Playing with kukuris
The mother in me gets nervous when I see a grown man playing with knives:
- (the late) Hajuramaa’s brother
All the more so when I see a six year old girl:
- Sharpening a pencil
But at least it’s for a good cause:
- Doing homework and being adorable
Soti lunch break
Some things I saw during my walk to and from Soti that aren’t highway signs:
New Passal
At long last, the plague of dal bhat is over. It isn’t that I stopped eating it – I still have it for lunch every day, and it’s grown on me to the point that I actually get hungry for dal bhat. But in the past week, the menu in Sundrawoti has grown significantly thanks to the opening of what we call New Passal.
The couple who runs New Passal always maintained a storefront where I bought onions and tomatoes, but while we were away in Bandipur they finished construction and opened for business. Where the old passal’s dinner menu was approximately eggs, instant noodles, chapatti on special request, and dal bhat, the new passal’s menu is considerably larger. Eager for business and eager to please, they so far seem quite happy to cook just about anything we ask for, including chow mein, aloo poratha, sel roti (bread that somewhat resembles a large, thin doughnut), and fried rice. And dudh chiya (milk tea) at New Passal is three rupees cheaper to boot.
Also fun: the passal didi is quite pregnant. When we asked her what month, she told us tenth. She went to Charikot Hospital Wednesday and will remain there until she delivers. I’m excited to complete the Sundrawoti circle of life, but honestly, also a bit concerned about what that might mean for my dinner plans.
Speaking of hajuramaa. As I sit in bed writing, I keep imagining that I hear the whine of a mosquito in my ear. This is, of course, ridiculous: I’m not in Kalimati. Instead, it’s the blowing of a conch as part of a ceremony I imagine is being held to commemorate three weeks since the passing of hajuramaa. The conch is, indeed, a curious choice of ceremonial object for a landlocked ethnicity like the Thami. I imagine a Thami reaching the ocean and thinking to himself, this sounds just like a conch shell.
Bandipur weekend
I didn’t take a huge number of pictures in Bandipur, but here are some of them:
And I think that makes five posts from our weekend trip to Bandipur. Done, I promise.
Newari culture
Bandipur is a Newari town, built in typical Newari style. I believe an hour of the Bandipur seminar was devoted to Newari history, culture, and architecture, but I missed it while working on the TCC proposal (more on this forthcoming) and drinking the world’s greatest lassi. So I will substitute facts I know about Newaris in lieu of substantive information:
Newari is one of the largest ethnic groups in Nepal
The Kathmandu Valley is predominantly Newari
Dolakha is considered to be the birthplace of Newari culture
A syllogism will serve in place of additional facts:
Upama’s last name is Shrestha
Upama is Newari
Therefore, we can conclude that a list of Newari names is somewhat more interesting than a list of Thami names
Similarly, I will substitute pictures I took in Bandipur in lieu of actually saying anything enlightening about Newari architecture:
Pancake Bihana
Last week, we instituted the tradition of chocolate banana pancakes for breakfast on Friday morning (Sukrabar Bihana)*. Quite obviously, this is the greatest idea of all time. Also obvious, I only have pictures from preparation because after that, I had more important things to worry about.
Unfortunately, this great tradition lasted for exactly one week before we had a Friday too busy for pancake breakfast (namely, today).
*Really, is there anything more appropriate for a day named Sukrabar than chocolate banana pancakes? Really?
In which I become a first-grade teacher
Ek! Dui! Tin! Char!
I could hear Alisa count to four all the way from the street twenty meters below Jagaran school, where she teaches an hour of nursery three days a week. Since I had never seen her in action, I decided to drop by and peek inside. I climbed to the school – her classroom was on the edge closest to mine – and was greeted by the following sight:
Two little girls who had the same idea I did
A second look: that dress looks awfully familiar. Monisa, Dan Bahadur dai’s 6-year old daughter. She heard the camera (though I imagine she’s kind of used to the sound), took a look at me, and went back to giving Alisa her full attention:
I went to the window, waved to Upama inside, and continued around the corner. Where I found the principle had brought a chair to the doorway of Alisa’s classroom and was also listening in. I greeted her and took a picture of the school over her head. It was painted over the school’s month-long vacation and looks rather nicer than it did when we first came to Sundrawoti:
I continued down the hall, past the next door (the office, which was empty) to the first grade classroom, where I discovered the first grade sitting at rapt attention and no teacher. I walked into the classroom – too much commotion – and did my best to entertain for the last five minutes before it was time for break. Monisa returned*. And when the bell rang, the kids bolted.
