Democrats, Hindus, and Italians

I’m writing this with henna on my hands.

And I don’t know how else to sum up today, except the title.  I’ve had one of the strangest and most fun days of my life.

I started out this morning watching a simulcast of Barack Obama’s convention speech, in the company of many interested Nepalis.  Before anyone starts getting suspicious about politics, I hasten to add that we plan to do the same next week with McCain’s convention speech.

Then I learned to knit, with the aid of a very experienced teacher.  I’ve only made one little row, but it’s a start!

After that I attended an early celebration of the Teej Festival.  In Nepal, Teej signifies a three-day festival, celebrated only by women.  It is said to commemorate the goddess Parvati, who was so devoted to the god Shiva that she diligently worshiped him and prayed for him to become her husband.  When he was so impressed by her devotion that he did marry her, the annual celebration was “started” in remembrance.  During it, women are expected to pray for the long life of their husbands and the health and prosperity of their families.  On the second day of the festival many women fast all day (Parvati is said to have done the same, as proof of her devotion to her prospective husband).  On the third day women take a special bath to purify themselves of all the accumulated sins of the past year.

But the first day is a plain-out party, and it was to this that I and other American women were invited.  The first day means wearing brilliant red and oodles of jewelry — the traditional attire of a Nepali bride.  It means getting your hands painted with intricate henna designs — also part of traditional wedding celebrations.

And it means throwing a party with only women attendees, where there’s good food, Nepali music, and plenty of enthusiastic dancing and laughter.  The arm motions during the dance made a little more sense to my foreign mind when a fellow American described them as “waving an invisible baton over your head with one hand; holding your other hand out in front of your stomach and petting an invisible dog.”  It looks much more elegant than the description sounds!  And more difficult, too, but fun.

I didn’t have a camera with me, but if you want some idea of the scene, check out the following link:

http://www.daylife.com/photo/05K82ww2Yf2HL

(the women in the front seems in the midst of “the invisible baton” part)

Red saris are the most traditional attire.  But since I have no sari, I merely wore my most intensely red shirt, which I’ve had for years… and a long skirt which I conveniently bought here in Thamel last weekend, without even knowing about the festival.  Since it had a nice splash of red, I wore it, too.

And then, in the evening, we went out to a restaurant in Thamel.  It’s very new–just opened this week–and, as the post’s title suggests, Italian.  And delicious!  The couple who own it are in fact from Italy, but they also speak English.  I know because we were there with eleven people, one of whom had been there every day since the restaurant opened, and the electricity was out in that part of Kathmandu, so I guess the proprietors worried about keeping us happy.  But they’re also just friendly and vivacious people, so we had great conversations with them, and enjoyed wonderful food… until we finally got tired and came home.

The restaurant is named Mamma Mia! and is conveniently located near the main entrance to Thamel, so check it out if you’re heading to Kathmandu.  (To all friends and family laughing at home:  this blog is getting hits from people searching google for specific restaurants in Kathmandu, so I don’t think the recommendations hurt).

A festive day!  Maybe not a normal American way to start Labor Day weekend, but truly in keeping with the spirit!  No work, all play, all day!

Nepali of the day:

git:  song

sunnu: to listen

nekhnu:  to dance

Git sunnus:  Listen to the song!

jatra:  festival (but usually used mainly for the Newari [Kathmandu-area indigenous group] festivals

Teej:  a small red insect that comes out of the soil during monsoon rains

For more info you might want to see:

http://www.teejfestival.org/

And for some good traditional Nepali music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLy_0jwSsCQ

Leaking Skylights and Escaping Kitties

[And here is my "final" post before I disappeared last week. The Internet was erratic that day, so I was able to write the text but not upload any photos. I decided to just save it and try to post it the next day. The next day, the Internet had disappeared. It was gone over a week. But you're up to speed on that story now, ne?]

Guess who apparently played on the roof again today?

So much for my declaration that kitties aren’t allowed on the terrace. Because our terrace also includes a skylight, and since the skylight was leaking a few weeks ago, we temporarily covered it with a tarp until we could have someone come to fix it.

