Sweet Rain

First puddle of '09!

Two days ago it rained for the first time in six months. Since then the sky has been grey and rumbly. It spurts drizzle every hour. Most conversations now start and end with a comment on this rain: About time! Thank heavens! and Hallelujah! people say.

Rain means there’s hope that our well will fill back up, our taps will stop going dry, and I no longer have to clean my armpits with wipees. It means the rain might bring more rain, enough to saturate the cracked soil and raise the sagging crops. It means the farmers can breath again. And that the rivers flowing from the glaciers of the Himalayas, the rivers that have slowed down to a trickle this dry winter, will soon come alive again and spin the turbines that create the electricity that’s been in such short supply.

I’ve never felt so dependent on the weather. When it rained at home my track meet might be canceled or a picnic might move indoors. Here rain means power, food and water. It means life.

My Alley Awakens

In January, I moved into a small flat with two Australian friends. We live in an alley the width of a sitting lawnmower. Like most alleys in Kathmandu, it has a small temple, a butcher and lots of dogs. I love being part of its living and breathing. I love my alley.


It starts with the ringing. The women of the alley roll out of bed, their eyes still puffy with sleep. Without peeing or eating, they walk, legs stiff with night, to the temple at the end of the lane. They brush their hands over its row of copper bells and leave coconut pieces and flower petals for Kumari, the Goddess that protects our alley. (One of 36 million Hindu Gods.)

The temple



The bells

The Goddess Kumari

“Its like someone’s hitting coke bottles together over and over,” a friend said after a night in our flat.

By 5:30 the bells stop. The women are back home – lighting stoves for tea, washing their mouths, and soaking the day’s lentils.

The white dog wakes up next. He licks the gnatted fur on his bony spine and yawns. He heads towards the corner momo stand, sniffing the gutter as he walks. He stops. Tucked in the edge where the stand meets the ground is a dark, greasy morsel the size of a domino. He chomps, swallows, then licks the spot until he’s scraped the cement for every last gristly molecule. He continues sniffing.

Next, around 7, the shopkeepers slide back the metal doors of their shops. Metal on metal; the sound of business starting. The sound of the hour. The shopkeepers’s wives tidy the entrances – sweeping banana peels and cigarette cartons into the gutter or onto the neighboring shop’s patch of alley. The man I buy bananas and laundry soap from polishes his foggy glass counter until the identity of the chewing gum and tampons underneath is unmistakable. This all goes on while I’m still horizontal, still drooling on my pillow.

When my alarm goes off at 8:35, the children are already in school, the shopkeeper’s milk is sold out and the women are cleaning copper pots that held the morning’s rice and tea. At 8:40 I stretch my arms up, pee, put on jeans, brush my teeth, check for keys, cell phone and computer charger and walk into the bright day.

First thing I see is the yarn. Just over the waist-high cement wall separating our compound from our neighbors, dozens of sheep’s-worth of newly-dyed yarn hangs to dry. Every day is a different hue – green, purple, red. Every day is brilliant. Next I walk under the canopy of softball-sized red flowers and out my creaking brown gate. I turn right.

The Yarn

The huge red flowers



The brown gate

First shop I come to is the butcher. Behind the counter a man in a white jacket hovers over yesterday’s parts – a leg, parts of an abdomen. I hold my breath and think of those red flowers. Across the alley a goat wobbles, his movement restricted by the 1-foot piece of twine tied around his neck. I bike on, try bring my mind back to the yarn.

The butcher's counter

Nearing the corner I ring my rusty bell. “Maaph garnu” I say as I weave between two groups – a cluster of men sipping tea from glass cups and old women with question mark-shaped backs buying bananas and lentils.

I turn right, out of the alley. Into the day.

Women's Day

It’s Women’s Day. I’m not sure what that means. But I have a better understanding of what Gender Based Violence means now. Until recently it was one of many acronym-y phrases that felt stale to me. It lacked a face.

Then last week I interviewed abused women at a shelter in Kathmandu.

Here is one of their stories, recently published.

Happy Women’s Day from a happy but sober wirl.*

* Sounds better than goman. And it’s still years before I’m ready to call myself a woman.

Highs and Lows

It’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s catch-up time. Here are some things that have made me happy and sad lately:

HAPPY:

1. My wool slippers

I bought these from a small man with leathery skin. Everything he wore was knitted. At dinner last week I said of my slippers: “If I could wear these to work I would.” My roommate said, why not? I shrugged. Now I carry them to work and put them on at my desk. Everyone should own a pair.

2. Tiksha the puppy

Tiksha means OK in Nepali. As ubiquitous as “Namaste.”

