Nepali Horticulture

Ok, so this stuff really was everywhere in Kathmandu Valley, growing alongside the road, between buildings, everywhere. Even though it's not my cup of tea, it was funny to watch the guys try to replant this stuff everywhere they could. Nevertheless, the farmers in the village saw these plants as nothing but a nuisance. They would pull them up by the roots and throw them on the nearest open garbage fire. Huh.

Daal Bhatt, American Style

Written and Posted from Hong Kong

I'm sitting upstairs surrounded by 7 happy babies, watching Aladdin for the hundredth time in a week, humming along to that song where Aladdin becomes Prince Ali and rides through the town on the monkey-turned-elephant. I look up in time to see the two directors of the volunteer program peering into the room, asking if they can talk to me for a minute. Flashback to that moment as a babysitter when I worried that maybe Mrs. Brenner KNEW that I didn't make her cute little boys brush their teeth before putting them to bed and THAT'S what she wanted to talk to me about. Except that no, she just wanted to give me a present for my 13th birthday (a candle! phew!). And this time, the directors just wanted nothing more than for me to cook a western meal for 25 people that night, people who included the babies in the room, babies who had, until that night, eaten a diet exclusively consisting of rice and daal. Why oh why didn't they just have a stupid candle for me?!

I settled on spaghetti and meatballs, a salad without lettuce, bruschetta, and ice cream and cookies. Typical Nepalese kitchens don't have an oven, so anything that couldn't be cooked over an open flame was out. And I was cooking for at least 25 people, so I needed big quantities. Big quantities at affordable prices, since we were talking about a meal that was being paid for by people who build orphanages and schools and finance micro-credit loans for a living. Except that it's impossible to cook western food in Nepal for affordable prices, especially if you want to make such exotic things as spaghetti! The total bill came to about $90, which is CRAZY-high by Nepalese standards. Then again, I ended up feeding about 35 people, which is CRAZY-lot of people on short notice, even by my standards.

The meatballs were a buff-chicken mix. Not buff as in, "hey, that shirt makes you look really buff" but buff as in water buffalo. Because in places where the cow is holy, the water buffalo is a tasty treat. The spaghetti didn't turn out quite right because the Nepalese household in charge of cooking the spaghetti didn't understand that you don't turn the water OFF once it boils and the pasta goes in (like you'd do with, say, RICE), but that you boil the pasta right there, IN the boiling water (oh the insanity!). The meatballs (all 70 of them) took forever to make because we could only cook 5 at a time in this teeny tiny little pan. But the bruschetta was some of the best that I've ever made, if I do say so myself, and the salad actually had real vinegar in it (and bonus!, it didn't make anyone sick, which is huge, considering it actually contained real raw vegetables).

The absolute highlight of the evening occurred when I walked into the kitchen at the orphanage and saw my Didi (Nepali for big sister) eating the entire meal in one big bowl -- spaghetti, sauce, meatballs, parmesan cheese, salad, bruschetta, all mixed together in an Italian-style jumble, complete with extra salt and a few chilies thrown in for flavor. She looked up at me from her bowl, spoon poised above what had essentially become a bowl of American-Italianized Daal Bhatt, and said, "ekdam mikto chaa!" which is Nepali for "very delicious!" I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was totally and completely lying but I didn't care at all, not even one little bit, because half of the people who ate dinner that night had never even seen spaghetti, kind of like I'd never even seen daal bhaat before I started eating it twice a day, and there's just something about cooking your brother's birthday dinner (minus the cake) in a little town outside of Kathmandu, using a teeny tiny pan and one burner and no power, that is the kind of thing that makes you realize that the world isn't so big after all, and that sometimes home is only as far away as an overpriced jar of green olives and cooking dinner for an impromptu hodgepodge family.

I Didn't Climb Mount Everest But Touched It With My Heart

Posted from Hong Kong, China

Yeah, that's Mount Everest. Un-freakin'-believable!

