Speedily in our days
Before I came to Nepal, there was a definite list of things in my head I was worried about (roughly in order):
- Nepali toilets (Ben Davis would have no problem with this, and as Rabbi Alpert loves to say, hamayveen hayveen)
- Clean food
- Clean water
- Toilet paper scarcity
- Bucket showers
- Finding time to finish my thesis
- Fitting in with the Israelis, esp. speaking Hebrew
- Bucket laundry
Each of these challenges has indeed turned out to be a problem of some sort, but it turns out there is one enormous issue I did not anticipate that has proven more troublesome than any of the above:
- Nepali doors
Nepali buildings are built for Nepalis. I hit my head in doorways and even on ceilings more often than we eat dal bhat (which is to say: a lot).
Even if I couldn’t care less about whether Nepal ever becomes a developed country for any other reasons, I certainly hope they do for selfish ones: a more-developed Nepal means a better-nourished Nepal which means taller Nepalis which in turn means larger buildings and which at the end of the day means fewer inventive English invectives coming out of my mouth.
On a related note:
- Nepali beds
It’s a good thing Nepal is pretty much the opposite of Sodom or I’d be out two feet and some leg.
I’m on a bus… with a goat
Photo courtesy of Avigayil Heimowitz
He wouldn’t look at the camera!
I know it’s a little hard to tell, but I’m on the roof of a bus.
(Micha, this post is specially for you. Welcome to Philadelphia.)
The Passal
Bullet points!
- The word passal means ‘business’, and while our passal is in an area that contains many, it is the passal. We eat lunch and dinner there nearly every day. The passal is a ~12 minute walk from our house along a very (need I say it?) winding road. In my experience, the more I traverse a given distance, the shorter it seems. For some reason, the walk to the passal seems to grow longer with each trek out. This bodes ill for the next few months.
- Before we came to Sundrawoti, we were told by certain reputable individuals that our passal serves the best dal bhat (lit. lentils and rice) in Nepal. For instance, Ari, who was just in Sundrawoti, said that he can only hope that he one day comes to love his wife as much as he loved the dal bhat in Sundrawoti. This was encouraging information, because dal bhat is more or less the only food in Nepal so Nepalis eat it twice a day, every day. Unfortunately, after approximately two days of eating dal bhat at the passal, we were all ready for something else. This bodes ill for the next few months.
- Avigayil is still having trouble with her Nepalis. The following is a brief conversation regarding the didi (lit. older sister; by way of explanation: in Nepal, everyone is somehow your brother or sister) who runs the passal:
Avigayil: She is so beautiful. She looks like a Yemenite goddess.
Me: Allah?
Jewish Shiva Ratri
I know this post is a few days late, but it’s something that I felt must be shared anyways. On Purim, we drew names from a hat and agreed to give Mishloach Manot to the person whose name we chose. I gave a hastily-assembled, typical Mishloach Manot: chocolate, cookies, a cream doughnut, with a cute note. In turn, I received possibly the funniest Mishloach Manot of my life. At first, I thought the person who gave it to me was insulting my breath:
Then, I noticed the box was already opened and took a peek inside:
I assume he got it from the empty lot immediately behind our house:
And, yes, it was on this occasion that I first chose to share with you pictures I actually took in Nepal.
Shiva Ratri is the only day on which marijuana is legal in Nepal (for religious reasons. See: Namastul). The rules of Tevel b’Tzedek prohibit drug use during our participation in the program, but a certain staff member who shall remain nameless has mentioned on more than one occasion that Purim is the Jewish Shiva Ratri.
And for those responsible individuals who are concerned in any way about the legality of this post: have no fear, I intend to save it for when I get cancer.
[Update: My legal advisers have informed me that saving it for when I get cancer might violate some possession laws in the meantime, so I have disposed of the material accordingly.]
Wel•Come to Sundrawoti
My favorite part is the numbers (for obvious reasons).
In order:
- Me (I include myself only because wordpress wouldn’t let me start with 2)
- Tal ‘Braveheart’ (rough translation)
- Dafna ‘Flower’ (a specific kind)
- Avigayil ‘Happy Love’
- Alisa ‘Alisha’ (unnecessary spelling change IMO, since Nepalis can’t say ‘sh’)
- Timna ‘Flower’ (a specific kind)/’Smile from the heart’
- Balram ‘little brother of Krishna’
- Upama ‘Illustration’
- Rajkumari ‘Princess’
The last three are TBT’s Nepali staff members doing the Wel•Coming (and to be fair, this is a fairly common mistake throughout Nepal)
Leaving (to Sundrawoti) on a prayer (flag)
At home, I find Buddhist prayer flags in only the most random places. In the woods on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. Halfway up Mt. Ellinor in Olympic National Park.
