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Published: August 22nd 2010
Nirmalpokhari
My trip to date has been too rooted in civilization. I feel like I’ve complained about this on the blog before, but I don’t think I did. I think that it was in one of my dozen aborted attempts at a post-New Zealand blog entry. On the plane ride to Bali, I wrote this:
Sydney was great, but I’ll get to Sydney later. I’m excited because I’m finally on my way to a place where they speak a foreign language—and look different, too. I just sat down on Garuda Indonesia Flight 715, and I’m on my way to Bali. True, Bali is hardly sub-Saharan Africa, or Peru for that matter. Bali is the top vacation destination for Australians, and one of the top resort destinations in the world, but I don’t think that I will confuse it with America and—accents and gorgeous scenery withstanding—the last three months haven’t been that different than being in the States. I hope that most the people here don’t speak English. I want to travel cheap. Not staying in crowded hostels with the post-college Western touring crowd, though. I want to stay in guesthouses with local foods, customs, and people.
This airplane is clean, new, and beautiful. All non-American airplanes seem to be*. The flight attendants are all Indonesian women. Each one folded her hands and bowed to each passenger as he walked past. “Selimat seyang.” Finally, I am going somewhere where the ground beneath my feet will feel foreign; somewhere where it will be a challenge to get around. Again, it’s only Bali. Baby steps, I guess. I will be out in the countryside, though, and up on the volcanoes, away from the resorts. My traveling is just beginning.
I will stand by everything I wrote there. Well, everything except that I would write more about Sydney later. That is an aborted blog entry that I may never revisit. Sydney is pretty great and I made a lot of good friends there. That was the best part of Sydney—meeting people that I will keep in touch with because I didn’t just meet them for a day or two. That was the best part of Sydney. That and the Opera House. I can’t say enough about the place. In another aborted blog entry, I made a long, unusual, but—I think—unforced comparison between the Opera House and Jack White.
The gist of it was that they are both on another level. I’ve seen the White Stripes with eight or ten people and they all agreed. When you leave that show, you say “Jack White is the best performer I have ever seen”. So much so, in fact, that you doubt—you hope, but doubt—that you’ll ever see another performer who is that good. What Jack White is to rock and roll performers, the Opera House is to architecture. I put out the pictures two months ago—they only give part of the story. I always say that, but usually I am talking about nature; huge, perfect nature. This is a building, and you have to see it in person to take it in. Whether I was in the botanic gardens, on a ferry, or by the docks of Circular Quay, catching a first glimpse of the Opera House was always a revelation. One night I watched it from a window on the second floor of an Italian restaurant and in my last night in the city, I drank at Opera House bar where it towered above us. At least three different times I said to myself, “this may be the last time I see the Opera House.” I was that conscious of it. Now I will admit that I am no architecture expert. The fact is, I don’t know jack about architecture. I don’t know how to play a guitar either. And, just maybe, OK, so the comparison was a little forced. Nevertheless, I was impressed.
So where were we? That’s right. I am in Nepal. Staying in Nirmalpokhari. Nirmalpokhari is quite different than Sydney.
I came to Nepal to volunteer. I arrived in Kathmandu and was there for three days—the day of arrival, then two days of “training”. Each day of training consisted of about a half-hour of the guy going over words in Nepalese and English, directly from a little booklet that they gave me. I recommend volunteering. I do not recommend volunteering with INFONepal.
On day four, I awoke at 5:30 and took a seven hour bus ride to Pokhara. The scenery along the ride was stunning. Kind of similar to Bali, actually—mountain sides divided between forest and rice terraces. The whole route was along a swollen river. It is monsoon season. By the time we stopped for breakfast about two hours after departure, I was starving. When stopped for lunch about an hour later, I was still full. Early in the trip, we bus slowed as it passed a group of men who were gathered on a bridge. A vehicle had crashed through the railing down to the river about 10 meters below. Emergency vehicles had not yet arrived. I had just read that Nepal had a serious issue with highway deaths. It was concerning.
When I arrived in Pokhara, I transferred to the local bus and the real excitement began. The roof of the bus was too low for me to stand, so I grabbed a spot on the stairs leading in. Moments before the bus was to leave, about ten other people charged on and the squeeze forced me up into the aisle. Three of them just reached their arms in, found a piece of metal to grab, and hung their bodies outside the door. I was caught more or less in the dead center, and I stayed for the next hour. It was too crowded to move, my neck craned down to fit my head in, and I began sweating from the heat. Nepalis don’t seem to have B.O., so it wasn’t
that bad.
Then it started raining. Lord, did it start raining. All the windows were closed and three hangers-on squeezed in. The temperature must have gone up 15 degrees in the next five minutes. Then we started going uphill. Steep uphill. Between being in the dead center of a packed bus and the windows fogging up, I couldn’t much see where we were, but it appeared that we were on the edge of cliff that dropped off beyond site. The wheels slid side to side over torrents of orange/brown water. Did I mention Nepal’s record of highway deaths?
