Re-emergence

I don't know where to begin.

This is the first time I've had access to Internet in two weeks. First shower. First ride in a vehicle. First sight of pavement. It's the first time in weeks where I've had water without adding chlorine. Last night I slept on my first mattress since Kathmandu.

I've been in Jajarkot District in Western Nepal. First to facilitate a report writing training to our health staff based in the district's cozy, remote headquarters. Next to document a journey – to follow two women who suffer from severe uterine prolapse from their village in Nepal to a teaching hospital in a city three days away. Then to witness their hospital stay, to be with them while they get surgery to remove their uterus.

22 women are taking the same journey this week, facilitated by IRC's health program. Over the next several months, IRC plans to support over 250 more women from remote villages to get this surgery.

The stories involved in this trip are more than I can begin to recount now. I've filled 2 notebooks in a week and a half. Here is one anecdote from yesterday, as our bus reaches the city:

Mandari, one of the two women I'm following, points out the window, asks me "What is that?"
That is a bike, I say. I explain that usually one person rides on it, but sometimes two can. Unlike the bus we are on, humans power it.

She nods. Her expression is the same as the day before, when she saw her first car – eyes wide, a faint smile on her face. No words. Just nods.

It may be my first time seeing cars, pavement, bikes, in weeks. But for these women, it's the first time in their lives.

Witnessing this is incredible and difficult to summarize in ten minutes. More to come in time.

Trip Itinerary

• Days 1-3: Traveled to IRC's health office in Jajarkot (1.5 hours by plane followed by 9 bumpy hours by car followed by 4 sweaty hours by foot. Up and up and up.)

• Day 4: Acclimatized, met IRC health staff. Felt thrilled by the uninterrupted mountain views, old men playing checkers in the streets, packs of donkeys carrying rice.

• Days 5 and 6: Facilitated a report-writing workshop with our 8 Nepali health staff. Collapsed each night, exhausted. Felt more fresh and useful than I have in months.

• Day 7: Vomited my brains out. (The culprit – the thistle dish I ate the night before. A village staple, they grind the spiky plant and mix it with oil and salt and potatoes. My stomach said no, all day long.)

• Day 8 – 9: Walked two days to Salma village to meet two women with severe uterine prolapse. Walked with Purna and Rajan, two members of IRC health team. On trail, learned the Nepali national anthem. How to say, "steep uphill," and "steep downhill" in Nepali. Taught our anthem. Felt utterly alive.

• Day 10: Met women in Salma village. Mandiri and Sangita. Talked to them about their upcoming trip, listened to their fears. Chewed on dried soybeans from Mandari's fall harvest.

• Day 11: Walked 12 hours with Mandari, Sangita, Mandari's husband and little son ("Babu") and Sangita's mother in law to bus town. Witnessed them see their first car. First stereo. Witnessed them meet the 20 other women who have also come for the surgery.

• Day 12 (CHRISTMAS!): Wait for the bus. Teach 'telephone' and 'who has the rock?' games to the women. Take bus halfway to hospital. (4 hours.) Stay overnight in chicken-poop-smelly town. In middle of the night, step in pile of green vomit outside my room. Swear.

• Day 13: (Yesterday!)– Take bus rest of way to hospital. Follow women as they are admitted.

• Today, tomorrow and coming days: Hang out in hospital. Talk with women. Take more pictures. Shower.

Christmas morning

Scritches from my journal Christmas morning (Purna and Rajan are two IRC staff I travelled with last week):

I wake up to a sound like wind chimes. Donkeys passing by.

Purna twists the light bulb on and picks through his blanket. Hunched over, his back lit by the dim light-bulb above his head, he looks like Galam from Lord of the Rings, or like a monkey. His frame is scrawny, his movements jolted.

Rajan questions him in Nepali. Purna nods. Keeps picking.

They notice I am awake.

"Bed bugs!" Rajan explains.

Purna keeps picking. Turns to me. Big grin."HAPPY NEW YEAR ROSIE!"

"Not new year, Purna, Christmas." Rajan laughs. Rajan is the more worldly of the two. He grew up in a town, went to college in Kathmandu, has an email account.

We all laugh.I'd forgotten. It's Christmas Eve at home. I try to imagine the families putting the turkey on the table, singing Silent Night by lit trees, sitting in wooden church pews - kids on laps, huddling by fires at their ski lodge - cheeks rosy, hot chocolate in hand.

