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