But near our house in Kathmandu, I find them pretty much everywhere I look. The house is located in a neighborhood called Swayambhu, which is an enclave of Tibetan Buddhist refugees. Seemingly every rooftop is trimmed with flags, and nearby temples are covered with literally thousands of them draped across stupas and over treetops.
Until I came to Nepal, I never really quite knew the deal with prayer flags; since my arrival, I’ve learned a bit more. The prayers written on the flags are delivered (to whom, I’m not sure; my education continues) every time they flap in the wind.
This discovery got me thinking: prayer flags would be a wonderful addition to Judaism. In particular, it would be nice to put up some flags with all of the prayers for Yom Kippur, though it would admittedly take a lot of flags to fit them all. As an added bonus, the flags could also not eat for you.
Or, if you want to break the system, try putting up a flag with Mashiv haRuach (that’s the one to make more wind).
Photo courtesy Avigayil Heimowitz
Welcome to Nepal, take II
One of the highlights of TBT orientation was the Alone Tour, in which we were asked to strike out alone in Kathmandu and explore non-tourist areas of the city. TBT gave us each a budget of 120 rupees ($1.69), a few simple rules (e.g. take public transportation and not taxis), and some suggestions (e.g. offer to buy a Nepali tea, ask a Nepali about the political situation).
I made it about three blocks before I found a large group of men intently playing a board game. I stood on the outside of the circle peering in, and being friendly Nepalis, they invited me to play in the next round. While I learned to play (the game turned out to be a Nepali version of Sorry! or Trouble!; I’m not sure which is which, or whether either one actually has an exclamation point), one of the men noticed my still-in-one-piece kippa and asked if I am a Muslim. No, I told him, I am Jewish. I could see that this was a confusing answer, but before anyone asked me to explain further, one of them did it for me: “Jewish is a kind of Christian.”
It’s fun to be in a country where nobody has any idea what a Jew is.
Photo courtesy Keshet Gross
Holi Holi Holi
Now that was a crazy holiday. And I’m not talking about Purim.
The day before, the entire city of Kathmandu celebrated Holi, the Hindu festival on which tika is the least of your worries. On Holi, celebrants douse one another – and innocent bystanders – with artificial dyes (these are usually healthy for you) and river water (this is usually ebola). Based on my careful observations, I have put together a survival guide with some quick and easy tips for those hoping to enjoy the optimal Holi experience:
- Be a bhidesi (foreigner)
- Travel with a large group of foreigners
- Head for a large public gathering space
- Encourage your group to wear matching Hawaiian t-shirts (this also saves real shirts from ruin)
- Chant “Shiva Ratri, Shiva Ratri” to see if anyone notices
- Walk through narrow alley-ways so that buckets dumped from nearby rooftops can’t miss you
- Carry a large quantity of ‘ammunition’ and look as threatening as possible
- Engage street gangs of children who are more than happy for any excuse to pull their water balloon shtick
By following the above guidelines, you should end up looking something like this:
Photo courtesy of Hofit Bar
I’m still not entirely clear on the origins of Holi – I have heard four different opinions from three different sources – but my favorite explanation by far was offered by the local Chabad Rabbi, who suggested on Friday night that Holi is actually Purim (m’Hodu v’ad Kush). He also advised those still looking for a Purim costume to spend about ten minutes outside during Holi (the above is the result of two hours of hard work), which is a great idea if you want to dress up for Purim like Ke$ha.
Arur Haman, Baruch Motorbike
I got a shoutout in the Purim party decorations. I’m the one underneath Mordechai.
Shoutout courtesy of Shira Langer
College is easy, if you just know where to look
When I arrived in Nepal, I was quick to find the bag Alana had left for me in the TBT house. It contained some hand sanitizer, some medicines, a map of Kathmandu, toilet paper – all sorts of useful things to help me get by in Nepal. It also contained about three single-spaced pages of tips and recommendations for navigating Kathmandu, including lists of good restaurants, coffeehouses, shopping areas, and nice places to stay for Shabbat. And while I truly appreciate that Alana went out of her way to help me find my way around the city, there is one store I really wish I’d found out a little bit earlier. To say that this store’s services would have been helpful is the understatement of 2067 (which is, by the way, the current year in Nepal):
Crazy Taxis
As much as I’ve written about public transportation in Kathmandu, we do most of our getting around by taxi. Every time I pile into one, I can’t help but think about all the reasons it’s a good thing I’m not in the driver’s seat. Here are some of the things taxi drivers in Kathmandu have to put up with:
- Cars that break down without warning
- Inattentive pedestrians
- Manual transmission
- Bumpy, cracked, potholed, and broken roads (Kathmandu has one recognizable paved road – the Ring Road, which loops around the inner city) if they were ever really roads to begin with
- Inattentive dogs (my first taxi ride in Kathmandu included a dog scraping)
- Blind corners
- Narrow alleyways
- One-lane streets
- Blind corners in narrow one-lane alleyways
- No traffic lights
- Inattentive bicyclists
- No street signs
- High oil prices
- Constant traffic jams
- No grid
- Inattentive cows, buffalo, goats, etc.
