19. Life Lessons

VILLAGE WITH A VIEW

My horrorscope this morning said that I should be careful taking on something that I haven't asked too many questions about, for it may lead me to difficult situations. 

In a country where Sadhus earn their keep telling the fortunes of their followers, perhaps I should have paid more heed.

A few days ago I  had been trying to find a tour company I could talk to about going to Tibet for a week or so.  Some of the people I spoke to, running these agencies, didn't even know what "tour" meant.  So I was very happy to be able to talk sensibly to Mr Uttam, into whose travel agency - Nepal Highpoint Trekking - I wandered. In the course of him inventing a short walk through the valleys near Nagakot for Luda and I when she arrives, I asked if there was a cultural village I could visit to photograph women wearing their traditional jewellery.  "Sure, no problem," he said assuredly.  "In fact, me and some of my  colleagues are going to a remote village tomorrow, where no westerners have been.  Would you like to come?  We're going by bus.  It'll only take about 3 hours and you can have a traditional meal with Nepalese families. And see women in their traditional clothing!"

Would I like to come? Try and stop me!  After a few harried, noisy phone calls between his colleagues, it was confirmed I could join them.   "I'll fetch you at 8am.  Have a big breakfast." Did I ask any more questions? Of course not!  I reminded myself, later, of the time I'd agreed to go to Komodo Island to photograph with the crew of the Discovery Channel, before I'd asked a) where it was, b) how long would I be there c) how did I get there d) were there any other women in the team?  That itself was probably my craziest six weeks in a leaking schooner in the middle of the Lesser Sundas with 8 Indonesian crew men, five Discovery crew, three hundred and twelve dragons and a damsel pretty close to distress most of the time.  Until she got over behaving like a distressed damsel and realised that it would be easier - and far more fun -  if she just gave into drinking rum on the roof of the deck and enjoyed swimming with the turtles. But that's another story.

Ensuring my batteries charged while I slept, and leaving the curtains open so I'd be sure to wake with the sun, I was ready by 7am. I posted Mr Uttam's details on the blog, and I emailed friends in various countries that I was heading into the wild. Unlike other days when I had breakfast up on the roof at any time before noon, the hotel was as packed as Delhi Train station on the eve of Diwali.  Sikhs with foot high turbans, their wives in glittering saris, took up every available seat.  "Breakfast not possible," said the gorgeous young man who brings me porridge and fruit salad on my patio every morning.  In search of breakfast, I walked down the lane, past the shuttered shopfronts, past the women sweeping the dusty roads with bristles of straw, past the yawning dogs; into a pale, weak, early light, onto Tridevi Marg, the main road into Thamel,  which was, for the first time since I've been here, free of the relentless whine and blare of traffic,  to get some bread rolls.  But even the bakeries were closed.

Mr Uttam, dressed in a dark jacket, smart pants and shoes, and a knitted jumper,  was early. We caught a taxi to somewhere just beyond Thamel.  We had "breakfast" - super sweet, milky tea boiled in a bucket, a hard boiled egg, and some curried peas, in a tiny stall, on a sticky, rickety table.He helped me buy a Nepalese sim card for my other phone; but because I didn't have my passport with me, I stole the identity of a young Nepalese boy;  his photo will forever be linked to my sim card.

We hung around the streets, waiting for the rest of the "delegation" to arrive.  Eventually, so did our bus, a rickety, stuck-together-with-chewing-gum-and-string - where's-the-brake contraption.  Total capacity 30 people - our capacity 50 people, plus huge boxes, suitcases, vegetables - all of them getting a ride to The Village. The bus driver counted his wads of small crumpled notes, crunched the beast into some sort of grating gear, and pulled off in a choking cloud of diesel.  After an hour of grinding, steaming, heaving, clanking, crunching gears, wheezes, coughs and splutters from the engine, and a half inch of dust on all of us, I asked Uttam how far away this village was.  "Don't know" he replied, "I've never been there before".  

We'd turned off the twisting, tortured, potholed Pokhara road, terrifying in the extreme, that leads to the town of Pokhara, from where the Annapurna treks begin.  Where other less fortunate travellers have been flung to early trips into their next lives when two buses were parallel on one road. We lurched down a dirt track, which narrowed and narrowed until the bus was scraping both sides of the gully through which we were driving. We passed tiny villages, where the elders, watching the passing dusty rallies, had to move their chairs from the lanes so we could pass.  Herdsmen smacked the backs of their cows to let us through.  One dragged his buffalo by its horns, snorting and huffing that he'd have to give way to a blue metal beast. We crossed a shallow river; the wheels slipped and spun on the rocks and mud, and after we'd groaned uphill knocking vegetation and sand off a cut in the mountain, and a wedge of rock ground off the mirror, I timidly asked "Can we walk yet?"  Every twenty metres the co-pilot - a young man wearing a banadanna, would hold the rail of the bus, peer over the ledge, or get off to calculate if the bus could actually make that turn.  One big smack of his hand on the side of the bus meant STOP, several bangs meant keep going, keep going, keep going.  Halfway up a tortuous path, the bus wedged against the side of a hill;  the driver hauled out his spade and widened the road for the bus to pass.  