But I can't. I am here. With bed bugs and donkeys and Purna and Rajan.

I can't understand it, but I am so happy to be here.

Jajarkot

In 11 minutes I leave for here:



Jajarkot, Nepal, the site of our health program.

I'll be gone 1-2 weeks. (Going to facilitate a report writing workshop and then spend some days following our staff around - taking pictures and gathering material for a story or two.)

I'm beyond-excited. Mountain air. Mountain views. Donkeys. No car horns. No English. Lots of potatoes.

I expect I won't want to return.

It's getting cold and...

…the men who used to sell mangos now sell blankets. Bananas stay ripe longer. The street dogs have started to sleep in piles.

Its getting cold and I’m adjusting too…

• I drink 6 cups of tea a day instead of 3.
• I wear a fuzzy hat, a puffy vest and cut-off gloves to work.
• I shower less and smell more (my water is solar heated – in the morning the water is too cold, at night the water is warm but the air is too cold).
• I sleep with a hot water bottle by my feet.
• I used to scoff at the puffy faux North Face jackets that are ubiquitous around Kathmandu; now I’m in the market for one.
• I stopped eating salad.
• I shape myself into a tightly woven ball when I sleep (instead of a splayed starfish).
• I replaced my bedroom fan with space heater.

I miss central heating and fireplaces and the sensation of warmth. But I’m learning that I can survive without these things.

Nepanksgiving

At 7 pm on November 27th, 15 other displaced Americans, 6 Australians and 5 Nepalis arrived at my door, their hands full of pies and casseroles, roast chickens (no turkey in Nepal) and more-than-we-could-eat potatoes.

We'd decided to have Thanksgiving at my house for two reasons: the toaster oven and the back up generator (that only sometimes works).

It was a hell of a night. And left a lot to be thankful for.

Here are some highlights:

Roast birds!



REAL LIFE PIE!



Macy's Parade on TV



Gobbles



Giggles



Post-meal floor time



Picking at leftovers!



Atmospheric lighting (ie power outage)



First time pie-eaters!

Morning-time

My dad recently visited. (That’s for another story. SO GREAT.)

His visit made me realize that I’ve not shared much of my daily routine. Haven't shared the little things: The smell of my alley. The vegetable lady (toothless, nose-ring), the fruit guy (smiley, calls me “didi” meaning “older sister”) and the corner shop lady who I buy walnuts and flour from (tight-lipped, wearer of tennis-ball-sized hoop earrings). How these days I prepare a hot water bottle before bed each night to keep my toes warm.

My routine will change soon. I might be moving in with a Nepali family, or at least share most dinners with them.

But here is my morning routine as it stands now.

It feels boring. But it’s real.


‘Eeeeeh-eeeeeh-eeeeeh!’ The high-pitched beep of my alarm jolts me awake. I groan.

The ledge.

I reach for the ledge behind me, knocking over my book and headlamp before I grasp my alarm clock. I click it off, stretch my arms up and squint open my eyes. The sun is bright in my room.

I pull my earplugs out and sounds flood in – dogs barking, a gate creaking, women chattering, birds chirping, an airplane soaring, my refrigerator buzzing.

I have to pee, but I beeline for my kitchen instead. I boil water and take the bag of coffee grinds out of the fridge. They’re warm. So is the milk I reach for next. Just last week we had 12 hours of power outages per day; this week it’s up to 16.

I pour my coffee and bring the steaming cup back to my room. Between sips I shower (45 seconds max –the water is ice-cream-headache cold these days), get dressed (jeans, a sweater, a scarf) and shove a spiral notebook and pens into my dusty backpack.

The caffeine kicks in. I open itunes and press play. The acoustic version of “Dr. Jones” comes on. I sing along as I slide on my socks to the kitchen.

I pour the remaining hot water into a bowl and mix in oatmeal, dried apple, walnuts, honey. It tastes just as good as it did yesterday and the day before and the day before. My comfort food.

My morning sustenance. Walnuts, oats, dried applies, honey and COFFEE.

I look at my watch. 8:50. Yikes, I’d better hurry. I shovel spoonfuls of gooey mush into my mouth, slide back across the floor, swallow, shovel more in. I put my laptop and a bag of walnuts in my backpack and zip it up.