*From the students’ perspective, it seems any bhidesi is equally exciting. Tal – Man Bahadur – showed up in Jagaran on Tuesday and one of the girls greeted him: ‘Namaste Alisa’.
It turns out that Jagaran School runs an interesting schedule: every class stays in the same classroom all day, and learns the same subject at the same time. Only their teachers change. So each teacher teaches a different subject to a different class every period. Without this system, I am told, the children would get bored. With this system, I imagine, teachers are quite happy when volunteers show up and take a class off their hands for an hour or so.
I later learned that the teacher assigned to Class 1 had taken the day off to take an exam, which simply meant each class got an extra period to sit in the classroom on their hands. And I needn’t worry that they would want some entertainment – they’re used to it, since their teacher takes exams on a fairly regular basis in the hope of graduating from Class 11 in the near future.
Balaram in a nutshell
We gathered early last Friday morning inside Shree Jagaran Primary Iskul’s nursery to meet with Buwaa Samoa. Balaram walked in a few minutes late, removed his shoes, and sat down next to me. Balaram, I said, there is a juka on the outside of your sock. Indeed, there was. He calmly removed the sock, removed the juka from the sock, and threw it over his shoulder, outside the circle.
About half an hour later, the juka returned, calmly latched onto Balaram’s big toe. You’d think he would have learned his lesson from the juka’s return and taken care of business. No. This time, he used a stick to gently remove the juka and deposit it in the front of the classroom. Again, we were meeting in a tiny classroom that would be filled with two dozen tiny children running around with bare feet less than an hour later.
As my mother would say, Balaram’s lucky we love him.
Epilogue: I used a rock to do the deed; jukas pop easily. This one blends in nicely with the red paint splattered all over the nursery floor from when Machzor 8 painted the room with local fruits like banana, apple, mango, and chili pepper.
Coming clean
We returned to Sundrawoti from our weekend in Bandipur last Tuesday, just in time for our meeting with Mehele Youth Group Wednesday morning. That said, we had a bit of a problem: Balaram was only planning to return Wednesday afternoon, Upama on Friday, and Rajkumari would be facilitating Avigayil and Timna’s Women’s Group at the same time. In other words, Dafna and I would have to run the activity without translation.
Fortunately, we had the perfect activity planned for such an occasion: sanitation project. We joined forces with Alisa’s Mehele Child Club (that meets at the same time) to pick up garbage around the village and clear the area in which we meet of weeds. At the end of the activity, of course, it was time to wash our hands. You’d never know it from looking at them, but it turns out the children of Sundrawoti really love soap:
Too long for ‘Too short for a post’ (at right), yet too short for a post: Dispatches from 5/25
Bullet holes:
- Thanks to the color of my skin and my kippa, I am easily recognizable from a distance in Sundrawoti. When I walk around, children shout ‘Namaste Mo-tor-biiiike’ from far above. I usually have to put on my glasses and scan the terraces above for some time before I know in which direction to return the greeting. While walking home from Jagaran school today, I got the best Namaste yet. One kid, eager to go home for his break from class, was running about three terraces above my head. He looked down, saw who I was, and shouted ‘Namaste Mo-tor-biiiike’ with quite some gusto before falling flat on his face, rolling, and continuing on his way. Still running.
- Long numbers written in chalk appeared in every Sundrawoti doorway seemingly overnight. That means it’s time for the census. Each family is responsible to write the number on its doorway. Though I’m unclear if the number is simply an identification code or somehow contains information about who lives inside, I thought it was interesting how willing Nepalis are to cooperate with something like the census. It makes me wonder how it is they have bandas every week and still don’t have a constitution.
- The census has yet to interview me, but my full Nepali name is Moti Bahadur Kumar Thami. The first and last of these have been mentioned and explained previously, but if you’re wondering about the two middle names, I’m not really sure which of the two I am but I’m sure it’s one or the other. Easily over half of all Nepali males boast one (brave) or the other (young boy). In Kalika School, I noticed a list of 26 students from one class, along with the names of their fathers. Of the 26 fathers, a full 15 of them (57%) were named Something Bahadur. Yes, I counted to 15.
