Mero Jiwan Nepal Ma

2009-06-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Here's some pictures from the past few weeks:

Alan received a king's welcome in my village.

Ruins at the birth place of the Buddha dating back to the 3rd century BC.
Me and Silpa at one of the newer monasteries on the grounds of Lumbini (Buddha's birthplace)
enjoying the view of Pokhara from the World Peace Pagoda.

It does.

View of a very big mountain from Ghandruk

I can't believe it, but I will be home in about three weeks. My flight leaves July 7. Today I am off to a monastery where I will be cleaning up after some very young monks (ages 5-15) for the next few weeks. This could very well be my last update.

I've decided to abandon my cell phone when I get home, but after July 9 I can be contacted at my parent's house (423-886-2328) until I go to college mid-August, and I am always available over email (ewray123@gmail.com).

I am looking forward to hugging all of you.

My deepest love and respect,
E. Wray

Jesus

2009-05-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

26 May, 2009
"Easter Morning"

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
"Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
for you." And you listen because that's how
you're trained––they told you, "Always hear both sides."
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
the door; yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, "Jesus?"

- William Stafford

Hey there everybody!

I know I've been out of touch for a couple of months. This is really the first opportunity I've had to update my blog since I was in Pokhara after the trek at the end of March. I did come back to Kathmandu one day about a month ago to do all of my course registration for college, but that was a very quick trip. Right now I am back in Kathmandu, because --very sadly-- my volunteership with SPW is over. The program actually ended a little bit early because SPW is really suffering from the current global economic crisis. We just finished this week, and I said bye to Uma, Silpa, and everyone in my village a few days ago. It was really hard for me to leave, but I am planning to go back to visit with my brother Alan in a week or two which will be really fun. I just found out yesterday that I am leaving this morning to go to Pokhara again to do a river kayaking trip for a few days with my friend Jessie. Jessie was planning on doing this trip with two other volunteers Fiaama and Rachel, who found out yesterday they couldn't make it, and somehow now I'm going along instead! I wasn't planning on spending any more money doing that kind of stuff, but kayaking should be alot of fun, and it will be good to have some time with Jessie before we go our separate ways.

After Kayaking, I am coming back to Kathmandu to meet MY BROTHER ALAN (!!!) at the airport in Kathmandu! Alan is going to be here for two weeks and we are planning to visit the birthplace of the Buddha together, visit Silpa's family, do a short trek, and spend a few days in my village in Sankosh. After Alan leaves, I am going to spend my remaining three weeks in Nepal sweeping, scrubbing floors, and washing dishes at a monastary in Kathmandu. My SPW field officer somehow knows someone who is connected with the monastaries in Kathmandu, so we called and asked if I could clean for them, and the llamas had a meeting about it (I think they were a little confused about the request), and they said yes! So I'm pretty happy about that. I'll find out which monastary I'm going to be at in a few days.

Now I suppose I should try to update all of you on everything that has been happening here over the past two months, which is, to me, a seemingly impossible task, but I shall try nonetheless. I hope these blogs are actually enjoyable to read and not too long and laborious. I rarely really know what I'm going to write before I sit down... I just put the pictures up and start ranting about whatever comes to mind-- probably not the most efficient way to communicate, but it seems to be working anyway.

After the trek, I came home to several suprises in Dhading. One suprise was that SPW was having serious economic trouble, and thus our program would be ending two months early. (Originally, the national volunteers were supposed to be on placement for an additional two months after the departure of the international volunteers.) This meant we had to do alot of shuffling and quick thinking to try to wrap up our programs in Sankosh and to try to ensure the sustainability of our Green club (students) and Youth club (out-of-school youth). This unfortunately was pretty stressful, but in order to cope, Uma, Silpa and I just picked up the frequency of sporadic instances of dancing and singing, which is a very reliable technique for breaking tension. My second surprise was a new host brother! Well, sort of. My family has three sons. The youngest is Bikash, who I think is about my age, and lives at our house. The first son, Ramesh, and his wife (my "bauju"), have their own tiny place close to the school where we teach. Their kids are Arpit and Ranjita who live with us. The second son is Suresh, who had been working abroad in Qatar, but he moved back home! Suresh is actually alot more talkative than the rest of my host family so having him there made things at home less awkward. The third and biggest surprise was rain! I came back to Sankosh and experienced rain for the first time in five months! It isn't raining every day yet (this will come with the monsoon in about a week), but the presence of water changed life in the village significantly. We were able to plant crops, save alot of already planted crops that had been dying from drought, and selfishly, I was most excited about being able to bathe and wash clothes more than once a week! Here are some pictures of me learning to plant rice in Parwati's (the 'w' is pronounced 'b') rice paddies during the first week in April.

That's Auntie (Parwati's mom). I feel just as loved by this woman as I do by my own beautiful mother, which is saying a heck of a lot. She kept telling that we had to smile when we left the village rather than be sad, but then she started weeping when we left a few mornings ago.

This is a street drama on safe motherhood that our green club performed for villagers in Kirakhor, one of our target communities. The kids wrote and directed the entire thing all on their own in just a few days. We were so proud of them, and all of the villagers were very attentive throughout the drama (which rarely happens).

This was during a door to door visit on nutrition in Kumal gaau. The old woman on the left was clearly not inspired.

This is another street drama on HIV that my green club performed down in the bazaar (market) in Dhadingbesi. They attracted a huge audience.

Here's Uma and me with our friends Raju and Ganesh, two Gurung teachers at our school (gurung is Uma's caste). This was taken on a religious holiday called saano desai. We left at 4:00 that morning, walked to a temple in the remote wards of Sankosh, spent an hour at the temple, and then walked back, arriving home around 7:00 PM. You can do the math, but that was alot of walking. Thankfully, since I'd just gotten back from trekking, the simple absence of my 15 kg backpack made the walk enjoyable, but we were pretty stinking tired at the end of the day.

Silpa putting henna in Uma's hair, which creates some reddish-brown highlights. They wanted to do this to me, but I never consented. I think the henna would have had more of a fluorescent orange effect on my already brown hair.

This is another picture from one of our nutrition door to door visits. We spent a week or so doing this in Kumal gaau after I came back from trekking.
Aren't they cute? These are my friends, sisters, and teachers Uma and Silpa. I'm getting emotional just looking at their picture. They have shown me nothing but love and patience over the past seven months. I'm going to see Silpa again before I leave to go home, but saying goodbye to Uma the other day was very difficult for me. She lives in the far western region of Nepal which is very remote and difficult to travel to. I don't know when I'll ever see her again.
Uma and me talking about family planning and population control during a workshop on Sexual Reproductive Health in Kirakhor.
Our audience. The women in Kirakhor were so supportive and showed alot of interest in all of our programs. There are alot of really terrible practices in Nepal in regards to menstruation. While bleeding women are ritually unclean and untouchable and often have to sleep and eat outside of the house, can't touch the water sources, and in some families, have to live in the goat shed so that the eyes of brothers, sons, and fathers, won't fall on them. Nothing was this intense in the village where I lived, but in my host family I still had to observe certain practices while on my period like eating outside, not entering the kitchen, not participating in worship, and not touching any cooking utensils, dishes (other than my own),water jugs or water sources. It was so exciting for me during these workshops to be able to discuss with these women scientifically what menstruation actually is, what is happening inside their bodies, that this is not damnation by the gods, but simply a very special and essential part of the reproductive process. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic about it, but I really feel that if SRH education is continued, the burden can slowly be lifted and the practices can begin to change.
My precious host sister is all ready for our school enrollment rally!

School enrollment campaign.
After walking through several villages, we stopped at a teashop in Baau Gaau to dance and sing a song that the students wrote about the importance of education.
Silpa's "birthday cake." Yes, those are boiled eggs. It was Uma's idea. I hope someone else thinks this is as funny as I did.
Celebrating Silpa's 27th birthday!
Team Sankosh.
Auntie kicking it in the kitchen while Parwati was cooking daal bhaat.
This is us with our community volunteer, Sita, and her mom. Also our dear friends.
I am going to miss my Aamaa's daal bhaat.
She thought it was absolutely hysterical that I wanted a picture of us eating daal bhaat.