I lead my bike outside, my eyes squinting as they adjust to the morning light. I take several deep breaths as I pass the begonias in my driveway. They are sweet, sharp. I wish I could bottle the scent.

My wheels. My life-line.

I turn onto the road. It smells of exhaust and fermented trash but it hardly bothers me anymore. I ignore the piles of banana peels, diapers, chicken bones, unidentifiable brown clump that line the street.

I pass my tomatoes and eggs supplier, a small graying woman who sits behind a crooked wooden stall. Her toothless grin and leathery skin are beautiful in the morning sun, against her bright red scarf. I smile, bow my head and remind myself to ask her name next time I talk to her.

I gather speed – now I’m riding alongside the cars and the three wheeled tuk tuks. I zoom past the arched entrance of the British School, past the cement house that hosts the ‘secret Italian bakery’ and past the Hotel Greenwich Village, whose name I stopped laughing at long ago. I weave around potholes and cows and through packs of street dogs, who seem oblivious to the bustle around them. They are focused on breakfast. Heads down, they wiggle and push their noses through the trash in search of discarded momos, old rice, anything to fill their stomachs.

Landmarks on my ride to work: the British School, Secret Italian Bakery, Hotel Greenwich Village

I reach the office. Bumila, the guard, opens the gate.

Namaste, san chai cha? We each say to each other, exchanging smiles. She takes my bike.

My breath still rapid, I step quickly into the office. I glance at my watch: 9:06. Not bad.

My day begins.

Election Day

I thought I’d never go to the American Club in Kathmandu. Run by the American Embassy, the three-square block compound looks more like a high security jail than a recreation center. Armed guards line the perimeter and barbed wire coils decorate the three-story high wall. Only Americans are allowed to enter. (If you’re Nepali, tough luck.) According to a friend who’d been, tiled bathrooms, chandeliers, neatly pruned hedges and a grocery store that sells imported organic tahini can be found inside.

It seemed pompous and hopelessly out of touch with its surroundings – a symbol to me of what our country had become. I’ll never go, I thought.

But on election day the Club hosted a party to watch the returns, and I decided to go. I wanted to be amongst “fellow Americans.” I was also secretly excited to see inside, how an ascetic might feel about trying alcohol for the first time.

I expected to feel like an anthropologist – to observe the scene with distance, even distaste, then leave thinking, “OK, I’ve seen it, I’ll never go there again.”

* * *

At 7:30 am on November 5, 2008 (or 8:45 pm EST on November 5th) I take a taxi with Sweta, my American colleague, her husband Michael, and my American friend Brendan.

The entrance routine evokes memories from airport security checkpoints – we wait in line; a stern-faced guard flips through our passports then enters them into a database; we walk through a metal detector and a second guard pats us down. Finally, guard number three nods approval and we enter.

Inside, we walk past two clay tennis courts, the American supermarket (large, sterile, without people) and little gold-plated signs with arrows pointing us towards the gym, the sauna and the pool. We find the sign that says “restaurant” and follow it.

The restaurant, where the event is held, smells of pancakes, fancy perfume – and Americans, roughly 50 of them. I haven’t seen this many Americans since my flight from Washington/Dulles four months ago.

At the back of the room, people sit around tables– munching on pancakes and sausages, drinking coffee, half watching the TV in the front of the room, half chatting with one another in rapid American cadence.

A quieter group sits in rows of plastic chairs at the front; their eyes are fixed on the small TV tuned to CNN. They clutch coffee mugs, strain necks towards the TV, speak in low tones to their neighbors, careful not to drown out Anderson Cooper.

Half of the crowd is grey and wrinkled. The old men wear khakis and have bald heads; their wives wear gold earrings and pink lipstick. The other half, the youngsters, wear beards, sandals and beads.

We make our way to the front of the room, walking through the round eating tables. I hear bits of conversations: Do you remember which way Pennsylvania went in the 2004 election? When did you post-mark your absentee ballot? I haven’t had pancakes like these since IHOP!

We watch returns come in from Virginia, Ohio then Pennsylvania. I munch on a cream cheese bagel, the first I’ve had in months. Around me wafts CNN election music, the smell of pancakes and the whispers and shouts of midwest, south and northeast America.

