Through the Looking Glass...

[John R]

My friend Liz is on an extended vacation in Nepal, where she lived for a time. She is sending dispatches back, which I thought I'd share...

Hello friends,

So I've made it to Kathmandu in one piece. Things are simultaneously the same and different as before, which I will be addressing in the following writing and more to come. I will be writing a column to be published weekly, on Tuesdays, in the Telluride Watch. I'm not sure if it will be posted to their website on Tuesdays, but please check at: www.telluridewatch.com. But you are lucky! You get the unedited preview ... I'll send it out to you the Friday before. So without further ado, installment one follows ...


Through the Looking-Glass

By Liz Lance



"The Himalayas aren't going anywhere, they're just getting taller," a Telluride friend said to me before I left the Happy Valley for Nepal a few weeks ago. Turns out he was right. As for Kathmandu, the chaotic city I called home for three years, it's just gotten bigger and busier.



Returning to Kathmandu after 3 1/2 years living stateside, I feel like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. It feels like not a moment has passed, and my 3 1/2 years of life lived in Telluride vanish from my mind as if I never attended a festival, never hiked the Wiebe, never walked down Main Street. The net effect is as though I have awoken from a long sleep to find that nothing has changed, but everyone has a mobile phone.



In 2003, only a few expat friends and a few well-off Nepalis I knew had mobile phones. Today, they are ubiquitous. Even the Indian fruit-sellers on the street chat on their mobile phones between sales. I was looking forward to this trip to escape from the hectic life I used to know to be endemic only to the United States and other developed countries. Now with mobile phones and broadband internet access, Kathmandu is more connected than my own home in Two Rivers, where cell phone reception is tenuous and I still rely on dial-up internet access. Now, as ever, it is up to me to choose the connected lifestyle over the escape I told myself I was seeking. As I write this column on a Nepali friend's laptop and send text messages to friends on a borrowed mobile phone, I now hear myself saying I'll find my escape in the mountains next week...or maybe the week after.



---



I arrive in Kathmandu in the middle of Dasain, Nepal's biggest festival, celebrating the triumph of good over evil. Dasain is Nepal's Christmas equivalent, and scores of Kathmanduites run around buying gifts with their Dasain bonuses, usually one month's extra salary. Traditionally, urban residents return to their ancestral villages for the end of the festival to give and receive blessings among their large extended families. For the past four or five years though, due to the Maoist conflict, many people avoided the very real possibility of extortion, imprisonment, torture and death, and remained in Kathmandu for the holiday. This year, with a UN-monitored cease-fire in place, families that have not visited their villages in years are headed home, and a palpable lightness in the air reflects that.



The Maoist conflict has raged for over ten years, and the body count has reached 15,000 in that time. The guerillas, led by Comrade Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, waged a people's war throughout the Nepali countryside, demanding the establishment of a republic and the abdication of the king in the only Hindu kingdom in the world. (The Maoists adhere to the philosophy of Mao Tse Tung, but are in no way backed by the Chinese government.) Cease-fires have come and gone over the past ten years, but there is a strong and certain hope among Nepalis that the current one will stick. The US Embassy in Kathmandu is less certain, sending emails to the American population here to be wary of demonstrations leading up to the October 27th expiration of the current cease-fire.



Nepalis have another reason to be more content with the current political situation -- after weeks of demonstrations last April, King Gyanendra abdicated power, ending his 15-month absolute dictatorship. The last elected parliament was reinstated, the Maoists were incorporated into the government and plans for a constitutional assembly and a new round of elections were made. Everything in Nepal takes longer than it would in the West, even more so at the political level, so the country remains in a holding pattern. Even so, the most cynical of my Nepali journalist friends remains optimistic that the country is progressing, and the end of Nepal's violent conflict is truly in sight.



Although it appears to be near its end, the conflict has left permanent scars. Some months back, I read a story in the New York Times recounting some of the stories behind the conflict. One of them was accompanied by the photograph of Devi Sunwar, a beautiful Nepali mother with striking grey eyes, taken by an American friend Tom Kelly. Devi's daughter had been killed by the Army, suspected of being a Maoist. Her daughter's killers had not been prosecuted, and Devi's sorrow screamed from her eyes. At the time, I was so moved by the photograph that I downloaded it onto my computer. Even though I have so many close friends that have been affected by the violence in Nepal, this one photograph became the face of the conflict for me.