- Bijay showed up in Sundrawoti yesterday with an unexpected guest in tow. Alisa saw the two walking from the road to Dan Bahadur dai’s house and began to shout excitedly in Hebrew, ‘Hoo lavan! Hoo lavan!’ (He’s white!). Bernard, it turns out, has lived in Tel Aviv for the past 30 years.
- Today, we ran into Binda, Santos’ sister who was married a month ago, living at home. At the end of the marriage ceremony, we had noticed that the women were all sad and the men happy, and were told the reason was because immediately after the wedding the bride is expected to go to her new husband’s village and stay there. So finding her again at home, so soon after the wedding, was somewhat curious. Nothing a few questions couldn’t clear up. It turns out that after marriage, a woman retains the right to remain in her mother’s home for up to one year. The weeping ceremony at the close of a wedding is symbolic. Binda will spend her final year at home studying in Grade 7.
Gorkha River Road
As mentioned previously, last Machzor’s seminar in Bandipur was originally scheduled to take place in Gorkha but was apprehended by a local banda. While the former volunteers waited for the issue to be resolved by a change of location, they waited by a river on the road to Gorkha. Though Nepali winters are relatively mild, at least at lower elevations, the river was a bit too chilly for them to really enjoy a dip.
It is now Nepali summer. Our trip to Bandipur took a chapter out of Mahadev Besi’s book – that is to say, it was uncomfortably hot and humid– so we, too, headed to the river for a short break from the stuffy bus. Those of you who have ever gone on a hike with me will be unsurprised to learn that while I got off the bus with everybody else, I reached the river only as everybody else was preparing to leave.
The most interesting man in Nepal
There are a lot of things different about Nepal. Some of them are obvious, like: Nepalis eat the same meal, twice a day, every day. Nepalis drive on the wrong side of the road. Nepalis speak Nepali.
Some differences, though, took me a bit more time to figure out just what was unfamiliar about them. For instance, take this sign:
Or this one:
It’s not the language. It’s not the handsome face that can miraculously appear in the same picture twice (twice!). It’s that it’s a cigarette ad. We don’t have those where I’m from.
And I was all set to declare this a Nepali change for the worse when I noticed this second ad, featuring the same handsome faces as above, this time cast as a friend of the blog:
I originally thought the ad was promoting hunting, and of a critically endangered species no less, until I got close enough to see that the bhidesi is wearing binoculars. It’s so cute when evil corporations try to be environmentally sensitive.
Miss You too
By now, my frequent hitchhikes to Charikot (and, unfortunately, Dolakha) have given me more or less a complete tour of Nepali trucks. I’ve ridden standing on the back of a flatbed, on the inside of a covered truck, squished into the front cab next to the driver… OK, come to think of it, I’ve sat just about everywhere except the driver’s seat, and at this rate I’ll be there before long.
I don’t have a story to relate, but I do want to share a bit of how the trucks are typically decorated. The backs are often adorned with phrases like I MISS YOU and I LOVE YOU and other sorts of English nonsense. The phrases are often sort of standard, but it is also possible to unearth the occasional gem. I was not fortunate enough to see the following with my own eyes (it was related to me by Michael Grumer of Machzor 8 [that would be the one immediately prior to my own]), but there’s no use wasting your time with anything less than the greatest:
Punk is not dead
Relax.
Be relax.
Do relax.
Sexy, sexy, sexy.
Another truck that frequently runs through Sundrawoti:
Photo courtesy of Tal Sarna
The back, of course, reads: ‘God Bless You’. (Photo not available)
I also wanted to share with you a picture I sort of like, from the side of a truck parked in Jiri:
Name that Tarkaari
Shalom, and welcome to the second edition of Name that Tarkaari.
Hint 1:
Hint 2:
In the waning days of the French monarchy, it was fashionable to wear these flowers in one’s hair (per An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage; this book does not come recommended)
Hint 3:
The Nepali (and other similar language) name for this vegetable is aloo. Abby, I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t get it after this one.
