Halftime for my voluntary service

Hello to home, you’ve tuned in for the Nepali News: I've been taking local buses, hanging out with my fam and making friends with Grandmas just through some weird sign language and awkward smiling.

It's been a while since I properly told you what I'm doing so let's start from mid-December when Nisha and Bimala took me to that really huge monastery on the top of our valley, the drawings in their prayer room were impressive, to say the least. So was the calm, the Buddha statue, the view and the fact that one of the monks was wearing Nike airforce that perfectly matched his monk robe. We went for some very nice streetfood called Pani-puri, Phara then some chatpate and Newari sweets.

I spent some more time at the high school, where I taught two classes on how to make a CV, I'll talk more about that in a special post, let's just say: I can't just go in and help everyone get a scholarship just because they have a nice looking CV, even if I realllllyyy want that to work.

I bought a 1 kg jar of peanut butter and right now I'm almost halfway, so these will go down as the months were all I needed was that American white toast and peanut butter to make my day, every day.

On Christmas eve, we went to the Tourist district called Thamel and ended up in this Irish pub where loads of trekking people from all over were celebrating with these 0.5 bottles of beer, we joined and before I knew it I was dancing in my Jack Wolfskin to a mixture of Justin Bieber and Hindi songs, with some Finish, English and Australian people, and on the wall was a poster of Curt Cobain.

It was definitely different than usual, but I'd be lying if I said the Veggieburger at 3 am didn't appear to me like a Christmas present straight from the heavens. It was cool especially because all those who missed Christmas at home got to spent a “Friend day” after all.

We spent the night at Nisha's sisters’ house, on Christmas day we went to the "Garden of dreams", the name really fits, it’s this little very nice garden in the middle of the city. It used to belong to the kings’ palace, but that guy kinda is no longer since he was kinda murdered in 2008. So the city gets this garden as a freedom present, which is cool.

Also, next to it is the “Kaiser Library” (the king had some slight inferiority complex issues, he was to be referred to as Kaiser and not as King, which is hilarious because Nepal is so tiny), anyhow, the King collect books in his Kaiser library, very old ones, mostly about western expeditions in Asia. They’ve been gathering dust there for a decade, the place is hidden an there’s almost no one there, but it has really got something.

With two of my Nepali friends we were just chillin on the grass in the garden, watching what looked like the national selfie championships, we really enjoyed ourselves haha

It got even better when we had Momos after, these things are so good I'll probably have withdrawal symptoms when I come back.

Probably the funniest part of Christmas in Nepal was when we came back to the house and the mother offered me some "local wine" in a big glass, she was joking, it was "Rakshi" which is like a rice vodka thing.We ended up having a lot of fun with my friends’ parents in the kitchen, so much that we got on our flip-flops to go buy ice cream and beer at the corner store. The "gone to get more beer trip" seems to be one of the things that are really international. So is the associated socks in houseshoes outfit.

26th of December, Nisha and I had to go back to our village, but we did stop on the way at a big fish pont (but everybody just leaves the fish be) for a tea, probably the best (and cheapest) one I've ever had.

Nisha spents some Saturdays in this place just looking at the turtles and the fish, so this little auntie with the street restaurant knows her well. She made those "wai-wai" instant noodles for breakfast which was perfect, and wouldn't even let us pay half of what all the other restaurants asked.

What an actual sister!

Back at work, we have loooooaaaaddss of maintenance to do, we're evening out the ways and hoping to make them last over the rain season, we're building a sink, compost,a poultry and cowshed. And planning the next season. I couldn't engage much in the decision of what we plant when and where, but I did learn a lot. I'm still trying to promote permaculture, local seeds and purely organic methods where I can, or rather to the extend my knowledge allows me too. I know that a lot of things need improving, but I don't really know how. Plus I’m alone in this fight, which is hard,

I took a holiday again for New Years eve, which was cool, though a little calmer than Christmas. Some of our friends were on a hike, others had exams at college, one of them had food poisoning. We ended up being just Cathy (the other Luxembourgish volunteer), Nisha (my friend from work) and me, still, we were pure rocking the dancefloor. One of the highlights was that the club had a huge Christmas tree and bonfires too, across from us were these very fancy Asian new yorkers who ordered more cheeseballs than they could eat, so we got some too.

1st of January was started, for the first in years without a head that hurts but with banana pancakes.

On that day, everyone I knew was busy, so I went for my first real solo day off to Patan. It's a city down south of Kathmandu, famous for Newari sweets and unfortunately: destroyed temples. The earthquake damaged major parts of the main square and made so many traditional houses inhabitable.

In part to help the reconstruction, the government has introduced a 1000NPR entry price (8€), once in the square and Museum, I was happy to be there on my own because the place is huge and there's plenty of things to read. this is were I usually everyone I with to museums because I’m so slow. This time, I kind of got my head around Buddhism a little more, and also how Nepal has got it's own kind of it. In Nepal, it didn't make sense to the people that a person becomes a buddha and then just leaves with his/her knowledge, here, a buddha becomes a humbled teacher, a Bodhisattwa, to instruct others.