The other day I went by the office where I used to work and was surprised to find a woman working there with the same steel eyes. My former colleagues had arranged a Dasain party, and I had arrived just in time. I sat on a bench on the edge of the courtyard, observing the light-hearted banter among the group. The woman with the grey eyes came over to sit next to me and she said I had probably read her story in the newspaper. This was Devi Sunwar.



Tom's wife Carroll Dunham runs a company called Wild Earth, which makes herbal soaps, as an income-generating project for women who have been displaced due to the Maoist conflict. Hearing Devi's story, Carroll brought her into the fold of Wild Earth, and she was now among the staff that makes traditional cold-process handmade soaps for both domestic and foreign markets.



I asked Devi if she was having fun at the Dasain celebration, for I and the rest of the staff certainly were. "Of course parties like this are fun," she said, a smile wavering on her face. "But there is an ache in my heart that will not go away." Devi and her family could not return to their village. Even with the relative calm, there was danger for them at their home, she said. She would spend Dasain in Kathmandu with her two sons and her husband, celebrating the triumph of good over evil, still reeling from the real-life loss of her daughter in a war not as simple as the mythological one being commemorated.

 

[John R]

this one showed up this am.

Nepal's Dasain festival ended Saturday with the purnima (full moon) of the Nepali month Asoj. The five days leading up the purnima are a host to a countrywide massacre of water buffalo, goats and chickens, offerings to the goddess Durga who is celebrated during Dasain. Any Nepali will tell you that Dasain means meat, meat and more meat, and many did tell me that throughout the week. I was invited to many gatherings throughout Dasain, all featuring absurd quantities of meat -- barbecued meat, fried meat, grilled meat, roasted meat, steamed meat, and the Newari specialty of choyella, boiled water buffalo that is heavily spiced. It's tough to be a vegetarian during Dasain, but even tougher to be a goat, I figure, so I indulge.



At the Dakshin Kali temple south of Kathmandu, devotees began lining up Saturday morning at 4 am to worship the wrathful goddess Kali, an incarnation of Durga. I arrived a bit later than that, but the queue still wrapped around the temple three times and over the bridge and then some, many devotees pulling resistant goats or carrying frightened chickens along with them.



The smells of Nepali temples are at once inviting and revolting. The scent of sandalwood and jasmine incense wafts around the perimeter of the temple, while the smell of singed goat hair rushes out of the butcher's shed, where bodies of goats are lined up outside, severed heads stacked on top. An old woman tries to cut the queue with her dead goat by dropping the sack containing the goat corpse through the open wall. The butchers tell her to go to the end of the line, while she tries to use her age to her advantage. "I am an old woman. Respect someone older than you and clean this goat for me. I cannot wait." The butchers will not relent, and one of them hefts the sack up again, and the woman drags it to the end of the line.



Around the temple courtyard, priests sit cross legged in the shade of their umbrellas putting tikka on devotees' foreheads. One old woman offers tikka from the base of a tree. She first applies a sticky red and then yellow paste to my forehead while reciting a Sanskrit blessing. She then affixes the tikka (uncooked rice mixed with yogurt and red powder) to my forehead, and uses a u-shaped stamp to place a yellow marking below the tikka. It is customary to offer money to a pandit for the blessing and I give her 10 rupees (about 14 cents). She balks and insists on the 50 rupees (70 cents) other foreigners have given her. I've never bargained for a blessing before, and am a bit taken aback. Showing me a hundred-rupee note, she says, "This was for two." I hand her a 20-rupee note, a completely sufficient price for the blessing. "Fine, if that is what you are giving me, then I must take it," she says. Commercialism has reached the temples.



While most Nepalis were worshipping the goddess Durga, I paid my respects to the human Durga, a dear friend and social worker Durga Mainali. I came to know Durga in 2002 when along with a group of friends, I began visiting an orphanage that Durga ran. At that time there were about 15 children, from infancy to about 12 years old. They all lived in three rooms in a flat on the busy road outside Bouddhanath Stupa. There was not enough funding to send the children to school, and Durga relied on outside help from friends to play with the kids and teach them simple things.