We made it, though, obviously. From there, it was a ten minute walk down a rock pathway (river at the moment), and I arrived at Laxman’s house—my home for the next three weeks.
•
About 5,000 people live in the village of Nirmalpokhari. One thing that has surprised me is their ethnic variety. Nepal lies between China (Tibet, actually) and India, and each gene pool is well represented. Then there is a third look that is kind of like a Peruvian. Close to half of the people have the last name “Nepali”. The night that I arrived, there was a Swiss girl who had been there four weeks. That was her last night, and the rest of the week, I did not see another non-Nepali.
Nirmalpokhari does not match the image of a village in my head. It is entirely on mountainsides, so the people are dispersed. The closest thing to the center is the “library” where I “teach”. More on these topics later. Every home is a small farm. Almost everyone has goats and buffalo (what I would call ox) and everyone has chickens. Cats and dogs, too. Real Old MacDonald stuff Two ox live on the other side of my bedroom wall. When they moo, you know it. When they poo, you get used to it. From open spaces, you can see homes and rice terraces scattered along the mountainsides. It is really very beautiful.
At 7AM and 5PM, I teach at the library. By "library, I mean community center, and by teach, I mean baby sit. I’m not sure if they really expected me to teach English when I am single handedly dealing with up to 25 kids ranging from 2 to 13 years old. However, this is actually my favorite part of the day. They have jump ropes, a Frisbee, kids books, and a plastic soccer ball (which they are not allowed to use, I was told
after the first day…the kids really liked me that day). Mostly, so far, they work on coloring books. What’s cuter than a kid giving you a drawing that they did? And they are really affectionate here. Kids start holding you and hugging on you the day you meet them. Adults are affectionate, too. Asia has an entirely different view of affection between men. You see men holding hands on the street (Moslem men included, so they are definitely not out of the closet gay). You often see men sitting down with their arms dropped over each other’s shoulders. Even teenagers. Harihari, the teacher who I’ve been working with, has his hands on my arm during 3/4s of our conversations.
The actual teaching is tough. The only instruction I received was watching Hari on my first day. I do not see the day’s lesson until I arrive in the class. Even then, I don’t have a lesson book. I just pick up the book of one of the kids in the first row and go from there. The kids are more attentive than American kids, I imagine, but they are not that attentive. As could be expected, only about a half dozen kids participate unless they’re called on. The ones you call on just stare at you blankly, slightly embarrassed. I don’t think it’s on purpose, they just don’t know what I’m asking (I really hope I get better at this). The exception is when I write something on the board, when they dutifully copy it in their notebooks. Also, when I have them repeat after me. They do that well. The lessons I teach from are of mixed quality, but so far mostly pretty awful. Often, I read the lesson (as the class waits) and I don’t understand what it is I am supposed to be teaching. My very first lesson was about Germany. Somehow, the kids were supposed to be able to fill in blanks like “Germany is in _____” (that would be Europe). They don’t even know Asia, you know? They are smart kids. I couldn’t get around hardly at all without their help, but these lessons are tough. Finally, two Achilles' heels that have haunted me for ages are absolutely killing me here. I am horrible at understanding accents and even worse at remembering names. I once forgot the name of a guy named Greg, so you can only imagine how I do with Jiban and Parmilla! Yes, I am pretty far out of my comfort zone here.
•
My first priority upon returning to the U.S. will be writing a sitcom pilot about the teachers at that school. The opening scene, however, is set in the courtyard at morning, where the teachers who feel like working that day mosey up one by one (this is apparently how it actually works). As the kids line up military style to sing the national anthem, they gather around the American volunteer and make jokes hilarious to them and unintelligible to him. He laughs along with them, which makes them laugh harder. After the rousing rendition of the national anthem (as Homer Simpson once wrote: “In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic!”), the kids file into the classrooms and the teachers head to the office for 20 minutes of drinking tea and making witty conversation (I’ll need experienced television writers to fill in this part, since, again, I couldn’t tell what they were saying). A silent man sits outside the office all day. His only job is to ring the bell and perhaps provide some physical comedy. For the students, the bell means get into the classroom. For the teachers, it means ‘consider going into the classroom some time in the next ten, fifteen minutes. The classes provide plenty of opportunity for hijinks and even ‘very special episodes’, but the main set is the office, where the teachers spend 15 minutes chatting and sipping tea in between each 30 minute class.