The skylight is quite nice -- when it doesn't leak.

Granted, the leak wasn’t too bad. It only happened on the same day that this happened to the front yard:

I like having a pond in my yard, but this is ridiculous!

So, yes, sometimes the monsoon is worse than other times. But then the sun always returns “and dries up all the rain,” and you could never tell that our yard had been flooded for several hours.

The staircase directly under the skylight -- not what you want to have slippery!

Still, since the leak happened at all, and the skylight is positioned right over our pretty spiral staircase, we made sure to have it fixed. And Regina made sure to take advantage of the cracked door leading out onto the rooftop terrace, and my husband had to haul her off the roof — again — and bring her inside.

Aggravating little adventuresome kitty!

Regina, pretending to be innocent

[Since I wrote this post, the cats have had no further adventures on the roof. My husband did let Regina out with him a few days ago, but he watched her strictly and shouted at her if she looked like she wanted to jump onto the wall, and she actually behaved and stayed down. L'Orange went out, too. But she just stretched out under the solar panels, which she thinks is an awesome place to rest.]

Nepali Politics 103

Now that you’re somewhat up to speed on Nepal’s past, the present hopefully makes a little more sense.

Because on August 15, while my Internet was out, the next critical event in Nepal’s political history occurred: the Maoists negotiated heavily with a lot of people, and the limbo since the April elections finally ended.

The Maoist party rejoined Nepal’s government with their leader, Prachanda, as the new prime minister. The same day, Girija Prasad Koirala ended his time as interim prime minister, stepping down with a formal congratulations to his successor.

Okay, does this make sense? Remember, the elections were in April — to choose 601 representatives to write a new constitution. At the end of May a republic was declared, and in June the king quietly left his palace. (Which we drove right in front of today; it’s quite impressive.) In July the Constituent Assembly (CA; said 601 people above) elected Ram Baran Yadav as the first president of Nepal. Now, in August, the new prime minister has been chosen, and he’s setting up his cabinet.

The “limbo” lasted from April until now, as the various political parties within the CA all bickered over how to set up and run the government. More than once, one or another threatened to, or temporarily did, resign from the government entirely. We have a quote on our fridge that I cut out of one of the first newspapers here, one of those quotes that the editorial staff felt strongly enough about to place in large type in its own text box in the middle of the article. It says, “Yes, I can confirm our party has withdrawn from the government. We just didn’t have time to file before the end of office hours today.”

Within a few days they were back in the government. Again. Until they withdrew. Again. And…

With all this going on, for four months it seemed like Nepal had no real government at all. At least, such the newspapers bitterly complained. When Koirala went to a summit meeting of South Asian nations at the start of this month, writers groaned about his status as “interim” prime minister and wondered what image they were portraying to the rest of the world.

Really, though, I think the timeline paragraph above does represent some definite progress. Each step took a month, but each happened, in a fairly comprehensible order. And during the so-called chaos, life in Kathmandu proceeded normally, as near as I could tell. Granted, we only got here in June. But traffic police stand at the major intersections directing traffic; fruit and vegetable stalls display fresh produce; stores feature piles of goods for sale; vehicular and pedestrian and other traffic clogs the streets daily… and while that’s frequently interrupted by protests, the protests are temporary and largely peaceful.

For us, they’re just a mild inconvenience. This morning it meant we arrived at fencing class half an hour late because a reported one thousand Buddhist monks were parading through the streets ahead of us. We never saw any of them at all; we’ve seen protesters in person only once, when a group of about 40 young people marched down the street beside us, all of them neatly grouped in rows of five and walking in solidarity toward an indeterminate point to the north. None carried signs, or even shouted slogans, near as I could tell. Many of them smiled, proud because of their mission, or grinning because of the lark of snarling traffic by force of numbers… I couldn’t tell which.