Durga is a remarkably resourceful woman, and over time she secured the funding to send the children to school, although she and her small staff still struggled to feed the children and provide them with meat and milk, expensive commodities for an organization with a tiny budget. The kids still needed an outlet from their cramped living quarters so we took them on field trips to the zoo, the botanical gardens and other places where they could run around.



The Buddhist Child Home has since moved to a new location in a compound with a courtyard and a decent-sized plot of land for vegetables. The population has more than doubled, and there are now 41 children living there. As I walk through the gate and up the steep driveway, three children run out and grab my hands to pull me inside, screaming, "Liz Miss! Liz Miss!" in their high-octave voices.



I sit down with Durga to discuss the Buddhist Child Home's current situation. Through friends of friends and a volunteer placement service, more foreigners have come to help Durga and the Buddhist Child Home, and one American, Nina Henning, has completed some fundraising stateside to support the home. Locally, there is a group of Nepalis that gives a fixed amount every month to support the food budget, and many people have donated books, school supplies and office equipment. The foreign involvement has effected an unexpected, but not unsurprising consequence: the principal of the school that the children attend is now refusing to provide the scholarships she once did. If there are foreigners involved, she reasoned, the home must have enough money to pay the full school fees.



Three of the older boys come in wheeling a 30-kg sack of rice over the cross-bar of a children's bicycle. One of the house staff follows with another 30-kg sack of rice over his shoulder. The total of about 130 pounds of rice will only feed the children and the house staff two meals -- that night's dinner and the next day's lunch.



Even with the extra help, both of money and extra hands, each day is a struggle for the Buddhist Child Home. Durga is an optimist, though, always smiling and laughing, despite circumstances to the contrary. But every so often her fears show through her smiling facade, and now is one of those times. With tears welling in her eyes, she says the words heard in similar conversations all over Nepal, "Garho chha. Jiban garho chha." (It is difficult. Life is difficult.)

 

[Miss Kitty]

Your friend is an excellent writer. Thanks for broadening my horizon this morning.

 

[Mango]

Don't have time to read it all, but what I did read was quite interesting.
:clap_1:

 

[kathydwells]

I throughly enjoyed reading this. What a gifted writer. I felt like I was right there with her and could visualize everything. Thanks John R for posting this.

 

[John R]

Through the Looking Glass

By Liz Lance

Published Oct. 17 in the Telluride Watch Newspaper (www.telluridewatch.com)



Autumn marches on in Kathmandu. Where fall brings early snows and cold rains in the San Juans, in the Kathmandu Valley it ushers in afternoon breezes that keep kites high aloft in the sky and blow the mosquitoes away. Nepal's monsoon ended with a bang right before my arrival here near the end of September. The afternoon I flew in from Bangkok, the sun shone high and the humidity filled my pores. Many people told me I brought the good weather with me; the previous four days had been cold and rainy, with low-hanging clouds in the hills.



The clouds that hang low in the hills are dangerous. They bring moisture that saturates the ground, causing landslides and ruining poorly-built roads. They also restrict the visibility of the small planes and helicopters that ferry trekkers, aid workers and residents to and from remote areas in Nepal. Every monsoon I have spent in Nepal I have read about at least one aircraft that has crashed into the side of the Himalayas. Four years ago, my dear friend Pasang's husband was killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in the Khumbu region. That helicopter disappeared without a trace, as is not uncommon in that treacherous terrain. This monsoon caused a helicopter crash that in one moment on September 22 killed some of Nepal's foremost conservationists along with dedicated foreign aid workers and diplomats. The loss is immeasurable.



In total, 24 people died when the helicopter crashed in Ghunsa, in a remote part of Taplejung District in far Eastern Nepal. The group had traveled there to attend and participate in a ceremony marking the handing over of the Kangchenjunga Conservation Area to a local council. This model had been implemented in other parts of the country as well with much success. "[The conservationists that died] proved that nature is best protected through grassroots ecotourism activities, and their projects are being replicated in Nepal and across the world," said Kunda Dixit in the Nepali Times.



