Tradition

Yesterday was New Year's in the Nepali calendar. To usher-in 2066, I went to my friend Yamuna’s house in Bakthapur, an ancient town outside of Kathmandu famous for its Newari culture. (Newars are the indigenous people of the Kathmandu Valley.) I met her large, jovial family and ate round after round of meat and boiled eggs (Newari festival food). After lunch we went to watch the celebrations in the center of town. Nothing could have prepared me for what we saw. Here's my account:

We walk downhill with a sea of Nepalis in their holiday clothes. (Sparkles and colors for the ladies; ironed grey and hats for the men.)

I see old lined faces leaning out of second and third story windows – windows framed by intricate wood carvings. Not a 90 degree angle in sight – the tiles in the street, the beams holding the roofs, even doorways are crooked and warped from centuries of recurrent frost and soggy heat.

Windows and watchers

We descend with the crowd. Steel symbols and wooden drums beat behind us and I hear shouts and murmurs and hushed conversations all around. They’re speaking Newari and I don’t even know the words for excuse me. We squeeze our way down – hands held, then pulled apart, held, then pulled apart. We round a corner and see The Spectacle below: a pole, the height of a pirate ship’s mast, erected at a slanting angle to the ground.

The pole from our vantage point

I focus my eyes and see a man clinging to the side of the pole. He is three quarters to the top. I gasp. I take three pictures. I watch the crowd watch the clinging man. Old men squint, small children stretch their necks from their father’s shoulders, faces stuff out of every window in the square, like clowns in a VW. Everyone is focused on the pole.

The man next to me



(A small part of) the crowd.

Before I can ask, ‘Why is he climbing the pole?’ and ‘What’s his aim?’ I see his ant-sized figure detach from the pole and free-fall to the ground. The crowd nearby rushes to where his body would have landed. The old men squint harder; kids strain their necks higher; the faces push farther out windows. And the murmurs grow louder.

The man on the pole, seconds before he fell. (He's on the left side. Blue-ish shirt.)

Is someone at the bottom to catch him? I ask.

No, Yamuna says. His only safety is the dangling rope. If he catches it on his way down, he lives.

He didn’t catch it. I imagine the thud of his body on the cobblestone and the shatter of his bones. I hope I’d misunderstood.

Do you think he’ll be OK?

No. He most probably died. Many people die each year during this festival.

Images from history books flash my mind –witches burning at the stake; Jews marching into gas chambers; villagers stoned to death. Encouraging men to climb a slippery pole without safety feels on par.

I learn later that it’s an honor to climb the pole. If you reach the top, you communicate directly with God. You come down a hero and God will forever protect your family.

When I ask Yamuna what thinks of the event, and whether she supports it, she says, It’s our tradition. And then, Ke garne? meaning What to do?


Other random photos from the day:

Sanjeev and Dil! My co-guests at Yamuna's family's house.

Round one: Boiled eggs, papadam, prawn chips and... Red Bull!

Yamuna and younger cousin in front of their home



Chickens! Bound for the pot...

Walkie Talkies and Duffel Bags

Orange tents staked to frozen fields. Snow whipping off steep cliffs. Sir Edmond Hilary with his goggles. Tattered prayer flags flapping in the wind. My images of Everest.

Now I also imagine duffel bags, walkie talkies and my friend Linden. This spring, Linden is helping coordinate an Eddie Bauer-sponsored trip up Everest. From what I gather the company formerly known for it’s high wasted khakis and boat shoes wants to be known instead for gortex vests and polar tec gloves. It wants to move away from golfers and tea to skiers and Red Bull. So they’ve gathered a team of professional climbers, a film crew from National Geographic and Linden’s guiding company (RMI) to launch a new “Expedition Line” with a summit of the world’s highest mountain.

Linden is coordinating the trip’s logistics. He filled out paperwork for their satellite phones and escorted 17 duffel bags of cheese, Snickers bars and other high altitude essentials to Nepal. Now he’s spending the next two months at Everest Base camp.

Infinitely jealous, I’ve been watching his team’s dispatches every day. Linden debuted in yesterday's (April 7th) with some serious walkie talky talk. Not to miss… Over.