- Physical intimacy
- Police checkpoints
- Driving on the wrong side of the road
- Shiva Ratri
And for all this they’ll drive you across the city for about $5.
Room 29 and three quarters
My address in Nepal is:
Mordechai Treiger
Nyayik Sansar
PO Box 20927
Kathmandu, Nepal
014-672854
I share this not because I expect anyone to send me letters but because it contains something you don’t typically see in an American address: a phone number. In Nepal, there is no package delivery. Instead, when someone sends you a parcel from abroad, the post office gives you a call to let you know you can come pick it up.
So it was that this past Thursday that Tevel b’Tzedek (Nepali: Nyayik Sansar) received such a call alerting them that a package had arrived for Mordechai Treiger, and that he should come pick it up by 2:30 or else it might get damaged or lost. It was already half past noon.
Furthermore, the post office reported, the precise contents of the package in question were known, and Mr. Treiger should be prepared to pay a rather sizable customs charge if he was interested in leaving the post office with his parcel. This last bit of information was particularly frustrating, as my camera would have entered the country duty-free, in my backpack, had Sony not been totally incompetent. (For details, see the ‘About’ tab above.)
Typically, when volunteers need to complete some complex task in Nepal, Tevel b’Tzedek sends a Nepali staff member along to help communicate. However, there were no staff members available, and the message had made clear that a hammer would come down on my package at precisely 2:30. So I grabbed my passport, jotted down directions, grabbed Hadas without her wallet and without her cigarettes, and ran.
We made it to the main entrance of the post office at exactly 2:30. Fortunately, no line. Unfortunately, wrong building.
We raced around the side in search of Room 29, where the package was rumored to be. Room 29 was nowhere to be found, but Room 28 was, and Room 28 should be close to Room 29. Room 28 contained about 100 packages, and the postmaster there let me examine each one in search of mine. I managed to find many packages that came from Israel, but unfortunately did not manage to find mine – or, fortunately, given the strong scent of urine that inexplicably filled the room. So we continued around the side of the building to Room 32, where we were finally directed to Room 29, which turned out to be down an alleyway, through a door, and at the end of a long, narrow hallway. At long last.
Sort of. Where Room 28 had contained about 100 packages, Room 29 contained about 100,000. The Nepali staffer checked my name against a list of packages he had received that day and, not finding it, sent me across the hall to a room that resembled a loading dock. There I received my first first-hand indication of any sort that my package had indeed arrived: reading my name caused the worker’s face to light up, and he spat out a stream of unintelligible Nepali from which I recognized one word, camera. I was led back to Room 29, where my package was promptly produced from a closet. Success.
Not so fast. From there, we were treated to a whirlwind of Nepali bureaucracy. First stop: passport check. Fortunately, I had recently read Alana’s account of her unsuccessful attempt to retrieve a package in Kathmandu, and had stopped on the way to photocopy my passport. This is apparently a necessary task, but impossible to accomplish once you have arrived at the post office.
Next came the box-opening ceremony. Someone had told me that the determining factor in whether I would pay customs or not was whether the camera being sent to me was new. Unfortunately, the ceremony revealed that the camera arrived in Kathmandu in more or less its original packaging. This was not going to be easy.
Our next stop was the assessor, who sat at a small table punching numbers into his calculator. Though the camera doubtlessly looked brand new, I had actually brought along one secret weapon: my camera equipment, which I pulled out to bolster my case that the camera was indeed old and only looked new because it had been sent in for repairs. OK, the assessor told me, “Old camera price, $200.” He poked at his calculator and turned it around to show me the result: 4000 rupees, or almost $60. No, I insisted, the camera was just sent in for repairs, it’s really an old camera. OK, he said, “Old Old camera price, $100. You are my guest.” As much as I complain about Nepali over-hospitality, I much prefer the Nepalis who give their guests tika to the ones who hand them a bill. But by this point, it was obvious that he really was just being nice. The camera was clearly not an “old, old camera” or even an “old camera” – time to pony up.