During the commercial breaks, Brendan and I comment on how surprisingly comfortable we feel here. We may be thousands of miles away from the counting and the projecting and the voting that will influence our lives more than we can imagine – but we feel close.

Once in a while, I’m reminded that I’m not home. I see the subtle Newari décor that lines the restaurant ceiling. And as the morning sun creeps into the restaurant and I feel the tea jerk my brain alert, the commentators on TV start to yawn, their eyes droop, the night darkens behind them.

Two hours and ten minutes after we arrive, as I am finishing my second cup of tea, the TV screen projects the most important line of the morning, and quite possibly, of our generation:

“OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

The moments following are a blur – of cheers, tears, gripping my friend Brendan’s leg, hugging the old man next to me and dancing with Sweta’s husband. I felt the world breath, sigh out, jump up for joy, relief.

The minute Obama was elected. Fist pumps and tears all around.



Minutes after. Sweta (grey shirt clapping), her husband Michael (blue shirt and victory fist), Brendan (plaid red shirt, pensive look), me (black zip-up)



This picture says it all. Michael.

I turn around. At least a hundred people are here now, most of them are standing – they’re coming out of hugs, straining to see the TV, pulling handkerchiefs out of their pockets. A young lesbian couple hold hands and stare at the TV with deer-in-the-headlight expressions; a middle-aged man with a scruffy face and a milk jug - sized camera takes pictures of the crowd; a man with grey receding hair takes off his thin spectacles to wipe his tears. The collective emotion in that room was greater than I’d felt. Ever.

Michael and Sweta embrace. Two months ago they had their first child, a baby girl.

As we walk out – past the security guards, through the metal detectors and back into the chaos and soot and color of Kathmandu, I look back at the compound. It looks less ominous, less imposing than it did three hours earlier.

I’d seen a community inside. I’d eaten bagels, chatted about my town in Maine with someone from New Hampshire, exchanged excited glances with strangers after every Obama state victory. And after his national victory, I embraced, danced, cheered and sighed with a roomful of people from my country. I’d felt comfortable. At home, even.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be a regular at the American Club. But I’ll consider going back.

Nepal-oween

The night started out on track...

Nepali institutions meet: a teeka (the red dot Hindus put on their foreheads), Dal Bat (the quintessential Nepali dish of rice and lentils) and ‘load shedding’ (ie power outages - there’s not enough electricity for everyone in Kathmandu so authorities cut power ~30 hours a week in each neighborhood.)

...and stayed that way for most of the night.

Smiles! Costumes! Fun!

John McCain even made an appearance.

(Fittingly he was thrown into the dump the next day.)

Then, at the end of the night things got weird. I was walking home and…

This is me trying. Halfway out.

…I fell into a manhole!?!!!

Getting out was tricky. Uncontrollable giggles prevented my muscles from working. The two friends with me were useless, too – they hovered above laughing, crying (from laughing) and taking pictures. It took a good 5 minutes to calm down and pull me out. (Five minutes flies by when I'm cleaning up the table from dinner or catching up on email. It slowed to a blurry halt that night!!!)

"The incident" left me with a French-baguette-sized bruise on my shin, mysterious slime on my red pjs (which I’d planned to return the next day) and… a fun story.

Home

This post has nothing to do with Kathmandu. But everything to do with what's been on my mind lately.

My childhood home was sold last week.

In some ways, it’s easier to be far away. I am not facing the boxes and the empty house. I didn’t have to meet the new owners. I didn’t see my room without the faded sunflower-shaped collage that’s been on its wall since before I can remember.

But it’s also harder, perhaps for the same reasons. I'm far away and I’m not forced to think about it. So when I do, the feelings are sharp.

