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by andyinasia » Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:52 pm
This one rambles on - literary diahorrea as a result of not writing for weeks - you might want to skim. It's the calm before the oncoming storm ...
53. A Homecoming
21 August 2003
So I am home. I know this to be true because suddenly I feel alive again; even my jug and bucket of cold water every morning now feels heavenly.
How did I get here? You know; if you ever need a good laugh come fly with me – I can guarantee you misadventure with the laffs entirely at my expense. Plan A had been to repeat my first journey by flying to India and getting the bus to Kathmandu. My return had to be um, 'unofficial' due to having used up all my visa allocation for the year, and having been nabbed by the bent cop in India I'd lost my bottle and figured that slipping across the techno-free land border was a safer option than flying into Kathmandu airport with computers containing more information about me than I'd find comfortable. But two circumstances wrecked this plan. One was the English food which screwed my digestive system – all the time I was in England I was really quite sick and was getting worse and worse; nothing I ate stayed in my body. I don't possess the common sense to take myself to the doctor even though I was getting concerned and it would have been more sensible to make use of the British health service, so I adopted my usual approach to problems – ignore them until they go away. And of course now I'm home I'm fine. Ironic? The second problem was that by keeping abreast of the news from Nepal I knew that the monsoon rains were repeatedly washing away or burying under landslides the few roads that exist including the main routes to Kathmandu. Therefore I could have been stranded in Delhi, or worse with a busload of passengers in some wayside village being very ill, for weeks.
So I had to fly directly to Kathmandu. This time the cheapest ticket I could get was with Gulf Air. Now do you remember the hassles I have with baggage allowance? Do you remember how last time I was waddling about like the Michelin Man as I was wearing all my clothing? I looked stupid enough but being December that was the only discomfort. This time, now that I'm not a homeless wanderer but have a home to build I decided to take a few precious books and CDs back with me. Lo! – 40 kg. The allowance on most airlines is 20 kg. and when I checked with the booking agent this was confirmed as my limit. This was one problem I felt I couldn't simply ignore so I took out just about all my books and CDs, keeping just a few essentials. 30 kg. I took my CDs out of their cases and threw the cases away. That shaved off barely a kilogram. Then in Cambridge I stumbled into a closing down sale in a record shop and found myself back to square one (by the way this is excluding my hand luggage – limit 5kg; me 15 kg).
As we all know, there are no such things as problems, just challenges, opportunities, solutions awaiting discovery. Bleugh! But then I had my stroke of genius, my master plan - one simple solution at a stroke and at a cost of only £10 plus all my dignity. If you read all my adventures scrupulously and learn nothing else ever from my journal you must at least log this tip in your memory – one day it may serve you well. I'd been noticing a number of wee girl fashion victims wandering the precincts of various English towns and cities in the naffest of trousers – these hyper cargo pants with stupid tassels and mega pockets. Pockets! Big strong ones! Yes! So naff and yesterday were they that I managed to procure a pair for a tenner. I didn't wear them – I stuffed them in my bag in readiness for the one time I would need them.
So at Heathrow I got on the baggage scales and tooled up. Under the gaze of thousands of incredulous passengers I donned my magic pants and proceeded to stuff all my CDs, cameras and other accessories into my pockets. I got 10 kg in. True the lower two calf pockets were scraping along the floor making a clanking sound, and true Heathrow that day was recording the hottest day in the UK in history (for those of you outside the UK, I'm not kidding; the front pages of all the newspapers were full of it – over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and me kitted up to ascend Everest) and true the discomfort and embarrassment defied adequate description, but hey – I had beaten the system once again. All hail the genius with his lateral thinking and magic pockets. I was waiting in the queue for checking in the baggage, aware of a long tail of derisory looks behind me. I got to the desk to discover that I was flying with the only airline to have a different policy. "30 kg. sir. 35 if you like. The last guy had 42." Was I supposed to react with relief or horror? I couldn't think, so I just looked at the woman and ripped off my trousers and stuffed them in the bag along with 10 kg of hand luggage.
You know, it's slowly beginning to dawn on me that my legendary inability to organise myself is not cute, it's nothing to be proud of, in fact it's really crap. But what can I do? Guess that's two reasons – no, three – why procuring a wife is becoming a matter of urgency.
Gulf Air – not at all like Syrian Arab; indeed this 'plane had electricity and all sorts. There was that TV on the back of the seat thing and so many Bollywood movies to choose from I was hoping the pilot would slow down or stop awhile so I could watch all of them. The nice Brahmin lad from Bombay I was sitting with discovered the dark secret the Arab hostess hid under her trolley so we got bladdered on wine, beer and rum. A girl from Pakistan ganged up with us at Abu Dhabi while we waiting four hours for our connections. She was travelling from Amerika with 64 kg. and was okay. How? The suitcase she kept with her as hand luggage was empty; she said it had been full when she boarded the 'plane at Atlanta – of chocolate. She restocked as we gawped. She was quite large.
