The Last Chapter

I wake up to loud voices outside my window and I can feel that it is to early.  I roll over to check my clock and see that it is 4:30am. Nepali women wake up so damn early, but why do they have to be so damn loud? I roll over and try to go back to sleep. I lay there in a half daze until the sound of a drill echoes around me. Our neighbor, and landlord, is a carpenter and his carpentry workshop is right next to my window and apparently he has decided to get an early start this morning. I look at my clock again, 5:30am. Alright that is manageable. I roll out of bed and peer our my window,

“Goodmorning Garnus.” I say groggily.

 “Shuba Bihani, Cara.”

I make my way out my front door to the water tank where I brush my teeth and wash my face. A few months ago we installed a tap at the bottom of the tank so it’s almost like having running water.  I go into the kitchen and figure I might as well make my lunch while everyone is sleeping so I can have the kitchen to myself. My two roommates, Alisa and Martin, and I usually go for dal bat everyday in the Jomsha, the village above ours. However recently they have mysteriously been going out of town for several days at a time. There have been rumors that the husband had gotten in a fight and might be in jail. However rumors don’t carry much weight around here, for a week there was a rumor going around that Alisa was pregnant and only god knows how that got started. Regardless we believe they might be involved in some sort of illegal activity but are not sure what. I think how in the West if I believed the owners of a restaurant were into sketchy business I would not give them my money, however in this situation this is the only place for me to get good food, and seeing that I am down to 59kg (129Ib), I choose eating over honor.  However because they are not here this week I have been making my own lunch, which is made up of pasta, soya balls, onions, corn, and green mangos. When it comes to home, I miss food the most.

            Once I finish cooking and cleaning it is still only 7:30 in the morning, so I go back upstairs to rest until it’s time to go meet with Mahendra. I can’t fall back to sleep so I decide to watch the next episode of Six Feet Under, an on HBO series I’ve recently become addicted to. It’s amazing how even though I am in the middle of nowhere on top of mountain, that having electricity allows me to enjoy some of the luxuries I would have in west. I lose myself for the next two hours and then decide it’s time to start being productive.

           

As I head down to the Nepali Fellows house I pass many of the children going to school, all of whom greet me with “Namaste”.  Finally I reach two of my favorite little girls, Alisa and Alina. They are sisters who live next to the Nepali Fellows and are always hanging around. Their mother was brought to this village to marry a man who has since left to work abroad. She is a very cold and rough woman who is rarely around to be with her two small children. I have witnessed her beat her oldest several times with a stick. There is not much you can do in these situations but turn away and hope it will end soon.  The oldest, Alina, is 6 and basically takes care of Alisa, who is 4. The volunteers have all taken an interest in them and always welcome them to come hang out. Every morning when I pass them we play a small game where I chase Alisa and pick her up and give her a big hug. After which they continue walking to school and continue on to the Nepali house, but just as they begin walking again Alisa turns around and screams “I love you Kanchan Dee Dee” and I scream “I love you Alisa”. This happens everyone morning, and every time it warms my heart.

           

The next people I pass are the Amma and Boa who live next to the Nepali fellows. Amma and Boa means mother and father. Here in Nepal you address everyone in these terms like Amma, Deedee, or Bahini, aka Mother, older sister, or younger sister. This has made addressing people in the village very easy, however it also means that after a year I still do not know a majority of the villagers names. This set of Amma and Boa are very sweet. The Boa enjoys trying to speak English with me so every morning we do a small exchange of introductory sentences: “Hello, How are you.” “I am fine, and you?”  And so on. After this exchange I have finally arrived at Mahendra’s house where I call his name and wait for him to come out and meet me. The Nepali fellows have already been up for hours at this point and are all scurrying around the house cooking, cleaning, and doing other household things before it is time to meet their partners as well.

“Mahendraaaaaaaa”

“Cara ji, Good Morning, I am coming!”