Thoughts of home seeped into my consciousness at unexpected, often unwelcome times this week:

• While cleaning my room. Yesterday the song “Ghetto Superstar” came on as I cleaned my room. It brought me to 14 Ocean Street, sometime in the late 90s. My best friend Maya and I are in my bedroom. We’re wearing flared jeans and t-shirts from the Gap. We hold hairbrush microphones, squint our eyes and dance around my room, careful not to bonk our heads on my loft bed.
• While voting. I tear up when I fill in my absentee ballot. They ask for my address in The States. I don’t know what to put.
• While Skype-ing. My parents have stress and weariness in their voice each time we’ve talked recently. 25 years of stuff to get rid of, to sort through, to throw out and to pack up. It wears.
• While uploading pictures. As I upload my latest pictures into iphoto, I see the folder labeled “Home.” It feels masochistic to click on it but I do anyway. I tear up at the first picture: its a view of the sunrise from our deck - reds, oranges and pinks mirrored in the still morning water. The nostalgia builds as I scroll through the rest – dad sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand, a book in his lap; my family and the Loxtercamp/McGuires around our dining room table, celebrating one the what-feels-like-hundreds of birthdays we've shared together (the staple cake with Ben & Jerry's, party hats and goofy smiles present); Max sleeping in dad’s puffy chair in ‘the boat shed.’
  

Why do I care so much about this move? “Home is where the heart is,” right? Why is this physical place – really just four walls and a roof – so important? A few reasons come to mind:

• Home provided stability. My life is transient at the moment – I’m living in Nepal, but who knows where I’ll be in eight months; I’m working for an NGO, but I don’t know if it’s what I want to “do” when I “grow up;” I have friends here, but my closest and oldest friends are scattered about The States. Home countered all this flux. If I ever felt lonely or lost, I could come home to our fireplace, to my baby blanket, to pancake breakfasts on our porch. I could come home and find Colonel Bruce next door on his porch, ready with a virgin Shirley Temple and a story from ‘back in Korea.’ “My surrogate granddaughter!” he’d say as I walk across our adjoining lawn. My home represented security, stability, comfort. Now where to run if things get tough?
• Home provided identity. “I am a Mainer” and “I am from Belfast” are phrases I’ve been saying since I could speak. They are as automatic and engrained as “My name is Rosie.” I also feel proud saying them. I met a lot of people in college who grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey or in high-rise buildings of Manhattan; I felt unique to be from a small town, from a community, from a place where everyone is connected. A place where my third grade teacher is also my mom’s best friend; where my next-door neighbor was a City Council member and taught my middle school-band class how to march; where my doctor is also the owner of the local diner where I go for pancakes on Saturdays. Belfast and its people shaped me. If Belfast, Maine is no longer my home, who am I? Am I now someone who simply grew up in Maine? As McCain has done so much this past month, I’ll have to change “my narrative.” That feels about as hard as changing my name – maybe harder.
• Home represents innocence, childhood. My freshest memories of home are these: racing barefoot along the hot beach rocks with summer-friend Paige, telling secrets with Maya under a sheet-fort in my living room, sipping hot cocoa and munching cookies by the fire after an afternoon of snowman-making, running inside the house dripping wet, pulse racing, after a morning of collecting crabs, swimming to the dock and making floating inner tube towers on the beach, and on and on… My memory is certainly rose-colored, tinged by nostalgia. But it is what it is. At my most melodramatic, it feels like I’ve lost not just the house, but my youth too.
  

How to let go? How to move on? How to remember 14 Ocean Street without feeling sad, nostalgic? Where am I from if my home is no longer physically in Belfast, Maine?

As these questions float in my mind this week, I read an email from the IRC. The headline: “IRC suspends programs in North Kivu, Congo, following renewed fighting.” It goes on to say that approximately 36,000 people have been recently displaced from their homes. I follow the link to read another article, this one by a reporter who traveled to formerly war-torn Western Congo. The family he stayed with the first night –poor and war affected – insisted on offering him rice and sardines. The man's wife had given birth to a daughter by a C-section earlier that day.

Then I think of Mary, a Liberian woman I met in Ghana who’s lived a third of her life in a refugee camp. She sells donuts for a living and raises her fatherless grand daughter, Lisa, in their little cement house. She keeps a garden in a dirt patch next to their house.

Their stories put my home-aches in perspective. And remind me that humans are good at adapting. Those who survive the current fighting in Congo will continue to gather firewood, to nurse their children and to seek work after the conflict is over. And Mary is still planting flowers and sending her grandchild to school.

I will adapt.

Ode to 14 Ocean St.

