....to India

I am thinking of my grandmother today as I prepare to travel to the south of India to meet my sister and my mother. We will meet in Kerala, near the water. This is where my sister spends her time in the Ashram. She has been there for a long time now.

I am thinking of Baba Dear especially today maybe, because the other day as I was walking in Asan – the shopping area where all the locals go in Kathmandu – and I noticed the fabrics, textures, and colors that would have also called to my grandmother. Even though she won’t paint any of them, I took pictures for her anyways.

Maybe, because the Christmas holiday is coming soon. The time when we would usually sit around and tell stories, comment on the abundance we are so lucky to have, the sustenance and joy of home cooked holiday food. And when we’d all try out a new game together. Baba Dear was always up for a good game.

Maybe, because I will be with my mother and sister together for the first time in almost two years. We, a continuation of my grandmother. A continuation of her story.

Maybe, because just before my sister left back to India for good, my grandmother’s health was getting worse and worse. And then she died a few months after that. I remember acutely the pain of one loss followed by the other.

This journey to visit my sister is like going home. My sister is home, and my mother is home. We plan to sing Christmas Carols to children in Kerala on Christmas evening. But, like Nepal, anything is possible in India.

It feels freeing to be away from the craziness of TV commercials, fake Santas, piped-in music, the pressures of too many parties and sweets.

And traveling towards remembering what I love most about Christmas and family: honoring the abundance that we have in our lives with simple gestures and intangible gifts. Enjoying stories, games, and bright colors that stand out from the darkness. Exploring the textures of life that are complex, soft, strong, intertwining, moving away, and then coming back together again.

From jungle to mountains and back

It's been a couple months of working and traveling for me...across the country, up and down the county, visiting tiny villages and the crazy, big city of Kathmandu.

I am back at home in Hetauda now for a few days before embarking on a new, but completely different journey. I'll be meeting up with my sister and mother in Kerala, India for Christmas. More on that later.

Right now I am happy to be feeling better after about 6 weeks of being sick. I got what travelers and tourists normally get in Nepal...bacteria attack on my body from something in the water, the food.

Turns out that when you have one of these bacteria things, you are miserable for a few days. Then you start to feel better again (and think, yeah!, I don't have to go to the doctor and take terrible antibiotics!). But, you only feel better for a day or so, and then it cycles back through again.

Okay - so maybe this wouldn't be your experience. But was mine. When I got sick again for what seemed the 10th time and I was near the doctor in KTM, I decided it was time to finally give in. Turns out that taking the 2 different types of antibiotics they gave me was a very wise decision. I am starting to feel good again and think this time it will last.

Above are pictures from the latest training our Leadership team facilitated at Nagarkot. We had folks from organizations working for social change withing the dalit, 3rd gender, people with disability, people living with HIV/AIDS communities.... It was a good group.

The Himalayan peaks were always the main entertainment during our tea breaks. We'd all go out to the porch in the cold and just stare and sigh collectively.

Ah....

Why I love training in Nepal

No training here is complete - or too successful - without lots of breaks for entertainment. This translates to: singing, dancing, poems and/or jokes.

At the beginning of a training only the more outgoing participants tend to volunteer for entertainment (for obvious reasons). By the end of a training, however, usually just about anyone will get up and present something. And at the very end, a good training often feels like a party. Singing, dancing, laughing.

People here know how to have a good time. They know that enjoying and celebrating is part of the work.

This short video was filmed on my recent trip to far Western Nepal, Dang. I led up a team of us who delivered training on "Gender, Leadership, and Micro Finance".
Most of the folks in the training were from the Tharu community, an indigenous group to Nepal. So, there were times when we did double translation. English to Nepali. Nepali to Tharu. Always an opportunity to think creatively here about how to make things really work in development work.

Enjoy...

Traditional meets Modern

Above: Lalita (on cell phone) and Lissim, who come from a small village in South Western Nepal.

In Nepal, especially, I constantly witness amazing intersections between traditional and the modern.

Just 10 years ago the goats and chickens in Lissim's village would be attacked regularly by tigers. Now, that particular threat is less probably due to influx of population in the area, as well as poaching. But coming into this village, in many ways (though not needing to be worried about the tigers), I feel like I could have stepped back hundreds of years earlier and things would have otherwise looked just the same way.

Lissim's house was actually built only 20 years ago, with wood, straw, mud, and cow dung. The hand washed laundry is hung to dry on a beautiful, hanging wooden pole. She cooks as her family has always - over a fire in the kitchen on the first floor.
A bit worried about the health risks associated with cooking this way (the smoke inhaled is hard on the lungs) and aware of the work involved with gathering firewood for every fire, I asked if they ever thought of having a gas stoves.

No, she replied. The rice cooked over fire is sweet. Rice cooked over anything else isn't as good.

Her "refrigerator" is a ceramic bowl, a vessel for the milk that comes from the cow she milks every morning. Rice is sifted by a hand-cranked fan that, when cranked hard enough, can separate the rice from it's hull.

Absolutely everything on her piece of land and in her house is organic, natural. Except for a very few items within the house that are immaculately taken care of. A comb, one small mirror, a picture on the wall of she and her brother (who is working in Dubai), and a computer. She proudly shows me video after video of traditional Tharu dances on her computer. I'm not sure that she uses the computer for much else. But her cousin seems quite adept on the computer and is often surfing the net.

While Lissim's house and surroundings are absolutely beautiful, life in the village is difficult. She works hard all day, every day, taking care of all the animals, cooking, planting rice and cultivating. And there is a severe lack of water in this village, which presents not only daily living task challenges, but also health risks.

So some, who have the opportunity (or through necessity), have picked up and moved to towns like where I live, Hetauda, which aren't quite city and aren't quite village, but somewhere in between.

My neighbors, who moved here recently still cook outside every morning and evening on an oven that they have built from mud as they did in their village. But now live in a concrete house with electricity and running water.

I was leaving home the other day to come to work and noticed that they had a new puppy. A black and white dog who was drinking water at the time. I had to fight the urge to go and play with the puppy since I was already late to work. For future reference, however, I wanted to know what the puppy's name was, so I asked.

The answer? Facebook.