I have no idea if any of them are achieving their goals, and often I’m fuzzy on just what those goals are, anyway. As frequently noted, I’m still toddling through elementary Nepali. The English-language papers report various types of protest, from the odd (students demanding a 50% discount on public transport, scorning the 35% offered to them) to the more sober (Maoist Victims’ Group, raising their voices for compensation for themselves or family members injured in the recent civil war).

We have had one other strange political experience over the weekend. Yesterday morning, as I finished reading A Passage to India, in the distance I heard an amplified voice. I paid it little attention for a while; the workers at the wrought iron shop near our house often have a blaring radio turned loud enough for them to hear it over their hammering. I rather like the radio here, because I enjoy both Nepali and Hindi music. But part of my mind thought the voice continued for an awful long time, and out of sync with the music…

My husband called me upstairs and we peered out our windows at a man holding a loud speaker. About 5 – 10 other people accompanied him, two carrying flags, a few carrying a red blanket in which they were collecting money, as donations, apparently. And none of those flags were Nepal’s refreshingly different national flag; instead they were red, with hammer and sickle.

We couldn’t understand a word the man said. We have no idea whether they were actually Maoists, or members of one of Nepal’s other communist groups. We just peeked at them but otherwise stayed back; we watched some of our neighbors walk out onto their terraces, leaning over to listen for a moment, their eyes a bit narrowed, before they turned and went inside, or nonchalantly continued with their outdoor tasks of washing the clothes or hanging up laundry. The little group continued, none deterred. And as they disappeared out of sight, we caught several pictures from our roof. I’ll post them tomorrow, or edit this post then; it’s late for me to fiddle with finding the camera and downloading pictures now.

Nepal is practicing democracy. It’s still a fairly new idea here. But they’re definitely fond of expressing varied political aspirations.

Nepali of the day:

sarkari: governmental

mantri: government minister

bandh: literally, “shut”; refers to a strike, or a day when a group calls on certain businesses or businesses in a certain area to close

Nepali Politics 102

(I saved this post as a draft just before the Internet went down; it’s remarkable how much the political situation has changed since I wrote it, which see Nepali Politics 103)

As I learn more about Nepal’s political situation, I’ll post it here regularly. For you to read, certainly — but also for me to use to sort out what on earth’s going on, and so that I can look back at it as something of a map of what happened.

The previous post on Nepali politics mentioned nothing about the Koiralas. I recognized that as an oversight at the time, but I also did it on purpose precisely because I thought I might give them their own post. Considering that Girija Prasad Koirala just led Nepal’s delegation to a South Asian conference, I thought it might be a good time to talk about him and his family.

Who are the Koiralas? Well, think of them as the Bushes of Nepal. Or the Kennedys. Or, if you’d like a closer parallel to Nepal’s level of govenment, maybe the Adamses. If you want nearby geographic parallels, think Nehrus.

I’m sure you get the idea. Basically, over and beyond the recently stepped-down king, they’ve been a political dynasty steering Nepal for the last 60 years.

I’ll list, because that’s convenient:

Krishna Prasad Koirala — father of the men below; a leading businessman; exiled to India for part of his life; follower of Mahatma Gandhi

Bishweshar Prasad (B. P.) Koirala — prime minister 1959-61; 1st elected prime minister of Nepal; forced out of office and spent much of the rest of his life in prison or exile; wrote  well-regarded & popular literature as well; founder of the Nepali Congress (NC) political party

Girija Prasad Koirala — served various stints in office as prime minister between 1991 and 2008; in 1991 became 1st democratically elected prime minister since his older brother (above); currently acting as interim prime minister, considering the disputing parties working on the new constitution have yet to form an official government

And on that note, the newly elected president, Ram Baran Yadav, apparently has decided he is as exasperated with the delays of the disputing parties as is the rest of the country. Today he announced a deadline for the Maoists to put together a body of ministers and appoint a new prime minister.

The Maoists have been balking at participating in the government ever since their candidate lost the recent election to President Yadav. Maybe his invitation to them will help overcome their annoyance at overwhelmingly winning the April elections only to lose the presidential election to a coalition of other parties. We’ll see.