I then will wait outside anywhere from 5-30 minutes for Mahendra to come out and join me. Today we are planning our youth group meetings for our final week here. It’s hard to imagine a year has come and gone so quickly and that in one week we will have to say goodbye. However I am really appreciating this time to process the end and plan out how we want to finish our work here. When Mahendra finally comes outside we briefly discuss last weeks activity. We discuss the activity we had done with out community youth, a song competition, which had gone very well. The kids all had a lot of fun and it had turned into a kind of party. We decided that we would postpone the song competition for the rest of the groups and save it for our last activity with them next week. This would actually be better so that this week we could give them time during our meetings to prepare and practice for our farewell community celebration next Saturday. 

The volunteers will be hosting a gathering of the community on our last weekend here to say goodbye and give the community members an opportunity to share with their family and friends what they have been working on. In the end the only people who want to present are the youth, so it will more or less be a youth talent show that will include food made by the women’s group. It has the potential to be really fun, I just hope that we will be able to put it together in time.

            After my meeting with Mahendra I head back to the house to get my things and head to my Tanka class. Learning Tanka has been a very enlightening experience to the industry. I took a Buddhist Mandala class in college that I loved and thought it would be similar, however Tanka is very different. For the most part it is a very difficult paint by numbers. You pick a design you like, you then trace it onto the canvas and then you paint in the lines. Once you paint all the color in then the difficult part begins, the details. However the details are all very delicate work that requires the hand of a professional. So in the end my teacher did that for me. While the work did not end up being has challenging  or meditative as I had anticipated I am so thankful I had the opportunity to do it. It allowed me to fill my days being surrounded by people in the community and make new meaningful relationships. And while in the end I can probably only take credit for 60% of the painting, it’s still an awesome thing to take home and have forever.

            I stay at class until 3:45pm, after which I head to my youth group meeting. Today my meeting is at Dahu School, which is a 30 minute walk down the jeep road from where I am. It’s all straight and down hill though so it’s quite an enjoyable walk. While I really like seeing our plans put into action, with the language barrier I am unable to be very active in our meetings. And on days when something isn’t working and Mahendra changes something, I then have no idea what is going on. To be honest I find them quite boring at this point.  We have made 5 groups, each with 20-30 youth in them. This structure combined with the fact that we work with 100+ youth, has made it very hard for me to make relationships with many of them. In the end I can say I’ve developed close relationships with around 20 youth,  most of which are the ones who live in our community and who I see regularly.  When the meeting ends it is 6:45pm. As Mahendra and I walk home we discuss the activity and our future plans for the week. Overall it has been a good relationship, but it also has been complicated. Over the year there have been many disagreements and clear cultural barriers that made these disagreements more stressful. However we are still working side by side, which is more then I can say for other partnerships. Now that we are at the end, and we are so close to going home, many people have given up and no longer are willing to work together. It is of no fault of anyone, but it has become clear that maybe the model that Tevel has set up for this fellowship needs to be challenged and revised.

         

   On our way home I notice that a group of youth are sitting at the stuppah above the tap and tell Mahendrah I’d like to go check it out. He says he will go home and see me tomorrow. When I reach the stuppah I see that they are all trying to knock mangos down from the tree. Obviously they are green mangos because no body waits for things to ripen here.  At first I didn’t understand why, but now I see that if you don’t eat it as soon as possible then insects will. I join in and start throwing rocks at the tree, as mangos begin to fall the kids all scream and scurry to go find them. They all then bring them back to me and tell me to take them!

“ Mito Cha! Kannah Kannah.”

They are telling me it is delicious and I should eat it. I take all the mangos and put them in my bag. As they bring me more I tell them to eat them too but they refuse. After 30 minutes or so of hanging out with the kids and collecting mangos I head home. It is starting to get late and I’m exhausted, seeing as I’ve been up since 4:30 in the morning.  When I get back my roommates are doing their own thing. Two are outside having tea, while the other two are upstairs in their room. I sit with Alisa and Martin outside. We discuss our day and our future days here. We enjoy the night’s breeze and calming sounds of the village. Another day has come to an end, and tomorrow will be exactly the same with a few of its own twists and turns.

 It really is a beautiful life.