Strands of Common Thread

Another favorite strips of artivism in Kathmandu - public health, style!

One of my favorite stretches of street artivism in Kathmandu. (Notice the “love is love” part near the end!)

The view from our balcony into the Madi Phant on the first morning, filled with clouds, and the second morning, cleared out from last night’s storm.

I was greeted with fresh honey combe, a plate full of of dhal baat, and a goat cutting. The smells of the moist soil in the monsoon season, the rich chorus of crickets and birds and rice cookers, and the sight of the dark green rolling hills felt like a warm blanket welcoming me back in.

Coming back to my site (what PCVs call the community they live in) has been, for lack of a better word, surreal. When I left site, two years and two weeks ago, I left in a rush. My Zayda (grandfather, in Yiddish) back home was sick, and so my family and I decided that I would COS (Close of Service – used interchangeably as a verb and a noun among PCVs) early to see him. The morning of the very day I was heading up to see him, after two years, he passed away. Even now, two years later, the memory of his passing before I got to see him feels heavy and sad.

In the rush of COS-ing in a week, I remember coming to terms with the feeling that I was trading closure at my site for closure with my grandpa. My last week here in Nepal was a frantic blur of packing and goodbyes and finishing up medical exams and paperwork for Peace Corps staff. Time moved quick, after two years of becoming accustomed to time that moved slow.

Now, as I sit here and look out over the Madi Phant (the valley in between Madan Pokhara, my site, to the South and Tansen, the district capital, to the North), I’m comforted by the familiarity that remains in this place. Chapal (sandals) are scattered throughout the house in pairs, as they once were, welcoming my feet to find some cushion from the cold cement floor. The layout of the kitchen garden, with the papaya trees soaring above the light green orange trees, crawling bean vines, and low-lying elephant leaf plants, is the same as it was two years ago. And our water buffalo, as always, is grunting in anger or hunger or whatever else compels her to sing her morning blues.

I haven’t even been here for 48 hours, and already the memories are rushing back. After my first morning dhal baat, I went with my aama to the monthly aama samuaa baitak (mother’s group meeting) and was welcomed with warm smiles and an unbroken pattern of reading through their money ledger – an implicit acknowledgement that I’m enough of a “normal” presence around here for them to stick to their routine (which I appreciated). A later gumnu (meander) around Tansen brought me past the medical pasaal (local pharmacy) where the owner laughed and asked if I remembered the time I brought my cat there for an x-ray of his foot (which I had forgotten!), then to the “Himalayan Organic Coffee” shop that held (holds) little treasures like dried ginger and dark roast coffee beans and chocolate digestive biscuits that were always a welcome deviation from the regular dhal baat, and then the print shop where I always printed and scanned by absentee ballots back to the States. After waiting an hour in the bus park for the bus to get filled (which is often more of a prompt for a bus to leave than any specific time on a clock), I came home to dinner with my aama (mom) and bua (dad), which was filled with an ease of simple coversation and smacking lips and looking out over the valley filled with the house lights that always reminded me of fallen stars.

Being here, even for two days, has been such a beautiful reminder that memories are held in space – and the topography and climate and people and the sounds and smells within – patiently awaiting us whenever we’re ready for them.

Meanwhile, just as I’ve changed over the past two years, there are small markers sprinkled around here that remind me that I’ve been gone for as long as I was ever here. The most glaring change is that of my family structure - my bahini (younger sister) is now married and living with her husband and his family down in the Terai (the plains of Southern Nepal), my dai (older brother) is now living and working on a pig farm in South Korea (and is only one year into a five year work contract), and my bhai (younger brother) has gotten married and now spends more time in the house with his new wife, my buhari (younger brother’s wife). The steep walking path to my cousin’s house has been paved, and the beginning stages of paving the big road up to the radio station are in place. A new veggie shop has opened up near my cousin’s store in Tansen, and a new hotel is open for business at the bus park. Our house is twice the size, with twice the subhida (amenities) as before – with WiFi in the house to enable my family to more easily talk with my brother in South Korea and my sister at her husband’s home in the Terai, a pump to bring running water up to the third (!) floor where the kitchen now sits, and a personal fridge in the kitchen next to the 55,000 NPR (~ $550) set of wooden chairs and table that replaced the metal set we once used. And the faces of all the little ones I loved have changed as well – Kris (the baby who was born to my friends at the fruit shop 3 years ago) is now walking and talking and trying to carry around my big hiking backpack, Amrika (whose mom sometimes does day labor for my family) has gotten taller and her face leaner, and Angie (the younger sister of Prijma, who came to Camp GROW and whose family is related to us through our grandpa’s brother) has replaced her love of goats for a newfound love of kittens. Even though I know it’s been two years, it feels as if time has played a trick on me, and all of the changes have happened overnight.

Meanwhile, the geo-political identity of my site has changed as well. As Tansen grows more developed and the country as a whole works to decentralize development out of Kathmandu, VDCs (Village Development Corporations, somewhat like county lines) have been dissolved. Madan Pokhara has become a part of Tansen Nagarpalika (municipality), as have the surrounding areas, Thelgha, Arghali and Bharangdi. Our house and land khorr (taxes) have increased from 150 Rs/year to 500 Rs/year, and we had to pay an additional 8,000 Rs to an engineer to make a naksa (map/blueprint) of our house – something which I believe is both associated in part with Madan Pokhara becoming a part of Tansen and with the expanded size of our house. Change is happening, in big and small ways, in this community and throughout the country as a whole.

Now, as my eyes linger on the top of the Himal poking out from above the Madi Phant that last night’s storm made “sapha bhayo” (clear), and I listen to my buaa “moi parne” (churning the buffalo milk into a liquidy yogurt) from his spot on the balcony a few feet away, I’m warmed by the sun to the East and by the way this community has graciously welcomed me back in. I and this community have changed a bit, but/so/and I still feel as happy to be here as ever.

On to day 3!

This week, the Department of Homeland Security officially announced that it will end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the almost 9,000 Nepalis living with TPS in the US.  

According to the press release, the “disruption to living conditions in Nepal” isn’t substantial enough anymore. But I’d call it pretty “substantial” when thousands of people across 14 earthquake-effected districts are still living under tarps, piled multiple families into homes, and/or unable to work because debris and boulders cover their farm lands…wouldn’t you? 

For more, check out the Nepali-led NY-based NGO Adhikaar, a March 2018 report by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, an article by NBC news, the official press release by DHS, and some photos I took from Lantang valley, just a year ago – which was two years after the earthquake.

From “when i sing along with you” by Zan Romanoff:

On the first night of Hanukkah, the moon is close to full, and we light one candle. 

The next night, the moon turns its face from us, and goes a little bit darker, so we light two. 

On the last night, there is almost no light left. We light eight candles. We make our own brightness. We put hanukkiot in the windows to publicize it: a great miracle happened here. And we remind ourselves, miracles don’t come unless we rise up to meet them. Boots on the ground, feet in the water. We have to march forward to find the world we’re trying to live in.

I know last night was a complicated victory, and too close for comfort. I know it was won the backs of people who are tired of carrying. I’m not– I don’t want to claim anything that doesn’t belong to me. All I know is that again and again I’m grateful, at least, for the tradition that I live in, which insists that we be our own light in the darkness. That we remember that we have been lucky. That we bless the forces that have brought us again to this season, and prepare ourselves to do the work that will bring us to the next.