Dr. Chandra Prasad Gurung was among those killed in the crash. He was one of Nepal's foremost conservationists and had worked for the past eight years as the country representative for World Wildlife Federation Nepal. I attended the first day of a three-day puja ceremony for Dr. Gurung on Friday, which had at least 200 people in attendance. Most people milled about, much like at a wake, sharing memories of those lost. Inside the living room, an altar to Dr. Gurung had been erected, and individuals approached it, draping katas (Tibetan silk scarves) around his photograph and lighting incense.



About 40 people surrounded the ghavri (shaman) leading the ceremony on Dr. Gurung's front lawn. The Gurungs are an ethnic group from the middle hills of Western Nepal, and according to their funeral tradition a ghavri is invited to perform a puja ceremony and invite the departed soul back to earth. This happens on the first day, and on the second day, the soul is said to inhabit the ghavri's body. On the third day, the soul is forever released from the bonds of earth. Next to the ghavri were a goat and a chicken to be sacrificed as an offering to invite Dr. Gurung's soul. Dogs scampered about, seemingly sensing the blood soon to be spilled.



Upstairs in Dr. Gurung's house, I sat with a few friends, all of whom had worked with Dr. Gurung. "I cannot make sense of his death," said Tsering Tenpa Lama, also with WWF. "He talked about retiring in five years, and even then, he had so many plans for what he wanted to do next." Jann, a Dutch man whose partner had worked with Dr. Gurung since the mid-90s, also wondered what lesson was to be learned from the deaths. "It seems you learn that life is precious, and you remember that for a while. But after a short time you again forget until someone else's death comes."



The community of Nepalis and foreigners involved in the conservation and development world is tight-knit; many of my Kathmandu friends knew and had worked with those killed in the crash. The main topic of conversation over the past few weeks has been the crash and the disbelief that these people are gone. Although I did not personally know any of those who died, sitting with friends mourning this loss, I was instantly taken back to the many times over the past year that the Telluride community has faced unexpected death.



In 2006, Telluride first lost Glen Harcourt, Bo Willse and Tim Hackett, then quite suddenly, Hoot Brown was gone. Again Jim Stewart and then David Gibson died. In Telluride then as in Kathmandu now, I did not personally know those who died, but to be a member of a close community is, in effect, to know everyone, and I was touched by all of those deaths. In June earlier this year, my friend Paul Green was killed suddenly in a car accident in Tibet, and in an instant I felt the cumulative effect of all of the death my community had experienced until then. It swept over me and preoccupied my thoughts for months to come.



In the wake of my friend Paul's death, an email he had written just the week before he died was circulated among friends. He was in a remote region of Tibet working on his PhD research surveying the monasteries of a certain lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. "I feel so fortunate I can hardly believe it ? to be here and involved in what I am. I actually feel like it is 'my gompa' there at Tsechu." The friend that shared this email, Galen Murton, also wrote, "My grief is alleviated somehow in knowing that Paul was in his favorite place on earth, doing what he loved best." And what more can you wish for a friend who dies unexpectedly? That they were happy, doing what they loved to do, up to the moment of their death.



The lesson remains the same, as with Telluride's losses, as with Paul Green, and now as with Nepal's losses. Death comes unexpectedly; best to be doing what satisfies you most and not settling for anything less. I took that to heart and followed my happiness to get back on the road again, camera in hand and never far from a good friend, a good adventure, a good meal, a good time. I spent this afternoon with a group of Nepali friends, harvesting rice, making lunch, playing cards, sharing memories, sitting on a hillside letting the temperate autumn breeze wash over me. There is nothing I would rather have been doing.

 

[Miss Kitty]

Thanks.

 

[Mermaid]

JohnR, thanks for letting us read your friend's accounts. She should be published to a wider audience. :clap_1:

 

[John R]

Through the Looking Glass

By Liz Lance



Tihar lagyo. Tihar is happening! Dasain has come and gone, and the tens of thousands of Nepalis that returned to their villages to celebrate that festival have returned to Kathmandu. The crowds have returned and the bazaars are bustling with Nepalis rushing here and there, making necessary purchases before the five-day Tihar festival begins.