Stay tuned for whatever happens next.

(which see Nepali Politics 103, because it already happened over a week ago)

Happy One Month Anniversary!

This blog is now one month (and one week) — and 689 views — old.

Thank you for reading! I hope you’re enjoying finding out about Nepal!

I’m Still Here!

I know, I know, you probably thought I got over-ambitious with my driving. Or over-ambitious with our restaurant visits, and picked up some nasty bug. Otherwise, why would updates to the blog have disappeared for so long?

Well, the answer’s more mundane. Your first clue should have been how updates disappeared right before I could post my “Happy One Month Anniversary, Blog!” post. You see, we thought we paid ahead of time for two months’ internet access. Evidently we only paid for one.

At first we just thought the company’s internet connection was down. Once we figured out the problem, we had to contact them and send someone in person to pay them the rest (we don’t really receive bills here, and automatic debit seems out of the question), and then they had to re-activate us, and then that took a while to take effect…

Anyway, we’re back up now. Lovely web access!

In the meantime, we haven’t done too much. Nepal has added to its momentous events: the new prime minister has been elected. The new government is forming. And we went to the best Mexican restaurant in Kathmandu, and visited the zoo.

Tomorrow I’ll put up the latest news in Nepali politics. But about the restaurant – it’s called the Lazy Gringo. And it offers delicious milkshakes. (Mine was labeled as “Snickers Milkshake.” It only had a very slight Snickers tinge, but was good and milky and chocolatey, nevertheless.)  And the burritos are huge, and the tacos easily recognizable as such, and my cheese enchilada was delicious.

The Lazy Gringo is in the much-mentioned city of Lalitpur (Patan), the third of the Kathmandu valley cities, along with Bhaktapur (of wood-carving and pottery fame) and Kathmandu itself.  And it also happens to be right across the street from the zoo.  So while we were there, we decided to also go to the zoo.

I’d heard reports that it was a tad depressing, so I braced myself to see tiny cages with miserable animals.  But it wasn’t that way at all.  Yes, one group of antelope/deer type animals looked like they needed to have the grass re-planted in their enclosure.  And none of the animals had huge amounts of space.  But they all had decent-sized enclosures, set up in different ways to better simulate the natural habitat of each animal.  The leopards had perches.  The monkey-type creatures had plenty to climb and swing from.  The water buffaloes and hippos had happily submerged themselves in their ponds to escape from the heat.

And the zoo included several animals I’d never seen before, some unique to the region, or Nepal itself.  Himalayan black bears, blue deer, clouded leopards… Whether playing or resting, they all seemed pretty comfortable.  And many Nepali families wandered through the zoo, the children as wide-eyed as any American child watching wild animals up close.  The whole area seemed set up for family outings, what with a playground with fair-type rides nearby, and a large pond/small lake in the center of the zoo which was busy with paddle-boats.

True, we also gained another perspective on the zoo.  Because as we gawked at the animals, many of the other zoo patrons stared at us.

I don’t tan. I learned years ago that I have two colors: white and red. And the red one hurts. So there’s little question of trying to blend in here.  One glance proves I’m very much of European descent (the Cherokee genes, though strong enough that I could actually claim membership in the tribe, do absolutely nothing for my complexion, and little for my overall appearance).

The briefest trip down any street in Kathmandu can display the ethnic diversity here:  some people look like Europeans with mild tans, while others look heavily Chinese.  But no one’s pale, so pale means foreigner — and it’s plain odd, and odd usually attracts stares anywhere.

Here, odder still are African features.  And the lack is especially startling to me, since I just spent a year teaching students from Somalia and Burundi and the Congo and Sudan.  I’d been a receptionist with African-American co-workers too, and greeted a diverse group of Americans who walked through the door every day.  Here, you see very few Africans, and those you do see are more likely African-Americans.