This is our youth club.
We took four members from our Green Club to Nilkantha (another SPW placement) where the Nilkantha Green Club trained our students how to make these handicrafts from recycled paper. The handicrafts are to be sold for fundraising.
Then Ambika, Manoj, Kolpana, and Kobita trained the rest of our green club how to make the handicrafts back in Sankosh. I thought it was really good for the students to know how to do something and then be able to teach other students how to do it. Little stuff like this is why we're able to call this an "empowerment" program.
They felt really independent about this project and it was really exciting when the crafts were ready to be sold and money started coming in. The green club will use the money to fund programs like the ones that we have been doing with SPW after we are gone.
At a temple with our friends and Green Club students Kobita, Ambika, and Kolpana.
Arpit's got style.
Our gurus.
Our youth club planting ginger which will be ready to sell in a few weeks. We hope they will use this money to continue SPW programs in the community (while the green club--we hope--will continue SPW programs in the school).
a picnic with Nilkantha and Sankosh Green Clubs
The chickens that were happily squaking a couple hours previous. If you look closely you can see feet, heads, everything. Nepali people don't waste anything and eat literally every part of the animal.
I've got moves.
That's Parwati's house.
A bunch of us who's villages are close to Dhadingbesi (the western end of Dhading) went to visit a cave in Nilkantha one day. Here's Jessie crawling up through a very narrow passage way. Thank God we didn't get stuck.
What was supposed to be a day visit and two hour walk turned into a day long ordeal with a 4 to 5 hour walk to the cave and then a 5 hour walk back, partly in the dark, as the sun set before we got back, and then we all had to sleep in Nilkantha. That's how any kind of "planned" anything usually turns out in Nepal. It was fun.

Sita's house
Sita's kitchen
Sankosh is beautiful. Everything turned green after the rain finally came.

My host brother Suresh got married on May 8. I think my host parents didn't arrange the wedding until May 1. It's incredible what an extensive wedding party these people can throw together in one week. It was absolute madness.
Making rice flower for special cell roti (bread) with the neighbor ladies.
Cell roti: a cross between a funnel cake and a fried donut. Greasy but delicious. It appears in abundance at any sort of Nepali festival or celebration.
My extremely unsuccessful attempt at making cell roti. It's difficult.
Ranjita in her brand new clothes for the wedding.
This was at the wedding party at the bride's house. I wasn't there for that, but let the fam take the camera. The way it works is there's a big party at the bride's house (in a different village sometimes very far away) where the actual marriage ceremony happens, and then the groom and his friends and family arrive and take the bride with them to the groom's house (her new home) where people have also been partying all day. There are also ceremonies and forms of worship in the grooms home to prepare for the wedding night. It was super weird. The bride is always extremely unhappy... for obvious reasons. She has just arrived at a new house where she will share a bed with an older man she's never met and work as the family's lowest servant until another bauju comes along.
The wedding party. That night, we already had 7 people to share the 3 beds in our room (Me, Uma, Silpa, Parwati, one of last year's SPW volunteers, and two family friends from Kathmandu), but when we went inside that night tired and ready to crash, we found a bunch of random relatives we'd never seen before all asleep in our beds. So we walked around to some neighboring houses to try to find a place to sleep-- no room anywhere... and in the end just ended up passing out on the floor. It was quite an event... and pretty funny.
Us with our new bauju. Your eyes do not deceive you. Suresh is at least in his late twenties. Our new bauju just started 10th grade.

May 27, 2009
I've been in a kayak in the Phewa Tal (a big lake in Pokhara) all day learning different rolls, paddle strokes, and braces (but mainly inhaling alot of water). Tomorrow morning Jessie and I depart on the Sankosi river, which we will be traveling down for the next three days before I head back to Kathmandu to pick Alan up at the airport. woohoo! Back to the blog.

Here is our GC vice president speaking at a cluster meeting with the Green Clubs from Sankosh, Nilkantha, Sunula Bazaar, and Murali Banjang. The students decided to form an inter-green club committee, and chose representatives from each club to attend cluster meetings every couple months. We are proud of them and hope they can support each other and keep up the good work now that we're gone.

Bathing in the jungle is always fun.
Those are our lungis... or bathing dress thingies.
Arpit = Bill Waterson's "Calvin"
Silpa and Uma in the office at school.
Ah, Pashupati Secondary. Perhaps it's a good thing that none of the students can actually read this.
The school bell. Banged with a mallet every 45 minutes Sunday-Friday. The reason I will be deaf by age 50.
This is one of our neighboring villagers, Raut Bubaa (aka "Granpa Raut"). I cannot express in words my love for this man.
And that's Aamaa Raut. They were like my Grandparents.
Some of our neighbors.
view from near Parwati's house.
Students dancing during a cultural program at school. I think Smartt would die and Bolden would kill to have some of these talented students audition for any of their theatrical productions. Really, the talent of these kids blew me away. They'll all grow up to be farmers.
After many days of begging to take a picture with them, my host family finally consented... but then Suresh, Bikash, and Ramesh bailed at the last minute. But this is my host father and host mother anyways. They look friendly don't they? We love them.
This is the mother of one of our green club students, Kobita, and her sister, Kapila, who was green club president a year ago. They live next to the school and right next door to dai and bauju, and they did alot to help us.
Here we are with the members of the Green Club and teachers at school.
All the teachers... well at least the ones that showed up to school on the day the photo was taken.
Us with Dai and Baauju in their brand new kitchen. I just recently found out that the reason they don't live with us is because Aamaa was really mean to Baauju so ultimately Bauju's parents were able to give enough money for dai and bauju to have their own little place... a tea shop next to the school. But the shop was just pieces of scrap tin and wood. About a month ago they tore it all down and built a real mud kitchen with a good smokeless stove. It was exciting. Bauju is a really good cook by the way. I will miss her chiyaa (tea) every day at 2:00 PM for the rest of my life.
Baauju and me!
Sanramaya didi and her husband--residents of our village and also members of the Raut family/caste-- enjoying cell roti and tarkari for khajaa (afternoon snack).
Saying goodbye to all of our didis and bahinis from Kirakhor village. These women did so much to help and support us, and the day before we left they did this whole big goodbye ceremony for us, giving us gifts and lots of tika. I was so overwhelmed, but it was a beautiful goodbye.
This was during our goodbye ceremony at school. The students gave me an authentic Nepali outfit... complete with petticoat, sari, wastecloth, shawl, blouse, bangles, and hair piece... which I wore for the ceremony. Here I'm giving a little speech in Nepali and telling the kids about Palmer (Thank you to Janelle Ellis for sending the balls).
"Thank you, Palmer!"
The kids were so excited about the three new soccer balls. All they had at school is one busted volleyball and three jump ropes that Uma, Silpa, and I gave as prizes for a sporting event a few months ago. I can assure all of you that Palmer's soccer balls will get alot of loving wear and tear.
Saying goodbye...
And finally leaving home the next morning. I held it together pretty well but now I'm getting emotional looking at the pictures. Aamaa is distributing tika.
So is Raut Bubaa.
These are my people.
It was so surreal descending through Sankosh with all of our bags that final morning, stopping at the homes of our loved ones to receive tika and blessings along the way. These people rock. I will carry them and everything they've taught me with me always.
This picture is kind of out of place, but as we were leaving, I wanted to snap a picture of someone carrying a doko (basket strapped to the head) so that I could show all of you. In the hills, this is how everything gets transported on a daily basis, whether it be grass for the animals, water, chickens, soil, manure, building supplies, crops... you name it... it can be carried in a doko.

A final meal in Kathmandu with all of the (remaining) international volunteers before going our separate ways. This place is called "Mike's Breakfast," and it was our haven in Kathmandu.

It's easy for me to put pictures up here and just write about what I've been doing. It's much more difficult for me to put into words all that I've been thinking, feeling, and learning about in the past months... especially while staring at a computer screen.

I've just deleted multiple attempts to describe what is happening in my heart, and no success thus far. God is changing me. I am beginning to see that there is another way to live my life, another way to go. I want to follow Jesus. It scares the crap out of me, but I have so much joy, because I have faith in a God who is strong when I am weak and who can give me the strength I need to do what is impossible for E. Wray. God is going to teach me to love.

Please pray for me.

Much love,
E

2009-03-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

Hello to All,

I am currently writing from Pokhora, Nepal, where today I concluded a twelve day trek through the Annapurna ranges of the Nepal Himalaya with my friends Andy and Ryan. We decided to use our 12 vacation days allotted us by SPW to make this trip, and it was one of the best adventures I've ever had in my life. Our students at school have been in exams for the past two weeks so this was the best time to do it. The other five international volunteers left five days ahead of us and completed the entire Annapurna Circuit-- a 16 day venture. I wish we could have done this too, but Andy, Ryan, and I had some pretty exciting things going on in our respective villages before we left which we didn't want to miss. Also, although this has probably been the coolest vacation of my life, I am here to be a volunteer, and I don't want to be away from my village for too long.

Before I talk any more about the trek, I'll start with village updates, since that's more important anyway. So much has happened in the past couple months that I don't even know where to start. My life here in Nepal seems so normal, so much of a whole, that it is very hard for me to even pick out things to share. And because everything just seems normal to me, I'm sure I write on this thing like all of you understand or have a good concept of where I am or what I'm doing, when in fact, you very well may not, so I apologize for that. I'm doing the best I can.