Not talking of which, as I penned the above note in the departure lounge for the Kathmandu connection a Nepalese air hostess walked past and smiled at me. OMG. I am returning to paradise. The second flight was of a suitably Nepalese scale – a small 'plane, three-quarters empty and 'interesting' facilities. Not that I desired any, caught between the sight of the hostesses and the view from 37000 feet; dawn from that height being a rainbow shimmering across the horizon, then looking down over multiple surreal cloudscapes with majestic peaks poking through the cover. It felt so right. Only now, finally did I experience a surge of emotion and feel my heart beat once again after eleven weeks of listlessness. I still had one obstacle to overcome though.
Before we crossed into Nepal and were flying over hundreds of miles of desert, to distract me from the gorgeous hostesses was the in-flight entertainment. This mainly consisted of the other passengers. Some people in the UK had asked me about the better-off Nepalese and I had confessed that a few did exist but I hadn't met any. I figured however that half the Nepalese middle class would be on this flight. Wrong. You should be sure to have the experience of observing fifty-odd bumpkins in the air – it's hilarious. Seeing half of them asking for help to stick the headphone jack in the socket put my naivety about mobile phones in perspective; viva le techno-innocence! Music didn't work anyway – it packed in after ten minutes. I knew I was heading home.
The airport was as you'd expect of Nepal. Security? Nah, we have a little war but nothing worth shaking the lethargy. So far do passengers have to walk from the 'plane to the terminal (in the rain) that the baggage is actually there before them. Then came the big test – the visa desk. As I approached I noticed that they do indeed have computers. As I took a deep breath and endeavoured to maintain a cool exterior I further noticed that nobody has trained the staff how to switch them on. I breezed through – Andy the Illegal Alien. But one surprise was awaiting me. I walked out of the terminal through the awaiting melee jostling in the deluge for custom. I picked my taxi and was quite non-plussed when I shut the door and it came away in my hand. But as we drove through the city I was shocked to realise that I of all people, Bollywood gourmet and proud connoisseur of eye candy had completely failed to anticipate the winning combo of monsoon and sari. Well it might as well rain until September. As I disembarked from the taxi and found myself alone in the dark wet night another surprise to greet me were the three million tenors – a frog chorus from the bogs all about that plays all night every night. Beautiful.
On my first morning back home it was immediately apparent that my fears that the children might have forgotten me were as unfounded as they were unlikely. I won't gush but they do have a way of making you feel so special. Mind you my own class had an extra reason to welcome me; to fill the gap of three weeks from Andrea's leaving to my arrival a pair of Spanish volunteers had filled in. Santosh regarded this as a learning curve as his experience of western volunteers had always been so positive. My immediate impression of these semi-naked unprofessional wasters was not good, and Santosh told me that they'd precipitated a revolt amongst my students – children who are so appreciative they'd give Saddam Hussein a warm welcome and a decent run before forming any negative judgments (are you reading this SH?). The children, bless 'em, would only tell me that they found it hard to understand the women's English. They didn't reveal that they'd been beaten, had things thrown at them, were told some very unacceptable things to their face and that these allegedly experienced teachers more often than not turned up very late, set little work and found the Class 4 level of primary teaching too difficult. I had intended to spend the first three or four days observing classes as I overcame jetlag and ensured a smooth transition of teaching but as it was I found myself taking over in full from the outset.
We also have a new full time member of staff to replace Andrea (Well, 'replace' isn't the right word; I keep hearing tales of the oceans of tears shed by all on her departure). Savitri (or Sabitree) is mainly teaching Maths and is doing a good job. She's a bit older than the others and has experience, teaching for about eight years in a village government school. There is a touch of the rustic about her which I find very cute and amusing. It's the way that although she's the most computer-literate of the lot she'll alternate knocking off some sophisticated resource on my PC with coming in with her hands coated in mud as she makes counters from a more natural source, and whilst she's not averse to chalk & talk she doesn't bother with the blackboard when the floor will do. When everyone else shies away from outdoor PE lessons in the swamp that used to be our 'school field' she just girds up her loins and leads her class in what looks like bouts of the hitherto unknown traditional Nepali sport of bog-wrestling. So keen was she to make my acquaintance that she introduced herself by tipping a full cup of lemon water over my lap. She's definitely a great addition to the staff.
Another change I've noticed on my return is a worrying semblance of genuine organisation which has broken out amongst the young staff. We've invested a lot of money in sending Santosh on this top quality privately run teacher training scheme and the workload is breaking him, but it's brought about a dramatic change in him and as he feeds back ideas to the staff things are really tightening up. The school is rapidly growing up but without losing the freshness and caring environment that makes it so special.