The festival's roots are in placating Yumaraj, the god of the underworld, to stave off death. The crow and the dog are worshipped during the first two days of the festival. Kukhor Puja, as the dog worship is called, is the one day many Nepali dogs are not mistreated in this country where they carry little respect. On the third day, Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, is worshipped to bring prosperity into the home. On the fourth day, Nepalis worship cow dung, considered sacred, while ethnic Newars worship their own bodies. On the final day of the festival, sisters worship brothers in a ceremony known as Bhai Tikka. Tihar is Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and Halloween all wrapped up into one festival, offering fun equal to more than the sum of its parts.



The streets are awash with colors. Residents and vendors along the narrow streets of Kathmandu's old city have strung multi-colored flags that criss-cross back and forth between buildings. At night, multi-colored strands of lights come on, and the streets glow red, blue, green and yellow. Street vendors crouch on every available square inch of real estate, hawking framed pictures of the goddess Laxmi, brilliant marigold garlands, and prepackaged tikka powders.



A trip through the main bazaars of Ason Tol and Indra Chowk at 5 PM seems ill-advised. Men are returning to their homes from the office, and many women with their daughters are buying necessities for the festival. Pedestrians inch along at a snail's pace, their progress impeded by street hawkers, while a few brash teenagers barge through the crowds, arms around one another's shoulders, laughing loudly. These crowds remind me of Calcutta, where walking on the city streets, I found myself swept along with the crowd, no longer an individual in control of her own movement, but a small, albeit taller, part of a larger human mass.



I am swept up in the same way, walking down these narrow gulleys. I am also swept up in the festivities, enchanted by the saris that hang from storefronts, banners of embroidered silk shining red, the pure rainbow of fabric bolts that line the shelves inside cramped fabric stores, and the sound of Nepali commerce, buyer and seller sounding agitated as they haggle over a price but smiling to one another when the transaction is completed.



Tihar offers five days of unabashed merry-making and Kathmandu is already abuzz with anticipation. Young children, mostly boys, light firecrackers on the street. The oldest in the group usually handles the delicate work of lighting first a wax match, and then the small firecracker, while the younger boys run away from it, fingers clogging their ears, squealing when the loud bang comes. Women busy themselves in their homes, cleaning meticulously and stockpiling the sugar needed to make sel roti and other Tihar sweets. Men gather in friends' homes in the evening to play marriage, a complicated card game requiring the players to hold 21 cards in their hand at a time.



I learned to play marriage during the Dasain and Tihar festivals five years ago with the family of my then-boyfriend Sushil. We sat for hours in a circle on the floor, making sets and runs of three cards in our hand, vying to be the first one to see the special joker card and begin racking up points. Sushil's older sister Sushila was one to watch out for. The cleverest card player in the family, she often went home with my rupees in her pocket. The only interruption to our card playing would be the arrival of food. The circular sel rotis made from hand-ground rice flour, sour achhars that had fermented for months in glass jars in the sun, and spicy potatoes fried with cilantro.



This festival season, I have already spent many afternoons and evenings playing marriage with Sushil and his co-workers, and with staff members of another friend's trekking company. As with any gambling game, I have learned it is important not to get too arrogant. The first evening I played cards with my friend Ripu, I insisted on playing one point per rupee, while Ripu wanted to play four points per rupee. I went home that night with 50 of Ripu's rupees in my pocket. The next night, my luck changed. I sat playing until late in the night, continually egged on by wanting to win back the 60 rupees I lost straightaway to Ripu in the first hour. I now stand 100 rupees poorer.



But Tihar is just now beginning! I still have five days to win back that money, and many hours to while away with friends. The mood in the city remains light, even though the peace talks between the Maoists and the Seven Party Alliance are currently stalled. No need to talk politics during a festival. While Nepalis celebrate Tihar to keep death at bay, they're simultaneously enjoying life's most fun vices, gambling, sweets and some measure of gluttony.

 

[Mango]

:clap_1: Very interesting. Thanks for taking us to another part of the world.
She makes you feel like you are there.