Uma came back a few weeks ago, which we were all very happy about, and from what I understand, her father is doing much better, but has some serious brain damage. Uma is naturally still under alot of emotional strain, which is hard, but team Sankosh is complete again! Another recent development is that Silpa and I encouraged Parbati, our community volunteer, to apply for a position with SPW's partner NGO in Dhading (PRAYAS Nepal). The position is for a new Library Unit which is working to promote literacy and provide books for children in Dhading's most rural villages. Parbati got the job! We are very excited for her! BUT we are also very sad because this means that she can't be our community volunteer any more. It's taken team Sankosh a few days to adjust to this idea, but we are moving forward now. And actually, a girl named Sita, who is a member of our SPW-established youth club in Sankosh, and is also one of our friends, got the position for community volunteership. We love Sita and it will be great to work with her more closely. And we will still get to see Parbati and her family alot.

My host family has also warmed up to us significantly which has been great. At first, our Aamaa was very removed and really didn't want to have anything to do with us, but now we have been helping her around the house and she talks and laughs with us and I love her so much. I think she's just a very quiet, solitary woman. She doesn't really spend alot of time with the village women either. But I lover her. She's pretty cool. I still haven't managed to get a picture of my host family (except for my bai and bahini who love to have their picture taken).
The camera is still a relatively new phenomenon in Nepal, and some people (including my host family) are quite wary of having their pictures taken. For the same reason, most people do not smile in pictures... perhaps for fear that the camera will "steal their soul." Part of me hates this because they are such joyful people and have such great smiles which I want to capture... but at the same time I have to be very sensitive. So anyways, I can usually get the kids to smile, but if people seem very solemn in pictures, it doesn't mean they're sad... And all that is to say that I still don't have pictures of my host family. Sorry Mom.
But here's my best friend in Nepal.

Okay I'm sorry if this ends up being a very scattered post but I'm just going to put up some pictures and see if that helps me think of things to write about. I also just figured out that you can click on the picture to make it bigger.

I experienced my first Nepali wedding about two months ago. The whole thing was terribly depressing. The bride was Ambika, an SPW community volunteer from a village called Sunula Bazaar (about a 3 hour walk from mine). Ambika was informed of the engagement about 3 weeks in advance and met her groom at the wedding. As you can see (above), they both looked very unhappy. It was weird because the bride and groom are so miserable all day and everyone else parties all day and celebrates. There is alot that I still need to learn and understand about Nepali culture.

This is my family's and our neighbor's fields.

This was a holy day for Parbati's family which honors children. We went to her Uncle's house and gave lots of tika to her younger cousins. All of the festivals and holy days are alot of fun. Each family and caste has its own.

In Sankosh, we have three target communities or villages aside from our own village (which is Damgardi) where we are focusing our programs. The most challenging community for us is Kumal gaau (Parbati's village), which is the poorest and lowest caste... and also the most wary of and unenthusiastic about SPW's presence in Sankosh. This is difficult because although Kumal gaau is the most in need, it is easy to want to focus our activities in villages where women are involved, supportive, interested, and enthusiastic about our programs. Uma and Silpa and I keep having to remind ourselves what our purpose is here and that patience is key in all of this. All this is to preface a couple of pictures from our cleaning campaign in Kumal Gaau. This village is very very dirty with no latrines and very little concept of hygience and sanitation. Many of the children are malnourished and caked with weeks' layers of dirt, sweat, and fecal matter. During our cleaning campaign, we rounded up school children from Kumal Gaau and swept through the entire village picking up trash... with the kids leading the way and talking to the adults about the importance of hygiene and sanitation. Then we all paraded down to the river where the kids stripped down and were soaped up by me, Silpa, Parbati, and several of our green club members who were eager to help. This probably wouldn't have gone over to well back home, but the "baby bathing," as Silpa called it, was actually quite fun.

And here we are with some very clean children:
playing a game with green club students

That's my crib.

"Roads" in Nepal are very dusty.

This is from a workshop that we did on women's hygiene and sanitation about a month ago.
And in Nepal, we find an excuse to dance at every possible occasoin.

Green Club Students doing some fundraising at Sankosh's main temple.

March 8 was International Women's Day. Also on this day, Dhading's representatives from Nepal's Constitutional Assembly were meeting in Dhadingbesi. So the women of Sankosh decided to march. And we did. We met early in the morning, and as the women finally arrived we began our women's rights march, descending through the fields of Sankosh into Dhadingbesi where we were joined by women from Murali Bhanjyang and Sunula Bazaar (other SPW placements). To see these normally shy and quiet women, who in Nepal are literally their husbands' and fathers' property, taking a stand to demand a better future for their daughters... was one moment where I felt a part of something so much bigger than just my SPW volunteership or a specific program that we were promoting. And I think it's those moments that I'm here for.

We were up late the night before making sign boards.

"We are all Nepali! We all have a voice!"

I was estatic.

Then came Holi, the color festival, on March 10. Basically everyone runs around like mad all day throwing tika powder on each other... and the kids break out color-filled water balloons and squirt guns. Uma, Silpa, and I were eating morning daal bhaat in our kitchen that morning, when all of a sudden the head of one of our green club students appeared at the window. We looked outside and realized that ALL of the children in our village were waiting for us outside our house armed with lots of tika, lots of balloons, and lots of powder. We sighed, slowly finished our daal bhaat, stepped outside... and so the day began. It was alot of fun.

Our new community volunteer, Sita, is the 3rd from the right.

Parbati's birthday was March 11, and we had a birthday party at her house the night before I left for my trek.

Parbati's first-ever birthday cake. I was very proud of myself for finding birthday candles in Nepal.

This is Parbati's family. I love them so much.

And now on to the trek! Andy, Ryan, and I began our trek on March 12 and steadily ascended for twelve days through the mountains, before ultimately climbing over a 5416 m pass! And we survived!

Joe, Moe, and Curly set off for the Himalaya! No, none of us had ever trekked before...
The path was shared with alotof mules...
... and wth alot of Nepali people carrying insanely large and heavy loads. We were actually trekking through Tibet-Nepal trade routes that have been used for many years before gore-tex glad trekkers or hippies in search of enlightenment arrived in Nepal from the West. We always tried to keep out of the way. These guys passed us after we had just ascended 200-300 terrifying meters up a big landslide and were resting breathless on the side of the trail. They kept going... Those are huge metal pipes strapped to their backs.

Feeling victorious at the top of a steep climb

We were really close to Tibet through most of the trek, so alot of the villages we went through were in many ways more Tibetan than Nepali... as many Tibetan people have fled here. The Buddhist influence was especially visible... which was pretty cool. I dragged Andy and Ryan to alot of Temples and Monasteries along the way. They were pretty good sports about it.

As volunteers rather than tourists in Nepal, our trekking-on-a-budget led to many a humorous trekking outfit. We like to call this one "the smurf":
Have I mentioned that there are monkeys everywhere in Nepal? This one was a pet at one of the teashops we stopped at along the way... he tried to steal my biscuits.

Sunrise over the Annapurna as seen from Chame.

Prayer flags and sanskrit engravings everywhere. Super cool.

a massive rock face

This was from upper Pisang. I think that might be Annapurna IV

It got very cold very fast as we started going up. This was in a village in upper Pisang where we spent the night in a ply-wood crafted room which I think was 18 degrees F when we woke up the next morning. Chilly. Especially compared to the sub-tropical villages of Dhading where we live among banana, papaya, and grapefruit trees.

Many villages had walls like this full of prayer wheels at the entrance and exit of the village. we walked along the left side and spund the wheels as we passed.
This was an amazing monastary that we hiked up to one evening. It was over 1,000 years old and the statues, manuscripts, prayer wheels, and tapestries inside were as old as 600 hundred years. It was amazing.

When we got up to the monastary, everything was locked up, but we found this one old monk who lives there and he let us in. I'm so glad he did.

I think few times in my life have I ever been in a place where I felt so strongly a sacred presence. It gave me chills.

Ryan gaping at crazy-old manuscripts.

There are goats everywhere in Nepal, but this goat had personality so he got his picture taken.

Another sunrise shot.

This was on our way up to another monastary 300 m above Manang village.
This one was also super old but there wasn't any one there so I don't have any fancy facts to tell. It's basically built out of a cave on the side of a mountain where villagers go to meditate.

I still can't get over the Sunrise over Himalayan peaks. The camera doesn't do it justice.
Early morning snowfall in Manang.

Andy made the mistake of washing his socks and hanging them out to dry... a coupel hours later he had two sock-sicles.

There were some moments when I was looking at the mountains, and we were so close, and the mountains were so big... they almost seemed to sacred to be photographed. I just needed to stand there for a minute in silence, in awe of God's presence, and then keep walking.

Okay this was early morning on day 10 as we headed out for the pass. This was the longest and physically most difficult day of my life but standing there at 5,416 m was worth it. We felt pretty hard core. This day we climbed 1,000 m and descended 1,600 m.

Ryan waving down to me... a little ahead on the trail.
There were actually alot of trekkers climbing to the Thorung La this day. The snow makes it kindf of hard to see the path but at this point I turned around to photograph the line of trekkers in the bottom left hand side of the picture with the mountains towering over them.
victory!
Here we are at the top! a very happy moment. Thanks mom for making me bring those waterproof pants to Nepal with me.
Andy upon the realization that after 10 days of walking up hill, we only have to go down now.