Still, the component of my most recent English classes that wasn’t African had been East Asian, primarily Burmese.  And since the Burmese language groups with Tibetan into the Tibeto-Burmese language group, and there aren’t just many Tibetans in Nepal, but, since Tibet lies on the northern border, many Nepali people are from Tibetan-type ethnic groups themselves… maybe you can guess how familiar some of the faces here are to me.  I could swear I’ve seen distant relatives of my previous students, many times.

But I’m strikingly odd to all of them.  A fair number of adults can’t drag their eyes away once they notice me walking by.  Children of course gawk more openly, and from the heavy-emphasis on English in grade schools here, they all seem to have gained the same word, because many of them shriek, “Hello!” when they see me.  I always smile and respond with the same, but I’ve learned not to expect them to dare anything more, not even a response to, “How are you?”

As I walked by three little boys who looked about six today, they all just followed me with their eyes till I was almost past them.  Then one dared, just below a normal tone, “Hello?”  When I smiled and responded, that encouraged the others, and after I responded to each one of them they got excited.  Till I was far down the street I heard them all chorusing repeatedly, “Hello!”

Still, I had an interesting moment of introspection on the whole thing, at the zoo.  Me staring at the animals… other people staring at me.  Is it flattering or offensive to be as unusual as a Himalayan Black Bear?

Can you spot the Americans in this picture?

Nepali of the day:

Ma ali ali Nepali bolchu.  — I only speak a little Nepali.

Ma Nepali sikchu.  –  I study Nepali.

Ma angrezi bolchu.  — I speak English.

Ma American hu.  –  I’m American.

Tapaain Nepali hunuhuncha.  — You’re Nepali.

(Almost) Flying Kitties

We have a turret on our house.

From below, it really looks like we could shoot arrows from it at need. Or maybe pour boiling oil?

I don’t really know why. It’s just sort of there — this entire house is very interesting, full of architectural quirks which make it quite different from the usual square on square on rectangle house.

The benefit to the turret is that my office here is a very pretty room — the rear wall billows out into a half-circle, with three tall windows facing the north. I’ve taken multiple pictures of The Pretty Mountain Hill through those windows.

I’m sure I’ll post more about my office later. At the moment, I want to underline that the house is three stories tall, with a nice front yard. The area around the house is fenced, too, so my husband thought it would be okay for the cats to occasionally go outside — under our supervision. Here is Regina in the interior alley to the side of, and beneath, the turret.

Do you see the floating pink? That's the turret again.

Well, of course this gave the cats ideas. Especially Regina — we just adopted her from a shelter last year, when she was already five years old. I wonder if her original people often let her go outside, because now that she has discovered she can sometimes go out here, she wants to do it all the time. She sits by the door and meows as if she expects us to open it for her.

And of course, finally, a few minutes after Sean came home today, I noticed he’d left the front door cracked. And Regina had disappeared. Repeated calling didn’t summon her, though good little L’Orange kept swirling around my ankles, peering up as if to say, “I’m right here, Mommy! You can stop calling me now!”

I sighed and ventured outside. Our night guard doesn’t speak much English, and I don’t yet know much Nepali, but I knew enough to walk up to him and ask, “Biraalo chaa?”

He nodded to the lawn, which he’d already been watching in some interest. I scanned it, and then he indicated straight down from where we stood. “Here.”

Sure enough, there was Regina, skulking against the wall behind some plants. I descended the short stairs from the driveway to the lawn, retrieved her, informed her she was a very bad kitty, and thanked the guard.

I also scolded my very bad husband who should pay more attention to shutting the door. But he usually does, and locks it, too, except now he’s suffering from the same flu I just recovered from, so I guess his thinking was a little hazy.  So I couldn’t scold him much.

Besides, Regina has had more exciting trips outside. Atop our three stories we have a large rooftop terrace, with yet another rooftop terrace stacked on it. And since before here we’d only ever lived in apartments, and those apartments had balconies, and the kitties had been allowed to sleep or play on the balconies as long as we were outside, too… when we moved here we initially thought the kitties could go out on the terraces  just as easily.

