Monsoon is coming

The rain is back, and with its restoring waters comes a smell that immediately brings me back to about a year ago, when I first got to my home in Lamjung, Nepal. The rains have come early this year, a fact which my host brother without any prompting from me, attributes to global warming. The first day we had a big rain I was overcome with a sense of realization that I have been here in Nepal for a year. The smell of wet earth, sodden water buffalo manure, and fallen rain-soaked leaves so distinctly reminded me of my early days here walking in the rain to the health post. Running through the roads which had become rivers, walking through villages hoping people would invite me in. Going up to a woman and telling her: “I have no friends here, I need friends.” In mid June, I will have been at my site for a full year. In that time, I have made dear friends, found a good running route, and feel few qualms about going to people’s homes and inviting myself in, Nepali e-style. Things that seemed so foreign to me have now become routine.

That’s not to say that I am completely comfortable here. Rather, I’ve adapted as best I can to what is uncomfortable, found ways to cope with the aspects of this culture that still makes me feel alone. I still get frustrated when people repeatedly ask me when I am going to get married, and why I don’t eat rice twice a day. When people tell me I am fat, and then someone else tells me I am too skinny later that day. But it has been a year of living in Nepal, and the time has really flown by. Somedays feel like they stretch forever, the weeks crawl by, but the months… I don’t know where they sneak off to.

A recap of the past few months includes cooking trainings, a trip to Bangkok for emergency wisdom teeth removal, several books, consumption of a lot of golden raspberries, an evening at the ambassador’s house, improved compost trainings, and my first harvest of kale. Perhaps the most striking of those tidbits, is my trip to Bangkok. In February, I went to another district to assist fellow volunteers in their GROW camp- a camp which teaches youth improved farming techniques, and skills to be stewards of the soil and equipped to confront food insecurity in their own villages. Unfortunately, I never really made it to this camp. I called the Peace Corps doctor on the first day with intense pain in my wisdom tooth, and was flown to Kathmandu. I spent a week in Kathmandu fighting an infection before they flew me to Bangkok where our regional headquarters is to have two wisdom teeth extracted. Peace Corps was very good to me during all of this, I felt like the doctors really did their best to get me the best care available.

The extraction went very smoothly, it was over in about 10 minutes. That night I had some yogurt and soup, then the next morning I was pretty much good to go! The next few days I spent exploring sights in Bangkok, eating delicious food like grilled squid, sushi, and sticky rice. The culinary highlight was going out to lunch with Thai Peace Corps volunteers who took me to a local place off the beaten path. They were able to use their impressive Thai language skills to order food that I otherwise would not have known to order, and everything was absolutely delicious. I was relishing the opportunity to eat seafood, and had a chilled squid salad, and all sorts of other delights that we ate family style. It was a wild experience to go from Kathmandu to a city that in many areas is pretty much as developed, if not more developed than anyplace in the US. It was unreal to be able to take public transportation that didn’t feel like gambling with your life. It was an overall pretty great trip, but I was happy to return back to Nepal. I missed this country and returning felt like coming home.

As I breath in the smell of another fresh rain, and look towards the view of the Himalaya that graces my front porch, I’m struck with the sense that this is my normal. I’ve gained much more than I have given to my community, and I have only a year left to try to even the score. But for now, I think I’ll just have another cup of tea with my grandmother.