We descended from the Torung La to Muktinath, which is an international pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Buddhist with lots of temples (mundirs) and monasteries (gompas). Ryan got some pretty awesome pictures of us hanging out with some yogis (Hindu holy men) at Muktinath... so I recommend looking up his blog if you want to check some of those out.

Because time was short, we trekked from Muktinath to Jomsom, where we got a flight to Pokhara and ended our trek.

Check out this plane:

All right I think that's enough for now. Much love to all of you. I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and I will be in touch when I can! Thanks for all of your support.

Namaste,
Elizabeth

Oh, if you are interested in more pictures of the mountains, you can check out Andy and Ryan's blogs...
gogoactionandy.blogspot.com
moshinnepal.blogspot.com

peace.

a purpose

2009-02-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

have a cause.

We need those don't we?

Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in

and everything starts to

ache.

My sould has a purpose, it is

to love;

if I do not fulfill my heart's vocation,

I suffer.

-St. Thomas Aquinas

Hello to all,

This is a super quick update just to say that I am doing well and thinking of all of you each day. We have been doing alot of work the past month: teaching classes at school 6 days a week and also doing other events at school and in the community. There are certainly days when my frustration reaches new bounds altogether, but this is part of the experience of being in a completely different culture and having such a short period of time to be here... wanting to make a difference. But when I feel like pulling my hair out, God reminds me that I am called to a very simple purpose, and that is what I am focusing on. I am so thankful to be here. My family is warming up to me alot and I feel much more comfortable around them than I did a month ago. They are really lovely. I learn something new every day. We have started spending almost all of our free time with students from school or people in the community, talking, drinking tea, laughing. This is really wonderful and it is so important that we develop strong relationships with the people that we are working with. I love the students so much. Even if it is hard to be here some times, it is going to be much harder for me to leave this place. Each day is a new blessing in and of itself. I get up every morning and sit out on the side of my little mountain, watch the sun rise, and thank God for all of it.

On a slightly darker note, Uma's father has been frigtheningly sick. I think alot has been lost in translation, so my understanding of what actually happened is limited, but I think he had a stroke. This was three weeks ago. Uma has been at home with her sisters and mother for the past few weeks, while her brother has been in India with her father who is in the intensive care unit in a hospital there. I do not think they can afford treatment... I have offered financial help but I don't know whether or not they are going to accept it. Please pray for her family. Silpa and I are doing great together (and I'm learning to speak alot more Nepali because Silpa's English isn't very good), but we miss Uma alot. We hope she comes back to us soon.

We have three more weeks of school, and then there are five weeks of exams and school holiday in March and April, before the new school year starts mid April. We will be able to do work in the community during this time, but we won't be teaching classes at school. I get the equivalent of two days of a month while I'm here (14 days altogether), and I took two of these days at Christmas, but I am planning on taking the remaining twelve in March to trek part of the Annapurna circuit with the other international volunteers (assuming Uma is back in Sankosh by then). So my next update will probably be about that.

Here's a few pictures:Leading a nutrition workshop in Kirakhor village

This was a sports contest that we sponsored at our school (High jump). This was very exciting because it's the first time that girls have been able to participate. They competed in running and jumping in their Kurta Suruwals and did a great job.

A street drama about HIV/AIDS

Hanging out with my friends Kobita, Ambika, and Kapila at their house... and that's my host sister Rangita.

Here Parbati's mom is making rhaksi, a strong alcohol made from hot water and fermented millet.

One last note:

Thank you to all of you who have been writing me letters. I so enjoy writing and receiving letters. Although I have to tell you, the mail is very unreliable and there are some letters that people have told me they have sent that I have not received... likewise I have a feeling that some of the letters that I am writing are not making it to the united states. I am so sorry about this. I just wanted to let you know that if I don't respond to a letter... it's not because I don't love hearing from you and don't want to write back... just the letter may have gotten lost! I still appreciate so much everyone writing me... I just want everyone to know what the mail is like. Sometimes I get a letter in two weeks and some times it takes two months... and sometimes they don't come at all. For the most part though, many letters have arrived and been sent!

Short post this time. Much love to all of you!

Happiness is a bowl of cornflakes.

2009-01-12T19:25:00.000-08:00

It is actually January 15.

"I don't believe that 'scientific genius'
in its naive assertions of power
is equal either to nature or
to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions
of the nuclei of atoms and cells
and this worlds every habitation
have not brought us to the light
but sent us wondering father through
the dark. Nor do I believe
'artistic genius' is the possession
of any artist, No one has made
the art by which one makes the works
of art, Each one who speaks, speaks
as a convocation. We live as councils
of ghosts. It is not 'human genius'
that makes us human, but an old love,
an old intelligence of the heart
we father to us from the world,
from the creatures, from the angels
of inspiration, from the dead--
an intelligence merely nonexistent
to those who do not have it, but
to those who have it, more dear than life."

-from Wendell Berry's "Some Further Words"... courtesy of Stewart Moore

Hello to all!

I thought it might be months before I was back in Kathmandu and could update my blog again, but several days ago, Uma got a phone call from our Field Officer, Sudeep, telling me to leave the next morning for Kathmandu for some more language training. This was both good and bad news. I am so thankful for the extra language classes, because we definitely didn't have enough during our initial training, but the short notice meant that I missed several green club and community events that we had planned for this week... and also meant that Uma and Silpa had to do most of the lesson planning and teaching on their own. I feel like the volunteer that's never there. I didn't know how long I'd be here when I left, but I've been here for five days and I'm leaving in the morning to go back to Dadhing. I've had four more language classes though, which has been incredible.

I'm going to back up and pick up where I left off on my last blog that I made from Chitwan over Christmas... I believe I had been typing about my first experience of learning what goes into making bread. My aamaa won't have much to do with us but Parbati's family is awesome and they're teaching me to do stuff like this. Here's some pictures from the whole extravaganza (for me)... weekly chore (for everyone else involved).

Kodo (Millet) is spread all over the ground in front of the house. After shuffling around in it, we separated the kodo into large piles and beat it with sticks to knock the grain loose. My soft "city hands" were cracked and bleeding after 10 or 15 minutes. I had checked out by the time I took this picture of the home stretch.
Then there were many more steps to sift the grain. Yep I definately beasted that entire pile of millet.

I've never in my life really had to work before... like do manual labor on a daily basis... and I'm starting to see how much is lacking in our culture and in our lives with this missing component. Just beating and sifting through the millet took all day. It was glorious. I don't know why we decided to invent speedy machines to do all these things for us and call it "progress." I think working, just sweating for my own food, is really important. I didn't know before. I'm not sure if I can explain it. A poem by Rabia says:

It helps,
putting my hands on a pot, on a broom,
in a wash pail.

I
tried painting,
but it was easier to fly slicing
potatoes.

In America, I drive to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread... which arrived at the grocery store on a truck... from a factory where it was produced... before which the flour was shipped across the country... from the workers who harvested the wheat from the field and ground it into flour. I don't see the worker's faces. I don't know who's blood and sweat is on my own food. I don't even think about it. Sure, I can buy from local farmers. I know these things. But it's not just that. There's something missing in the way that I live. The work is good. The sweating. The time it takes. Think about it... we have to go "work out" to stay "in shape." And we exalt ourselves in all of our technology and "civilization"... when really, if any one of us were left to our own devices... without our machines and electricity and automobiles and packaged food and what not... we probably couldn't survive a week. At least I don't think I would. I wouldn't know how to do the most basic things... wouldn't know how to feed, clothe, and shelter myself. Is that at all frightening to anyone else?

I'm not sure how to say what I'm trying to say, so I'll leave it to Rabia. I found God, slicing potatoes.

I'm going to jump around a little bit here if that's okay. This computer is letting me put quite a few pictures on, so I'll start with a few of those.

I suppose I should actually update you on what I've been doing. Forgive my tangents.

This is Uma and me with our host bahini and bai, Rangita (7) and Arpit (4). Living with small children also kind of goes along with that slicing potatoes thing. (I'm really juming around here) It's funny, I thought I was coming to Nepal to spend alot of time in silence and solitude... listening and meditating. I got here and kind of feel like I hit the ground running. But I am also so often alone in my own mind, because of the language barrier... even though we're busy... I rarely have any clue what's going on or being discussed. So it's an interesting combination. And anyways I think I'm beginning (only beginning) to learn what it means to pray and be present. And with the slicing potatoes thing... I think I'm trying to say that having young children running around, crying, laughing, making messes, tearing up your poetry books... also helps quite a bit. This probably is not making much sense to anyone. Some things are difficult for me to express.