Our very first day outside, after both cats had been out for several minutes and seemed to have adjusted, and Sean had gone back in for a moment, and I’d started taking pictures… I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Then turned and saw this:

Regina getting a bird's eye view of Kathmandu. Three stories up.

In the next second I was wailing, “Kitties do not belong on the roof! HOW DID YOU GET UP THERE?”

Maybe the architecture of the house is a bit too interesting. The lower rooftop terrace is surrounded by a waist-high railing, and in the front that railing touches part of the roof that arches over the front of the house. And Regina was already standing smack in the middle of the roof, too far for me to reach. I called her for a while, shouted at her for a while longer, then finally took the picture since I was holding the camera anyway and it was pretty clear she wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.

Then she started to teeter down the side of the roof, occasionally slipping a few inches. Not on the side of the roof toward the rooftop terrace, no. On the side with the three-story drop.

And then a giant crow arrived, and decided to sit at the very edge of the roof, and Regina stared, transfixed.

I pleaded with her to no avail. I shouted at the crow. Then screamed at it. It ruffled its feathers a bit, eyed me as if unimpressed, and Regina watched the movement. She crept around to enter a stalking position, and the crow — nearly the same size as her — watched idly.

Thank God she’d finally reached a part of the roof where I could lean over and — just barely — reach her. She didn’t like having me pull on her flea collar. She really didn’t like being throttled. But I think she would have liked slipping the final few inches, and three stories, to hard pavement, even less. I hauled her over the barrier and immediately dumped her inside.

The kitties are now banned from the rooftop terraces. At least until we erect a cage of chicken wire.

But now they’ve discovered the doors on the ground floor lead outside, too. Aaauuuggghhh!

Nepali of the day:

“Biraalo chha?” isn’t the most formal grammatical sentence, but I guessed it would, and it in fact did, convey enough of the notion of “Is there a cat out here?” “Chha” is the third-person form of “is” to describe location. If I would have just gone with my likely conclusion that she was outside somewhere, I could have asked, “Kahaan biraalo chha?” which literally means “Where is the cat?” But I still wasn’t certain she was even outside, so I just asked it to establish whether or not he’d seen Regina.

Traffic, Part II

I seem to be pretty well recovered from the flu — I did see a nurse this morning who confirmed as much.  Otherwise, the day has been notable for traffic incidents.

First, this morning, I dared to drive.  And I hit no one, and no one hit me, and it was nowhere near as bad as I’d expected a couple of months ago — I’d go so far as to say it’s ALMOST easy.  As my husband says, it’s like constantly driving in a parking lot.  Basically you just need to be alert, and keep an eye out for the pedestrians and other vehicles, be they cars or tuk-tuks or rickshaws, (and bikes and cows and dogs and…), and slow down or stop if one seems about to imminently get in your way.  And if a giant bus or truck comes at you, pull over as far as possible to the shoulder — or, heck, drive on the shoulder for a bit.  Everything works itself out.

On my way to teach one of my English classes today, I had traffic incident number two.  I wasn’t driving then — and at one point the Nepali driver, like all drivers in Kathmandu, veered into the lane of oncoming traffic in order to go around a stopped car in his way.  But then he hesitated, as we realized the other driver had stopped because a motorcycle with a red siren was barrelling down the lane of oncoming traffic, and the cyclist furiously gestured to my car’s driver to stop.

There are emergency vehicles here.  Inside the house I don’t hear anywhere near the number of sirens I’d expect in just about any other capital city in the world, but at least a few times a week, I do hear them.  I’ve seen them before, too, “rushing” down the street in comparison to the rest of the traffic — I’d bet some of them make 40 miles per hour.  Many of these vehicles proudly state on the side (in English) “Gift of the government/people of ______” (Japan, Pakistan, India… you get the idea).

But this afternoon was unique.  Because, right after siren motorcycle number one came motorcycle number two.  And then siren car.  And then non-siren car.  And then car with cracked windows and rhythmically waving hands.  And then another car.  And two more motorcycles.