Both self-indulgent and therapeutic, I've documented home, the way I remember it. This is 14 Ocean Street:

The Smells

Mostly, it smells like dog and pine. At dinnertime though, garlic and onion wafts from the kitchen. During the winter, it smells like wood smoke and the pine smell intensifies. When Bern Porter (old eccentric poet) comes to visit, the whole house smells like old un-showered man and old cabbage. We open the windows and doors after he leaves. When the cats or Max are getting their monthly flea treatments, an unpleasant chemical smell lingers. In the summer, the breeze from the ocean carries in smells of seaweed and salt water. Also grass clippings. Summer evenings, the smell of Colonol Bruce’s barbeque seeps in our windows and screen doors. Max disappears. Occasionally, when Max rolls in something on the beach, the house smells of dead seal or rotten fish.

The Sounds

Before dinner, NPR plays loud from the kitchen – I hear the familiar jingle (doo doo dooo) and then, “This is all things considered, I’m Alex Seigel.” The sizzle of onions and mushrooms sautéing fills the quiet moments between segments.

In the mornings, I hear coffee perking; dad clicking at his computer; Max’s toenails tap on the wood floors.

During the day, I hear the “shake-shake” of Max’s kibbles as he pushes them around in his bowl. I hear the phone ring and ring – no one gets up to answer it.

In the summer, I hear a lawnmower most days (Dick and Bruce obsess and compete over their pruned lawns.) I hear a boat engine; sea gulls cawing; kids laughing on the beach; Max barking at them. I hear “NUMBER 42, YOUR ORDER IS READY,” the muffled woman’s voice broadcast from the Lobster Pound Restaurant across the bay. During the Bay Festival every July, I hear rock music, the clank of metal and girls screaming from down the beach.

In the winter, I hear logs drop as dad piles wood next to the fireplace; I hear the click-click-click as our heat comes on, the hot water filling up the cold pipes. Some nights I hear howling wind and waves crashing outside.


The Sights

View from the deck



Summer after first year of college. Lawn catch-up.

Delicious rainbow. Our dock. Big boat that's parked there every summer. Sigh.

Summer morning view from the deck. No words.



View south on cold winter day.



Mmm.

Goodbye.

Momentum.

Life in Kathmandu is speeding up. More work, more play, more travel.

Here’s a glimpse of what I’ve been doing:

• Mountain-related – Last week was Nepal’s biggest Hindu holiday, Dasain. I got the week off from work and spent it "trekking" with two new-but-feel-like-old friends, Lena and Katherine. The week was full of sweet and wild moments. Highlights included breathing deeply the cold morning mountain air after coming out of my hot sleeping bag, singing 90s songs out of tune as we pummeled downhill, sipping steamy yak tea at every meal, eating finger-fulls of peanut butter at most stops, mingling with yaks, peeing at 16,000 feet and most of all... BEING AMONGST THESE BAD BOYS (see below)!
  

Shoot. I thought I had a better picture. This one is from the drive there, which ended inside of those white giants in the distance!

• Office-related – I end this work week feeling dry and cracked and longing to be back in the mountains. The last 4 days I've been writing chunks of a proposal for a project that targets “Violence Against Women” in Western Nepal. (Or "VAW ," another fun acronym.) It's due next week to "The Belgians" (their Embassy) but I'm ready to be finished with it now. The guidelines, which were translated from Flemmish, leave me scratching my head alot. (For example, one question asks us to "Motivate the financing request under the Peace-building budget line while taking into account its supplementary character. " HUH?) I send regular emails to my boss saying, "what do you think they mean by THIS?" (On the upside, I'm learning from it - for example, I learned today that 80% of women in rural Nepal report being abused by their husbands. Yikes.) Next week should be a good work week though. I’m supposed to travel to Jajarkot, a hilly district in the West to facilitate a 2-day report-writing training to our Nepali staff there. I'm excited. Excited for the hills and for the chance to do a project that feels fully "mine." (I held my first report writing workshop the week before last. Went well! Hope to post pictures/ snippets from that in coming days.)

• Miscellaneous-related – Things are good on the friend front. It's taken some time, but my 'circle' of friends here is growing larger and cozier. Fun activities on the rise. In the last two weeks friends and I have: played charades on a dusty rooftop, watched the final US presidential debates over chili and cheap wine, biked around the Kathmandu Valley, tried (and failed) to make chapati, a naan-like flat bread, practiced Nepali from a weathered old book, gloried in aforementioned mountain trip.