Just one problem: the payment counter was next to a big sign that read Cash. Before I left Tevel b’Tzedek, someone had told me the post office would definitely accept credit cards. Uh oh. I started counting out the small bills in my wallet. 1000. 1100. 1200. 1300. 1400. 1450. 1500. 1550. 1600. 1650. 1670. 1690. 1710. 1730. 1740. 1750. 1760. 1770. 1780. 1785 …you…get…the…idea…I…had…a…lot…of…very…small…bills… 1965.
Which, it turned out, was literally the perfect amount. For some reason, instead of the 2000 rupees the assessor had originally calculated, he wrote on the customs form that I owed just 1930, which seems like it had taken, if anything, more effort on his part. The bus home would cost 30 rupees, meaning we had just enough to get the package and get home. Fabulous. We grabbed the receipt and headed for the exit.
Not so fast: one last desk. “10 rupees, postage surcharge.” 35 rupees minus 10 rupees equals 25 rupees, which is less than the 30 rupee bus fare home. I opened my wallet, counted out my 35 rupees, and explained that we needed 30 of them to get home. OK, he said, “bring me the other 5 next time you come by the post office.” If all goes well, that will be never.
Moments after leaving the post office, Kathmandu treated us to a pleasant surprise. A young man lay still on the sidewalk, his head resting on the lap of a friend, red stains covering his shirt, and a blood-soaked formerly-white bandana tied around his head. I may have just suffered from seven months without a camera, paid $45 to ship a new one to Kathmandu, paid $30 in customs, and carried only pennies in my pocket, all through no fault of my own, but, I told myself, at least I wasn’t that guy.
I, Motorbike
How do you befriend an entire village of Nepalis? Start by telling them your name.
When we first arrived for our visit in Sundrawoti, we found all the women and children – and a few of the men – of the village patiently awaiting our arrival by the local temple. They wasted no time treating us to the three fundamental elements of a traditional Nepali arrival ceremony:
- Tika – they dabbed/smeared red powder on our foreheads. Tika was kind of cute the first two or three times it happened (Sundrawoti was just the second), but now we evaluate our hosts by how many baby wipes they force us to use within a minute of leaving their home.
- Malla – they draped chains of flowers around our necks. The national flower of Nepal is a red Rhododendron, and most mallas are handmade using a mixture of flowers and leaves of this species. (Malla is also the Nepali name of my friend Alana, who was part of Tevel b’Tzedek’s previous cohort.)
- Phul – they shoved more flowers into our hands. Step three was repeated until the village seemingly exhausted its enormous supply. When we were handed yet more phul the next day in a neighboring village, I was relieved to learn that our first welcome ceremony had not driven Rhododendron arboreum locally extinct.
Next, the volunteers sat in a row and introduced themselves in turn:
Mero naam Hadas ho. Mero naam Alisa ho. Mero naam Tal ho...
After each volunteer offered his (or more likely, her) name, the villagers held an impromptu council which resulted in the assignment of a Nepali name based on the meaning or phonetics of the original one. This was not a particularly efficient process, and by the time it was my turn to be Nepali-ed, I could tell that even the villagers were getting a little tired of making up so many names for us.
Fortunately for them, I already had a Nepali name of sorts. Gopal, my Nepali teacher, had some difficulty pronouncing my name (he’s in good company – even my dear grandmother, whom I love very much, can’t do it), and had told me that it reminds him of a different word he is more familiar with. So when it was my turn to introduce myself, I wasted no time offering the Nepali name I already had:
Mero naam Motorbike ho.
A moment of hesitation. And then the entire village of Sundrawoti cracked up in unison.
When we danced to Nepali folk music at the close of the ceremony, the villagers were eager to offer dancing tips to Motorbike (and I definitely needed them). When I was introduced to my host family for the four-day stay, I was Motorbike. Each night, the village children had no trouble recognizing Motorbike, and I was accompanied ‘home’ by kids noisily imitating a motorcycle engine. And when I got a little lost in an unfamiliar corner of the village, two women from the next field over called out to Motorbike and pointed me the right way home.
Unlike Tevel b’Tzedek’s two other volunteering sites, Sundrawoti feels like a single community. Everybody knows everybody else, lends their neighbors a hand during the harvest, and feels comfortable allowing their children to run around unsupervised at all times of the day. This sense of community was part of what drew me to Sundrawoti, and I can only hope that the volunteers who plan to spend the next three months there can begin to duplicate it.
For the record, I have since settled on an actual Nepali (and incidentally, familiar) name: Moti, which means pearl – not to be confused with MoTi, which means fat (girl). In Nepali, whether you press your tongue against the back of your teeth (correct) or against the roof of your mouth (hopefully not) makes all the difference. Don’t get any ideas.
How Much Sutra is too much?
