Pheri Namaste (Namaste... again)

Well, dear readers. I have procrastinated this day long enough. The people have complained, they have rallied, they have cried out “why have you not written! Where is your blog! It sustains us!.” By people I mean mom. This is for you, I am recommitting to my blog in the New Year. It’s a long one, so grab yourself a steaming cup of chiya (nepali tea).

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened. Since I last wrote, nothing has happened. During the first three months, we are not allowed to leave site. This was really valuable time to get to know my community, be present, and adjust to the much slower pace of Nepali life. During Pre Service Training, my friend Becca, a girl in the group above me, told me that it is probably going to be the longest time you will have at site during service. I scoffed, thinking this couldn’t possibly be true. But since September I haven’t had more than two weeks in a row at site. So, what have I been up to?

Teej in the bazaar with Shova's mom, sister, and nephew

After I last wrote, we celebrated Tij, the women’s festival. The women worship Shiva and Parbati, the divine couple who epitomize marital bliss in Hindu religion. The first day of Tij is called dar khane din, meaning the day of feast. On this day, we ate a lot of sel roti (fried dough) in preparation for the next day where everyone fasted except for me, my younger brother, and the two children under 4. The fast is in reverence to Parbati who fasted to obtain Shiva. My host sister, her daughter, and bunch of aunts came to our house for a few days to celebrate. I live about 30 minute walk from a fairly big (by rural nepali village standards) bazaar. On the main day of Tij there was a huge festival in our Bazaar. We all got dressed up in red saris and paraded down to the bazaar. PCVs from other groups had made me somewhat nervous about this holiday. Despite my many attempts (ballet, Irish step dancing, African, modern) I have never been a good dancer, and Tij is all about the dancing. But sure enough, soon after arriving in the bazaar, I met up with my friend Shova and her family, and Shova whisked me up on stage where I found myself dancing in front of hundreds. People who I’ve never met still approach me on busses, in capital, in village, on the road, and tell me that they saw me dancing in a red sari on Tij. Throughout the day, women sing songs about their husbands, lost love, being a woman, inequality, the pain of raising a family alone if the husband is abroad, and how hard they work.  It started out as a holiday to celebrate husbands, but in recent years has turned into much more of a celebration about womanhood. Women return to their maiti ghars, home where they were born, to spend time with the women in their own families and commiserate. The day after fasting and partying, the women all bathed together and conducted a puja (worship) to bless their marriages and clean their souls.

Mandalas for Tihar in Kathmandu

Soon after Tij, I went into Kathmandu for our two week long In Service Training, IST. My whole group was looking forward to being together again. On the second night of being in Kathmandu, I broke my foot. During our pre service training, the doctors told us that no one in Peace Corps Nepal had ever broken anything. They must have jinxed it because I was the second person in my group in only 4 months to break something. I tried not to let breaking my foot hold me back much, I still attended all the trainings, even when it required some fancy crutch-work to navigate thin paths through fields, and muddy paths. I recruited the help of some especially kind strong friends who carried me up hills, over streams, and down some pretty narrow paths over cliffs. The training was really interesting, and provided us with some really good ideas to take back to site. We learned about mushroom cultivation, tree pruning, grafting, and some techniques for saving water. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to return to site after the 2 weeks were up because I had to let my foot heal. I missed the two biggest holidays in Nepal, Deshai and Tihar. Thankfully, Peace Corps was very good to me, and set me up at a really nice hotel, and allowed for me to have friends stay with me to help out in my wobbly gimpy state. Celebrating Deshai in Kathmandu was uneventful, as most people return to their villages during this time, the city was a ghost town. Thankfully we had stock-piled some peanut butter and bananas, or else we wouldn’t have eaten, everyplace was closed. Celebrating Tihar on the other hand was a fantastic experience!  Tihar is a five day celebration, and on each day something else is worshipped. The first day is crow puja, then dog, cow/goddess of wealth, ox, and on the last day the relationship between brothers and sisters is celebrated. I wish I had bene home to celebrate this last day with my brother, and give him tikka (red powder on the forehead). On the third day, Laxmi the goddess of wealth, as represented by the cow, is celebrated by giving malaas (garlands) and tikka to cows. Nepali people clean their homes and make a design with colored powder outside their doors (called mandalas) to lead Laxmi into the home. Outside people’s homes in Kathmandu there were extremely elaborate mandalas that were strikingly beautiful.

