Happy Canada Day from Nepal: The Monkey Temple Part II and Meeting the Lama's: Local Stone Carvers

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Happy Canada Day! Unfortunately, we're not in Canada to celebrate our nation's birthday. This morning Elysia spent the morning at the hospital and came back to spend the afternoon with Mike. Today our friend Katie was leaving to continue on her travels, so we said goodbye to her at breakfast. Then Elysia spent the rest of the morning at the hospital learning more about medicine in Nepal. There wasn't anything too exciting today. She just stuck around the outpatient clinic and made funny faces to make the children laugh when they cried. The one interesting patient was a little baby in the ICU. This is a sad story though, because the baby a few days earlier had been on a ventilator, which is very bad news in Nepal. Being on a ventilator is expensive for the family (who has to pay for everything), and since the parents thought there was very little chance that the baby would recover and be taken off of it, the parents abandoned him. This is apparently a somewhat common occurrence. The parents had gone off the grid completely and the hospital couldn't find them. So Dr. X told me today that the hospital has to technically adopt the baby and figure out what to do with him. He hinted at one of us students taking the baby home — as tempting as having a beautiful Nepali baby is, there's no way I can handle that right now! If I was going to adopt in the future, I would definitely get a Nepali baby because they are so beautiful!

Today, Elysia was joined by her friend Nasrin, a good friend from school who is just starting her volunteer shift for the next 6 weeks. They both came back to Thamel together at lunchtime and met up with Mike to eat lunch on a 2nd floor patio overlooking the street.

After lunch, we caught ourselves a cab (200 rupees; about the same as going to the hospital each morning — approximately 2 dollars for a 25 minute trip) and went up to Swayambhunath (aka the Monkey Temple). This was Elysia's second trip up there, but it's worth it to see the monkeys (and it's fun to see it with Mike and Nasrin who haven't seen them yet!). When we got to the bottom of the hill where the big stupa (kind of like a temple) sits atop, we were bombarded by rhesus macaques monkeys, old and young. They are adorable! We climbed the extremely steep steps up to the top where the stupa sits. The stupa is surrounded by religious (Buddhist and hindu) statues and temples, and tons of stalls selling souvenirs for the tourists. The view is also amazing from up there. We walked around the site.

One of the funniest things we saw was a monkey attack a woman's pony tail. It grabbed it and started pulling. I threw a rock to distract the monkey and he let go, but then he stole her plastic water bottle and ran away with it. He poked a hole in the bottle and tried to drink from it, but it was really struggling. He finally got the cap off and turned the bottle over to drink from it, and accidentally poured it all out. It was hilarious. The monkey actually looked very frustrated when that happened, almost like a human would.

After we walked around the site, we went back down the steep stairs. We had a mission: Mike was given a letter from his father and step-mother to deliver to a stone carving couple that they had met on their trip to Nepal 2 years ago. I guess they become friends with the couple. Mike's dad had told him that this family's stone carving "shop" (really an area, kind of like a stall), would be located on the right of the stairs. We saw lots of souvenir sellers but we didn't see them on our way up, but we thought maybe they moved to a different position in the last 2 years (you never know). So before we came back down, we asked another stone carver at the top and he said that he knew them and they usually are on the right of the steps going up, midway down. So we went down the steps and still couldn't find them (Mike had seen pictures of them, so we asked another stone carver. It turns out because of the rain (and the fact that it's low season) they hadn't come out today. The man we asked apparently was a brother-in-law that lives across the street from them, so he took us to their house, which was only about 5 minutes from the bottom of the monkey temple. This was in a little area with lots of buildings. The man led us through a small door that fronted onto the street through to the other side of the building (it resembled walking through a barn). Behind that building was another small building where they were living. Really, it was just one room that they lived in, on the ground floor. He showed us the place and the couple (the Lamas) came out to greet us. They were very sweet. They invited us inside, so we took our shoes off and went in. This was a true authentic Nepali experience. In this room were just two single beds some storage, an old TV and a hot plate basically, all in one room. The rest of their family were inside and we were introduced to one of their elderly mothers (we're not sure whose), sister, and niece. Their English is not too bad, but the niece is taking journalism at a local university, and most of her program is in english, so it's decent. We figure that at least a total of 5 people were living in that room. No bathroom either. Not sure what they do for that. They invited us to have tea, and at first we declined because we didn't want them to go through any effort, but after a few offerings I remembered someone telling me that it's rude to refuse tea because it makes the host feel like you feel their cooking (or tea) is unsanitary. So we took it and it was good typical Nepali tea.

