Teej!

Last week we celebrated the woman's festival "Teej". It was a full weekend party all across Nepal. During Teej the women fast for 24 hours with no water or food. They all dress in red saris, with a red tikka and red glass bangles. Red is the color married women wear and the whole idea of the festival is that the women fast to wish for the long lives of their husbands, so they can provide for them or to wish for a good husband for all the single ladies. Unfortunately the volunteers couldn't cope with the fasting aspect so we will probably all have crap husbands, who will die early and produce only baby girls (sigh).
The night before the 24 hour fasting there is the "stuffing of the face ceremony", which all volunteers happily took part in. It was like a midnight feast. The families here never buy food from the shop but on this occasion they bought fruit and nuts and made us hot oily prawn crackers. We also had an array of Nepali sweets, my favorite was these doughnut type balls soaked in syrup and ginger and were sickly sweet.

Getting dressed for Teej was the most fun, the sister spent a good half an hour putting on our Saris. Then the aama squeezed tiny glass bangles onto our wrists. About 30% of the bangles broke in the process leaving our hands bloody but also sparkly, which was nice. We're pretty sure aama dislocated Mellisa's thumb as well because it's swollen quite a significant amount since the event.

Today we went on a trek, which was amazing! When we got to the top we had buffalo chow mien and Mountain Dew  drink, which we a pretty sure has been banned from the UK because of its dangerously high caffeine content. On the way back I got seriously leached. I didn't see the culprit but it has left me with a very bloody foot, which keeps sticking to my flip flop.


My body is definitely on Nepali time at the moment. I'm up at 5 AM to lube and milk the cow. Then a bit of clothes washing or corn shedding. Before a mountain walk with the mountain walk crew. Tara brought a yoga book here and I've been appointed yogi of the group. Tomorrow we plan to walk to the mountain top cafe, perform our sun salutations to the Himalayas before tucking into a bowl  of muesli. Perhaps a tad ambitious but I think a lot of the volunteers are determined to come back fit after our unforgiving diet of samosas, pakoras and buffalo. If it's not greasy and its not spicy its not getting served here in Nepal.

Ferri Bitula

Mariam

xxx

Saris and Shopping!

I'm sitting in the internet cafe, covered head to toe in powdered cement. Today we were performing what can only be described as the most thankless task in the world. We have to remove cement from the classroom floors before they are plastered. Tools included hammer, pickaxe and tiny Gurka knives. It took 5 of us 6 hours to get a quater of the room done. I have cement in my eyes, in my ears, in my nose and a nasty gritty feeling between my teeth. I'm heading straight for my cold bucket shower as soon as I get home.

Last weekend was very exciting. On Friday one of the volunteer's aama told us Sari shopping. She spoke as much English as we did Nepali but language of shop brought us together. Next weekend is the big women's festival in Nepal. All the woman wear red and fast for the whole day. We have been promised lots of dancing and singing. So four of us girl volunteers went frock shopping in preparation, IT WAS LIKE NEPAL MEETS SEX IN THE CITY! Amazing...

She took us to a small shack which was decorated with the most beautiful long sparkly bits of material. I'm glad we were with aama because she could get us the best Nepali prices. The material was 600 Rs a pop and we only get paid 700 Rs a week. It was quite funny. One of the volunteers Steph was charged more money. When we asked why they just kept saying "big, you know, like fat? need more sari, big girl". I almost errupted with muffled laughter, Steph can't be bigger than the most of us volunteers but the Nepalis seem to have it in for her. Her family love calling her fat. It's not a insult over here, it's a compliment to be able to keep your women fat it means you have enough money to feed them.

After we got the material we went back to the village where we found the tailor shop. It was a room about 3 x3 m with three women and a large pedal powered sewing machine. The woman measured us all and kept telling us how pretty we all were and repeating our Nepali names over and over, in case we would forget them. That cost us 100 Rs. All together a tailor made Sari with next day deliever cost us about 6 british pounds, barginous. But here it cost us an entire weeks wages that most Nepalis would use to feed a family of about 5.

The internet keeps going off so I will send this while I still can.

Lady in red

xxxx