Hari is the central protagonist; an earnest teacher who dreams of going to the United States and obsesses on English literature. Leegreg is the proud member of the upper-caste who the rest of them secretly laugh at. Saroj is quiet and always has a sly grin. His piercing stare causes the ever-rotating cast of volunteer teachers (can you say “celebrity guest stars”?) to blabber about anything just to be talking. Asim is the cynical old man, biding time in a system that he can only laugh at until retirement brings a pension at the end of the school year. The two female characters are essentially Carla and Diane from Cheers. They get the best sarcastic lines: low brow and high brow, respectively. All the characters will be played by themselves2 except Hari who will be played by the kid from Slumdog Millionaire and Carla and Diane who will be played by Rhea Perlman and Shelley Long in makeup. The Danny DeVito episode will be hilarious.
•
Well, believe it or not, all of that came from my first week in Nirmalpokhari, and I didn’t even get into the daily commute, the rolling blackouts, the toilet situation (you would be surprised how long you can hold it when you know you’ll be in a hotel with plumbing over the weekend), or the village shower (one shower, which is actually redirected river water from a pipe three feet off the ground). I didn’t get into the food on purpose. I don’t want to talk about it.
So here it is my first weekend, and I am in Pokhara—the tourist-heavy gateway to the world’s trekking Mecca. There are two buses a day out of Nirmalpokhari—one at 7AM and one at 9AM. Needless to say, I went for the 9 o’clock one. Bad call! It was canceled. No explanation, just “it’s not coming”. The girl from next door goes to Uni3 in Pokhara and she and her friend led me down the alternate route. 45 minutes walk down steep, wet rocks in my flip-flops (the hiking shoes still being soaked, I had decided not to take them). This was a difficult, but as it turned out, beautiful walk because we were on the opposite side of the mountain of the village overlooking the river. Downside: leeches! Three of them attached their suckers to my foot. Two brushed off pretty easy; the other, I had to wait until I got to the next village to find salt. It was wedged between my second and third toes. Leeches inject an anti-coagulant, so when you get them off you bleed for a long time. My foot was a bloody mess as we took a bus to the outskirts of Pokhara, where we then walked 20 more minutes, and then I caught a cab the rest of the way. The thing is, the whole journey coincided almost perfectly with the only time of the day that it wasn’t pouring rain. So all in all, I was lucky.
So that is where I stand now. I’m in Pokhara and it’s been raining. This has kept me from hiking to the local Buddhist Temple, but it gave me time to write my longest blog entry yet. It also gave me a chance to buy some more food. I deeply appreciate the family that I am staying with. They are boarding and feeding me for not much money, but they eat the same thing all three meals! Lentil and rice for breakfast? I can’t carry back too much food, but any variety will be good.
Gots to run. Pictures later. Thanks for reading,
Greg
* What the hell is the deal with our airline industry, anyway? Could unions have really made things that much worse off? I don’t buy the “mismanagement” idea either. People don’t get to the top because they’re idiots (I believe that). I wrote this before I took a flight on Emirates, too. And Emirates is profitable as hell! Did you know that most international airlines give free drinks? That’s right, not only do they not charge you for a bag of chips, they give you free booze! And they give you hot towels, a huge selection of movies, freakin’ socks!
1 pronounced “key” for some ridiculous reason.
2 This is the lynchpin to the entire show, just as it was on my first imaginary sitcom pilot, “Straight Place on Christopher St.”, where the Greg Sims character was played by Gregory Sims. (And, in case you are interested, the Greg “Stew” Stewart character was to be played by Jay Mohr, Gary Stewart character was to be played by Seth Green, and the Frenchy Aguis cared was to be played by Joe Pantoliano—who would have been stretching suspension of disbelief on the age issue to levels not seen since
Beverly Hills 90210). My other imaginary sitcom was “The Fusco Brothers”, based upon the now-defunct daily comic strip, which was certainly one of the best 10 comic strips ever and absolutely perfectly ready to be one of the best 10 sitcoms ever. Are you listening, Hollywood? Get on it!
3 Oh, I am getting international!
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Finally, someone can relate
Greg: Well written, economical, humor, good descriptive narrative. B+ We did two trips out of Pokhara.... so I spent over two months in that district. We probably walked past Nirmal... I too had a leech removed by alternative means, right of passage and all. Of course being there in November I missed the rain....more's the pity. Be aware of the "red clay, slippery way" (in Nepali it sounds like rotto motto, chipallo batto) it's like ice. I recommend the Annapurna Sanctuary trek. You will get close to Machapuchare (fish tail) home of Shiva the Destroyer, and off limits to climbers for many years. Do not look for Maccu Piccu...SPOILER ALERT...a different mountain!!! Only one pass goes into the "sanctuary" it could be a little busy, but you're out of season. But it's the highest place on earth you can get home cooked pizza. All sodas, food, tents etc brought up on the backs of porters. That's gotta be worth something. Around you in gay profusion are many peaks of 23,000 to 26,000 feet. Beautiful.