Its a little bit hard to look at pictures like this from an office in Kathmandu. More drool-worthy photos on their website.

Colors!

STATEMENT: Nepal is colorful.

EVIDENCE:

Doors



Street scenes

Teapots
Teapot and door photos taken by the illustrious Ms. Lena Bean(a) Neufeld



Temples

Tikka powder (used during worship)



Carrots



Cloth



Columns



Food



Roommates (on Holi, a Hindu color festival)



Trash



Flowers

Happy Spring.

Potbellies revisited

I felt mean after I posted the last blog entry. I was unfair to the government men. I portrayed them as all belly and appetite and nothing else. I hate that. They are human.

This guilt surprises me. To overcome it, I’m writing about it. To understand The Minister better, here are some questions I might ask:

• Why doesn’t he give a crap? Would I give a crap in his shoes?
• What does he give a crap about?
• Why does he work for the government? (For the pension? Access to a shiny car? Commitment to public service? It was that or the mafia?)
• What keeps him awake at night? (Fear of exposure? His baby crying? Cockroaches scampering?)
• How does he stereotype my kind? (Ignorant foreigner? Fresh meat?)
• Has he always driven around in a shiny black car or did he grow up riding rickshaws and rickety bikes?
• If he steals money (as the stereotype suggests), what does he spend it on? (Cuff links? Shoes for his children? Hemorrhoids cream for his ailing mother?)
• What does he talk about with his father? (Indian Idol? The fluffiness of today’s rice? The impact of global warming in Nepal?)
• How many NGOs does he visit each week? (Two? Twelve?) Does he get tired of finger sandwiches?
• How does he regard his potbelly? (With pride? Affection? Disdain? Loyalty?) Did he work hard to grow it? Or is he trying to lose it?
  

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I bet more than one would surprise me.

Pot bellies and Wusteetees

Here's a snippet from my work-life and one from my play-life:

Dear pot-bellied minister who doesn’t give a crap,

That’s how I want to start the report I’m writing this week. It’s for The Government, to update them on our work.

Every few months they come around to check on us. Last time, a car-full of pot-bellied men with sweat stains under their armpits shuffled into our conference room. The Big Man, a Minister of such-and-such, sat in the largest chair and read questions from a sheet he’d pulled from his leather briefcase. Our director answered while the other men quietly stuffed finger sandwiches into their mouths and asked for seconds on tea. Tuna and breadcrumbs stuck to the mustache of the man next to me. 45 minutes and three platefuls of sandwiches later, the Big Man cleared his throat. The suits stood up, shook our hands, and screeched off in their shiny black vehicle.

If reading the report I'm to write would result in free tuna sandwiches, someone might read it. But it won’t. The Big Man’s secretary will tuck it into a manila folder which she'll stuff into a crooked cabinet in the corner of her room. Dust will settle, its pages will turn yellow, and one day it will rot in a pile of stinking trash by the river.

This image in mind as I write the report, I take a lot of tea breaks. I clean the dirt from my nails; I watch the lady hanging laundry on the roof next to ours; I organize the paper clips and papers on my desk. I need to breath deep, wiggle my fingers over my keyboard, and Just Do It.


Wusteeteee

That’s the French word for a kid’s climbing harness, as pronounced by Isa the 3-year old. Here she is with her harness:

Isa is a new friend. As is Wendy, her mom. I met Wendy because we went to the same college. (Though 20 years apart.) Wendy wears scarves and boots for her UN job. On the weekends she wears sandals and dirt on her knees though, which is probably why we’re friends. We go climbing and sometimes eat meals together.

Isa says things like: “Guys, I’m not vewwy happy wid you” and “I need to go Ka-Ka…NOW!” When she feels like being a tiger, she crawls on her knees and roars. If allowed, she’d eat only potato chips and strawberries. She ignores questions like, What did you do at school today? and Where are you going tomorrow? But if asked Whats the name of that plastic cow over there? she’ll explain not only his name, but also his entire family history, what he wants for lunch and how he feels about the plastic horse next to him.

Isa helps me focus on what’s in front of my nose – things like plastic cows and potato chips and spring blossoms. Things I’d otherwise miss.

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.