Biking the Valley

Here are some snippets from a bike ride a couple of weeks ago. (Up and along the northern rim of the Kathmandu Valley.)

View from halfway up

Today was a pinch-myself day.

A 7:10 wakeup.

I stock my bag with chocolate covered lemon peel (yum) and pesto/cheese/tomato sandwiches (double yum) and drag myself out the door. Drag is an exaggeration. I feel remarkably awake for pre-8 on a Saturday.

I meet Jarrod (American neighbor) and Amra (friendly Australian) at Epic Bikes, the bike shop around the corner from my house.

We zoom through town to meet the others. Through the pollution, we zig zag past taxis and cows and children in the streets, past papaya hawkers and ladies on their way to the temple.

We meet Rob (another friendly Australian) and two Austrians (Ulie "like Julie without the J" and her scrawny/fit fiance, Flo). We say our hellos (I'd met everyone but the Austrians before) and zoom off towards the road out of town.

The pollution and traffic thins. Lone buses and motorbikes pass every few minutes. For the first time in Kathmandu I breath air that is crisp, fall-like.

The road tilts upwards.

Early view from the road

The climb is steady but manageable.

30 minutes into the ride, views emerges on either side. We're balancing on a ridge - on either side of us, valleys down below - GREEN, GREEN, GREEN. All green, rice paddies. Pea-sized brown dots (homes) punctuate the green.

Now the road is mostly ours. Every few minutes a bus passes. Glazed faces, perturbed chickens and sleeping babies press up against the windows. A pack of men sit on the roof. They shout to us, "Helloooo!" "Good biking!!"

The buses whoosh past us, leaving a puff of sooty smoke in our face. The horn - a 3-second ear-deafening jingle - plays before it turns the next corner.

We pass moss-covered walls, kilometers of stepped rice paddies and the occasional cluster of mud houses. Groups of bouncy, snotty-nosed, half-naked children outside most settlements. Playing jump rope in the street. Untangling a kite rope. (Lots of kites up here.) Braiding each other's hair. When they see us coming, they jump, scream, temples pop out of their faces, snot pours out of their noses.

"NAMASTEE NAMASTE NAMASTE NAMASTE" chime the little voices.

Giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle.

A favorite game.

At the top, we dance.

And eat...

And pose...

And envy the kite kid....

Then we zoom down.

I sleep like a bug that night.

Immigration fun

Highlight of my day was going to the government’s immigration office to extend my visa.

Behind the counters pot-bellied men wearing button up shirts, shiny badges and khaki pants sit sipping tea, chatting. Their feet are propped on desks. A few lady administrators sit behind large stacks of money. They yawn, look at their nails. Meanwhile, a handful of young scruffy westerners sit on plastic waiting-room chairs, vulnerable.

As I wait, I jot down a list of ingredients that must be universal to immigration offices, particularly in the developing world:

• yawning ladies behind desks
• pot bellied men with mustaches
• scrawny men in blue uniforms by door
• 2 -5 flies buzzing
• peeling paint
• young westerners with large faded backpacks, sandals and sunburns. seemingly malnourished.
• a few older tourist couples – man wears Hawaian-type shirt, pants that can zip off into shorts, woman has a fanny pack, short hair, guidebook in hand
• cracked plastic waiting room seats
• foggy/stained plexi-glass barriers at each counter
• exorbitant visa fees (to pay for all the salaries)
• drips in the corner
• rusty, crooked filing cabinets
• smell of must
  

Please add any I’ve missed. There are bound to be more.

Flood snapshots

Here are some reflections from two days of my trip to Saptari District:

Day 1:

Today Pawan and I travel to Rajbiraj, the headquarters of Saptari District and the hub for the coordination of relief for around 25,000 people displaced from the recent floods.

The presence of the UN, government officials and aid workers is immediately evident in this otherwise sleepy place.

Driving into town, I see two white UN Land Rovers bump down the main street, their drivers swerving to avoid rickshaws, cows, potholes and children. I see five or six smaller but equally new cars advertising various organizations – Concern, Médecins Sans Frontiéres, Caritas. Men and women in khaki pants walk rapidly through the streets, fidgeting with cell phones.

“Shall we get tea?” Pawan suggests when we arrive. I agree – after two hours in a hot car, I’m hitting my afternoon slump.

