Loss of control. Letting go of control.

The past couple of days, if not all of the past 21 months I’ve been living in Nepal, has taught me a lot about control.  In American society, having control over one’s situation, circumstances, means of living, money, career, family, etc. is something valued and desired.  Western culture I believe idealizes a sense of control over one’s life—the security in the knowledge that you know what will happen tomorrow and what consequences or rewards are paired with certain actions.

Living in Nepal and working for the Peace Corps has shown me how little control one really possesses over one’s own life.  The struggles that come with uncertainty vary from trivial to significant.  Will I have something to eat tomorrow? Will I be hungry tomorrow or overfed? Will I be able to complete my work tomorrow or will the weather disrupt my plans? Will I be stressed? Bored? Happy? Content? Lazy? Overworked? Lonely? Depressed? Busy?

I never realized to what extent I value ownership and control over what happens in my life until I began my life here.  And although I still enjoy the moments when things work out “according to plan”, I’m beginning to learn how to accept, even embrace, the fact of life that no matter how far in advance I prepare and how well I plan out my life, my life is not my own.  I am not the sole writer of my life.  I will not be able to predict where I die, how I die, whom I marry, if I get married, where I will live, what I will do as a career, what I’ll eat tomorrow. 

So in a sense, it’s not as much as a loss of control, because I never really owned it in the first place, but letting go of control.

An American villager's account of the past few days

On Friday, April 24th, I woke up at 5am and left my home at 6am to walk over to Tulsipur bazaar, a somewhat large market area roughly 6.5 kilometers from my village.  

It was a beautiful walk between homes, across a dried out river, through a forest, and ends in a beautiful and green clearing before reaching the bazaar area. I usually enjoy such walks, but this time of year is much hotter and drier than other seasons, and although I left my home in the wee hours of the morning I was pretty tired once I reached my destination.

I met with a Nepalese woman whom I often collaborate with on projects, and after we ate breakfast together we hurriedly left to our first village of three spots we had to make that day.  I didn't realize how dehydrated I was until after we left for the bus, not realizing I had gulped down more than half of my water bottle.

After our bus ride we had to walk roughly another 40 minutes to reach the community women's meeting.  By the time we reached out destination, I was very tired. I began to doze off a bit during the meeting, but afterwards we stopped by a villager's home where the young housewife fed us tea and crackers.  It was a much needed and delightful treat. 

We walked the same distance back and beyond and grabbed a coke cola at a local shop.  I chugged the drink as I was feeling very tired and dehydrated.  We reached our second destination shortly after and I was still dehydrated but had no more water left.  Although it is not safe for foreigners to drink the local water, I prayed for safe tummy travels and filled my water bottle up with the local well water before we left for our third and final destination of the day.

As we set off again on foot the weather had dramatically cooled off.  This felt like a real treat as the sweltering heat of the morning through midday was very exhausting.  However, moments after we reached our final village, lightning and thunder began to roll in the distance.  We got the work done we intended, creating the beginning stages of a nursery farm for trees and monitoring the construction of two new wells, but as we thought to set off back to the main road the rain began to pour.  We found shelter in a local villager's home and decided to wait out the rain before heading back as we were an hour's way away from the main road.  

Quickly the rain turned into hail. The hail then turned into very large balls of hail, maybe 1-2 inches in diameter! This was the first time I've seen ice in a while and it excited me, except for the fact that this would mean we might have to sleep in this village for the night. I began to doze off in the dark room I was sitting in and woke to the family serving us tea.  Soon after the family quickly prepared a meal for us.  It was a beautiful gesture and sign of hospitality often found in these remote villages.  The family spoke in a local dialect known as tharu, in which I've only learned how to say "hello" and "tasty!" so I couldn't communicate with them much.  

We peeked outside and found that the rain was beginning to thin out, so we made a game time decision to try and make a break for the main road.  One of the ladies of the house borrowed umbrellas from her neighbors for us to use and walked with us up to a swing bridge she knew of as she predicted we would not be able to walk out the same way we came in because the river water will have risen from the heavy rains.  She was right.  This detour we had to take to the swing bridge was much longer than we predicted, and we had to walk through a shallower end of the river to get to the larger swing bridge.  The walk was difficult to say the least, but after we crossed the bridge the kind lady took the umbrellas but let me wear her shawl which was wrapped around me as she knew I would be cold the rest of the way.  I promised to return the shawl the next day and she began her journey back to her own village by herself.  

After the bridge, our journey was not complete. I had to take off my flip flops and walk barefoot through the muddy substance that used to be the road, mixed with debris, rocks, and poop of all sorts.  The shawl wrapped around me and over my head was quickly getting soaked through as the rain began to pick up speed.  After approximately another 50 minutes-1 hour of walking in the rain and lots of mental exercise, we made it to the main road.  

