Breaking speed

Yesterday I walked up a path I've walked so many times to my friends' place in a village area outside of Hetauda. He's built a home and there are 12 girls living there - who otherwise would have been at risk of being trafficked to India.

Instead, they are living and working together, studying, planting rice and cooking, creating and maintaining a beautiful, peaceful home. I so enjoy visiting them whenever I have the opportunity.

After being a guest in a country where it is considered an honor both to be a guest, as well as to provide comforts to your guest, I have to say that it's a nice change of pace to visit a home where they're willing to put me straight to work.

The girls were drying rice in the day sun, rice that had just been harvested from the field. We pulled up our pant legs, sifting huge piles of rice with our feet. Spreading it into thin layers on the ground. It was easy work, physical, tangible, satisfying, joyful.

They then put me to work weeding the vegetable garden. My hands in the dirt, I looked at the young women around me. Everyone pitching in. Silence balanced with laughter. Broken occasionally by song. We would work until we needed a break. Then sit on the wall, entertaining those crouched down. Until we returned to the dirt.

Our movements slow...this is not work that can be sped through. But with so many people, it goes quickly. And easily.

There are so many from the West in Nepal who are trying to change the speed here. Trying to impose their ways of doing things. Trying to make people think in a different way. Trying to propose that their development is "the" development.

But just as much as speed, humans need stillness and slowness. Just as much as the individual, we need the group. Just as much as noise, we need silence. Without one, how can we have the other?

Without the East, how can we have the West?

And why do we try so desperately to change the other....to be convinced that we are right?

Maybe there is a place for work that isn't organized. Where people come and go as they are able. And break out into song. Work that is intentional and human...and not "outcome" oriented. But that is present to the world around.

Maybe we need to still be walking through the rice every once in a while. Feeling the grains stick to our feet. Watching the husks dry in the sun. Slowly, slowly...taking in what is happening.

Fall

A few days ago I celebrated my two year anniversary in Nepal. Unfortunately, in bed, as I was laid out with a fever. But I was internally celebrating, nevertheless.

It was hard for me to imagine being in Nepal for two years when I first arrived. But here I am, in certain ways, quite a changed person. No matter what other reasons might exist, I guess this is partially why we really come if we are honest with ourselves.

I am enjoying feeling at home in a country that at one point felt so foreign.

I am enjoying switching easily in conversations between Nepali and English.

I am enjoying knowing finally what work it is here that brings me genuine joy.

I continue to enjoy simple pleasures: like Nepali tea and full conversations with no words; dancing and joke telling as part of trainings; knowing my neighbours and the fact that my corner shop carries everything really necessary.

And I am enjoying knowing that I am on my last stretch of time here. Time which I am really grateful for.

For me life in Nepal has a level of intensity to it, as well as a circularity and fluidity. I am starting to wonder what it will be like to go back to things that feel normal, predictable, and linear. I imagine that I will find this alternatively hard and comforting.

Here the weather is crisp. Sunny. The mountains stretching along the horizon. On and on and on. Dust is filling the air. More and more every day. And outside of the city the fields have now been cleared of all the rice. Everyone is getting ready for the cold that is starting to set in.

Picture above: evening of dancing at our young professional women's workshop.

Tihar

Tihar is my favorite holiday in Nepal. It's all about singing, dancing, community and neighbors, kids, families, and having fun. It's about lighting candles, inviting prosperity into our lives, honoring animals and renewing relationships.

I headed up briefly to the mountains during Tihar and got to join in on a rockin' village dance party high up in the now cooooold mountain foothills. The views of the peaks this time of year are breathtaking.

I came back to town with 2 nasty blisters, a cold, and a fresh and clear mind. Plus this photo.

The boy above, when he saw himself, got the hugest grin on his face. He said, "I look like an eagle"! Indeed.