in the warm air, the relief of the rain finally giving in after it has been building all day...

Back in Hetauda

Arrived back in Hetauda a few days ago after an amazing trek and some work in Kathmandu at my organization's central office.

It is taking me some time to go through the pictures from Langtang (and to find an internet connection that can upload them), so those pictures to come.

In the meantime, a few pictures from Hetauda. The shopping market (I buy everything on the street and in tiny shops), my dhera (apartment - second floor of the building), a buddhist monastery that I found close to my house (second picture is with Brian and my Hetauda friend, Bikram, who is an amazing artist), and my office (COSAN).

Brian has survived the heat, the busy main street of Hetauda, a dose of getting sick, and the experience of shopping here. It helps that my apartment is large and beautiful- a good place to rest after a day of listening to a foreign language and having everyone in town stare at you. He is off to Kathmandu this morning for his climb up a 6,000 meter peak (Island Peak) near the Everest region. Whew!

2 weeks in short and sometimes fragmented sentences

above: Milk Baba. Survived 16 years (If I remember right) on milk and water and air alone.

leaving tomorrow AM with a guide and a porter for 8 days of trekking in the Nepal mountains.

tomorrow's bus ride is 9 hours, up steep hills, corners, and on dusty roads.

i will go trekking for the first time, testing my own personal limits of comfort in many ways.

but not to get ahead of myself...

have a new dhera (apartment).

my mom says it looks like our apartment in greece. and i think she is right, especially the color is a greek blue. of people who live close to the water.

i can go on the rooftop to dry my laundry now. this bring more joy than i would have thought.

asked the family who lives below me to water the 19 plants that will keep me company while i'm here in kathmandu and trekking.

i don't know that i should have asked them to do a favor as i am just getting to know them.

but couldn't bear the thought of the plants dying while i was away. it is hot in hetauda right now. very hot.

and dusty.

we had a freak hail storm the other evening.

a ball of hail as large as a penny hit me on the head. it didn't hurt for too long, though.

the rain and thunder were so welcome. transformed. cleansed. gave me just the tiniest window of insight into what it might be like when the big rains come and i have to roll up my pants and wade through water to my calves to get to work.

it was harder to say goodbye to the family i was staying with than i thought. because i have been looking forward to my own place and some independence for so long.

no more art afternoons with nesa, though. and no more meals with a family.

food should always - whenever possible - be shared with others.

brian arrived in kathmandu two days ago. it is fun for me to share my world with an old, good, close friend.

it is good for me to see things anew again through his eyes.

the seemingly apocalyptic chaos of this city until you surrender to a new sense of order and understanding.

the blissful feeling of being in a place where the spiritual is alive, real, and part of everyday life.

song. nepali head nods. chiyaa. the satisfaction of a good negotiation. the horror of the trash in the river. and the realization that people live in the trash by the river. the beautiful, hanging cedar trees. the bright clothes that the women wear. the lack of any show of anger.

i am 34 now.

and, last, but not least, wow, the gratitude i have for being around other VSO volunteers when i have the opportunity. a shared understanding of what it is to make this place a home. to be both insider and outsider. to know that we will return to our homes new people, transformed by something we have seen and experienced.

i love the opportunity over and over again to be at a table with people fighting for justice, equality, what is healing. maybe also needing a chance to start a few things new, maybe needing to learn and grow and understand. the hunger for a bit more freedom...

pictures from langtang valley when i return.