Receiving tikka and tending the flame for a long life during mahar puja

 Another neat opportunity I had in Kathmandu, was the chance to celebrate Maha Puja, which is known aas the self-puja, to purify one’s own body and connect families. It is particular to the Newar community in Nepal. It is also the first day of the Newari new year. Since I don’t live with a Newari family, this was a really unique opportunity. My friend and I met a lady who lives in Spain, but was back in Nepal to visit her family. She invited us to her house, fed us an amazing Spanish omelet complete with cheese (!!!!) and prosciutto from Spain (!!!) and then to her family’s house where we did the puja. I feel so lucky to have met this lady and experience this puja. Her whole family was incredibly welcoming, and knew a lot of English. Her father and mother live in America now in fact, and had really insightful comments to make about American culture. It was really interesting to talk with them about challenges they face in America, and trends they notice in the states. A refreshing contrast to the many comments we hear in Nepal that glorify the United States. In maha puja, each member of the family sits on the floor in a line in front of a mandala. In front of us we tended to a long thread representing our lives as it burned in a small bowl. This represents a long life, and caring for one’s self. Next, we were presented with Sagun, a plate consisting of eggs, fruits, sweets, meat, fish, lentils, and pastries. We were instructed to eat this, while taking sips of Johnny Walker. The mandala represents the universe, the wick represents our life and the hopes that we should tend to our souls and spread light for others. We were given tikka an enjoyed more delicious food. At the conclusion, all of our mandalas were swept together in one continuous brush of the broom, bonding the family (and me and my friend) together. This ceremony is probably my favorite holiday I have celebrated in Nepal. It felt meaningful to celebrate my own life and body, and I was especially thankful to have so many English speakers there who were eager and interested to explain all the aspects of the ceremony to me. Usually these types of worships are largely a mystery to me, and when I ask for an explanation, I am told that it is Nepali culture.

Soon after this holiday, I returned finally to my village!! I was really ready to be home after so much time in the city, so much time unable to walk, and after missing out on so many important holidays with my family. My bus ride back to Lamjung was beautiful, monsoon had ended and after leaving the smog of Kathmandu, the Himalaya shone through clear and piercingly white against the blue sky. I spent about two weeks at site, bustling around to different people’s houses after being away for so long. I went to a training at the school about reproductive health. I celebrated my birthday with my closest friend here, who made me a beautiful woven shawl. I ate a lot of multiple week old sel roti, which people had saved for me from Deshai and Tihar. Sweet thought, but I am not a big fan of sel roti when it is fresh, so two week old roti pulled out of a dusty suitcase was often not the tastiest. It was nice to see how concerned my village was about my foot, everyone was amazed that I run every day on the muddy monsoon slip-n-slide roads, and then go to the paved streets of the city. I amaze myself too sometimes.

In mid-November, all the PCVs gathered together for a Thanksgiving in Pokhara, under the guise of attending a conference to talk about Let Girls Learn, my girl Michelle Obama’s initiative that partners with Peace Corps to encourage girls to stay in school and pursue careers. Thanksgiving was a fun affair complete with pumpkin pie, chicken, and lots of delicious sides. I definitely missed being home for this holiday though, as it has always been my favorite. Right after that conference, we had PDM, project design management. Each PCV in my group was allowed to bring their government counterpart, and one member of their community to this training. I brought my friend Shova, an inspiring young woman as my counterpart. Stay tuned in the next few days for a post wholly dedicated to Shova. She kept me in check and was great to talk through project ideas with. We talked about how we can create income generating projects for women in our community, and talk about financial literacy with families. We’re planning on making some nursery beds and doing mushroom cultivation soon together.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Note the tree behind my head.

Thanks for staying with me, as we zoom into December. December brought several mushroom trainings, a lot of downtime, and the initiation of my project aimed at improving nutrition in nursing and pregnant mamas. It started through some of my friends, one of whom is pregnant, one nursing, who asked me some really pointed nutrition questions. Since, I have been working with a small group to talk about what women need nutrition wise, and why some practices, such as only eating rice after a girl is born, or the thought that fruits and green vegetables shouldn’t be eaten at certain points in the pregnancy, can really harm a woman and baby’s health. The month ended with me going to visit friends in another district for Christmas where we watched Elf, cooked a not terribly exiting Christmas dinner of some sort of root vegetable that we thought was sweet potato but wasn’t and ate it with mustard, drank eggnog, sang, and wore Santa hats. It was a ton of fun and very festive. We even had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree to tie together the room. Our boxing day meals were more delicious, we made pancakes in the morning, and chicken and kale from my friends’ garden. Between Christmas and New Years, a friend and I went to a beautiful lake outside of Pokhara, where people were fishing and the air smelled like beautiful clean lakes. A smell that makes me pine for Minnesota and the Adirondacks. New Years was spent back in Lamjung celebrating Gurung (an ethnic minority in Nepal) New Years called Losar, and American New Years back to back.

Sporting some wildly applied Tikka at the Losar (Gurung new Year) festival in Josh's village

Now I find myself in the beginning of January, facing a full calendar year in Nepal. I am 2017 off feeling more secure and happy here, confident that I am finding my rhythm in Peace Corps.  I feel so lucky to have this opportunity. With that, I leave you for now. Stay tuned for more regular updates (promise!).