Last Entry

June 11th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kruithof

Namaste…this will be the last journal entry to come to you from Nepal!

Bandha bandha. Big strike today. I left the guesthouse before Amanda and Laura woke up to try and find some breakfast. Everything was closed today (not just transportation) and I had to walk all the way to North Lakeside just to find a roadside shack that looked like it might serve me some toast and tea. The butter on my toast was really orange and smelled a bit funky, but I ate it anyway (convinced myself it must have been special water buffalo butter). As I was just finishing, a group of young men bearing wooden sticks and red Maoist flags came up the road chanting something in Nepali (I had just read in the Himalayan Times newspaper that the strike had something to do with the Maoists protesting the President’s decision to sack some guy in the government). The owner of the breakfast place started pulling in all the chairs and shutting his metal garage door as the group shouted at him. That was my cue to leave; I paid him quickly and started walking in the opposite direction of the gang of men with nothing better to do than make themselves feel important with sticks and interrupt the lives of the Nepali people. Walking back to the hotel I saw another group of men beat a man with their sticks because he was riding his bicycle, while trucks of blue army fatigues-clad police officers drove up and down the road. The four of us sat at the small garden café of a guesthouse across from ours for most of the rest of the day, ordering tea and reading our books since there was nothing else to do (not a good idea to be on the streets and everything remained closed anyway). Later in the afternoon we ventured out to get ice cream (because it’s the rainy season now, there is much more power than before and refrigeration/freezing is actually possible)…but Nepali portions of ice cream are nothing like Canadian portions. After a nice dinner together (mmm vegetable korma with naan) I went back to the hotel, ate too many gummies, and went to bed.

The next morning we were up early again to try to catch a bus back to Kathmandu. I ordered 8 slices of toast from the only tea shop that was open that early to share with everyone for breakfast. Once at the bus park, I fed a few bits of my toast to a stray dog because it reminded me of a taller and thinner Lucy. We snagged the front seats in the bus and finally headed out. Everything around us looked even greener than it had when we drove here; the banana trees, rice paddies, fields of corn. Just after our lunch break (the trip takes about 6.5 hours), our bus stopped behind a long line of other buses, trucks, and Jeeps at a standstill snaking around the mountainside so we couldn’t even see how long the line was. We sat in the baking heat in the bus (no shade anywhere to be seen outside) having no idea why we were stopped or how long we’d be stopped for. We could hear the Nepalis in the bus saying “bandha bandha” and we weren’t surprised to think that the Maoists might be blocking the highway. From the paper, we had read that in Kathmandu there was gunfire and tear gas to get the crowds under control from the strikes of the last two days. We were getting a bit anxious (and ridiculously hot) when we finally started inching along. We passed some police trucks, and then we looked down over the cliff side to see a large green cargo truck resting with its top half totally sheered off in the middle of the river bed, hundreds of feet below. In the late afternoon we finally arrived in Kathmandu, had a quick snack and then got on the microbus back to Godawari where we volunteered. The bus was so packed that when we got off, we were actually shoved off with people throwing their bags at us to try and save the seat we’d barely managed to get off of because of the sea of people. I had dhal bhaat with Amanda’s host family (who are the neighbors of the host family I lived with while volunteering in this village) and fell asleep in Amanda’s extra bed.

Had a bit of a lazy start the next morning, with Amanda’s aamaa bringing us chiyaa in bed. I went for a walk up to the build site of the new children’s home just to get some exercise (must go to bootcamp with Amanda when I get home! I have gotten much too soft). It was so hot, even at 8am, walking up sweaty hills with vehicles spewing their black clouds and dust at me. When I got there, none of the workers were around so I sat and peeled some mangoes with my swiss army knife. They were so good that their juice dripped all the way to my elbows. Walked back to Amanda’s house in time for morning dhal bhaat and then we caught the micro to the market at Lagenkhel, where they had erected gigantic statues of pine boughs woven together and sitting on huge wooden carts, perched in between the fruit and vegetable sellers on the street. We went in to Thamel to Hotel Dream Home, where we spent Laura’s last night in Nepal with her. I checked my email and found out that my flight had been changed (which I’d been trying to do for over a month and a half, but had finally given up on). All of a sudden, I’m flying out of Kathmandu in two days (June 12)! I was in a bit of a state of shock…I was mentally prepared to leave in a week…not two days. Suddenly I felt I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Nepal just yet. We did some last minute gift shopping with Laura and had a late dinner at the Yak restaurant for the last time together. We sat listening to some live Nepali music for a while at an outdoor venue near the hotel before turning in for a hot, sweaty sleep.

