Bartering for wool

I woke up this morning wondering how to best spend my second-to-last Saturday in Kathmandu. At least as part of my official language and culture training period. I will, of course, be back to Kathmandu many, many times over the next couple of years for work.

I walked around today appreciating how familiar I’ve become with the city over the last couple of months- at least on a surface level. I had to do all of my shopping today as there might be a strike tomorrow. And you never know how long they’ll last. So I headed out from the guest house with my shopping list: snacks and Masala mix from the corner market, bread from the bakery, a glue stick from one of the small stationary shops that are scattered around town, cheese and yogurt from the one dairy in Kathmandu I’ve seen, and bananas from a street vendors who sells fruit from his bike that he walks around street to street. My shopping ended with some bartering for a pashmina shawl for my mother, a gift for her 60^th birthday that happened last month.

It took me several days to gather the energy and headspace for bartering. Something that definitely doesn’t come naturally to me, but that I hope becomes more comfortable with time. In the right mood, it’s actually quite a lot of fun, and a fabulous way to connect on a personal level with someone you’re buying something from. A complex system it is here, bartering and shopping.

I realized as I walked to the area of town that sells shawls that I don’t even take notice of the severed pigs heads that caught me quite by surprise the first day I came here. But I did notice a group of hooves displayed on a table side right next to my path. I wondered for a just a second if they were also from pigs, but have learned to let certain things come in and out of my consciousness more quickly these days.

Today I have walked by a woman washing her friends’ hair on the sidewalk – this is Saturday, the day of going to the temple and bathing, men shining their shoes and playing chess on the side of the street, countless businessmen walking around selling their wares, sheep being brought to the butcher just a couple doors down from where I’m staying, a woman roasting corn at the corner of a building, and a group of youth staying warm by a pile of burning trash.

I have become adept at navigating the spit on the road (and can almost always anticipate when someone is about to spit near me now so I jump away as quickly as possible), as well as the dried flowers and red vermillion powder that is set outside doorsteps every 200 meters or so as an offering to the gods. If you didn’t know what it was an offering you would assume someone has just littered on the road and wouldn’t guess it an act of sacredness and something to be respectfully avoided.

I’ve also have learned to remember the goats in the village as I walk down the sidewalks with holes two feet wide and many more feet deep, one after the other: their playfulness and amazing agility. It takes quite a lot of nimbleness to walk with any speed and confidence here.

And I’ve learned that if you hear honking – doesn’t matter if it’s a car or a motorbike or a Tuk Tuk – you have to get out of the way as quickly as possible. There is no such thing as pedestrians having the right of way here like they do in Portland. I have had a few near misses, motorbikes brushing me as they whizz past. Which is commonplace here. People somehow miss each other despite being so close. Everything seems closer here than at home. People stand close to you. They look right in our eyes and ask you anything they like. They tap the car passing by to let the car know they are standing right next to it. Shops and streets are narrow and right next to one another. Animals stand right next to you. So far – I’ve only experienced quite friendly and calm animals. Someone in a shop will finish a conversation with their neighbor and friend before they will serve you. People are helped one by one, informally, personally. Even in the big city. If our group orders 5 omelets at our guesthouse they will cook one omelet at a time. Partially, because their pan and set-up only allows one omelet to be cooked at a time, I imagine. But I also guess that it doesn’t cross their minds to do it any other way. There is something beautiful about this: an attention to process and each individual. Even if I’m the fifth person I have to practice my patience.

When I leave for Hetauda in a week I won’t miss now hard it is to ever speak a word of Nepali here in Kathmandu – everyone speaks to me in English whether I like it or not. And I will not miss the pollution that has started to settle in my lungs. But I imagine that – despite this or in spite of these things- I will still be excited every time I come back to Kathmandu. I’ve started to feel at home here. It’s so satisfying to know where the good places to get food are, where to warm up when there is no electricity or heat at the guest house, and where to buy a good shawl. Speaking of which, I found a wonderful man to buy them from if you ever come here…. There is something so satisfying to me about knowing a city. And as I feel this level of comfort here finally, I get myself prepared to move to a new town and to start the process over again.