Traffic resumed moving more confidently in the wake of all these vehicles.  And — in some wonder, since I’d never before seen anything of the like here, I asked my driver, “Who was that?”

Sheepishly, he said, “The prime minister.”

“The prime minister?”  I’d repeated it in dumb reflex, while I searched my brain for my Nepali Politics 102 post, which I have in the form of a draft but haven’t yet posted.  And as my driver was nodding in confirmation, I pressed, “Koirala?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Part of me wanted to ask more questions, as there are some interesting political issues related to the prime minister, and the current state of Nepali politics in general, but I refrained.  I did need to pay attention to landmarks, so that I could drive the same route myself in the future — and one of those landmarks, indeed, just half a kilometer further down the street, was the residence of the prime minister.

Still, as the driver is also practicing his English, I taught him the word “motorcade.”

I also have a brief traffic note for this evening — Sean drove me a few kilometers to the north, to show me a new supermarket he’d just discovered.  We’ve decided we define supermarkets, as opposed to stores, here, by whether or not they sell Oreo’s.  We drove further north than ever before, almost into the hills — we only needed to go another half kilometer or so, surely.  I think we’re closer to the “hills” here than many people in Gatlinburg are to the Smoky Mountains, if that’s any point of reference.  I doubt I’ll ever again have such a gorgeous view out of every northern window in my house.

But we didn’t drive all the way into the hills, because it was late evening (nearly seven) and dark was falling.  And apparently headlights haven’t completely caught on in Kathmandu yet, so the traffic was even more harrowing than usual.  The ironic thing is that people do flash their headlights if they feel an oncoming car is racing at them a little too fast — but most people don’t leave those headlights on after flashing them.

In connection with the current topic, I’d like to append a picture I took the weekend before last.  I captured it on the Ring Road itself, the main road that loops Kathmandu and Lalitpur (Patan).  And it’s an iconic image of both India and Nepal.

A cow in the middle of the road. Except it's a bull.

Nepali of the day:

bihaana:  morning

diuso:  “during the day,” afternoon

belukaa:  evening

raati:  night

gaadi:  car (not to be confused with ghaDi, watch/clock)

Gaadi roknus!  — Stop the car!

The Flu in Kathmandu

Yes, it’s true.
And I’ll now stop rhyming, although I’ve read too many poems today.

You would think the first disease I came down with in Kathmandu would be something exotic. After all, in order to come here, we needed vaccines for tuberculosis, rabies, and two forms of hepatitis. We were warned about the great variety of water-borne diseases seething in all the water from the taps. We worried, a little bit, about the side-effects of the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, then found out there was a world-wide shortage of it anyway, as the vaccine was declared so bad that it had been recalled, with its replacement still in development. Okay, yes, having to sit in the doctor’s office for half an hour after being vaccinated, because of a ten percent risk of patients passing out or stopping breathing, did sound bad, yes, but being bitten by a mosquito and getting a disease that would make my brain swell until I died also seems a tad worrying… um, help… ?

But, no. Japanese Encephalitis is very rare, and not all that common in Kathmandu; in any case, I’ve gotten less bites here than in any typical summer in the mid-western US. On the other hand, the flu isn’t that common in the summer in the US, so I was a tad surprised to hear it was going around starting a few weeks ago. Then, earlier this week, I started getting body aches and headaches, accompanied with pronounced exhaustion… and yesterday I started coughing and being restricted to a gravely voice, sneezing, too, with my nose running like a sieve. No fever, though, but that’s typical for me — my body temperature stubbornly insists its 98.1, or somewhere in the 97s, even when I feel like I’m dying. Methinks my fever-making response doesn’t work all that well.

I haven’t actually been seen by a doctor — there’s still a remote possibility I have something exotic. But I’ve had the flu enough times to be pretty sure I recognize it — and as I said, I knew it was going around.

So there haven’t been many useful posts lately. But in the past two days I’ve read more than I normally do in two weeks — and I already read a lot. When I realized yesterday morning that I really ought to just curl up in bed with a box of tissues nearby, I was too tired to move around much and too awake to sleep. So I gathered magazines and massive books to keep myself busy.