The next morning I was a little worried that there might not be anyone waiting for me at the airport now that my flight had changed. No Brandin, no Anna…and no word from Mom or Dad yet. I went to Hotel Tradition to try to find a beautiful shirt I’d bought the week before, but for some reason had a bad feeling I had left somewhere. Not in storage with my other crap loads of stuff…not in the lost and found…no cleaning ladies had picked it up. I was really upset because it was my birthday present to myself (and wasn’t cheap in Nepali terms). I went for breakfast with Amanda and Laura, but not even curd and thick toast with butter improved my mood. I checked everywhere and finally thought I’d have to buy a new one, but the organic cotton store never opened that morning. I kept telling myself that life works out as it should and that I should stop feeling peeved and upset. After escaping a very pushy, begging, rickshaw driver I made a last ditch effort by asking the waiter of the restaurant we’d gone to after I bought it…and he had it there still in it’s little pink cotton bag! It sounds ridiculous, but it really reminded me that there are good and honest people in the world. We said goodbye to Laura who’s flying back to England tonight…I’m really happy to have spent the last month with her, and it doesn’t feel real to think I may never see her again. Back at Amanda’s host family we found the men outside wearing white and chanting prayers with offerings of food surrounding them. All the women of the neighborhood were in the kitchen cooking huge amounts of food. They fed me a plate of lentil balls, special papads, curried vegetables, and spiced rice pudding. Amanda’s host father told me it was a ceremony the families did every year on the anniversary of one of their father’s death. It had a strong sense of community and family about it, and I thought it was a good tradition. I went for a walk to try to find the golden Buddha that you can see shining from Taukhel village. I missed the Buddha somehow and got lost through a village, so I arrived home late to find all the volunteers that were living with families in the area having dhal bhaat at Amanda’s house. I ate my last dhal bhaat in Nepal and after all the guests left, Amanda and I went to bed.

Today is my last day in Nepal…and so I’m writing my last journal for you. I won’t bother to bore you with the packing that will have to get done today, or with the 30-odd hours of travel to get home. I’m totally unprepared for this to be my last day. I know there were times when I felt that time was moving too slowly here, times when I really missed the people at home, and times when I wished my flight was just a bit earlier. But now, I feel I’m not ready to leave. It hasn’t sunk in yet that I will be stepping off the plane in to Western civilization in 2 days. I think I’m a different person than the one who left for Nepal 3 months ago…or at least a changed person. And I think that’s the best thing I could have hoped for.

Some things Nepal has taught me (in no particular order):

- hot showers and flushing toilets are luxuries that should not be taken for granted

- you can survive on an absolute minimum of clothing and no washing machine for months

- you can always give something, even when you barely have enough for yourself

- we need less than we think to be happy: simple food, a roof, family, and a generous heart

- talk to strangers…we’ve gotten too used to passing the world by without smiling or saying hello

- it is possible for religion to permeate every aspect of life in a peaceful and beautiful way

- people who have very little are often the kindest

- flexibility is a virtue

- there is little in the world truly worthy of our stress and concern…live with the belief that life will unfold the way it should (this will be the hardest lesson for me to remember to live by, but I think it’s the most important thing Nepal has given me)

- we should accept dirt as one of our closest friends

- personal space is a luxury

- immersion in a new culture has taught me more than any amount of education ever could

In Canada, we don’t need to be concerned with where our food comes from (and we’re definitely not in the fields growing our own rice), we don’t pump water or beg for it from the family next door…and we can drink it straight from our taps, we complain when there’s a power outage for a few hours, we can refrigerate our food, we have a government that is accountable to its people, and we live in a well-organized world. Nepal is nothing like Canada. But after 3 months here, I feel like I’ve begun to understand just a little bit about Nepal, and I’m actually comfortable here. Our lives are surprisingly complicated in Canada, despite having all the necessities of life given to us as though it were our right to have them. Well, except for maybe two essentials: family and love. Nepal has shown me this: if I come home and make family and love the most important things in my life, I won’t be able to avoid happiness J

I will not miss the putrid stench of the Bagmati River; I will not miss the toxic fumes of burning piles of garbage; I will not miss getting ripped off, treated differently, stared at, because I’m white; I will not miss sucking back the dust and pollution everywhere I go. But I am absolutely sure of one thing: I will miss Nepal.

I will be home on June 13th. Thanks for reading!