She entered my life a few months ago. It was puppy season and little puppy puff balls (or puffy pup balls?) were crawling all over the streets of Kathmandu. One day a soft-hearted lady I work with scooped one off the street and brought it to work. My boss named her “Tiksha” and bought her a collar with a bell. She’s been our office dog and mascot since. When my brain gets stiff I go outside and play with her. She jumps, gnaws, licks, nestles, butt-sniffs and bone-chases. She’s better at waking me up than tea.

3. Visitors!

The highlight of my month (year?): visitors! When Seinfeld George’s worlds collided it was a disaster. When mine collided it felt like the planets were coming into alignment. Kathmandu and home! Family and Friends! A fusion of my worlds.

Family and Friends!

Kathmandu and Home!

4. The Daily Yarn

I live next to a yarn-dying operation. Every morning two brothers dunk 100-ish sweaters-worth of yarn into a bubbling vat of dye. They stir it with long wooden poles, remove it, squeeze the water out, and then, around 8:30, they drape it over sunny laundry lines to dry. At night, my roommates and I guess what color tomorrow will be. In the mornings we walk out and smile. (Except for the two days in a row it was black.)

Here's a sampling:

5. The White Blossoms

With the exception of the sticky orange dessert made for festivals, these blossoms give off the sweetest smell in the Kathmandu Valley. And they’re everywhere now. They cover the wall that lines my alley. They hang from the shop where I buy walnuts and chocolate powder. And best of all, they sprout above rotting street trash. Like potpourri in a smelly toilet.

6. Rupesh the Yoga guy

The width of a carrot and the soft-spokenness of a lullaby performer, Rupesh is my new favorite. He pronounces his r’s like l’s (i.e. loll your head from side to side then leach your light arm up to the sky.”). He adjusts my posture how I imagine a potter would adjust the handle of a teacup. Despite his gentle façade, he runs his class like a military camp. The next day my back and toes and every muscle in between are sore.

If I had a picture of him it would look like this:

7. The Pink Lady

The pink lady lives in the fish tank that’s tucked in the walls of The Blue Fox. The Blue Fox is my favorite restaurant in Kathmandu; accordingly, the pink lady is my favorite lady. What is she thinking? Why does she fold her arms? Is she judging us, or jealous of us? Aloof, or catching every word of conversation? This enigma – and the 50-ruppee Paalaak Paneer – is why I’m a regular at The Fox.

Note: It's true: The Blue Fox is actually purple and the Pink Lady is more of a brown-ish pink. (I would be too if I lived amongst fish poo.)

SAD

1. The Daily Goat

I live 5 houses away from a butcher. His specialty seems to be goat. Every morning there’s a goat tied across the ally from his counter. The counter is empty. By evening the goat is gone and the counter is covered in dead parts – legs, abdomens, and the centerpiece – a head. Faced outward, the goat’s hollowed eyes stare across the alley at the limp rope that held it’s neck hours ago. My daily reminder of death.

A two goat-day. The worst kind.

The Butcher's Counter

2. The White Dog

Can dogs have bi-polar disorder? There’s a mangy white dog that lives near me with all the symptoms. I see him once a day. Here’s an average week of his moods:

• M: Indifferent
• T: Indifferent
• W: Indifferent
• Th: CRAZY
• F: Indifferent
• S: Indifferent
• Su: CRAZY
  

When he’s crazy he’ll rip my roommate’s bag; he’ll hunch his back, show his canines and snarl at me as if I’m trying to kill his babies. Plotting his death is a daily topic of conversation in our flat.

His rear. Wasn't gutsy enough to take his head shot.

3. Darkness

In January the Prime Minister announced an end to 16-hour a day power cuts. He promised they’d be down to 10 hours a day within the week. Two months later and nothing has changed. We’re still in the dark and the cuts are rumored to jump from 16 to 20 hours a day. Lots of grumbling by all, me included. I grumble when:

• It’s nighttime and I can’t find my keys. My headlamp’s coverage is never enough
• My computer battery dies at the climax of a movie
• I hear a word I don’t know and I can’t Wikipedia or Google it
• I open my email’s inbox and am reminded of how weedy, overgrown it’s become
• I discover green on the cheese I’d put in the fridge two days before

To be fair, there are benefits of having no power: I read more, tell stories with my roommates, and go to bed by nine.

4. Dirtiness

The other day I was cleaning behind my underwear shelf and I discovered a pouch from my June flight on Qatar Airways. Inside was a toothbrush and a pair of turquoise socks. Halleluiah – I’d been wearing the same socks for three days. Like the electricity shortage, there’s also not enough water. It's the dry season and our tap is usually dry. Lots of dirty underwear and unwashed hair as a result. I’m now on day three of the turquoise socks.

The turquoise socks, three-days in