Photos from Bhairahawa, Nepl

Fruit stand in Bhairahawa

Tailors working next to fruit stand in downtown Bhairahawa, Nepal

Morning outside our back deck... foggy, foggy, foggy...

Downtown Bhairahawa, Nepal

This lady looked like a haystack walking. She carries a similar load past our house each day to feed her buffalo or cow.

The site of ladies with their heads loaded with everything from dung (this lady) to bricks to sticks to large masses of hay or branches to sacks of potatoes and other things is common in Nepal. (Every once in awhile the men will pitch in!)

In and around the town of Bhairahawa (which is just a few miles from the Indian border) are small villages like this one.

Our twice daily diet of dahl baat (rice, watery lentil soup and usually overcooked vegetables) makes the fruit stands a welcome visiting spot. The oranges are delicious (although fairly expensive at 10 rupies each (there are 70 rupies to a dollar).

January mornings can be foggy and verrrrry chilly. While I resort to my long underwear and lots of layers of clothes, many people build small fires and gather around them for a morning chat. These ladies giggled and chatted while I took their photo and a large crowd gathered around us to admire the photo and the ladies' celebrity status.

Although Bhairahawa is fairly prosperous (despite the fact that they only have electricity around 11 hours each day), there is definitely a class system. This lady is obviously very poor but she gave me a big smile when I greeted her with "Namaste!" and snapped her photo.

Vegetable vendors line the streets of Bhairahawa

Married Lady (as indicated by red stripe on head)

Cute kid

Bhairawa

Nov 3, 2008

Oh, my God! I’m the only one here who speaks English (at least during a significant percentage of the time…like 99% of the time!)

I caught a minivan from Kathmandu to Bhairawa. It was supposed to leave at 7:30 am but left at 8:30 (not bad by Nepalese standards). We bumped and honked and nearly crashed head on into large trucks for the next 8 hours of silence within the bus (at least where I was concerned). No English AT ALL. Which was Ok by me because I read 1/3 of a book and still admired the astounding landscape of Nepal – some of the most beautiful terraced hills that I’ve ever seen… absolutely poetic, a river of a light green color that’s difficult to describe… must have very white sand beneath the green water… can’t think of where I’ve seen this color… and the riverbeds are clogged with huge boulders and gravel companies (Joanie, you would’ve loved these!). The gravel “companies” set up their crushers in the riverbeds and women in saris stand in line with baskets to collect the gravel that’s spewed forth… lines of women in red floated from the riverbed lugging god only knows how many pounds of rocks on their backs. Get a grip, guys, you really need to pitch in here!

Anyhow, I figured 8 hours of bumping thru beauty in silence was great… then I arrived at my new home for 3 months. Oh, boy! I’m probably gonna use less words here in three months than I usually use in three days…. Or maybe minutes. And I think I’m gonna love it. The town is just the right size… I can bicycle in and buy groceries and stuff and go to the Internet and the local chai shops with little effort… The house I’m staying in is lovely…. Two side-by-side houses filled with deaf girls who are adorable (no English, tho, except for one). Down the road is the Refuge for children saved from jails and abuse. Stopped in today and held many hands and shared giggles and hugs… they are certainly going to be fun! The deaf boys’ house is down the road as is the Administrative office (with Internet and promised art supplies).

After taking the tour of the surrounding town and kids, I unpacked using my headlight (power outages are common between 6 and 9 pm… THAT’S an inopportune time for my life!!) and worked on my computer by battery. At 8 I decided dinner should be served so I gathered 6 or 8 giggling deaf girls and went to the kitchen. Thank you, powers that be, for providing me good cooks for this adventure…. If I can’t talk, at least let me eat (especially since the food at the Kathmandu residency has been horrible recently). We had plates heaped with rice and dahl (good dahl) and veggies (green beans and other good stuff) and cucumbers with lime. Everyone ate on the floor on mats while I was on a chair throne at a table (won’t happen again)… I drew the line at using a fork/spoon while everyone else ate with their right hand only (which I had practiced so expertly on the bus up)… Tomorrow and forever more I’m gonna be eating on the mats with the girls and practicing sign language!