Arpit and Rangita sitting on my bed coloring with some markers and paper I gave them. It's very sad... in the schools here, children aren't really taught to think, to use their imaginations, to ask questions, to be creative. They aren't told stories. In class, they never make anything. Even in middle school classes, when we ask students to draw something... like a picture of themselves doing something they're good at.... They'll say they don't know how to draw it. So I'm beginning a creativity campaign with my host brother and sister. I started by having them draw pictures to send to a couple young friends of mine back in the States, and now they are actually asking me to color. I hang the pictures up on the wall by my bed. They still draw the same picture each time... but Arpit at least is starting to use rediculous colors for the things he is drawing... so I think we're moving in the right direction.

Parbati, Silpa, and Uma sitting in front of Parbati's house.

These girls are my inspiration.

Here's some shots from my very Nepali birthday party (They don't celebrate birthdays but they know that we do, so they went WAY out of their way to make the day special for me. I love them.)

That's popcorn and soy beans. The closest thing they could make to a cake (no ovens in Nepal). We ate it. They also found a small candle for me to blow out:
And, of course, there was lots of dancing:

Over Christmas, the other international volunteers and I spent three nights at Chitwan National Park in Nepal's Terai region. This was definitely the best vacation I've ever taken in my life probably just because it was the most needed. We had a lot of fun. We had to take a 2 or 3 hour bus ride from Gajuri (Ryan's placement... closest to the "highway")... winding through the slightly terrifying mountain roads... standing in the aisle. That's right: we managaed to buy tickets for a bus on which there were no seats left. I'm not sure how this happened. That's Nepal for you. We were all so excited that no one cared, but looking back it was pretty funny. I kept falling over on top of the people sitting in the seats next to me.

After we got off the bus, we took a tuk-tuk to Chitwan. A tuk tuk is best described as a 3 wheeled truck-taxi... a pretty interesting way to get around. Here we are crammed inside... bumping down the road. This was Christmas Eve. We were singing Christmas carols. It was pretty hilarious.
That night we were eating dinner at this little roof top resteraunt and the guys that worked there brought out a scrawny little pine tree, and proceeded to decorate it... Nepali style. Of course Rachel and I immediately jumped up from the table and asked if we could help.
That night we hung our socks up at the lodge.

And this is us on Christmas morning, departing for our canoe safari which later turned into a walking safari through the jungle.

When we got out of the canoe and were preparing to enter the Jungle, our guide told us of the dangers of running into a sloth bear, tiger, or especially a rhino. He told us how to run in zig zags from a charging animal, to keep our eyes open for safety havens where we could make quick escapes from a charging rhino... like a tree... etc. Basically we entered the jungle completely terrified. However, on this safari we never caught one glimse of a tiger or rhino or sloth bear. However, we did spend about 10 minutes tracking the infamous "jungley chicken" off the trail... it was a rooster. But our guide was very excited about the Jungley chicken, and wanted to make sure we all got a good look at it. We later missed seeing a rhino by about 5 minutes... had we not tracked the chicken we would have seen a rhino. What a great story.

aand we did get to see wild rhinos... while riding elephants on a safari the next day! Very exciting!

You can't tell in the picture, but we are definitely sitting on the back of an elephant.

We got so close to rhinos just living in the wild. It was very cool.

Probably the most exciting thing about our trip to Chitwan was meeting a man named Om who volunteered with SPW in 1998 and now runs three fair trade shops in Chitwan with his wife. When Om volunteered, he was on a program focussed on environmental sustainability. Among other things, the volunteers were trained to make baskets out of plastic wrappers and bags, and they then taught village women to make these baskets. The women are able to sell the baskets which not only gives them some financial independence in the very patriarchal and confining Nepali family structure, but also helps them simply by food for their families and pay for their children to go to school. AND in a country which has no trash or waste disposal facilities at all whatsoever, any way of recycling plastic especially makes a huge difference. Even in the villages. The ground, street, fields are completely littered and covered with plastic wrappers and bags.

This is what the baskets look at. In fact, you can buy your very own at the World Next Door Market on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga.

After working at World Next Door for five months before I came to Nepal, I cannot describe how exciting it was for me to get to see how fair trade works from this side.

Om also sells organic honey at his shops... the farm is right behind the shop and one day he invited Fiamma and I to come back and watch them harvest the honey. It was so cool.

He takes this rack with the honeycomb out of the box-hive thing (I don't know what it's called), and scrapes off the top layer. Then they put two of them at a time in this home-made contraption (yes that's a bicycle chain) and spin it
and the honey runs out a tap in the bottom.
and this is the most delicious honey I've ever tasted.

When we came back from Chitwan, I was very sick for a few days and stayed in Dhadingbeshi for several nights. Then it was time for the monthly meeting with all of the volunteers, so I was in Dhadingbeshi for three more nights. The monthly meeting was very productive and we did alot of organization and planning that I feel like we should have done at the end of training a month before, but at least we've done it now. We all made plans for our events for the next month, and were trained how to do lesson plans, etc. So I feel like we're actually getting things done now. The monthly meeting coincided with the Western New Year's... so we had a picnic here on New Year's day.

washing dishes in the river

I don't have much time left, but here's a few more pictures:

Some community members in kumal gaau. The fourteen year old girl on the left is married with children. 40% of women in Nepal are married before the age of 15.
Some students at school

Parbati's family think it is hilarious how much I love their baby goats.
This is my bauju (sister in law) eating some daal bhaat in the kitchen of the teashop she runs next to the school.
This is the Nepali mansion where I live... very different than I expected. The house is in two pieces, so it's not actually as big as it looks, but it is very nontraditional by Nepali standards. The part on the left is concrete and has four rooms: three bedrooms and one store room. There is another section on the right which is mud. The bottom part is where they keep the animals and the top part is where the kitchen and another store room is.

our kitchen

Our buffalo

Our family is one of the wealthiest in the village and we have our own water tap. There is only water sometimes, but this is where I bathe, wash my clothes, wash the dishes, etc.

Some green club members with a wall magazine they made featuring original poems and articles about important issues like HIV/AIDS, hygiene, and sanitation. The magazine will be hung up at school for other students to read. Kapila, the green club president, is second from the left. She is absolutely incredible.

Students at the school were very enthusiastic about our toilet cleaning campaign last week.

It's been great to be in Kathmandu and have language training this week, but I am definitely ready to be back in Sankosh. I'm leaving early in the morning so that I can hopefully make it back for our Green Club meeting tomorrow afternoon. I think Kathmandu is the dirtiest place I have ever been in my life.

Here's a cow eating out of a pile of trash on the side of the street.

This trip I've discovered that I can order a bowl of cornflakes and milk at the bakery next to the basic hotel where we always stay in Kathmandu. A bowl of cornflakes might be the best thing that's happened to me in the past month. I say that with a grain of salt, but it's crazy how estatic I can be each morning about something like a bowl of cereal. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Andy, Ryan, and I had a pretty whacked out experience the other day. We discovered that there is a supermarket about a 15 minute walk from the SPW office. Before entering this supermarket, I thought that going back to the United States wouldn't be that big of a deal. In a way, I'm looking forward to it. Now I'm not so sure. This was an actual supermarket with aisles of food and toiletries and what not. We walked inside and all three of us started shaking. My whole body was tingling all over. I was so completely overwhelmed. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. We did both. It was one of the strangest experiences I've ever had in my life. I'm pretty embarassed to say that all three of us started crying in the cereal aisle. it was like a laughing crying.
I was so overwhelmed. I was confronted with this mix of excitement and actual terror at all of it. We kept saying... it's just a supermarket it's just a supermarket. We would be calm for a few minutes and then freak out again. Everyone in the store was gaping at us. I'm sure it looked like we were on a really bad drug trip. I'm a little worried about going home now. I actually still feel a little overwhelmed just looking at the picture. But the whole experience was pretty funny. We bought a box of fruit loops and showed up to the bakery the next day and asked for 3 bowls of milk and ate our fruit loops right there.... We laughed the whole time.

What a crazy world I'm living in.

Well, this has definitely been my longest post. I hope I didn't boor anyone. I honestly don't know when I will update again. It might be a couple months, but then again, I said that a couple weeks ago when I last updated so who knows.

Here are the addresses of a few of the other volunteers' blogs if anyone is interested:

Andy- gogoactionandy.blogspot.com
Ryan- moshinnepal.blogspot.com
Jessie- jessiekaplan.blogspot.com

The website for Om's fair trade shop is www.happyhouse-fairtrade.com.np

I hope all of you are well, and I will be in touch the best I can!

Namaste,
Ewray

the sky is what we have

2008-12-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

You are not suprised at the force of the storm--

you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight

sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:

he whom they flee is the one

you move toward. All your senses

sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in the summer.

The trees' blood rose. Now you feel

it wants to sink back

into the source of everything. You thought

you could trust that power

when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew

where each thing stood.

Now you must go out into your heart

as onto a vast plain. Now

the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through empty branches the sky remains.

It is what you have.

Be earth now, and evensong.

Be the ground lying under that sky.

Be modest now, like a thing

ripened until it is real,

so that he who began it all

can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Merry Christmas to all!

