The week I spent in a very remote village called Phalebas was absolutely amazing. It was quite the fiasco trying to get there: 2 hour bus ride to Kathmandu (I was staying in a village outside the capital for a public health internship), 7 hour bus ride to Pokhara, but then there was something up with a bridge being closed, so we had to spend the night in Pokhara. After a three hour bus ride to Kusma, we then had a 3 1/2 hour hike up two small mountains to get to the village. (I say "small" mountain because they were small by Nepali standards...quite large, though, by American standards!)
Phalebas looks like a cross between Austria from the 'Sound of Music' and the Shire from 'Lord of the Rings.' It's so gorgeous - everything is green, blue, and orangey-brown. The clouds often hang low over the mountains, and there are flowering trees everywhere. The people at the health clinic and in the village were SO welcoming that it was a bit overwhelming at times. We slept in a room at the clinic under blue mosquito nets and took our meals on the other side of a cornfield at the house of the clinic's accountant. They insisted that we call them Kaka and Kaki (Uncle and Aunt), and they were so sweet. Kaki made some delicious daal bhaat, and Kaka showed us how to milk a water buffalo. Kumar, the community medical auxiliary at the clinic, helped us kill the enormous spiders (we're talking tarantula-sized!) and kept begging us to play badminton despite the rain and mud.
We were treated like doctors, even though we repeatedly told them we weren't. We shied away from giving injections and setting up IVs, but I did agree to remove stitches from a man's leg after a horrific fall, and Esther and I helped to set a boy's broken arm and then cast it. We also hiked to various health posts and sub-health posts, and managed to pull together a health lesson for the local secondary school. They asked us to teach but didn't know which subject we should focus on, they didn't have any resources, and they had no art supplies. It was a very rudimentary lesson about nutrition and disease prevention, but the students seemed to be interested.
They almost never get foreigners in the village, so we were semi-celebrities. They even interviewed us for the local FM radio station! It was for their health section, and they asked us questions about our experiences here and our suggestions for healthy living in the village. We were considered swastik guru (that's Nepali for health teacher).
We also learned how to plant rice...talk about a fiasco! I've always wondered what the bottom of a rice paddy was like, and now I know: very thick, slippery mud with some snails thrown in. It's all uneven due to other people's footsteps, and I slipped almost immediately. We were covered in mud, but it was a lot of fun! Basically, you just take sprouts and shove them into the mud at even intervals and try not to fall over in the process.
The monsoon officially started a before we arrived, and boy did we experience it in Phalebas! It often rained about 18 hours a day! You had to squelch your way through the ubiquitous mud, and washing your feet off quickly became pointless. Hiking up and down the mountains is rather difficult when you're walking on compacted mud covered in an algae-mossy slime type thing.
After a somewhat less grueling two and a half hour hike, we made it back to Kusma on Sunday, and braved another three hour bus ride back into Pokhara. We spent two days there kayaking, eating momos and naan, watching pirated DVDs at restaurants, and enjoying "city life". The next morning, we got up at 4am to go see the sun rise over the Annapurna range of the Himalayas. It was a bit cloudy, but that's about as much as you can hope for during the monsoon. We got back to Kathmandu after a very long eight-hour bus ride on a bus with very narrow seats and a nourishing roadside meal of French fries and scrambled eggs on toast. Delicious!
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A Birthday Celebration with the Newari
A Newari birthday party doesn’t have a big cake, balloons, or presents. Instead, they celebrate several janko (old age ceremonies), starting with 77 years, 7 months, 7 days, etc. and two more at 84 and 99 years. Its a big deal because not many people live long enough to reach these milestones.
Basically, all the female relatives (and volunteers staying with relatives!) get dressed up in traditional outfits, the men can wear whatever they want as long as they don a traditional cap, and then everyone walks around the hometown of the honoree, making sure to hit all the important temples along the way. There’s also a band, complete with drums, cymbals, and flutes, platters full of rice and red tika powder, and the one celebrating their birthday is carried around in a seat covered in all sorts of colorful decorations. The women walk two-by-two, occasional toss some rice (two grains at a time), and try not to melt in their traditional outfits.
Before the celebration, my host father warned us that “the Newari saris are not sexy,” and that was not a lie. First you have to wear a petticoat, or in our case, rolled up jeans. Then you put on your sari, but it’s often a two-person job (or in our case, three-person ordeal). I stood there with my arms up while some family members wrapped me in the thick, black, pleated skirt, plaid wrapper, and red sash. And that was only the bottom half! On top, I had a traditional red blouse, which wraps across the front and has about a zillion ties on it. THEN, I had to be tied into my cream scarf, which winds around your waist, chest, and shoulders. All in all, you have about twenty pounds of fabric, which adds about twelve inches to your waist. Apparently, appearing to have a thin waist is not all that important in the Newari culture. We all looked like sumo wrestlers because all the fabric was wrapped around our mid-sections.
The walk around Patan, a big city just outside of Kathmandu, was actually a lot of fun. The monsoon held off long enough so that we remained dry, and it was only hot, not scorching. The music attracted a lot of attention, and people flocked to windows and doorways to watch the procession. Everyone got a kick out of the crazy white girl (me)throwing rice, and people kept laughing and pointing at me as we went by.
Afterwards, we changed into normal clothes, even though we were still covered in tika powder and various necklaces. Dinner was…an experience. It kind of reminded me of the Nepali version of that Medieval Times restaurant. We sat cross-legged and barefoot on straw mats in long rows inside a huge room on the second floor of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Each row had about 45 people, so nearly 200 people in the room sat expectantly in front of banana leaf plates (the Nepali version of paper plates). People walked up and down the rows with huge pots of food and ladled some onto each plate. I ended up with a plate full of water buffalo, chicken, beaten rice, two types of achar (spicy raw vegetables), two types of beans, radishes and mushrooms…all of which I had to eat with my hands! I had small bowls that looked like terracotta (they were actually made of mud, and also disposable), one filled with some very strong liquor made from rice and the other had two types of soup and curd at various times. Finally, we were served cucumbers and carrots, and they sprinkled some sugar on our curd, which is apparently the signal for us to get out. It turns out that the entire community is invited to this feast, and they feed us in shifts. We were merely shift #2 out of ten or more.
On our way out the door, we stopped to pay our respects to the grandmother who was celebrating her birthday. People were giving her hard-boiled eggs, bananas, apples, cloth, flowers, tika powder, and coins. They all signify different things, but most of them mean something all the lines of good luck and long life. There were also four small children involved in the ceremony today who were getting lots of eggs and pieces of fruit, as well as wrapped gifts containing toys. I’m not quire sure of all the details, but the Newaris celebrate several symbolic marriages (to fruit and bells and small children of the opposite sex, apparently) as children before they actually tie the knot as young adults. These children were going through various marriages today, so they had on elaborate dresses and traditional outfits.
It was a completely exhausting day, but I would definitely be up for another hike through temples wearing a ridiculous outfit. I got to see all the temples recommended by my Lonely Planet guide, and I didn’t have to pay a single entrance fee!
Kate Henschel
04/04/2009
