We get off the bus in Bhaktapur at the entrance to some of Nepal’s oldest palaces. Right off the bus there are several women lying Dhaan, unprocessed rice recently reaped, so it can dry. This is a process most of us have aided in, one of my finest days here was deep in the paddy’s with my family and neighbors, taking a sickle to some Dhaan. As we weaved in and out of the field smiles were exchanged for laughs; some guffaws even. Before my mind could question why one would bring Dhaan in the middle of a city to dry, my eyes met the tourist covenant of neon colored quick dry clothes and panorama hats. In my village, I learned the process of growing and harvesting rice because it was a part of my family’s life, my country’s life, therefore it became integral to mine. Here, walking past, I saw these Dhaan stacks through several new lenses. Some of these scopes were high powered, some point and click even a couple of iPads. In this digital and mechanical scope I saw myself too. Seven weeks of life in Nepal were photoshopped off. I was a tourist.
I’m sitting in a restaurant looking at a menu in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Around me are my friends, fellow volunteers. As our eyes slowly and distainfully digest the menu there are joking cries of “casto mahango” and “melai Swyamsewak ho.” “How expensive,” “we are volunteers,” these are things you learn quickly in language class and nobody lets you forget. The final straw is placed when we make it to the traditional Nepali meal. The meal, falsely imitating what you could find in rural Nepal, what we’ve been eating with our host families for weeks now, was about a fifth of our stipend for the next 6 weeks. We leave
Kathmandu was fun though. Our tour of the Peace Corps office was an affirmation of the resources that back me. I have the best of the best in my corner. There are also a lot of maps. One of them put me in the far west; I really liked that map. I got this assignment, my permanent site, about two weeks ago. We are leaving for our sites when we’re ripe for the plucking. I think we’re supposed to be at the point where we’re ready and don’t know it.
Leaving Kathmandu, we gazed at the now powerfully visible Himalayas, most of ready to be back with our host families, back in the Nepal we were birthed into. This was on the first day of Tihar festival. It was only a couple of days later that I would be sucked in by this Christmas/Halloween hybrid: the festival of lights.