I am writing this from Chitwan National Park, where the other international volunteers and I have just taken a few days vacation to celebrate Christmas. We have been here for 3 nights, and we are leaving in a few hours to return to our villages. So I thought I would try to send out an update before we do! Once again, the computer I am using is very slow, and I am trying to put some pictures up, but I'm not too sure it's going to work. I will try to be as thorough as I can though because it might be a couple months before I go back to Kathmandu. I'm not sure.

I'll give you a brief summary of what I've been doing for the past few weeks, and then I may just copy some entries out of my journal for the sake of time.

We have been on placement for 4 weeks. During the first two weeks, Uma, Silpa, and I were spending most of our time teaching at our local school, because our community volunteer, Parbati, had exams then. For the past two weeks, the students at the local school have been in exams, so we have been spending our time walking around to different villages, getting to know people, and conducting Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) which is basically a method of gathering social information from community members and finding out from them what they identify as their village's greatest needs. We have also been trying to reform clubs for out-of-school youth that SPW formed last year, but so far we have been unsuccessful. We walked a couple of hours the other day to where Sankosh's district center is supposed to be, only to find that it had been bombed 3 or 4 years ago by the Maoists and all of their records and materials were lost. They don't even know how many people are in Sankosh. As far as the government is concerned, these people don't even exist. Honestly, so far I honestly don't feel like we've done much, but I guess change happens very slowly... especially in places like Nepal. I am certainly learning alot. And Uma, Silpa, and Parbati are absolutely incredible. The only thing that isn't going so well is that my host family is quite cold and removed. I don't feel very comfortable around them. But they are the only Nepalis I have met that are not just over-the-top hospitable. Everyone is lovely. I am actually getting very close to Parbati's family which is great.

Okay here are some selections from my journal entries:

December 7-

I was sick again today. I threw up this morning. I hope this doesn't happen too often.

Uma and I talked about God for the first time tonight.

December 8-

"For you shall go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

shall break forth into singing,

and all the trees of the field shall clap
their hands."

-Isaiah 55:12

December 9-

Today was a holiday (I think maybe the last day of Ramadan), so we didn't have to go to school. We slept in until 7:00 or 7:30. This morning Uma, Silpa, Arpit, Rangita, and I went on a long walk and saw some beautiful views of the Himilayas. We didn't get back until at least 11:00. After morning daal bhaat, we bathed Rangita and Arpit. They were very dirty. This is definately the first time they've been washed since we've been here. I can think of few things better for the soul than chasing two naken children around outside with jugs of water.

I washed my clothes this afternoon. This took quite a while because I hadn't done so in a few days.

Right now Parbati is here. There is a peace in her presence.

It's amazing how simple everything is here. No one thinks twice about walking up to a complete stranger's front step and sitting down for a cup of tea. Today when we were on a walk, Arpit and Rangita found a couple pieces of a broken tricycle and I was amazed at how much joy came from playing with the leftovers of a broken toy for a little while. I wonder if they've ever seen a tricycle. Probably not.

Something is different tonight. A barrier is broken: none of us is sitting on her own bed. Uma is sitting on mine, playing songs on my guitar with the G chord i taught her (the only chord she knows). Silpa has gotten up from Uma's bed and is beginning to dance around the room. I am reclining on Silpa's bed, a book of William Stafford poetry in my lap, and little Rangita's head resting on my chest. She looks up at me and smiles and speaks to me as if I understand. And I do understand. I just don't understand the language. When she laughs, I laugh. Uma's hand has slipped down a couple frets... She doesn't realize. The off-key note rings throughout the room... Silpa is still dancing by the light of a flashlight propped in the corner and Rangita has joined her. Their shadows dance as well on the walls and ceiling. This is beautiful music. Rangita has Silpa's radio. She has climbed back up next to me on the bed. She shoves one of the earpieces into my ear so that I can share in her delight. Then her head is back on my chest. She is flipping the pages of my book with her sticky fingers. I forget about the poem I am trying to read. This, here, right now, is what the poems say anyways. Then, almost at once, we are all dancing, all four of us... twirling, spinning, gliding around the room, in the light and in the dark... our shadows dancing after us. Thankyou, Father, for this moment. Thank you. All is well.

December 10-
Five days until Alan turns 28!
I spent most of my day today holding squirming, crying children down on my lap while they received Polio and Measels immunizations. Polio was by mouth (which Uma distributed), but Measels was by shot. Silpa kept recordss and I got to pin the kids down. One of our partner NGO's was doing this for free today in different communities in Sankosh and we helped them instead of going to school.

School is starting to overwhelm me a little bit (I'm not exactly sure why) so I was happy to hold crying children instead.

Arpit is sick.

I took a picture with Parbati's baby goats today. Baby goats (Paatha paathi) might be my favorite thing about Nepal.

December 11-

I slipped out of bed before Silpa and Uma this morning and found a big tree to sit in for a little while. As soon as I climbed up in it, I felt at home, which is something that hasn't happened in a while. More than anything else, I am thristing for a little silence and solitude. There are alot of thins I like about the interdependence of their culture, but the complete lack of any sort of concept of personal time is not one of them. I am going to try my tree trick again tomorrow morning. Of course, when I got back this morning I got that whole "where have you been?" thing, but I guess I'm going to get used to that.

I went to "worship" in a neighbor's home for the first time tonight. Some sort of shrine or offering had been made this morning, and then everyone was gathered there tonight. I did everything wrong. Tika was put on my forehead (I didn't bow at the right time). Then flowers and more tika were put in my hair. Then I was given bit of the food offering, which I did not recieve the correct way, but it was okay. I was given some kind of drink, part of which I put in my hair (it is crusty now), part of which I drank. Then we were each given a little bowl made ith dried leaves joined by toothpicks (a traditional Nepali plate), that had little bits of fruit, nuts, sugarcane, seeds, tarkari, and roti in it. I was also given a piece of round roti. I think these were also offerings that had been sitting out all day but I'm not going to think about that. It was great. I loved the whole thing. Uma told me this was like church.

Jessie and Ryan have boh been in the hospital this week with stomach troubles. I am thinking positively!

I finally helped wash the dishes tonight. My aamaa works so hard. She is always working... literally, always. She is the first one up in the morning and the last one to go to sleep. I feel like such a burden because I don't do anything to help. I don't konw how to do anything. Tonight I got Uma to show me how to wash the dishes. They use ashes from the fire they cook over for soap and corn husks for scrubbers. It only took the us 3 all together like 20 minutes to watch all te cooking utensils. It makes so much more sense than Aamaa spending an hour doing it twice a day. Now that I know how, I'm going to wash all the dishes I can. Maybe I will learn to plow and cook daal bhaat and carry a doko soon.

The kids here don't really have toys to play with. Even at school there is just one flat volleyball. They make hacky sack type toys by tying rubber bands together. We have been using these at school (we can usually find one or two) to play games and have relays with the students. Today one of the girls in grade 7 gave us two balls that she made from scrap cloth. It was so sweet. We have already been having alot of fun with them.

Okay this is taking far too long for me to type all of this out so I'm afraid I'll have to stop typing up my journal. But I'll try to get the important things down. It turns out the tree where I was going for my morning prayer time is also a sacred place for my family. They sacrificed a chicken there a week or two ago. I thought it was very cool that we were drawn to the same place, but then one morning my aamaa told Uma to as me not to sit in or near the tree. I guess I was violating it. I am a pilgrim.

I feel like the most important thing we have been doing over the past month is just getting to know the people in or village and the surrounding villages. Change seems so slow... but really this is a vital part of the process. We can't just come in and start programs when people don't even know who we are. I'm beginning to realize that 7 months is really not enough time to do much of anything. But we are contributing all we can, and I feel like this is a really important learning experience for me. I'm seeing so many things that I would like to do here. The Peace Corps pulled out of Nepal a few years ago because it was too dangerous with the social unrest, but I hope they come back because I would really love to come back and do something like that i a few years.

Several pretty awesome things have happened though. One of our communities is kumal gaau, and when we went there for the first time a couple of weeks ago we found a group of women were already meeting about forest conservation which was one of the most exciting things that is happened. We are going to try to help them all we can. We went back to kumal last week to do PRA. Here is a group of women making a social map of their village on the ground using sticks and rocks and sand.

Doing things like this helps us get to know the village better and identify ways that we can facilitate positive change led by the villagers.

Something funny: Silpa keeps reading my palm. So far I have learned that I will live to be 90, at I have a long soul line and alot of love, that I will have very little money, that there will be alot of tension in my life, I will see many troubles, I will travel alot, and I will fall in love and get married (not sure about that one!).

Uma read about the Holocaust for the first time the other morning. At 7:00 AM she was asking me questions like "Do you know about this man Hitler?" pause "Who are Jewish peope" a few minutes later "Why did he want to kill Jewish people?"

She is 23. They are so innocent, so innocent. Part of me thinks we should just get out of their country and leave them alone. Tourism is destroying Nepal.