For the past week, Tevel b’Tzedek has been joined by a very nice couple, Allison and Andrew from Toronto. The two are in the middle of three months of travel by bike, which is rather impressive given that Andrew is 65. On the couple’s first day with us, I noticed that Andrew was carrying around a serious-looking camera, and feeling rather camera-deprived at the time, asked if I could take a look at it. He took this as a request to look through the viewfinder at the hundreds of pictures he had taken since he arrived in Nepal, so I flipped through them backwards, one by one, for about twenty minutes. They were nice pictures – that is to say, more or less what I expected – until I reached the final three or so dozen. Andrew had apparently visited a temple covered in a rather narrow variety of realistic carvings. In other words, Andrew had devoted his time at the temple to documenting as much of the Kama Sutra as possible. Something like but not necessarily:
Meanwhile, before I came to Nepal, I bought a Kindle to cut down on the number of books I’d need to schlep around. Turns out that Tevel b’Tzedek boasts a rather sizable library of English and Hebrew books. A lot of them are related to development, globalization, and the like, but others seem to have been picked off bookstore shelves more or less at random. So although the library has a wide variety of serious material to choose from, what excited me the most was finding a book from a series I last read a good decade and a half ago (I am so, so old). The day after I was treated to Andrew’s collection of photographs, I came upon the following passage:
He had one of the most beautiful faces she had ever seen on a man … a sophisticated and subtle arrangement, almost sculpted, like some of the ancient Indic and Cambodian princes on ruined stone murals. She flushed as she remembered what those princes had been doing in the murals.
Because I last read the series so long ago, I don’t remember much from the first go-around, and still haven’t read anything to trigger in my memory whether or not I read this particular book before. That said, I’m fairly confident that I could have theoretically read it at any time up until a week ago, and this little gem would have gone right over my head. Now, I could picture what the author was thinking of without bothering to exercise my imagination. Thank you, Andrew, for everything.
You can read Andrew’s impressions of Tevel b’Tzedek on his blog.
Sundrawoti
I am going to spend the next three months in the middle of nowhere. Really, the exact center. Sundrawoti is a Thami (ethnic) village an eight-hour busride from Kathmandu. And when I say busride, I mean slow-moving rollercoaster.The road to Sundrawoti is up and down, wraps around mountains, hugs the edge of cliffs, includes few stretches of pavement, fords a couple of streams, and, oh, is only one lane. That means every time the bus encounters another vehicle traveling in the opposite direction – and to be fair, this isn’t the most frequent occurrence – one of them has to back up until it reaches an area large enough to accommodate a bus pulling over. To pull off this little trick without falling off the side of the road, every bus carries a staff of two: a driver and what I’ll call a reverser. The driver does exactly what you would expect him to do. When the need arises, the reverser jumps out, runs to the back, and hits the side of the bus rhythmically to tell the driver when and where to continue backing up. When it’s time to stop, he hits the side twice in succession.
Though living in Sundrawoti means a lot of isolation and little access to internet, I am really excited to have been placed there. Each volunteer filled out a form indicating where he or she would like to be placed – I circled Sundrawoti, then circled it again, underlined it a few times, circled it once more, and then surrounded it by arrows pointing inwards. In case they were somehow confused about where I wanted to be placed. The truth is my second choice – Mahadev Besi – would have been fine, but Sundrawoti was my clear preference.
Sundrawoti is stunning – I won’t go into much detail for now when I can use only words – but it is built on the side of a mountain (where else?) that has been entirely terraced from top to bottom. Getting from house to house is less like walking and more like mountain climbing. We visited the village for four days last week, and while living there will certainly have its fair share of challenges, I expect it to be entirely worth it.
I have much more to share, and typically would leave an unfinished post as a draft until I had time to complete it, but in the interests of BREAKING NEWS, I will hit Publish now and write more about Sundrawoti after Shabbat. I will sign off with a brief list of names you should get used to reading: Tal, Timna, Dafna, Alisa, and Avigayil (from the river). Shabbat Shalom!
That’s what it’s all about
Last week, the TBT staff performed a short skit to illustrate Nepali cultural sensibilities we might not have otherwise been aware of. Some of the things they told us were commonsense, like “boys and girls should not be all over each other in the presence of villagers.” Others were not as obvious. For instance, we were instructed to do everything – eat, shake hands, wave, handle money – with our right hand, and not our left. (Nepalis don’t use toilet paper – unless, of course, you count their left hands.) Another rule is that when sitting on the floor (that is to say, when sitting) one must sit with his or her feet tucked away, as it is considered rude to show the bottom of one’s foot to a Nepali. Between these two rules, it is safe to assume that one game we won’t teach the children in the village is hokey pokey.