This picture looks like it was taken by a washing machine, I can assure you, it wasn't butmy old Iphone defo feels like one, an broken one.

A Policewoman is chilling on her phone by the holy pont in Patan Museum

Back at home, I've been learning a little how to cook, playing with the kids, mastering the art of laundry making. Also, I got a new housemate from Finnland, she's a med student in 5th year who’s working in our community hospital.she's super chill and it has been great to have someone to hang out with, without taking a 1H bus. Like many foreigners, I'm interested in the Nepali Health service too, as per expected it is very poor and sadly, very corrupted too. Doctors are not showing up, medicine is regulated by something like a mafia, nurses are on 24H call and untrained. Our hospital is funded from outside, making it well-equipped to care for pregnant women or elderly people with eye or teeth problems mostly, but most of the rural areas are not like this at all.We better have equipment as Pharping Hospital is the only one in a 6H radius moving away from the city.

I went to it to show my housemate her worklpace and it was obviously something I had never seen before ...development goes so fast in so many domains and so slow in others. Health facilities are the latter, though at least for our community hosital you can leave having seen some very good prospects, in Pharping you can get treatment for about 10 times less than what you would've paid in Kathmandu, it's about 80 cents for an eye checkup plus medicine. Hurray'!

Around the new year, I've also called home a lot. Either checking on how the exams went, if that wasn't well, then we just spent more time talking about free beers and the Zürcher Ball. I got to see my whole family on the Christmas call, and was very grateful and very lucky it turned out, because we had a power cut just minutes after.

Loads more visitors at work, district committees or college classes mostly. They always spoke in Nepali, but I just listened and tried to understand. The project advisor and funding member is a retired maths teacher that is running just about everything in the village. When he talks, no one even moves. He must be veryyy good at explaining, I really have no idea, but he was mentioning a poem in a presentation about difficulties of social work today, that's what I found quite cool.

With my housemate, the daughter and the cousin of the family we went to Kathmandu to shop for something for a family festival coming up, it's a tradition where the son is moving from childhood to adulthood. It's a bunch of things more which I didn't get, something about his star sign, he's going to get his head shaven, all of the women members of the family are going to get new sari's, about 400 people are going to come to the house haha

After shopping, we met Rajani (my friend who visited Luxembourg) and Nora, the other Finnish volunteer near Swoyambhu, the Monkey Temple.

We passed Buddha park, and went up loads of stairs, to reach a Stupa (huge white Buddhist temple with a golden top), said to be build by the gods.

The place was very cool and so big that, you can’t help but think about majesties on top of there, Rajani explained us some more Buddhist traditions and beliefs.

I’m very interested in their philosophy got to say, Swoyambhu was even surprising because we saw our first trashbin in Nepal, total stunner that guy. Even with an organic compartment.

The government has got a huge "VisitNepal2020" campaign running, they've even made a foodtruck festival for it, then they biggest shitstorm ever because everyone complained that tourists would much rather have just a trash bin or a public toilet than a food truck. The pollution problem is the N1 obstacle of why tourism can't really develop. It's absolutely everywhere, and just normal for everyone who knows no different.

Swoyambuh made us hungry, so we went to the first western-looking restaurant (shame on us) to have a pizza and an oreo milkshake. Next up, us three volunteers went for "one" drink, because we enjoyed just being tourists for a while. It was happy hour at the Irish pub, so we got loads of these 0.5 beers, which made us increasingly motivated to spend the night in Thamel. We "missed" our bus, and had the best time in Kathmandu nightlife, the picture is from "Lord of Drinks"haha), the drawback was that we had to take one of the first busses in the morning to make it in time for work.

We met this nice dude upon passing a liquor store.

I arrived there to find quite a change of scenery: the whole farm was going to the forest to cut forest grass as cow feed for the rest of the winter. These days many farmers are feeding their livestock almost only dried rice straw, which is not nutritious and thus the quality of milk goes down. That's why we're trying to encourage grass harvest instead. On a hilarious bike ride, we went all the way up to the hill, where we collected the grass the whole day. It looked like the forest in the South of France, a really calm, clean place, wish I could go there more often (apparently there’s leopards hihi, don’t tell my mum!)

Don’t worry I don’t have a bike so I can’t go very far can I.

It felt good to be in nature, eventhough I'm living in a village, no one ever goes to spend time outdoors except for farm work. Unsurprisingly, I was tired and good for not much to be honest as I also had this weird mood of wanting to be alone but also feeling like having to do something. So I was taking some time to sit around, then I was working for 10 min, then my cutting-thingy broke so I couldn't. I wandered around and was just starting to feel a little calmer, when a nepali grandma was calling me about 5 times to come back as she was worried I'm going to get lost, It was a good day, just... it was very complicated too.

