Today we went to our new village… AAaah! Today was insane but I will start from the begging.
We woke at 6AM and had a marvelous cold shower with my new friend the cockroach. Bal said “the rat and the cockroach and spiders also want to make your friendship very much, so you must not scream like EEEEeee! when you see them or they will cry”. Then we had one of our routine power cuts. All over Nepal they have scheduled power cuts which is called shedding to reserve the electricity that the cities and villages rely on.
I played for jam and toast for breakfast. The jam he is spicey and lovely, but we had cardboard corkflakes and hot milk. As usual breakfast made me want to vom everywhere. Luckily it was not the “coleslaw-style-sandwiches” from the yesterday that had most of the volunteers bent double for most of the morning.
We then left the Siritar group and got onto the bus to Lamatar. As we did we stumbled on the boy who slept on the street. About nine of them lay together with 2 stray dogs and their faces covered in flies. It reminded me that we are not here on holiday and that we are extremely lucky to have cardboard cornflakes in the morning.
We stopped of at a supermarket to pick up last minute things we needed. With the street boys at the back of my mind I decided to buy the things I only desperately needed, toilet roll and 2 unhappy looking pomegranates.
The bus then sped off at top Nepali speed (35m/h) until the tire let out a loud POP followed by a long hissing. They changed the tire with just a large rock and the help of 3 small boys. The new tire was like the old one, smooth as a babies bum.
After 20mins on the road again the street signs became less English and more Nepalese.
WE ENTERED LAMATAR, what must be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was surrounded by the most beautiful, green dense mountains with butterflies and dragonflies the size of my hand. The streams from the mountains run down in the rice paddies which are this amazing luminous yellow color. The houses are brick and mud huts and look like they are straight out of a page from national geographic.
I can’t do this place justice but it looks like someone might have plucked it from my dreams. I love it here.
Finally we met our Aama (mother) and didi (eldest sister). I’m sharing with another volunteer called Mellisa, whose suitcase we struggled to carry down the steps. There was lots of laughing which was good because the women do not speak a lot of English and we don’t know that much Nepali yet. Luckily Aama was carrying a babau (baby boy) so the women manage to break the communication barrier with universal cooing over the boy who wore earring and lots of eyeliner.
We live with Aama, her three sons and their 3 wives and their 4 children. It’s a lively household and there is always a lot of laughter.
Dinner was a strange experience. Aama called us in to the kitchen at 7.30PM. We went into the mudhut, with our gaai (cow) below and the kitchen above. It was a tiny dark and warm and the whole room was made of an orange mud, so it felt like we were sitting in a clay oven. You couldn’t stand up, but we sat on floor and were served our dhal bhat. I’m sure my mum will be delighted to know that I have picked up the Nepalese custom of eating with my left hand quite expertly. It was incredibly surreal. After we went to bed in complete darkness, with just the sounds of crickets and the occasional moo to keep us company.
Aama has given me a Nepali name, Manita. If anyone wants to text me my new number is 9808170397, its very cheap.
Namaste
Mariam
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