In any event, I took a microbus yesterday to pick up my camera from the post office (more on this chavaya later). As usual, the van was completely full, and I found myself squished against the window in the far back corner. To make a little more room for myself, I crossed my left leg over the right and left my foot hanging out the window, in the face of oncoming traffic. I sat like that for about ten minutes before I realized that I was basically driving around with my middle finger hanging out the window. I may have provoked some road rage, but with the way Nepalis usually drive, it is literally impossible to tell.
Selection day
We find out in about six hours where we’ve been assigned to volunteer for the next three months. Some people have asked what I’ve been doing until now, so I’m writing this post more or less to answer that question.
The bulk of my time in Nepal has been spent sitting on the floor on a pillow, listening to someone talk about topics like Nepali geography, Nepali education, Nepali politics, Nepali language, Nepali agriculture, Nepali culture, and a whole series of lectures on globalization. Which makes my experience in Nepal much like my experience in:
High School (except, obviously Rabbi Moskowitz’s class)
Gush (particularly from ~February on)
DiNardo Lab Meetings (the room was dark for the powerpoint, I had no chance)
College Courses (until I started bringing my laptop)
OCP Divrei Torah
OCP Shiurim
ASB New Orleans (they were so concerned I would insult speakers they offered to let me stop coming)
Personal chavrutot (this is the worst)
Driving (don’t worry I’ve learned to pull over)
Pretty much any time that isn’t night
In other words:
Photo courtesy Keshet Gross
My apologies to anyone affected by this habit, and please know that it isn’t personal (usually). In case you’re curious – and I know you are – how it is that I’m currently awake even though we’re in the middle of a lecture on corporations (did you know they have limited liability?) it’s because nobody yet told me to put away my laptop.
Mahadev Besi II
For portions of the second post, I have included a bit of perspective from my friend Avigayil, whose own – more substantive blog – about our volunteering in Nepal can be found on the right-hand side of this page.
This second story requires a bit of background. Monkeys are not the only menace to roam the streets of Kathmandu: the other major threat is Nepali boys who seemingly spend their waking hours in search of foreigners to pelt with water balloons. I have personally been hit at least twice, Avigayil thrice, and other volunteers, more. Today, I was thirty seconds from home when I saw three small boys hanging out with water balloons. I stared them down as I walked past and am clearly intimidating enough that they decided I wasn’t worth it. One of these days I’m going to take a random walk with a backpack full of water balloons and nail every little Nepali boy I see. It will be epic.
In any event, it turns out Nepali boys never actually grow up. Mahadev Besi is bissected by a river, so to get from one side to the other we jumped from rock to rock one by one. As I stood in the middle of the river, deciding how best to cross, I heard a loud splash, and a wall of water soaked my legs. One of the local (ie Nepali) TBT staff members had chucked an enormous boulder into the river, in what was, I will admit, a rather effective improvised water balloon.
I don’t think it’s fair to describe the rock as one of Kathmandu’s water balloons. Here’s what really went down. I had crossed the river rather easily since I was first and the rocks were still dry. I turned around to help my friends cross when some started slipping into the river. Next thing I saw was a Nepali staff member throwing a rock into the river in order to make it easier to cross. He had not really thought this through and caused a tidal wave to splash all over Mordechai’s backside. As Mordechai turned around he had the most shocked look on his face, since he had no idea where the splash had come from. The stupidity of the Nepali staff member and the shocked look on Mordechai’s face had me cracking up for a long time. – A
Regardless of the thrower’s intentions, I was soaked. Returning to my contemplation of potential crossing routes, I realized that the path on which I had set out would not quite take me to the other side. There was a large gap between where I stood and a sizable border on the far bank of the river.
Now, I’m not going to claim the jump I took was impossible, or even that it was a good idea. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. For one, two people had made it before my attempt. For two, I had already determined that the only other way across was to wade, and that – thanks to Oregon Trail – that’s never a good idea. Granted, rocks stretched all the way across immediately upriver and immediately downriver, but taking either route would have required backtracking, and that is something I was simply not prepared to do. For three, I was already wet from the waist down, so I figured that even if I somehow missed the jump, it would be difficult for me to get any wetter than I already was. I was wrong.
The people who attempted the jump beforehand were Nepali, which explains it all. Their jump is longer then Bidesis‘ – foreigners’. Mordechai attempted to make a jump that was farther than his reach. His leg hit the rock on the opposite side of the river and it almost looked like he was going to only get slightly wet. But then he lost his balance again and fell into the river, getting his backside wet all over again. At least he surfaced smiling. – A
Indeed. The swelling on my calf is a testament to the fact that my leg at least reached the boulder for which I was aiming. The good news is I had thought ahead and thrown my backpack to the far bank before attempting my jump. The better news is that it was a very hot day and I felt much more comfortable all wet than I had before. The best news is that I happened to have a change of clothes waiting for me in my backpack. The bad news is I don’t even want to think about how many strains of ebola I picked up splashing around in that river.