December 18-

Steps for making Roti:

1. Plant kodo (millet).
2. Harvest kodo.
3. Spread kodo out on ground outside house (shuffle with feet)
4. Beat the kodo with a large stick, knocking the grain loose from the part you don't eat.
5. Sift #1 through large basket (separation of grain from part you don't eat)
6. Toss/sift in flat round basket things
7. Take this and sift grain through finer sifter
8. grind into flour
further steps TBA

I am not finished with this entry but I am going to have to go. I will finish it when I can. Much love to all of you. I can't move the pictures around for some reason so sorry the formatting is weird.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Namaste!

2008-12-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

Hello friends! I came back to Kathmandu yesterday to get my last Rabies shot, and I need to head out in an hour or so so that I can get something to eat and get back to my village before dark, but I thought first I'd try to update all of you on what's been going on in Nepal for the past couple of weeks.

First of all, I've got a few pictures from the last week of training... which my last post was about.

This is Dadhingbeshi, the district center, and closest town to all 11 villages that SPW volunteers are working in in Dadhing.

I took that picture while I was hanging laundry on the roof of the hotel where we were staying that week.

This is Rachel, Jessie, me, and Laura on the day we got our Kurta Surwals.

More singing and dancing...

Enjoying ourselves on the last night of training....

Saying goodbye to the other volunteers before we left for our respective villages...
I moved to Sankosh about a week and a half ago. I am not exactly living in poverty as I had hoped, but I am still very happy. My living situation is just different than I expected. Sankosh, it turns out, is not the name of the village, but the name of the sub-district, in which there are many villages and communities. I don't think my village has a name, but it seems that about 15 families live there. It is only about a 45 minute walk (or clilmb) from Dadhingbeshi to the home of my host family. My host family is pretty non-traditional. Most homes house extended families with grandparents, parents, their sons, the son's wife (didi), and their children. My aamaa and baa have three grown sons, but only the third son lives with us. He is not married. My family are farmers, and so everyone works in the fields all day, and the second son comes and works in the fields with them during the day, but he and his wife live about 15 minutes away. However, the second son's two children, Rangita and Arpit, live with us. I don't completely understand why. So there are only five in my household not including me, Uma, and Silpa: The Aamaa, Baa, Dai, Bai, and Bahini. My house is really nice. It's not what I expected at all. It's concrete (traditional Nepali homes are mud in this area) and has four rooms. My Aamaa, Baa, and Rangita and Arpit sleep in one room, Bikash, my older host brother (the dai) sleeps in one room, and Uma, Silpa, and I sleep in one room. The other room is a store room. There is a mud section of the house which is separate. The bottom part is like an open stable where they keep the goats, cows, and baby water buffalo. Then, we climb a very wobbly ladder to go to the upper part which is where the kitchen is. I don't really feel comfortable enough yet with my host family to take pictures of them and the house, but I will put some pictures up of them in the future. This is the view from where I live:

We haven't had much time for exploring so far, but I think if I climb to the other side of the hill that I live on, I will be able to see the Himalayas. I hope I can check it out soon. Sex trafficing is a big problem in Dadhing, so we can't really go anywhere after around 5:00 PM when it starts to get dark. (Don't worry... I'm safe!). But this means that we haven't had a whole lot of free time after school to walk around yet. We are going to start visiting neighboring communities this week though so I am excited about seeing more of the area.

I don't have my journal with me and I'm a little rushed (and tired) right now, so I feel like this is kind of a scattered post. Sorry about that.

My host family is nice, but I don't know them very well yet because my Nepali is so terrible. My Baa is really nice and good about speaking to me slowly and trying to help me understand. My Aamaa isn't mean but hasn't really tried to talk to me yet. Bikash is also nice and my little brother and sister, Arpit and Rangita, are so cute. I think Arpit is about 4 and Rangita is about 6. Arpit is in grade one and Rangita is in grade two (the Nepali school system is so screwed up... more on that later.)

Here's Uma and Rangita dancing in our room one night:

Everything involving the school and our SPW work has been pretty unorganized so far, because we haven't received the new SPW Community and Youth Empowerent Program curriculum yet, but hopefully we will get that this week. Right now I am teaching grades 4, 5, and 6 English (this has nothing to do with SPW but is just something that the school has asked me to do so I am) and Uma Silpa and I have been teaching some classes on Hygiene and Environmental health. Half the time the teachers don't show up at school, so we will get thrown into teaching a random class with no warning at all.

This is a grade one class that we ended up teaching the other day:

Once we get the SPW curriculum, we will just be teaching grades 4-9. Each class has about 40 students in it. We will also be doing alot of work in surrounding communities, but our community volunteer, Parbati, has been in exams this past week so we haven't gotten started with that yet.

We have also been meeting with the Green Club and out-of-school youth groups and clubs that SPW started last year.

We helped the Green Club organize a poetry contest and street drama for World AIDS day on December 1st.

This is Santa, a grade 7 Green Club member, singing a song that she wrote about HIV/AIDS.

Street Drama....

This is the green club president, Kapila, on the left in the pink jacket, then Parbati, our community volunteer, Silpa, and Uma with the Headmaster (first day he showed up to school) and the winners of the poetry contest.

Okay I have got to RUN try to find a phone to call my family on and catch a bus back to Dadhingbeshi!

Namaste!

Dirt under my fingernails

2008-11-25T03:17:00.000-08:00

The kings of the world are old and feeble.
They bring forth no heirs.

Their sons are dying before they are men,
and their pale daughters
abandon themselves to the brokers of violence.

Their crowns are exchanged for money
and melted down into machines,
and there is no health in it.

Does the ore feel trapped
in coins and gears? In the petty life
imposed upon it
does it feel homesick for earth?

If metal could escape
from coffers and factories,
and the torn-open mountains
close around it again,

we would be whole.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Hello Everyone,

I have been in training in Dadhing's district center for the past week. The local, national, and international volunteers have been staying in a basic hotel and most of our training has been in the basement of a nearby school. I go to my village tomorrow. Dadhing is bigger than I expected, but I like it. It's kind of like Kathmandu except much smaller and much cleaner. There's some shops and plenty of fruit stands which is a relief because we are never served fruit in the home. I actually found an internet cafe but the computer is very very very slow... so no pictures this time. It has taken me about an hour just to get this far on the blog.

I was a little upset because SPW actually placed me in the village that is closest to the district center... it's on top of a large hill/small mountain just about a 30-45 minute walk away... depending on whether you're going up or down. I had hoped to be in a much more rural area, but I figure que sera, sera. The village is called Sankosh. There are 15 homes in the village. I will also be doing alot of work in neighboring villages... all within a 1-2 hour walking radius of my host family. Half of the volunteers went up to the Sankosh school a few days ago for facilitatoin training, and I couldn't really understand what was going on, because my Nepali isn't good enough yet... but I just loved being with the kids. All of the little girls were giggling at this "tall" white person speaking broken Nepali and wearing a kurta surwal that didn't fit quite right. When another volunteer, Ashish, told the girls that I would be their teacher, they couldn't believe it... "No, she won't come..." I tried my best to assure them that I would be back in a few days, and they finally seemed convinced enough to offer to teach me Nepali if I would teach them English. I said it was a deal. So we set in the grass and sang (the only two Nepali songs I have learned) until time to go back to work. I'm excited.

SPW's community volunteers have also joined us for training this week. The community volunteer for Sankosh is Parbati. She's great. She reminds me a lot of Alizeh. I went to her home the other day for popcorn. But she speaks about as much English as I speak Nepali. I am really looking forward to working with Parbati, Silpa, and Uma. I think we will make a good team.

I've got my journal with me, so I'm just going to copy a few selections from my past few jounral entries because I can't really think right now.

November 20, 2008

We were in Kathmandu for the past two nights. We were only supposed to be there for one, but there was a strike and we couldn't get out of the city.... Today we left at 4:00 AM to get out of Kathmandu before the strikers got started again, so this is our first night in Dadhing.... The people here are clearly not used to seeing white people. I have never in my life been so aware of my skin color as I was when I was walking down the street today.

I finally got my first Kurta Surwal yesterday, and I am having a second one made. The other volunteers are getting at least three... but Uma told me that two would be sufficient.

I have had dirt under my fingernails since I got here and I can't get it out. I think that is how it should be...

November 21, 2008

This morning I awakened to soldiers marching through the street. A small child was crying. Children know that it's not supposed to be like this. Children know that men in uniform shouldn't be running in formation through the streets with guns strapped to their backs. Sometimes small groups of street protesters also march through the street below my hostel window, chanting things I don't understand.

I'm starting to get used to the electricity going out randomly. Last night I was sitting in the room playing "Holy, Holy, Holy" on the guitar and everything went completely dark... I didn't even flinch... just continued with the song.

Last night I dreamed that it snowed.

