Pockets aren’t for coins, they’re for popcorn!

I still can’t get over the fact that it’s 2015, but it’s typically a difficult change for me to comprehend during the month of January. I’ll probably be used to it come February.

There were many highlights in my day today.  I’ll begin by indulging in two of them.

1.         1. After spending some time at my village health post lazing under the sun in our bright blue plastic chairs, I walked with one of the health post worker’s to her home across the river, about a 10 minute walk away.  She invited me over for tea and popcorn in return for a gift I brought her from my last trip to Kathmandu (she had been raving about my water bottle the previous month and I caught the hint). I sat on her bed while she began cooking the popcorn on her stove top.  This one room is her kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom all in one (and no, it’s not a big room).  A few minutes later a man walks up to the door with a small, metal jug with enough milk to fill about three cups of tea. He pours the milk in her personal-size, wok-like pot and in return she fills a bowl with popcorn and hands it to the man (who she refers to as bhinaaju, meaning elder sister’s husband). Rather than taking the bowl with him, he begins grabbing handfuls of popcorn and shoving it into his pant pocket. He cleans out the bowl, places it on the ground, and walks away. It’s quite common to see kids eating popcorn that’s been stuffed into their pockets, but this observation was new to me as it was a much older man, probably in his 40-50’s. I don’t exactly remember what my initial reaction was to the observation, but perhaps it was something in between sympathy and compassion and the thought of how frickin’ cool that was.  I loved the contrast of the fact that pockets back home are usually used for I-phones, credit cards, chapstick, or cash, but in this pocket of the world they are most useful for much simpler and essential things, like popcorn.

2.      2.  Later in the evening, I was sitting on the balcony area of my home with everyone in my host-family: aama, bubaa, my two naaniharu and my two bhaaujuharu (respectively, mom, dad, two baby girls and two sister-in-laws).  Nighttime had arrived, and we were huddled around a small fire where my aama was cooking sel roti (deep-fried rice dough in the shape of a circle) for the upcoming Nepali holiday known as maagi.  I was sitting, reading a book when I took a break to look up to see both my bhaaujuharu breastfeeding and talking to their respective naani next to me.  Both my bhaaujuharu (sister-in-laws) are my same exact age, 24, and this thought made me chuckle to myself to see both of them breastfeeding and me babying my latest novel.  Observing myself in this context, I thought, “I am soo American”. 

Lots of other interesting stuff happened today, but I won’t bother you all with that excessive information! Muchos kisses to my ladies out there working hard for the money.

Always,

Bora