Once the entire group made it across, we walked a few hundred meters upstream, where we used a bridge to cross back to exactly where we had started.
Mahadev Besi (Cox)
Yesterday, we visited Mahadev Besi. The village – along with Sundrawoti, and the Kalamati neighborhood of Kathmandu – is one of the three sites at which Tevel B’Tzedek places volunteers through its four-month program. Our visit to Mahadev Besi wrapped up our tour of the three, so we have until tomorrow morning to rank the sites according to personal preference, and by Friday will know where we will be spending the coming three months. Instead of writing about each potential site, I will wait to do so until my placement has been finalized, so that my dear readers don’t have to read about two places where I won’t be spending any time (and more importantly, so that this dear writer doesn’t have to write about two places where he won’t be spending any time). In keeping with this commitment, the purpose of this – and the coming – post is not to tell you about Mahadev Besi but to relay two short incidents that occured during our trip, and as such will not include much – if any – substantive information about the location.
Our last stop for the day was a school for the blind that hosts about a dozen students from all over the district in which Mahadev Besi is located. Last fall, a TBT volunteer helped start a kitchen garden at the school. At first, asking students to speak about themselves was like pulling teeth – we asked a lot of questions through a translator and were met with mostly silence. But when someone asked about the kitchen garden, the students immediately got very excited and talkative all at once – without first waiting for the translator to even begin telling them the question.
After we asked questions directly to the students, we had the opportunity to ask questions to the school’s principal through the translator and to the TBT facilitator. I asked how the children are typically treated at home and in the community at large, expecting that – as she had done for other questions – the facilitator would answer my question directly in English. Instead, she translated the question into Nepali, to which the principal gave a lengthy reply – also in Nepali – that basically boiled down to: their families mistreat the blind students, and are just happy to get them out of the house and into a school so they no longer have to look after them or pay to support them.
While I was listening to the principal’s reply, I understood very little, but the one word I did recognize again and again was ‘blind’. So, I asked a follow-up question: Is there no word in Nepali for ‘blind’ ? The local (ie Nepali) TBT staff member standing next to me turned and whispered in my ear that Nepalis do not like to hear the word ‘blind’ in their language, but that he would be happy to tell it to me as soon as we stepped outside. Blindness – indeed, disability in general – seems to carry a certain stigma in Nepali society. I think the contrast between what the Nepali staff was and wasn’t willing to discuss in front of the students was interesting.
The ethnicity of our city… of our ciiiity
Nepal is a landlocked country of ~30 million bordered on three sides by India and one side by Tibet. As you might imagine, Nepalis vary in appearance from Indian to Tibetan to anything in between. This can occasionally lead to some confusion.
The time: “Eight”-hour bus ride from Sundrawoti to Kathmandu
The situation: Non-charter buses don’t run on Shiva Ratri, so our bus driver stuffed a few local hitchhikers into the already-packed bus
Me: *Singing along to one earbud from Avigayil’s iPod*
Avigayil: *nods toward the row in front of us* The Indian woman is looking at you
*Ten seconds pass*
Me: … she’s Nepali.
Monkey Zvi Monkey Shmu
The first place I went when I arrived in Nepal was the Swayambhou Monkey Temple, a Kathmandu landmark only a few minutes’ walk from our house. The site is of great importance to both Hindus and Buddhists, and is a model of religious coexistence, but most importantly, it is home to coutnless monkeys that live in and around the temple grounds.
Photo courtesy Dafna Satran
Here is an excerpt from our House Rules:
Windows and doors are always closed, to keep the monkeys from entering
This isn’t an idle worry. One rooftop seminar was interrupted when a dog chased three monkeys across nearby rooftops, while our neighbor across the street emerged from his home with a slingshot, ready to do battle. And while closing windows can keep the monkeys away from our food, it doesn’t do much good when we’re out of the house: one girl was jumped by a monkey – literally – while another nearly had her bananas stolen last week while walking home.
Swayambhou Monkey Temple certainly does not have a monopoly on monkeys. On Shiva Ratri, while standing in line to enter Pashupati (spoiler: we weren’t successful), we saw two people carry a monkey upside down by its arms and legs out of the the temple, evidently a sacrifice to Shiva. I have no doubt that he enjoyed it.
In any event, this past Shabbat, a few of us took a walk down to the monkey temple, just to get out of the house. I remarked at the time that when I first arrived at Swayambhou there had once been trees and trees and trees full of monkeys but now I could hardly spot a single one.