But every teashop gives us the same response: “Chiya chaina.” Pawan shakes his head, says he’s never heard of a Nepali town running out of tea. (Tea to Nepalis is like cheese to the French.)

Before evening, we ask five different hotels before we find one that has room. My room smells of urine and mold; the communal toilet is clogged; the fan does not work.

Just last week, Rajbiraj was a remote city of 30,000. Rickshaws, a handful of rusty cars, and the occasional bus crammed with people, goats, chickens, were the only vehicles on the town’s dusty, rutted main street. The Star Hotel, the largest in town, had not filled its 25 rooms in over a year.

Now the town swells with aid workers and government officials. Men with walkie-talkies stride past half naked kids running after rolling tires; UN vehicles drive past men with bike baskets full of mangos; women sit on curbs with blankets of spices laid in front of them, gossiping: “did you hear, the shops have run out of tea?”

* * *

Disaster coverage, rightly, focuses on the victims. The people forced to flee their water-logged homes, those caught in the cross-fire, now living out of tarps.

Today I saw the other side – the people who benefit from the swell in relief after an emergency. For the managers of the Star Hotel, the tea suppliers and the rickshaw drivers of Rajbiraj, business has never been so good.


Day 2:

“We’re going to the breaking point,” Rajan of OCHA tells me as he gets up from his desk.

My eyes must light up because he follows it with, “Would you like to come?”

OCHA is the UN body charged with coordinating humanitarian relief. Rajan, a round man with a small mustache and a large smile, is leading OCHA’s mission in Saptari.

Five minutes later, Rajan, his colleague and I are headed for the site where the now infamous Koshi embankment broke less than three weeks ago.

It should take us 2 ½ hours to drive from Rajbiraj to the breakage point, Rajan says. The last hour of the trip we will drive along a narrow road that sits atop the remaining embankment.

After half hour, I start to see clusters of blue tarps packed, sardine-tight close to each other outside of my window. SUV-sized, the tarps are dome shaped and held by bamboo sticks. They sit together between rows of bright green rice paddy fields.

Tarps and Paddies

Underneath the tarps I see glimpses of interrupted lives. (Most are open with no door.) Some house bikes, a few sacks, a bed and cooking utensils. Most though, house just a bed and a few blankets.

I also see people. Under most tarps are bodies splayed out on blankets, sleeping. I see a naked boy crying outside of a tarp. He holds an empty metal bowl. I also see women carrying bundles of firewood on their heads – their eyes sunken, clothes stained.

When we reach the embankment, Rajan explains to me that two weeks ago the embankment separated the river on the left from villages on the right. Now it is flip-flopped – the Koshi’s dry riverbed and clusters of displaced people are on the left and flooded villages on the right.

As we drive north along the embankment, the water on our right flows faster. Milk chocolate colored, it carries pieces of wood and bits of tattered plastic faster than I could run. Crooked outlines of straw roofs peak from the surface, as do tips of trees and a line of the raised East/West Highway. All else is under water, buried.

Some pictures from the drive

We reach the breaking point and the driver turns off the engine. There are roughly two dozen people in the area – some with construction hats and boots, others in khakis and button up shirts.

Outside of the car is surprisingly quiet. I mostly hear water flow, gurgle and clanks of a bulldozer. I hear peoples’ voices too, but they are hushed, soft.

Rajan and his colleague take GPS measurements, I wander towards the tip of the break, past groups of men speaking Hindi and bags of concrete that an Indian work crew has put as a temporary measure.

I squint to see the other end of the breakage point across the gap – it must be a kilometer away. Muddy water flows through the gap. If I fall in I would not be able to swim against the current.

Above: Rajan and I standing where the wall broke. You can see the other tip of the broken wall at the top of the picture. The water to the right is flowing towards the flooded villages. Below: Another picture at the breaking point. A group of Indian men ask me to join their picture - eager for a token female, it seems. I was the only one in sight.

Most of the people with button up shirts are taking photos. I take out my camera too, I feel compelled to document this moment.

We get back in the car and drive home as the sun goes down. We pass the thousands of tarps again – against the darkening sky, dark figures scurry with buckets of carry water and bundles of firewood to get back to their tarps before dark.

The drive back is mostly silent – we each look out the window, watching the figures, reflecting.