Essentially, do not go for a walk mid or directly after a monsoon. Also if a Nepali says there is a path – there is a path, regardless of jungle, river, cliff, volcano, etc.
This week has been prime Nepali style organisation. We knew Tiij festival was on Monday meaning no school and so we were dressed and ready by 10 o’clock only to realise there was nobody around. “Be ready at 10” in Nepali time roughly translates to leaving at 3 o’clock. Having been a beautiful day all morning of course by 3:30 it was pouring and we were huddled under a woman’s umbrella with her 3 daughters. This woman spoke no English and had been assigned to deliver us the two hour walk up the other side of the valley to the festival. It is a unique bond that forms between strangers under an abandoned goat shed in a monsoon for an hour and a half. The rain subsided and we continued, however this was when we discovered the aftermath of Nepali monsoon season: leeches. The walk was then characterised by stopping every 5-10 minutes for leech checks (not helped by wearing sliders). In typical Nepali style, as soon as we arrived at the festival everyone forgot the torments of the walk as we were continually pushed into the middle of dance circles. We were awful at dancing but it was a lot of fun – both for us and for everyone else laughing at us. It is normal here for people to stay the night as it’s often inconvenient to go home but unfortunately we didn’t know this and so had to leave after only one and a half hours before it got dark and the tigers came out (this isn’t an exaggeration – a teacher from our school very proudly told us about being attacked by a tiger, losing a litre of blood leaving him in bed for 2 months). The walk down was very leech infested but we had slightly gotten use to them by this point.
The following day we arrived at school to find only about 20 kids and 2 teachers had shown up. School then ran for 15 minutes and then we walked back to the festival. We are not yet fluent in Nepali logic. After watching a lot of volleyball and being handed multiple babies (we are now also very used to strangers taking selfies with us without saying anything) we made it home without being eaten (there were some close calls).
The rest of the week was defined by still having no children in school making classes very difficult as there wasn’t much point continuing with our lesson plans without the class.
A particular leech-related high point was our walk on Friday afternoon. It had been raining for several hours and we were feeling very cooped up and so when it cleared we decided to explore the mountain side behind our house. Although this was nice at the time, on reflection it was definitely not worth the 45 minutes afterwards of unlacing our shoes and picking leeches out of the toes to then burn them. We have definitely learnt many leech related lessons this week.
In non-leech related news: after multiple texts sent to various mums earlier in the week for very precise instructions, we have mastered a banging lentil daal. We’re still not sure where we get vegetables from – we think we have to ask the kids to bring them from home. However, on Saturday whilst shopping in Aglung Phedi (the closest town – a two hour walk away), we located tomatoes. This is very exciting news. We are very, very happy with our find. We have discovered that tomatoes are actually the work of God himself. Tomatoes have made our week.
A Year in Nepal 