After dinner we shared sign language names and other amenities with the help of the “Nepali Sign Language Dictionary” the girls whipped out and sent home with me. They each spelled out their names and then gave me their “shortcut” name. I spelled out my name and they all agreed – in giggling unison – that my shortcut name is a hand on the head wiggled down thru blonde curls. I did a few vampish renditions of my new name (gotta establish that I’m crazy, you know) to appreciative laughter and then was hit by a BARRAGE of words and phrases that were easy one on one but after a dozen of so my mind went into hibernation mode.

They sent me home with “good night, see you soon” (Good --thumbs up) Night (pretend you’re sleeping on your hand), see you (twirl finger from eye) soon (flat palms banging together)… if that’s all I had to say, it’d be fine, but tomorrow is not going to use “good night” for many, many hours…

I think I’m gonna do a photo shoot tomorrow.. print out all their photos and add their names and pin them on the wall… it’s my only hope!

I do think , though, that I can teach some some English (that can hear)… they can teach me either Nepalese or sign language (depending on whether they can hear)… and local people can have my horrible language skills inflicted on them (whatever! They get to stare at me and say ‘how are you?’ a million times!) Not to worry, I’m just gonna shoot “cust o cha” right back at ‘em! And if they say they are fine, I’m gonna be “tick-ta” with an attitude!

Oh, and it’s HOT here… I’d guess around 90 during the day and cools off to maybe 60 at night.. the heat is nice, the mosquitoes, not so much… we are, after all, living in the middle of rice paddies and word has it that Bhairawa is MOSQUITO PARADISE!!! Thankfully we have fans in our rooms…. Oh! But then there is that little issue about having the POWER to make them spin around!!

Love it…. Why doesn’t everybody want to be here with me???!?!?!?

Invasion of the Birthday Party

October 29, 2008

After nearly 48 hours of rather grueling travel (Cleveland – Atlanta – London – Kathmandu), I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal on Wednesday night and was welcomed by a birthday party. Nick from Esther Benjamins Trust (EBT) picked me up and delivered me to a hotel near the art school and I wasted NO TIME taking a (very icy!) shower and heading for the restaurant.

I was the only customer so chatted with the waiter (who didn’t speak any English but seemed to understand my sign language) and ordered (I though) chicken butter marsala, rice and beans. However, I ended up with chicken butter marsala, lamb marsala, rice, chopped garlic spinach and chai. (I guess if you MENTION any item, you GET it!) But I WAS hungry and it took almost two hours to get everything out to me, so I enjoyed not being on an airplane and reading my book in peaceful solitude…until the invasion of the birthday party!

The restaurant went from silent to raucous with a single sweep of the double glass doors. Leading the procession of 16 boisterous men was the 30-something female birthday girl. With hardly a pause, the guest of honor whipped out a cake and surrounded it with four slender tapers, lit them, and ordered the video camera to “roll”. The men burst into a rousing round of “Happy Birthday,” partly in English and partly in what I assumed was Nepalese, and clapped enthusiastically as she blew out the candles carefully one by one.

Next, one of the men cut a small piece of the cake and fed it to the birthday girl while giving a speech about the wonderful qualities of “our friend and colleague.” A flurry of photos later, the entire group was chowing down at the buffet line that had miraculously appeared. Within 15 minutes, both the food and the party were gone. (However, the birthday girl had – very graciously – dropped off a piece of birthday cake at my table.. it was delicious...white cake and icing …very moist… topped with apples, mango and cherries, pits and all.)

I was left, once again, in the silence to enjoy my excellent meal, which cost $910 rupies (around $12 – outrageous!!). In all fairness, though, I had ordered enough food for 4!