busy bee

things are crazy right now, i must apologize for my infrequent updates. right now is the four day festival of Tihar, known as Diwali in India. It is the festival of lights and one of my favorite holidays. People play cards, bless crows, dogs, the cows, laxmi, themselves and their brothers. colors, lights, songs and firecrackers are everywhere. it is a beautiful time. yesterday my friends nick, jake and i went on a bike ride to the south of the Valley. The ride was a great way to see what was going on in the different villages. it was also a clear night so you could see the Himalayan range.

the next 2 months or so are going to be busy. I will try to update as much as I can- I have a few unfinished posts waiting to be edited and posted, so wait on those.

On Saturday I am travelling to Mugu with the Poverty Alleviation Fund. Mugu is the poorest district in Nepal and in the Northwest. I will be there for two weeks conducting research on the impact of PAF's income generating activities on the beneficiaries standard of living. I am both excited and nervous- I expect Mugu will be starkly different than the valley (and much colder too!). I can't wait to get into the mountains. but I am also sad to be missing Halloween!

Upon return, I will be in the valley for about 12 days before my older sister Meghan arrives for a quicky nine day trip to Nepal! We are planning on doing the beginning of the Annapurna circuit and making our way up to Poon Hill (Meghan if you are reading this, don't look at any pictures of this place because I want you to be wowed with no expectations). For the rest of you, google Poon Hill or wait on our pictures, because it is incredible.

Following Meghan's visit, I plan on participating in a Vipassana meditation retreat, in which I do not speak or look at anyone for TEN DAYS! A few of my friends have done this and tell me it is an invaluable experience. when do we give ourselves the chance to really get to know ourselves like that? I will have no means of distraction- no reading, no writing, no exercise. I am not going into the experience expecting to get anything in particular out of it, although I feel as though I might become more patient.

All of this brings me to mid December. I planned on returning to the US on December 19th, but my friend Zack and I are making plans to possibly travel to Sikkim and Darjeeling. Zack studied in Nepal with me at the Cornell Nepal Study Program and is one of my best friends from Cornell. He is teaching Chemistry at Cornell's Medical College in Qatar and is arriving in Kathmandu on December 13th to start his winter break. Plans are not finalized yet, and I am sad to be missing Christmas and my birthday at home, but who knows when I will be in South Asia again so why not embrace it?

The Dangers of Nepali Food

People would think one would lose weight in a country such as Nepal. Foreign food, not as many sweets, more walking around and frequent sicknesses could be just a few of the reasons. Unfortunately, and fortunately, this is not true.

I never eat better anywhere else in the world than I do here. Fresh fruits and vegetables all the time. Delicious Indian and Nepali sweets. Rice and rice and rice and more rice. Saag, paneer, spicy potatoes, roti, poori, nan, just to name a few. then my tummy expands two fold, and I get hungry all the time and demand even more food.

Tonight, I went to a little Cornell gathering, and after completing two full plates of bhat, tarkari, achaar and daal (rice, vegetables, pickled tomato and lentals), realized i wasn't hungry anymore but I wasn't stuffed either. ohh the joys of eating.. and eating... and eating :)

saano biraalo

Emily (my apartment-mate) and I found a kitty on the street. Her hindlegs looked paralyzed, so we took her to the animal hospital (after much debate about what we should do with our agency). The doctor said that the kitten must have fallen and has some internal damage. Now this kitten is in a box next to me in our kitchen. We just fed her yogurt. We have no idea what we are getting ourselves into. She is quite a cute wreck.

UPDATE (October 6, 2009): The kitten died in the night last night. She seemed fine before we went to sleep, sitting up and meowing. She most likely died of internal bleeding from significant damage to her organs.

Body, why don't you love me?

So, I got sick. It was bound to happen. Two days ago I was sitting in a fabric store in the middle of the city when I started feeling sick. It came on suddenly, one moment I was sitting there, feeling fine. and the next moment I was running to the bathroom to vomit (sorry for being so explicit, but one has to be here. bowel functions are not hidden. Today on the bus, the man sitting next to me hocked a lougie, and then reached into his pocket to take out a container FILLED TO THE BRIM with lougies and simply added to his collection. just picture this. yum.)

back to my sick story. basically, i blacked out and went to CIWEC to be cared for by my favorite doctor of all time, Doctor David. Two years ago, Doctor David told me that because I pet puppies in Tibet, I had at least ten years to worry about contracting rabies. This time, he told me that if my illness was caused by a kidney stone, I was likely to die. Two years ago, I almost cried. This time, I laughed.