I caught a ride to finish my journey home, but along the way I passed a tree up in flames.  As I was approaching the tree I thought, "who would light this tree on fire in the middle of a storm?", but quickly realized with the background lightning and thunder that a lightning bolt must have struck the tree.  The branches were ablaze and a large crack was noticeable through the center.  The next morning the tree was still burning, however all the branches were burned through and it was merely a stump.  

April 25th, the next day at approximately 11am the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in/around lamjung district.  

Peace Corps volunteers are all on stand-fast since the earthquake, meaning no travel within the country.  Large aftershocks and tremors are still being felt.  Many Nepali families have moved their beds outside to sleep in fear of the danger of their homes collapsing in the middle of the night.

All in all, it's been a wild past couple of days and there has been a lot of destruction, but lots of luck as well.  All Peace Corps staff, volunteers, and trainees in country have been accounted for and are safe; quite lucky considering the circumstances.  

I am safe and unharmed and so is my host-family and village.  Thank you all for keeping in touch! 


With love,
Bora

a real blog post :O

It's been a while since I've posted a decent size post. Here's a (hopefully) fuller account of life, events and passing thoughts:

1. Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World): The volunteers in Dang district and I got together and put on a Camp GLOW project for a total of 25 girls ages 12-16 (5 girls from each volunteer's village).   The program was conducted in conjunction with a local NGO, WOREC (Women's Rehabilitation Center).  The camp was over five days and the themes of the days were Empowerment, Health, (Women's) Development, and Careers (but ended up being more like a Personal Development day).  The camp was held from April 6-10th, 2015, and was a great success. The sessions were taught by WOREC facilitators while many of the activities were conducted by Peace Corps Volunteers.  Thank you to all who donated financially to this project (as it was funded via a PCPP grant, which requires donations from friends and families).  Being a part of this process was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've had in Nepal, and perhaps in all my life, as I was a firsthand witness of the joy and change being created within our participants and the Nepalese staff we worked alongside with.  This project reminded me of the once in a lifetime opportunity I have here to directly work with people who are beyond deserving.  

2. Tibet:  On the morning of April 28th, I'll be headed out in a jeep (or microbus) up into the Himalayan mountains and over to Tibet!  I'll be going with a group of 10 other Peace Corps volunteers in my group and 2 persons from the States.  We'll be returning to Nepal on May 7th.  I just finished watching Seven Years in Tibet starring Brad Pitt and am re-invigorated to see the temples and bazaars of Tibet.  On the way back to Nepal our tour will make a trip to Mount Everest Base Camp (from the Tibetan side of the mountain).  I'm excited to get up and into the mountains! Wish me warmth and I'll try to take clear photos to share.  

3.  Village Life:  For the past 1-2 weeks, village life has been oddly different.  Not much has changed in terms of the way my host-family interacts with me, but I feel I've changed the way I interact with my host-family. I feel I've been more irritable, less patient and ultimately less kind.  I witness myself act this way and try to compel myself to act differently, but upon interaction I fall back into these automatic ways.  A part of me sees this as me becoming more integrated into the family, perhaps literally feeling comfortable enough with them to be me (flaws and all), but another part of me wishes I could regain the decency a guest has inside someone else's home.  Because, as much as I've been told I'm a daughter to this family, I will always be somewhat of a guest.  I come from a different country and I can't speak fluently with the family members as they can to each other.  Language barriers cause me to be suspicious of laughter and whispered words at times.  "Are they laughing at me or at something I said?".  I will be leaving for Tibet soon, but when I come back to village afterwards I hope my mental and emotional state becomes reawakened with more joy and less irritation.  

4.  A Farmer's Life:  It's the time of year when farmers must harvest their wheat, meaning there is a lot of work to be done.  The wheat must be cut and bundled meanwhile keeping the goats and other nearby livestock away from eating it and hoping that the rain doesn't pour to ruin the crops.  In my host-family, my host-mother did most of this work solo.  On Nepali Mother's Day, I spent an hour of my day cutting the wheat with my host-mother, and it was tough!  Together in that one hour we might have accomplished cutting about a half of a half of a half of a plot of land, and our home own four full plots of land full of wheat.  My host-mother woke up early the next morning to cut more wheat and finished all four plots of land in the next day and a half.  Afterwards, host-mama walked around the village (side note: it's in between 95-100 F nowadays) gathering cow poop and smoothed over a 20x20 ft area of land where the wheat will be harvested. The laborious life of a farmer caught my heart and attention.  I wanted to help her in some way, but I struggled with thinking, "How can I, someone who's grown up in a city in California all my life, help these farmers with the skill set that I possess?"  Perhaps to honor and respect each other is a first step.  

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! It's always a weird feeling when an American holiday passes by here with barely a mention on these streets.

Us volunteers in Dang (besides Nekeia :P ) are working on a girls' empowerment camp which officially begins tomorrow and goes for 5 days.  Wish us luck!! I'll try to post an update on how the camp goes once we're done.

Woof.

-Bora