This is my first monsoon. I was a little confused during the first two days back as the weather was very pleasant and apart from the downpour during my arrival back in the country there were only a few short 'English' showers. Then Bam! I would estimate than in the last four days there has been less than twelve hours without rain. This explains the perplexing sight I witnessed from 37000 feet when my vague sense of geography told me that we should be over Nepal and those mountains were The Himalayas, yet through the breaks in the clouds all I could see was water; were we over the land-locked and virtually lake-free Kingdom of Nepal or the Indian Ocean? Now I realise that vast tracts of the country are quite literally under water.
Here in the city what appears to be the case is that the rain clears the air, reducing the air pollution but at the expense of land and water pollution. It is very difficult to maintain health and hygiene in these conditions. I'm alright; I don't have to leave my place of living and working and I have running water, but for everyone else I'm coming to see how grim it is trying to bathe and perform the daily chores when the rain is beating down, you're wading through a sea of mud and the water is frequently unavailable (ironically). The aromas are quite fruity; the air being thick with BO and raw sewerage. I'm learning and seeing a lot of the children's daily lives and I understand how impossible it is to bathe, wash and dry clothes in these conditions. I find it quite comical when children turn up minus a shoe and one leg caked in mud up to the knee but they don't see the funny side. I've made a few trips to the shoewallah recently. My dear Humagain family have moved into their beautiful new home below us and their tap only runs on alternate days for a short time. The mother in her endeavours to collect rainwater has contracted a nasty chill. Our teacher Sunita who I'm very fond of contracted typhus about three weeks ago. I thought she seemed a bit subdued – the poor girl is still half dead and on heavy medication but she won't ease up and her exams for her degree are only two weeks away. There have been other waves of sickness and infections sweeping through the school whilst I've been away. I've made a few trips to the pharmacist recently (to get medicines for the kids; I'm absolutely fine). As I'll relate in full in my next report on Friday afternoon I went with my children to visit their homes; they remarked on how my trousers were covered in mud – how do they manage to walk about through this environment without getting filthy? At least I was spared leeches. Still, the frogs are loving it.
Festivals are coming thick and fast; today is Sri Krishna's birthday, and the first two days of my return were Gai Jatri – cow festival where our holy beasts are worshipped and garlanded. (This is just as well; you can't tether the cows as they just pull the stakes out of the mud and wander everywhere). As soon as school finished on my first day back the children grabbed me and took me down to the stupa at Boudhanath. By braving a very dangerous crush of many thousands of people we ascended to a good vantage point on the stupa to watch the procession. Men dressed as highly surrealistic cows danced past (don't think 'pantomime cow', think rather of shaman), circling the stupa the regulatory three times. They were followed by a motley procession of all sorts (Now the panto cow turns up along with dodgy dames in saris and make up). Really it was not so different to any local carnival the like of which I abhor back in Blighty but here I love for reasons that are entirely not to do with anything unconnected with sheer bias.
I returned home intending to clean myself up as I'd been invited by Padma to meet and eat with her family in their new home. However as I got there I ran into Nirmala (if you don't remember her she's the tasty waitress with the great boobs who lives in the 'hotel' – or in western terms pokey wee caff round the corner). She invited me back for what I expected to be a quick cuppa chiya. I was introduced to the delights of tongba, a Himalayan drink made with fermented millet. It was bloody nice unfortunately. The jug of millet is filled with warm water and you drink it through a straw. I really meant to say 'just the one'; but every time I'd finished and got distracted the jug would be refilled and I think I consumed four jugs. In addition she presented me with a bowl of noodles followed by a plate of something else. I really needed to say 'no thank you' but I cannot develop the art, and given that owing to illness and neglect in England my stomach is miniscule this was not ideal preparation for my evening. So I retuned intending still to clean myself up but found that Rajshree, Padma's sister who'd been despatched to collect me had been waiting some time. Seeing them all again was wonderful and my head cleared enough to leave these devout Brahmins none the wiser but the initial 'snacks' of a plate of chura and channa (beaten rice and chick peas) followed by makhi (corn on the cob) left me a little full. Having consumed four meals each bigger than I would have eaten in the UK it was time to join them for the main meal. Suffice to say I felt so sick that night. At least it wasn't illness from food poisoning like I had been experiencing; this was sheer if unwilling gluttony.
A couple of 'quickies' from school: you know how it is when you open a Pot Noodle and find something surprising inside? Well the mother of one of our small girls, Dipanjali opened a packet of noodles and found a diamond necklace (it was a promotion – she's now in a TV commercial and on noodle posters). Being 35,000 rupees the richer she's withdrawn her daughter to send her to a private school that will charge an extortionate fee for an education inferior to ours, and then after two years' fees her mum's wealth will be exhausted and she'll be chucked out.