It's really hard to describe our feelings of visiting these people. They obviously have very little. Mike's dad said that the last time they were there, the family was 5 months behind on their bills and that when they offered tea, their tea ration for the day was used up on his dad and step-mom so the family didn't have any to drink. This time they all drank tea with us, so maybe things are going a bit better. He told us that he's sick though, and we don't know what he has but he's quite skinny. They showed us their stone carvings that they sell for the tourists. I really think they were being genuine when showing us their work for our interests sake. The stones that they use come from the Annapurna mountains. He goes to get the stones himself. They obviously have a lot of pride in it, and it's really quite good! They told us that business is really slow during the monsoon months. Their last sale (they told us) was over a month ago. We really liked some of their stuff so we bought a couple of carved plaques for home and Nasrin bought one too and a few necklaces. We told some of the others about them, and they want to help them with sales and buy some stuff too!

These people are just so amazing to me. Despite having so little, they seem to me some of the happiest people I've ever met. It makes me feel that we don't appreciate just how lucky in North America. Why am I so lucky to have grown up in a place where I have my own bedroom, but these people have to share one room? They're just so resilient. Also, they are probably the most welcoming people I've ever met. They invited us into their home, let us stay for tea and even invited us back for dinner, all when they have so little! We would have loved to come back for dinner but not only did we feel uncomfortable taking from them when they have so little, but also we were a bit worried about the food they might prepare for us. They could potentially prepare something for us that they would not be aware that makes us sick, and we wouldn't be able to refuse because that's so rude. So we thanked them politely but said we weren't sure if we had enough time. Anyways, it was so heartwarming to see the look on their faces when we gave them the envelope that came from mike's dad. They were so excited and almost looked like they had tears in their eyes. They remembered Mike's dad, and the man even ruffled through the papers in his pockets to find his email address written on an old piece of paper. It's very obvious what these westerners meant to him, and even how our visit meant to all of them.

It was truly an enlightening experience to see how these guys live such simple, but happy lives. Family is obviously a very important part of their happiness and materialism not so much. It was very cool seeing into their world, and it's something that is hard to understand until you experience it for yourself. I really feel like it has changed my perspective on people and life. I should always think of this experience when I'm frustrated with things in my own life because that should help put things into perspective of how lucky I am.

After we said our goodbyes to the family we headed back to Thamel to meet the others for dinner. Tonight we headed to eat at the Third Eye restaurant. Elysia had missed out on going to this restaurant a few weeks ago when she was very sick. The food was amazing!!! It was some of the most flavourful Indian/Nepali food we've ever tried. Elysia had a more traditional Nepali (actually Newari) meal that had some very interesting different types of dishes that we hadn't seen before. It's definitely worth a trip to this restaurant — and definitely order the Newari meal (she got the veggie one). It comes with a lot of food so Elysia couldn't even finish it all. Unfortunately these days it feels like we're always going home with our stomachs stretched at the end of the night. It is an expensive restaurant however because it probably cost $30 Canadian for the two of us. It was worth every penny... A restaurant like this at home would run us $100 for two. Only problem though was that the waiters stood behind us and stared at us the entire time. Awkward!!!

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Photos

With the Monkeys
At the base of the steps up to the Stupa

The Steps
They get steeper as you go. Towards the top, the steps are actually sloped against you too... might be tricky in the rain.

Random Guy Who Stopped Mike for a Photo
He is from India

Indian Food!
At Third Eye Restaurant in Thamel

Comments

[donna d]

Nepali Trek Next Generation
What a lovely story about going to see the Lamas family.