Namaste!

It’s been incredibly busy here over the past few weeks and I have not had much opportunity to write. At the same time, I feel I could write a million entries and still not do my experiences justice. Admittedly, I have also had little motivation to be on my computer given all that has been going on here. For such a simple place, there is plenty of stimulation, albeit it is much less overwhelming and in-your-face than on the US East Coast. Things here move slower. I can experience everything much more deeply and without feeling like I am flying from place to place faster than I can fully process it. The activities here are also mainly self-driven and require absolute presence of mind. Back home in school and even during work, it was sometimes easy and even expected for me to multitask at meetings and classes (that were also scheduled for me, not self-initiated) and treat everything as if it was simply a resume builder. That is neither done nor encouraged here, and I have noticed my mind spinning less and less as time goes on. I feel much more connected to what I am doing while I am doing it, and I have felt much more satisfied with my experiences as a result. Meanwhile, I am learning much more about the intricacies of international development, recovery and resilience than I ever thought I could. I had forgotten what it felt like to be fully immersed in something without feeling under a gun or a microscope. It’s a calm, satisfied feeling.

On that note, here is an in-depth and hopefully entertaining description of what Halloween weekend was like out here in the jungles of Nepal.

Tihar Festival took place here over the last few days of October plus Nov 1-2. The Nepalis who normally work with us had a 4-day weekend to spend with their families, each day honoring a different Hindu god/goddess. On October 30th, around forty community members came to our camp to honor Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. That night we lined all our paths with candles and built a shrine to the goddess where people put offerings of food and money. Many of the young Nepali girls would dance in order to encourage more offerings, occasionally pulling people into their dance circle (myself included). I am vaguely certain I am famous on a Nepali website somewhere, as there were multiple people recording us dancing. And by “us” I mean namely me, the foreigner in a dress and ankle brace. Everyone stayed here in their red festival garb dancing, clapping, singing and sharing local treats by the fire until 1am. It was then that Rupak, one of the brick-masons here and a close friend of Conscious Impact, finally asked them to leave and let us sleep. Before they left, I did finally manage to make friends with Radha, one of the elder women closely involved with us here. She understands English, and I still know almost zero Nepali, so I was glad for the interaction. All in all, it was a beautifully shared and sacred experience under the stars.

On Halloween, a few of us dressed in costume for the occasion. I was Miss Scarlet from Clue, which basically meant I wore red and carried my pocket knife. It was between that and paracord “rope.” We did our best to trade and borrow items from each other for costumes, but resources are a bit limited here. Regardless, Team Halloween Decor (Dylan, Konstantin, Satwika and me) managed to carve a jack-o-lantern from a green-and-yellow pumpkin and make a scarecrow using leftover plastic bags and clothes from our “Lost and Confused” pile. After dinner, Dylan attempted to make peanut brittle in lieu of Halloween candy. The result was more of a caramel-peanut mush, but it was delicious nonetheless. Plus, everyone very much appreciated the jar of Lancaster, PA honey I donated for the experiment. In the spirit of spookiness, we had all discussed watching The Shining (one of the only good quality horror movies here) but it never happened. It’s common that whenever we suggest watching a movie, the power goes out partway through or no one really feels like setting up the projector. In a whole month, we have managed only to make it through Forrest Gump and Aladdin, and I watched Rififi (a black and white French gangster film) on my own once. There is honestly so much to do here that movies don’t follow through often, though I am writing this as everyone is watching Slumdog Millionaire…

Halloween itself was still during Tihar, so after “peanut brittle” we hosted our second dance party in two days. Thirty Nepali youth came to our camp bearing a gigantic speaker system and a smartphone playlist full of Indian dance pop, with a few American dance songs thrown in. This time, the festivities lasted til around 11. As we were all exhausted from the previous nights’ celebration, we decided to take the following morning off for the last day of Tihar – Brother/Sister Day. On this day, brothers travel to their sisters’ houses for gifts and tika, the traditional red/yellow rice-paste forehead blessing. People without blood-brothers/sisters usually go to another family member or neighbor’s house, as community ties are very close here. The Nepalis here even often refer to us Conscious Impact volunteers as Brother or Sister in lieu of our real names, and vice versa. Those of us at camp split into groups and went, wearing our best red festival clothes, to different community-members’ houses for tika. I went with a group of 5 to the home of siblings Nita and Prakash Khanal, a 10 minute walk away. Prakash works with us in the Training Center making bricks, and Nita helps cook our (delicious) dal bhat lunch nearly every day. Their stone/cob home was destroyed by the earthquake in April 2015. Behind the remaining rubble, they built a 2-room, temporary home and shed out of sheet-metal, wood and cob. That is where we had our visit.

When we arrived, Nita greeted us with bowls (made with toothpicks and sacred Silam leaf) filled with candies, home-made donuts, local fruit, nuts, coconut, spiced legumes and other treats. We then sat on mats around their Tihar shrine as Nita came around to give us our tika blessing. Apparently, the belief is that sitting on the ground causes digestive distress. So, we either sit on cob-benches or mats at all times here. After tika, we had home-made tea and dal bhat lunch before staying to talk with Nita, Prakash and the rest of their family. Jose, one of our group leaders, taught us the Nepali word for “full” or “enough” (Pugyo – poo-ghee-oh). It’s the only thing we could say to prevent our hosts from piling even more food on our plates when we were already stuffed full of vegetables, rice and lentils. That rule also goes for everywhere in Nepal.

While we were talking after lunch, Jose said something that put a lot in perspective in regards to food. People here did not grow up with the luxury of having enough food for everyone to feel full after eating. There is not always enough to go around either due to harvest or affordability. So, villagers feel they have done their job of taking care of those they love (especially guests) if they are able to feed them enough. That stereotype about grandparents pushing food on you all the time even though you’ve clearly overeaten also holds true here. It’s the same mindset, especially since the people here do an ABSURD amount of manual labor (rice farming and otherwise) in their everyday lives. They need food for the energy to survive and enable their families to survive, as opposed to many in the US who use food more as a means of enjoyment than a means of nutrition. Not to say food isn’t both – it is – but I think too much emphasis on the sensual enjoyment of food leads to a lack consideration for what it does to the body and how much of it we actually need. Considering the amount of food waste that exists in the US, I can only hope my friends back home are mindful of just how much abundance they have (for the record, we go far from hungry at camp. We don’t waste anything, but we always have enough even when we don’t have much variety. And it is ALWAYS home-made and delicious).

More to come, I have a ton of updates, but all on different topics. Feel free to start with this 🙂

As always, if you would like to donate to the cause so we can buy things like building supplies, soap, tools and food, please go to www.empowered.org/anne-goodman.

For continued updates on our projects and progress, go to www.consciousimpact.org.

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Namaskar!