A different fate has met the mother of a classmate of hers. The usually hyper-bright and entertaining Sujanna was subdued and tearful the other day and she told us that her mother has been crying a lot. She sells roasted makhi in the street in Boudha (she lights a little fire and throws an ear of corn on it for a few seconds and sells it for a couple of pence. I don't like them but she forces me to take one gratis whenever I pass and you know how I can't say no). With the monsoon no one is buying and she's two months behind on the rent (about £6 per month). Her landlord is about to evict the family. The difference between having a home and living on the streets in the monsoon is what I earnt in less than an hour in meetings in Cambridge. I know I still have rent arrears of my own to sort out and I will, but this seemed a bit more pressing. Fortunately she accepted the offer; I used the guaranteed tactic of passing the money to Santosh to give to her – I can always rely on him to take the credit which I genuinely appreciate as it saves hassle as I rake in the karma 9until I blow it by telling you). Whilst there are many greedy opportunists in this community I know Sujanna's mother to be a good and proud woman and it was not easy for her.
One of our lads, Sonam aged ten or eleven spent a few nights sleeping in the school. His mother had started working nights and wouldn't give him a key. Santosh went to investigate and it turned out that his little brother has just died and it seems the mother is a bit grief-stricken and mixed up. Just this lunchtime one of our wee girls got bit on the bum by a snake in the toilet. It was only a baby snake and not poisonous, so no harm done and no sucking out of poison required.
I have now been back for a week. I returned with a definite and well thought-out plan of inaction which is currently bombing miserably. I want to attempt to keep in with the spirit of these times and develop a new superhero persona. I want to be known as 'Lazyman'. I figured that as everybody in the UK and here thinks I'm so bloody marvellous I'd cash in my karma. I've brought back heaps of CDs and most significantly my favourite computer game with the thought that as things are now ticking over nicely I'd sit back, deliver the odd bit of patronage and take the accolades. Unfortunately I'm finding some major obstacles to this new path. Firstly everyone's so pleased to see me again they all want a piece of me and they're all so damned nice and – well I can't say no can I? Secondly when I nip upstairs in my free time to chill out I find Santosh or Savitri using my PC; I mean I know I bought it for school use but that was supposed to be a flimsy excuse for goodness sake so I end up planning lessons instead. Thirdly the children are suddenly working so hard for me that I'm finding I have a serious workload issue which is adversely affecting my life of lethargy; this is not what I expected when I threw my lot in with a bunch of clueless illiterate street kids and it's not what I was getting a few months ago. It is perhaps not surprising therefore when Santosh tells me that a wave of incredulity washed through the staffroom as the Nepalese teachers realised that Class A have apparently progressed from Year 2 to Year 5 in the five months before my temporary departure. Given that I am putting them in for their end of primary schooling exams (sort of SATs 2 equivalent) in March I guess I'm putting my reputation on the line here. I'm not sure that I care about that, but what I do care about is this: I'm sure I communicated my affection for my children quite well to those of you who met me recently but it was nothing to how I feel about them now. I'm saving for the next report the most important experience of my week but I'll say here that the cumulative effect of visiting the children's homes on Friday and Saturday left me quite chocked, and also I find in some of these children – and I'm thinking of the oldest two, 16 year old Talak and 15 year old Kumari in particular such goodness and purity as I have never encountered before, and I feel such a sense of admiration, respect and sheer unadulterated love for all of them that it's bringing about quite a Manichaean struggle in my soul with the superheroic indolent part of me that is trying to break through. Mind you, to put this in perspective I should confess that I'm scribbling this with a tear in my eye as a mosquito that had been pestering me all evening has just flown into my candle flame and is undergoing a nasty lingering death.
The political situation is looking very grim. The democratic parties' ridiculous 'agitation against regression' seems to have foundered – they were expecting The People would join them in a mass movement to put them back in power but have been met with a wave of scorn and apathy – and not simply because no one fancies sit-down demos and marches in the monsoon. But suddenly these prats could be the only hope the country has; the peace talks appear to have terminally broken down. Ostensibly the sticking point is that the Maoists want a new constitution written and the government want to re-draft the present one. The real difference here appears to be nothing more than semantics but there does seem to be a hidden agenda, namely despite their words of compromise the Maoists are trying to slip in the total abolition of the monarchy and establishment of a communist republic without anyone noticing. I was reading recently in Britain that the Nepalese government has been filling Kathmandu with under-cover armed police 'just in case'. Certainly the Maoists have moved their forces into the city during the cease-fire and if it does all kick off this time Kathmandu will be the chief killing field. I still believe it won't come to that, but last time peace talks broke down the Maoists launched a massive pre-emptive strike which took everyone by surprise and gave them an unassailable initiative, so who knows?
I came, I argued, I'm out