It wasn’t until just now that I suddenly realized where the monkeys could have possibly gone. I need to look into it more, but we may finally be able to leave windows open from time to time. Shiva Shiva hey.
Update: Gopal, my Nepali language teacher, insists Hindus don’t sacrifice monkeys on Shiva Ratri, or ever. But my friends and I all saw the same thing: two people carrying a dead monkey out of a temple dedicated to Shiva, as part of a procession including other dead animals and animal parts during a holiday dedicated to Shiva. If anyone would like to explain this to me… you know where to find me
A tale of two Kippot
All I really wanted was a burnt orange kippa.
I first bought one while spending a year in Israel. I liked the color, they cost almost nothing, and so I left the country with a stash of four or five. They served me well, but over the years they slowly disappeared – one while kayaking in Costa Rica, one while hiking to Anderson Glacier, the other few in less exciting locations – until by the end of this past summer I was finally out.
Burnt Orange
I asked my dear cousin who is spending the year in Israel to see if she could find some where I had originally bought them. No luck.
I asked my dear aunt who was visiting my dear cousin who is spending the year in Israel to see if she could find some where I had originally bought them. She did bring me back some very nice kippot, but still, no luck.
Finally, when I was in Israel on Birthright I took a look for myself. I found the place alright, but failed to find the kippot I was looking for. Disaster.
And so with my existing stash of orange — but not burnt orange — kippot I set off for Nepal. And that’s when I discovered that Israelis – even nonreligious ones, and particularly, females – have more definite ideas about kippot than do Americans.
It started with my clips. Turns out having two is nerdy and makes you look like a puppy. So whenever I was in the company of certain individuals, one clip would spend some time clipped to my collar.
Next, it turns out hair clips themselves are an issue. Really, I should be wearing bobby pins. Fortunately one of the Israelis had an enormous collection for me to choose from – blue, black, or gold. But, oh, my hair is currently too short for the bobby pins to do any good, so I was granted temporary dispensation to hang onto my clips.
It goes without saying that the style and the color of your kippa are loaded with meaning. A kippa is definitely not just a kippa. Five and a half years later, an orange kippa still communicated my putative position on Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
And then, Thursday morning, in the middle of my Nepali lesson, I suddenly found out that my kippa is too big. It looks like a pancake. Really, the whole point is to make it as small as possible, and preferably non-existent.
Next thing I knew, my kippa had disappeared, locked in a room with three giggling Israeli girls. Five minutes later, they emerged one by one, until the last presented me with the product of their collective handiwork:
Photo courtesy Hadas Gann-Perkal
You might notice that the kippa is not only smaller than it had been only minutes before, but that it also now sports a lovely black border. You see, the problem with simply cutting a kippa wherever is that pieces of yellow and orange thread end up tending to scatter like dandruff. This problem, to Israelis, has a simple solution: burn the new edges in an attempt to close the threads and keep them from further unraveling. Hence, my kippa grew a classy black border that lasted all of about two days before it began to unravel in turn. I hope all those Israeli girls who seem to care so much about kippot also know how to knit new ones.
And of course, any good story has a moral. In this case, I lucked into a classic: be careful what you wish for. I spent months trying to find a Burnt Orange kippa, and ended up with a burnt Orange kippa.
On a lot of holidays I don’t celebrate, Part II
This post will make more sense if you’ve already read Part I.
As you know, my jokes tend to repeat themselves:
When Yonatan Cwik (the artist) and I were discussing how best to depict our pirate, I suggested he draw a group of kids using a rope to hijack a bus. Oh, Shiva Ratri, how I miss you already.
One final (hopefully) thought on Shiva Ratri: While revelers hijack innocent wayfarers during the day, Shiva Ratri literally means Night of Shiva, and night is when the real action happens. You see, Shiva is the god of destruction, sex, and smoking, so on Shiva Ratri, the entire Hindu population of Kathmandu gets stoned and heads for the Hindu Temple of Pashupati. So though we’d just endured a 10+ hour bus ride from hell, we had no choice but to head over and see for ourselves. Kitzur, the details of our experience were more or less horrifying and not worth repeating (if you don’t believe me, think monkey sacrifice and sexual harassment), but I would like to share the one positive thing that emerged from the night: the coinage of a beautiful new word.
Namastul: -noun :: from Namaste (noun – Hindi) and mastul (adjective – Hebrew)
These are the dogs at Beit Chabad in Kathmandu
The one on the right thinks the Rebbe is Moshiach. The one on the left doesn’t.
Photo courtesy of Dafna Satran
Eye of the Treiger 