Blink, another week has passed

Amongst power clicking on and off at strange hours and a work schedule that kicks everyone’s butt, it is certainly hard to get to posting.  Add to it that everyone in the clinic jumps onto the internet when we have electricity and the garbled waves cause it to be as convenient and speedy as snail mail....ok, exaggeration.

But anyway.  Here I am.

And here's the recap....

Monday:

Elissa and I headed to Champi with our interpreters, Prajwal and Mishal.  We heard loudspeaker chanting and music across the valley as we hiked up to the village.  Arriving, we hear that it is a day for puja, this celebration nine days in length.  Our lunch break consisted of hopping over to the tent where we had tikkas placed on our foreheads and were made to dance.  I loved the feeling of being so welcomed.  

Tuesday: 

Normally one practitioner goes by motorbike to Godhavri  but today we were two.  Reason?  To leave early afternoon, meet other team members in Sathobado  and taxi out to Boudha where we would have dinner, crawl into bed at a decent hour and arise the next morning at 5:30 to meet the jeep and taxi who would take us up to the stairway leading to Nagi Gompa, where we would then climb to the monastery and commune in ceremony with the nuns, offer a kata to the Rinpoches, get bonked on the head by what looked like a deck of cards by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and brother, receive an “empowerment”, eat Tibetan breakfast, meditate over yak butter candlelight while we are tied in by katas that connect the entire room of two hundred people, descend back to Boudha and find our way back to Chapagaon by evening.  That was a description of....

'stairs' to the gompa

Wednesday:

Thunderstorms break out early morning, which bring a soggy adventure ascending to the Gompa, taxi getting stuck in the mud, which allows a little hiking, yay.  All transpires what was said before, it’s beautiful, comfortable, colourful!  Windy, cloudy, rainy all day, the likes of which is strange at this time of year.  I elect to brave the motorbike back ‘home’ to Chapagaon with Tsering, and am happy to not shop, save for a scarf to replace the one I lost at the Buddhist temple.  I hope a nun is keeping her neck warm by it.

Tsering takes me to his aunt and uncle’s abode in Boudha where we are picking up a bag of Tongpa, fermented millet that is steeped in hot water and refilled, a warm alcoholic specialty that is drunk in the cold months (and perfect for a rainy chilly day).  Tsering cordially declined any being the driver.  His uncle made us Thukpa (noodle soup), the best meal I’ve had yet in Nepal, with buff meat.  We had to wait out the rain, and crossed the city in perfectly dry air, over muddy streets, making it home before the rain began again, soaking the night. 

Felt huge shifts in body and spirit before and while sleeping. 

Thursday:

Awoke, a new person.  Just like any other day...

Treated 23 patients.  Felt pretty good. 

In the evening had a party for Alison, our team leader, who left us the following day.  Drank Tongpa, my new favourite!  And red wine, which is a great treat in this part of the world for us westerners.  

Friday: 

Treated patients again, all day, said goodbye to Ali at lunch :(, hit a wall in the afternoon, wasn’t sure I could continue for a minute but made it through.  Kept calm through it, good good. 

Saturday (today):

Adventure walk down the road, taking pictures of dwellings and landscapes. Finally encountered the lake we were told to find, where we would also find food (or beer, or tongpa! In my case) at one of the restaurants surrounding.  Followed the nose towards home, through fields of spring onion, wild mustard and the brick yards, getting stares from the locals.  Slightly nervous, hoping to find the right road, but knowing we were headed straight for Chapagoan, companions naming me the human compass once we found our way to a familiar spot.

Sunday (tomorrow):

Treating in Godavri, beginning the week of packed patient schedules.  Wheeeeee! 

Until next time...

Trash Talk

Feb 4

I wrote a page in my journal during the first week in Chapagaon, concerning my concerns about the trash situation here in Nepal.  From that point, it has been interesting to observe within myself the transitions in emotion and perception surrounding the topic of trash.  From a Western perspective, Nepal is, literally, littered.  There is trash everywhere, the places free from it are mostly the agricultural fields, but even then you may find a stray plastic bag trampled into the worn, narrow path. 

And so.  Here are my feelings from almost a month ago.

Jan 15

Smita (one of the clinic workers) took Seven and I on a walk today, through Chapagaon and its streets, and to a cafe, and then back to the clinic through fields of young fava beans, and flowering wild mustard.  It’s still dusty here in the village, but the diesel fumes are less and so the dust is simply dusty and not sticky-dusty, as it is in the city.

Smita shed some light on what I have termed for myself “the trash situation” as we walked past small ponds, greyish-brown murk with a thin fluorescent green algae bloom towards on end.  She explained that it was not always this way, that when she was a child, twenty years ago, these ponds and canals were clean and clear.  It’s not so hard to imagine how beautiful this place must have been, it’s quite beautiful now.  But the plastic, of every imaginable color, litters every block, every embankment, every edge of beautiful green field, a huge disappointment at the state of the environment here for me, a softie for the earth and easily triggered by lack of care for it. 

I remember the anti-“litterbug” campaign of my own early childhood, and the advent of yellow metal trashcans on every street corner around town.  I remember also, in the sixth grade, our teacher talking about Tenney lagoon and how it used to be a swimspot, the water crystal clear, you could see to the bottom.  Not saturated in a rainbow of plastic trash, like the Vishnumati or the Bagmati Rivers, that run through Kathmandu, but saturated with algae, seaweed and lilypads due to the unregulated Wisconsin farm-water runoff.  The concept of a crystal clear Tenney Park lagoon was about as conceivable as martians joining us for volleyball at the beach.  So my thoughts and questions about my own country, before the yellow trashcan invasion, which provided a constant reminder to us to ‘Keep Clean!’ our city:  did this type of thing ever happen  when every sort of plastic packaging for any sort of good first came on the market?  Was “disposable” considered by the majority of our population as game for simply tossing to the side of the road?  And finally, the fact that we have mechanisms set up to collect, consolidate, and “dispose” of this plastic, among other things (i.e. put them out of site, cover them up etc. etc.) doesn’t make it go away now, does it? 

 

I consider plastic one of the greatest tragedies of the 20^th century.  

In any case.  Smita did not allude to either negative nor positive feelings over the matter, but my heart breaks as I think of our globalized economy and witness first-hand what it is doing to the towns and cities of Nepal. 

Their solution?

But it's interesting, the longer I am here, the less I see the trash.  It blends into the landscape.  And I wonder, is it complacency, or coping?  Or is it the sense of Buddhist impermanence?  Although majority Hindu, Buddhism pervades and mingles amongst the Nepali character.  If I am empty, so is the world, and the trash that I see with my mind is only a concept, created by the idea itself.  If I don't see it, is it really there?