Taste of a New Generation

Posted from Kathmandu, Nepal

Aside from our daily life in the orphanage, we've got our fingers in a few other pies. Last weekend we spent the night drinking and laughing in Thamel, the backpacker ghetto of Kathmandu. In the space of 30 minutes we met a bunch of kids who came to Kathmandu for its party scene and its easy access to hash as well as a group of climbers who were planning on tackling Everest in the coming week. Back in our village, VSN is building a school, and we have been given the task of painting the classrooms. So far, we've painted the alphabet and number line in one classroom, and I think we'll be finished with the other three rooms by the time we leave.

Last night, we had a big going-away dinner for a couple from The Netherlands, who are responsible for raising the funds necessary to run the orphanage. Just to give you an idea of how little money it takes to properly run a caring, clean orphanage, this couple raised $50,000, and that allowed VSN to buy the property, build the orphanage, and operate it for the next 2 years! Lizzi has more to say about the dinner itself :)

Other than all that, it's life as usual. We watch Aladdin every day with the kids. But they get no more than an hour into it before they have to go to school or the power goes out. So we start over from the beginning each day. I'm looking forward to the 16-hour flight home just so I can watch a different movie. Maybe one that doesn't have animated genies and monkeys.

Oh, one more thing. The village we live in is called Pepsicola. Yeah, as in, Pepsi, Michael Jackson and the taste of a new generation. Recently, Pepsi built a bottling plant in the undeveloped suburbs of Kathmandu, and the town that grew around it became known as Pepsicola. It still cracks me up to hear the bus-wallahs yelling " Baneshwor, Pepsicola, ..." as they careen through the city streets.

We're Still Here

Posted from Kathmandu, Nepal

Well, we arrived in Kathmandu with only minor hassle. The plane was 2 hours late. Then, there was no power in the Kathmandu airport, so we couldn't get cash to pay our visa fees. And, finally, our ride wasn't there to pick us up. Pretty typical for us, actually.

Here we are. In Nepal! If I wasn't actually sitting here right now, I don't think I would believe that I was in Nepal. It's a far cry from India, and an even farther cry from home. But it's quiet, and the people are exceptionally friendly. The most noticeable thing about Nepal is how quiet it is compared to India. When we got off the plane, that was the first thing Lizzi noticed. However, I was so used to the constant, ear-splitting level of background noise in India, that I didn't notice the quiet until we'd arrived at our volunteer site. Yeah, it's quiet here.

There are a few things about Nepal aside from the quiet that take a little getting used to. Meals are served twice a day. In fact, it's very nearly the same meal that is served twice a day. It's call daal bhat, which means rice with lentil soup. In fact, it's really rice, lentils, and some type of vegetable curry. If we weren't living in an orphanage with little kids, the daal bhat would also include some spicy pickle. Daal bhat is good, really good, in fact. But I think at the end of two weeks, I'll be ready for something new to eat. Like a cheesesteak!

We also have to get used to the power cuts. The power is turned off in Kathmandu for 8 hours a day. Usually, they break it up, so it's not a single block of blackout time. Most nights the power is out from about 6PM till 9PM. Which is fine because everyone heads to bed at 9PM. And I mean everyone. We thought it was early just because we were staying in a orphanage, and the kids had an early bedtime. But we talked to some of the other volunteers, who are staying with host families, and they also remarked how their families went to bed at 9PM too.

Going to bed at 9PM is fine when you are getting up every morning at 6AM. Yep, that's 6AM in the morning! I haven't voluntarily woken up at 6AM in years. But that's the way it goes here. Up at 6AM, tea at 7AM, daal bhaat at 9AM, off to school/work at 10AM, come home at 6PM, daal bhaat again at 8PM, and then to bed at 9PM. Repeat. It's simple, and it gets the job done, but again I think I'll be ready for a change when we leave.

There's a lot more to say about what we're doing here, which is fantastic work! And all that we're learning -- we're learning to speak Nepali! But it's time for daal bhat #1.