Name that Tarkaari 1 Answer: Zucchini
This post is brought to you by Khajurico Peanut cookies
which is in turn brought to you by, well, you tell me:
Fun with Shelves, Part III and a half
Turns out our goodbye to the Tamakoshi Educational Bulletin was somewhat premature. No, it’s not because I continued reading and found more juicy material I felt the overwhelming urge to share; when I wrapped up the Tamakoshi segment, I had already finished reading the bulletin, and had no shortage of further tidbits, but decided three posts was probably more than enough. Rather, it’s because I feel I’ve presented a bit of a one-sided perspective on the Bulletin. While it certainly contains its fair share of articles plagued by circular logic and faulty baseless assertions, it also has some articles that reflect well on the school district. So, here I wanted to present a few of the items I enjoyed for reasons other than sadistic delight.
The first is an excerpt from the article ‘Climate change and its bad impart on human being’, by Projjwol Bikram Khadka, who is in 9th grade. I wouldn’t say everything in the article is correct, but the sentiment is largely one I agree with:
Today, climate change occurs mainly by human’s activities and this problem should be solved by them. We should be involved in getting less on the green house effect. The harmful gases produced by us should become less in amount. By the process of photosynthesis, carbondioxide gas can be changed in carbon solid and we should do a forestation on the bare land. We should have to avoid the human activities by which climate are changing.
The second is a poem by Manoj Adhikari, a lecturer at ‘Shree Kalinagh Multiple Mampus’ in Sunkhani, Dolakha. Like many poems, I assume its genius comes from the fact that I have no idea what it’s talking about. But the key here is that it is not much worse than what I might expect a random English-speaker to produce:
Because you love me
Anxiety runs away for ever,
gloom comes never,
I started to swim in the ocean of pleasure,
because you love me.I don’t know ever me
but you are more myself than me
I think I can do everything
because you love me.I was walking alone
how you led me behind you.
I agree to surrender my heart
because you love me.With innocent eyes and gloomy face,
rising the heart’s race.
You said I hate you, I hate you, I hate
because you love meI roared my silence up to date
I felt I found my fate.
I come with millions of ideas
because you love.Deep dark ends of life disappear,
horizens come near
Life is beginning
because you love me.
Finally, my favorite entry in the Bulletin, courtesy of Khadka Bd. Shrestha, teacher at Shree Tamrakaushika Lower Secondary School, also in Sunkhani, Dolakha. Disclaimer: This is the kind of thing that will leave you with a positive impression as long as you don’t think about it while you read, and never go back to take a second look:
The most selfish word of one letter: ‘I’ avoid it.
The most satisfying word of two letters: ‘We’ Use it.
The most poisonous word of three letters: ‘Ego’ kill it.
The most used word of four letters: ‘Love’ value it.
The most pleasant word of five letters: ‘Smile’ keep it.
The fastest spreading word of six letters: ‘Rumour’ ignore it.
The hardest king word of seven letters: ‘Success’ achieve it.
The most enviable word of eight letters: ‘Jealous’ distance it.
The most powerful word of nine letters: ‘Knowledge’ aguare it.
The most essential word of ten letters: ‘confidence’ trust it.
As always, I am aware that the English in the above entries is not perfect, but I hope it’s clear by now that — with a few irresistible exceptions — Fun with Shelves is not intended to make fun of English so much as it is intended to make fun of everything else. And with that, we can hopefully put the Tamakoshi Educational Bulletin to well-deserved rest.
Fun with Shelves, Part III
In this third installment of Fun with Shelves, we unfortunately bring our time with the Tamakoshi Educational Bulletin to a close. But don’t get too down, because we still have an entire post’s worth of Bulletin to enjoy. The first bit is a diatribe by a local teacher against the pervasive and corrosive use of cell phones entitled The Misuse of Mobile:
Especially among teenagers it has been badly misused. They tell the parents that they are in colleges but actually they are outside of the colleges enjoying with the friends, instead of going to class. So, it has become effective device to lie others.
I suppose it is true that lie others is a thing one can do with a mobile phone. That said, it is also true that this is also a thing one can do without a cellphone – indeed, is probably easier to do without a cellphone, when the parents cannot hear one enjoying with the friends outside of the colleges in the background.