November 22, 2008:

I went to my village for the first time today. I wish it wasn't so close to the Dadhing district center but I like it. It's on top of a big hill. I haven't seen my house yet or met my host family. I hope the house isn't too big. I want to move closer to you, God. I'm feeling a little bit lonely today. Andy's letting me borrow his ipod tonight. I'm listening to an artist called Jose Gonzalez. He's really good...

November 23, 2008:

Creepa taught class today and translated everything he said in Nepali which was great.... I also finished reading Sold today.

November 24, 2008:

We met with officials from District Organizations today and walked around to see the offices and headquarters.

I am particularly thankful for pommegrannets today. [These might be my new favorite fruit... I'd never had one before I came here, but they sell them like apples... alot of the street vendors have them. I remember Alex telling me about surviving off of pommegrannets when he was in California, so I think of him every time I eat one.]

I got my second Kurta Surwal today. It fits better than the first one.

-------------------------------

My deepest respect, love, and blessings to all of you. It feels really weird just writing all of this stuff about myself and posting it up to the internet. As I said, I go to my village tomorrow. I'm not sure when I am going to have access to post, internet, or telephones again... but hopefully it won't be too long. Actually, I have to go back to Kathmandu in 2 weeks to get my third rabies shot... so maybe I can use a computer then and update this thing.

I'm going to head back to the hotel and have my daal bhat.

2008-11-18T18:22:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone! Okay I think this will be my first real narration about Nepal. I have about half an hour or so and don't have my journal with me... so this may be a little scattered but I will do my best. I have been in Nepal for two weeks and have had very little time in Kathmandu to use a computer or telephone. The night I got here it was already dark and I was dropped up at a hotel and then picked up early the next morning where I was taken to the SPW office in Kathmandu for a brief orientation. (I arrived a few days later than the other volunteers and missed this early training). By lunch time I was at the SPW Resource center about an hour or hour and a half away in Godowari. During this first long car ride, I laughed that I thought driving in Jamaica was scary. At the SPW resource center, I met the seven other international volunteers, Jessie (USA), Laura (USA), Rachel (UK), Andrew (UK), Ryan (Canada), Andy (USA), and Fiamma (Italy), and about 25 Nepali volunteers who will also be placed in Dadhing. This is the room that Fiamma and I shared during our time at the resource center. Our accomodations since we've been here have been alot nicer than I expected.

Training has actually been a very busy time with Nepali language classes and classes in nonformal education, reproductive health, Nepal's culture, etc. And then nights have been filled with lots of singing and dancing around the campfire. I really think the Nepali people are the kindest people I have ever met. They are so colorful and full of life... the women are just lovely... and the guys are constantly full of energy. I love spending time with the Nepali volunteers. The SPW staff is great too. And Nepal is beautiful. One morning a few volunteers and I hiked up over this mountain (what Nepalis call a hill), in hopes of catching a glimpse of the real mountains (the Himalayas). I tried to enlarge this picture which made it blurry (I'll try to fix it later), but here is the Kathmandu valley with the Himilayas in the background. This picture right here is actually very funny. We had hiked up the hill and through this little mountainside village in hopes of finding a clearing where we could see the mountains. We found one and were all ooh-ing and ahh-ing and taking pictures with our fancy digital cameras... while the villagers were staring and probably laughing at us... because we later realized that we were standing (and taking pictures) in the village "latrine"... literally a pile of shit. There has to be some sort of symbol in that.

But our stupidity still didn't stop the villagers from greeting all of us with deep bows and "namaste"... we were invited in for cups of tea... but had to get back for class. This is the village: Last Tuesday, we walked from the Resource Center in Godowari to a nearby village called Bistachap. This is where we lived for the second week of training. Uma (one of my Nepali counterparts) and I stayed with a host family in the village. I was expecting to be living in a hut so the accommodations were really nice... almost nicer than I would like. The house we stayed in was part mud and part concrete with dirt floors. Extended families live together, and I know there were alot of people living in the house, but it was never completely clear to me whether some people were family or friends, etc. I never saw the baabu (father). There were several children, didis (sons' wives), and the aama (mother)... and her father and mother. This is Uma and me and another volunteer, Toya (second from the left), with some of the children in our family. The children's great grandparents (probably not as old as my grandparents) are sitting in the back ground. Our host family was actually of a higher caste than Uma. She says their house was much nicer than her family's mud hut in the Terai. She showed me her photo album and asked me if I had a photo album to show her and I lied that no I didn't because I didn't want to show her what kind of house I have always lived in. I feel like she would feel different around me or something. I don't know. Uma is absolutely incredible. Last year she was the first woman in Nepal to win some kind of national oration contest. She is also a very good dancer. She has promised to teach me to dance (Nepali dance... very difficult for westerners) if I teach her to play guitar. The guitar, by the way, has been a hit with everyone. I'm glad I brought it.

I'm tall in Nepal! My aama is the second woman from the right. This is Monta, Narayani, me, and Uma. The language barrier makes things very difficult. I am starting to get frustrated. Thankfully, Uma speaks English pretty well, but I want to be able to talk to everyone else. The cultural barriers are also extreme, but what else can one expect? I know that this is where I need to be. Here are Silpa, Uma, Kriti, and Sita in our room with the host family during training. The room was pretty nice. We even had electricity sometimes (notice the outlet on the wall). The beds were kind of hard... just wood with a very thin cotton pad and a blanket... but they were off the ground! This is much nicer than I expected. Uma and Silpa will be my counterparts for the next six and a half months. We will be at the same placement and be working together to facilitate the community and youth empowerment program. All of the international volunteers are paired with two Nepali volunteers and placed in different villages. If the picture below was bigger you could see the red dots of the women plowing the fields in their red saris while the men sit in the shade and drink tea. During this past week we had more language classes and also joined the Nepali volunteers for many of their classes on HIV/AIDS, leadership, lifeskils, etc.... Some of these classes were fairly frustrating... we would be sitting there for four hours and sometimes the class would be conducted almost exclusively in Nepali. But hey, what can you do? Overall, my experience has been very good, just different than I expected. Alot of the Nepali volunteers have cell phones and stuff which suprised me... and it turns out that the international volunteers will actually be teaching alot of English classes as well as health, lifeskills, hygiene, environmental sustainability, etc. At first, the Nepali volunteers will mostly lead these classes because our Nepali is not very good yet. Okay this is me, Andrew, Fiamma, Ryan, Laura, Andy, and Jessie with our language teachers Guru Karuna and Guru Prikash on our last day of language training. We will miss them (and the training!) The last day of class we had to perform skits in Nepali. The basic plotline of ours was three superheroes saving Kathmandu from the attack of giant criminal goats. Is anyone suprised? Our classes were accompanied by the background noises of cows mooing and goats bahhing... at first this was even funnier than the music of the Southern Bell during Mr. Well's English class... but now it all seems very normal. It is starting to seem normal that I should never touch anyone with my left hand. It is starting to seem normal that I am awoken with the sun at 5:30 each morning. It is starting to seem normal to bathe in a very cold public tap wearing a very awkward looking little bathing dress called a lungi. It is starting to seem normal that we break from class every couple of hours for tea. It is starting to seem normal that I should always sit on the floor with my legs crossed (not showing my feet) but never without a cushion or piece of wood or fabric. It is starting to seem normal that I should eat the same thing, daal bhaat (rice and lentils) at every meal. We have two meals ("daal bhaats") a day: one at about 8:30 AM and one at about 6:30 PM. The culture here is very different... and I have experienced moments of extreme aloneness in the middle of it... but there is something different here that I like very much... and I can't quite put my finger on it yet.

Being in Kathmandu yesterday was great though. I have never been more thankful for a real breakfast. Sheer glee:

And the international volunteers had some time together. We found an Italian resteraunt last night. We couldn't believe it. You have no idea how incredible pasta and pizza was after two weeks of Daal Bhaat. I am learning to be thankful. We got a little silly...

Well, I have spent a much longer period of time on this computer than I intended to, so I am going to try to run grab a bite of breakfast before we head out for Dadhing (where it will be back to daal bhaat!) I love all of you very much... I've never really had a blog before and I'm not sure how to share this thing but I guess pass the address on to others who might be interested.

namaste,
Ewray

My frist blog

2008-11-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Hello everyone,

I am currently sitting at an internet cafe in Kathmandu, and I've just managed to set up this blog. I believe that I have been in Nepal for about two weeks now, although it seems like 2 months. Everything has been quite different than I expected, not better or worse, just different. I do not have a whole lot of time right now, because the cafe is actually closing right now, but I just wanted to get this blog set up so that it can hopefully be used in the future.
I really despise mass communications like this... because they seem so unpersonal... but this might be the best way for me to update everyone on what is happening in Nepal... then the letters that I manage to write can be more personal.

I have been in training for two weeks in Godowari (I think that's how you spell it). Tomorrow I go to Dadhing. We are spending the night at a hotel in Kathmandu.

They are kicking me off the computer.

Much love,
Ewray