All my Bros! I've got 14 of them here, one nicer than the other

On my Housemate’s last day,we’re planning to go on a day hike around our little valley, it passes through the same forest on the way to the Champa Devi peak: so see you soon top of the hill, and for the Leopards: we’re mates my bros, but just as long as you’re not where I am.

We spent one-day hiking already, this time on the east of Kathmandu Valley. Behind Bhaktapur, we walked for 2 hours to reach a temple where a very big festival was honoring Hindu's greatest God: Shiva. It was colors, offerings, little fires, flowers and just like the first time I visited a Hindu temple, there were no other foreigners. We just passed and nobody seems to mind, we were glad as we really didn't mean to intrude, and they weren't bothered, what’s more is that they gave us all the local prices for tea and lunch. In that sense, I think Nepal is different from India, where tourists in these places seem to be hyped up and touched and asked for pictures. This only happened to me one single time in Nepal, i said no (Joke: I said: talk to my manager, that was a joke, again... )

We continued to reach an Ashram (Buddhist spiritual teaching place), I find these really interesting though it's quite hard to find out what they're really about.

The hike ended in the old city of Bhaktapur, one of the main reasons why Kathmandu valley is said to be one of the most culturally rich places on earth. Temples on every corner, huge wood carvings on every Newari house. Here the earthquake stroke as well and the people lost their biggest pagoda temple and are still rebuilding it. It would’ve been much easier if that had been a person’s fault, then at least the city would have someone that paid for reconstruction, but no, all this money needs to come from donations, mostly from the community. We had some traditional yogurt, and then we made our way back. We planned an hour more than people told us it would, still we were back in KTM just in time for our very last bus home. Stuck in traffic, I was watching the sunset over the Himalayas while planes were landing and taking off. Didn’t really feel so stuck in traffic then, cause I was happy to be there, to see that.

Now I'm back at work for a short time, we've got new interns that will stay for one year. They're very open and interested we had good fun while writing case studies about beneficiaries of our project. Plus loads of the boys from the Project are at home to visit their families, with the few that stayed we had a little party with a lot of momo's, oh happy day.

There is a Hinu tradition that in one special month, between two full moons which are decided by the god. Women fast during the whole day, and stay for reasons of "Pugja" in one place away from their families. They do this in order to sacrifice to the Gods, so they don't get angry. They all wear read, and on the last day of their fasting they do a pilgrimage from one temple to another. Both are at the opposite sides of the valley, it' about 8H walk on paved road, and none of the women has shoes on. The second temple is close to our Village: Dakshinkali. This will be the end of their walk after a month of fasting.

About 300 women did this, they're considered sacred, sre not to be touched while walking and not talked to eother. This was only half through though, cause I know some of the women took loads of businesscalls while walking, others had their sons and brothers with them to make sure they are not bothered and of course, all of them we're weak from fasting so some fainted, these women usually then came to us by truck. Our Community centre managed to clear some classrooms fir them to stay. It's been astonishing to see how fast people can collect so many matrasses and blankets in one day.Often it was the men that carried all of the sleeping material that their family could lend on their bike.

All of the women we're utterly exhausted when they came. And freezing too, so the community offered hot water to drink and for their feet. All the women are looked up upon and we happily made fires and some sacrifices in honor of the womens much bigger sacrfices.

Also, I spent a weekend in Chitwan National Park, a jungle with Rhinos and elephants and vultures and even Bengal tigers (whose population has been boosted in record speed!).

Their big on elephant riding, which is 100% cruel in Nepal. Stand up 4 elephants are doing a good job in rescuing privately owned elephants, so we visited them and heard about how the situation sucks because of guess what: corruption. The elephants are treated like cattle and have no writes, well technically they do, but the people who wrote these rights are the same people that break them as most o the elephant owners are amidst the government, isn’t that lovely.

The good news is, that “only” half of the 130 are privately owned, the rest are in the army or relatively free in the nature reserve. The army patrols the jungle with the elephants which helps them no disturb the tigers, which in return, helps the tiger conservation a LOT. These things are black and white but mostly grey I guess.

As for us (Cathy, Cathy’s sister who came to visit and me), we went to Chitwan with the aim to take the “smart-spending” to another level, we met at the bus station with not a lot of cash, and our Visa cards, we kind of took on the challenge to not use them. The weekend started with us splashing on coffees and fried cheese momos and ended with us sharing one all you can eat buffet plate of rice. We felt a little like the three idiots from a Hindu movie with the same name that we kept on referring to. They say “all is well” all the time, and that’s also what we said to each other when we made our way back to KTM with a total of 75 cents in our pockets, we may be idiots but we do know how to push our budget right to the edge, but not over haha

In Friendship,

Teddy Smile