The diatribe goes on to indict, among other things, ‘misscalls’: “Misscalls give another irritation to mobile users.” After reading this sentence, I assume you thought the writer was discussing Missed Calls, as did I. Wrong. Instead, I learned that misscall is actually a verb: “Without any reasons people misscall others to disturb them and their work.” I can’t wait until Nepalis learn about prank calls.
The second bit is from an anonymous ten-question quiz included in the Bulletin. The first five questions are straight out of Laffy Taffy (e.g. What is always follows a ‘horse’? It is a tail.), but the last five are too much fun to pass up:
Question 6: What comes ones a year and twice a week?
Answer: ‘e’.
I like spoon and not fork.
Question 7:There were four rats. The first one said that there were three rats behind him. The second, third, and forth also said something. How is it possible?
Answer: Definitely, They are in circule.
The real question here is since when can rats say anything, much less something?
Question 8:How can you drop an egg from the height of 5 feet without breaking it?
Answer: Simple, threaten it to drop from the height of 10 feet. It will be automatically for the half 5 feet.
Simple. Why didn’t I think of that?
Question 9: It becomes 10+2=12, but 10+2 becomes 9. In what condition it becomes?
Answer: It becomes in wrong condition.
This is the best one. It becomes in wrong condition. גדול
Question 10: There were ten birds in a tree. A hunter fired a gun and kill two birds. Now how many birds were there?
Answer: There are no birds.
I didn’t realize this was an existential question.
And with that, we say goodbye to the Tamakoshi Educational Bulletin. But have no fear, Fun with Shelves will be back soon, with more fun and more shelves.
Old Goats
I can’t say this with any level of certainty, but it seems that men of a certain age in Sundrawoti are regarded as better suited for goat-herding than any other activity. Because the goats are usually reasonably well-behaved, this means the hajurbuwaas tend to spend a lot of the day sitting on their hands, which in turn means they are more than happy to endlessly entertain any silly bidesi who happens to wander by with a camera.
So far, I have two favorites. I met Ganesh in the area of the passal; he spoke to me in very rapidly in Nepali and did not quite seem to understand that I could not understand a word he was saying. The second, I met while walking home from Soti, when I helped him catch a runaway kid he was hobbling after.
Which couple is more adorable? Decide for yourself.
An old pal
After three months of good-luck Swastikas it was actually kind of comforting to find one that meant it
Nepali hygiene
I found this little assemblage on the streets of Kathmandu, otherwise known as the city’s medieval-style open sewer:
I can only hope the soap is there to scrub that toothbrush for a solid ten minutes before each use.
The thrill of the chase
In which our speedy, superior bus overtakes and passes a pathetic, inferior Nepali truck who should have known better than to get in the way of our trip to Jiri.
Viewer’s discretion advised: I got more nauseous watching this video than I ever have while actually on the top of a bus.
Note the honks are used first to ask the truck to pull over somewhere on a one-lane highway and used second to alert oncoming traffic that we are about to round a corner so get out of that one lane or we will hit you.
‘That is not a highway’ (sign)
El Dorado. The Holy Grail. Soti.
It was a week or so after we arrived in Sundrawoti that I first became aware of the village a forty minute walk up the road. The settlement held more significance than simply being our closest neighbor. In Soti, it was rumored that one could acquire samosas and other delicious things that aren’t dal bhat.
My only reservation about heading for Soti immediately is that it rhymes with Sony.
I got my first glimpse of the legendary city on the way home from Singati, when I noticed donut-shaped roti stacked high inside a glass display case. Then, Avigayil set out on an expedition a few weeks ago and reported the distance was not long and the food was not untasty. The time had come for me to mount an expedition of my own.
I saw many things in the course of my adventure, some interesting, many not. It may prove difficult to tell which of these two categories the subject of this post falls into. I imagine there is a great deal of individual variation in opinion – much like the individual variation that defines Nepali highway markers, incidentally the subject of this post. (It is these signs that allowed me to tell you how far I walked from Dolakha Hospital to Sundrawoti that fateful night only one month and one week ago.)
On my short walk to Soti, I took pictures of a few to give you an idea of how distance is marked in Nepal. Once you get a look, you are free to choose to what degree you are inclined to believe the number I cited:
Ed. note: for subject line reference, see https://eyeofthetreiger.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/in-which-i-share-an-actual-photograph/
Eye of the Treiger 