I had a 102 fever and was quite sick throughout the night. I rested all day yesterday and am feeling much better today. I think it was the combination of some bacterial infection and dehydration. The Kathmandu Valley is extremely hot right now, and the pollution is absurd. I've been walking around a lot because I've been lost a lot.

Anyhow, this illness is one big lesson. BE MORE CAREFUL. My housemate Emily is extremely careful about using the water and what she puts in her mouth. I, on the other hand, think that if I just build up my resistance against all these little scary bacterias and parasites, I'll become immune and never get sick. I'm not quite sure if my theory is coming into fruition. So... I'll stop brushing my teeth with the faucet water (maybe), and I'll be more careful about the food I get on the street, and I'll make sure to drink lots of water throughout the day. But really only because I don't want to see Doctor David again, and for him to tell me how else I'm going to die.

Daal Bhat

Bishnu and Katie, in Bishnu's room after eating daal bhat. Daal bhat is the traditional Nepali food of daal (lental curry/soup) and bhat (rice). You eat it with your hand! Sometimes it gets messy, but as one friend puts it "the hand is sweeter than the spoon."

New Clothes!

An exciting thing about being in Nepal is that I get a brand new wardrobe. Unlike in the United States, ready-made clothing stores are not popular here. Instead, you go to a fabric shop and pick out the fabrics you like, then head to the tailor where they will measure you and help you decide on your preferred style of shirts and pants. Women most commonly wear a kurta (also called salwar kameez in India) or a sari. I am told that the present fashionable thing to do is wear a short kurta with jeans instead of with the traditional flowy pants.

With the big festival of Dashain coming up, everybody is making new clothes. I am joining in on this festivity! My friend Bishnu and I picked out two fabrics last week and I received my new shirts yesterday. Pictures are sure to come!

Hope you are all well in the US (or wherever in the world you are), and are enjoying the changing colors of the fall.

What Am I Doing Here?

This is a question I get asked a lot, whether it be from people in the United States or people in Nepal. So, what kind of work are you doing? What field do you work in? tapaai ke kaam gardaihunchha? What are you trying to achieve? These are good questions. These are questions that I ask myself everyday.

I can answer in a literal sense. Starting on Friday, I will be working for the Poverty Alleviation Fund, which declares itself an autonomous institution (as opposed to a non-governmental organization, government organization or donor organization), whose primary goal is to reduce extreme forms of poverty in the program's districts. Specifically, I will most likely be working in agriculture and promoting a certain kind of rice farming methodology called SRI (http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/). Evidence shows that this really works, and increases rice yields at least 50-100%. I haven't started work yet, so once I do I will further inform you on what my job entails.

There is an ideological issue that also corresponds with this "what are you doing?" question. And that is, really, what am I doing? Who am I to say I know anything about this place or what life is really like? Is my presence and eagerness to "change" the world for the "better" a new form of western imperialism and colonialism? The reinvention of the white mans burden? Do I do more harm than help? Who am I to govern what direction public policy, government or civil society moves in this country? How much do I really know about this place, its culture, its people, its food, its religion, its language? Why do people care more about what I have to say than what my Nepali friends have to say? Why does success have to correspond with how well someone knows English? What kind of values do I consciously or unconsciously promote? With my pale skin, my brown hair, and my (summer) freckles, I represent the West. It doesn't matter how much of the language I know, how long I've been here or how many Nepali friends I have. I am still a bideshi, a foreigner. Thus, I constantly battle with my role here. I know I will always battle with this role. I think it is important to keep wrestling with this issue, and understand that it is an area of ambiguity. What I should or should not do changes upon the situation.

One of my professor's told me, “Grace is like rain. It falls on everyone. The key is to realize that one is receiving it, cup ones hand to collect it, and then spread it around." When we spread such grace around, we must tread very lightly. We must always evaluate and reevaluate what we are doing because the consequences of our actions reach far beyond our sight and our control.

And what I do know, is that I've come here to learn.