In the last 36 hours I’ve read most of an Economist, half a Better Homes and Gardens (and cut out many pictures to use as writing prompts for my students to practice with prepositions: the vase is ON the table, the flowers are IN the vase, the vase is NEXT TO the book — you know their pictures are perfect for it!), part of a National Geographic, and I’ve been eyeing the first Smithsonian that has finally discovered my address.

As for the books: I have The Violet Shyness of their Eyes: Notes from Nepal, A Passage to India, The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present (which actually means the early 1990s), Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans… and, primarily, since I have three volumes of the Norton Anthology of American Literature here, I’ve been attacking volume B, 1820-1865. I have Emerson and Melville and Longfellow running around in my head, not to mention lesser-known but fascinating writers like Fannie Fern (think, rabble-rousing feminist/muckraker, but in the mid-1800s) and Harriet Jacobs (a former slave who wrote a novel long-assumed to be fiction… until scholarship 20 years ago strongly suggested the “novel” was primarily autobiographical, and therefore more harrowing).

And I graduated with an English degree and honors, but I’d still never heard of Thorpe’s “The Big Bear of Arkansas” except in the table of contents of the book — and it proved about as rollicking as some of Twain’s minor stuff. And it put me in mind of the bluegrass tune “Bear Tracks, Bear Tracks,” which is now mercilessly running around in my head. (“…What did I see? Bear tracks, bear tracks coming after me. / Better get your rifle, before it’s too late, / That bear’s got a little pig and is heading for the gate…” I wonder how many people have had THAT in their head while they sat in Kathmandu?!)

There is a moral to today’s post. While, yes, I’m reading a couple of books about India and Nepal, I’m primarily reading history/literature from America and Europe. When I was in the US, I had great difficulty convincing myself to be interested in American history or literature, EVER. I trudged through it as needed for classes; I forced myself to focus on it before coming here, with a little more interest, as I suspected I might need to explain myself as an American at some point. But now, more than ever before, it’s quite fascinating.

And, of course, before coming here I primarily read about India and Nepal and Tibet and Maoism and Hinduism and Buddhism, to brace myself for what I was about to move into, yes, but also because at the time they all seemed very interesting. This puts me in mind of Yoda’s sharp rebuke to Luke Skywalker, “All his life has he looked away… Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing!”

Well, sorry, Yoda, maybe it’s hard for you to understand, since you’re a member of another species. But I do think it’s human nature.

Fire and Ice, Part II

Just a brief post for now, because it is very late.

On Sunday we went to Thamel again (we have discovered most foreigners spend excessive amounts of time in Thamel), thought not just to wander around — my husband brought his new bike with him here, and while he was pretty certain he put it together correctly, he wanted to have a professional check the brakes. (If for some reason you doubt the importance of this, see the post on “Traffic,” July 22.)

Anyhow, since we were there anyway — and we needed to also wait around a while to get pictures made for our driver’s licenses (if you want proof we are insane, see the above post again) — we decided to go to Fire and Ice again.

And this time I had my trusty camera, so I took pictures of our food, for visual proof that you can find both pizza and ice cream in Kathmandu:

Arguably the best pizza in Nepal. “Funghi” with chicken.

Yes, there’s wonderful soft-serve ice cream and fluffy cake here.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera handy when we went to the Roadhouse Cafe last Friday. There, you can get pizza topped with Tandoori chicken. Yum!

Someday we will have pictures of daal-bhat, too. I had daal soup for lunch today, but alas, no cameras then.

And some other day there will be pictures of the strange variety of packaged food you can buy in the stores here. And the fruits and vegetables in local markets and…

I’m afraid I really ought to go to bed now, though!

Nepali of the day:

khaanaa: food

khaanu: to eat

Ma khaanchu: I eat

malaai manparchha: I like

malaai manpardaina: I don’t like

ra: and

Ma pizza ra ice cream khaanchu .

Malaai pizza ra ice cream manparchha.