After 2.5 hours, and several litanies of prayers to Shiva, Hanuman, Buddha, God, Krishna, Moses, Christ, and even Hashem, for good measure, the bus became thoroughly wedged between a rock face, a u bend in the road, and a tumble to nirvana. We could not go forwards, there was no place to go backwards, and we couldn't turn.

I've seen some terrible roads, and I've been very scared on others.  When I noticed that there wasn't a door on the driver's side, possibly for a fast escape if the bus did careen over the top, I stopped thinking of this as an adventure but more an act of insanity.  I'd done the Kathmandu/Pokhara road twice before: once in 1989, when the road was continually being built just ahead of the avalanche of trucks, buses and rocks, and a few years ago after a trek, when I couldn't look down the unstable ravines thinking I'd join the rusted piles of buses that had been thrown down by angry, unappeased gods.  Holy Moses, Holy Shiva, Holy Hanuman, Holy Buddha, Holy Krishna, I continually mumbled, as fifty faces watched me with amusement, hoping that such fervent prayers, with eyes tightly closed and my heart in my mouth,  would prevent me from keeping company with those less fortunate travellers who had catapulted so unexpectedly into their next lives.

I thought again of the people we entrust our lives to, to take us Home or Away.  We know nothing about them, especially not their skills. Yet we pay them a few rupees, board with a hope and a dream, and let chance do the rest. 

Now, the bus teetered on the edge of all our lives.  We were told to get out.  Nervously, unsteadily, we clambered out over each other to the exit, clutching our plastic bags of liquid lunch tightly in our white knuckled fists.  The step down to the road was high, as the bus was at an angle.  Once out, we had to turn sideways and creep between the sandy cliff and the hot bus:  a fat person would have been wedged there until either she lost weight or the bus toppled over.  To pass the bus, we had to sidestep along a crumbling wedge of loose rocks and sand, holding onto the rusted window ledges of the bus, not daring to look below, to the sheer 50 metre fall. 

Village not far, said Mr Uttam, pointing up the mountain to a slight wisp of smoke. Leaving a very concerned driver behind, we started the walk in to the village, up a stony path; as they say in Nepal, little bit up, little bit down. Always the biggest understatement from anyone.  After a while, sweating and panting, we rested under a pilgrim's tree, then followed two small boys along a sandy track on the cliff's edge. The village wasn't easy to miss: right across the valley distorted music blared, heralding our advance.   Livingstone's arrival in Africa couldn't have been met with more fanfare.  The closer we got to the village, the more people gathered above us, to wave us up;  some began clambering down the banks to help us up.  This dusty hard and hot climb was a piece of sweet cake compared to the fright club of crawling out of a bus about to plummet to its rusting end.

An enormous plastic WELCOME sign was tied between two trees.  Gathered beneath it, in the shade of the dusty oval which doubled as a sports field, community meeting place, dance floor, tribal counsellor symposium, and wedding venue, was the entire village of about 200 people.  Across the valley, the terraced hills tumbled to other villages; some trees were already in blossom. 

 

Mostly women, older men and children, we were here to see how this tiny, remote community could raise money to improve their lives by building a new school and get books and stationery to educate their children, so they wouldn't leave for the big city of Kathmandu as most of the teenage youth had. 

On a ridge above this oval was the Shree Chandeswary Primary School: built out of dry planks, corrugated iron, and thousands of stones, wedged together to make the walls which were held together with dried mud. Below the ridge, and the oval, were the potato fields that sustained the villagers, and a few ochre coloured houses, where goats and a small herd of cows were tethered.  School desks had been brought down from the classrooms for the villagers to sit on during this very important event. 

The village spokesperson welcomed me with a deep namaste, hung a garland of marigolds around my neck, and placed a bunch of flowers in my hand.  The gathered crowd, dressed in their red and pink finery, clapped.  I was smudged with red powder on my forehead. The crowd clapped. I was told to sit down.  They clapped again. The village spokesperson picked up his whining microphone, said lots of something, the only word of which I could recognise was Stralian, and the crowd clapped and clapped enthusiastically.   Then he presented me with a rosette in red, yellow and gold.  It was inscribed, in Nepali, "Chief Number One Guest of Honour".  The crowd clapped.   "Now, breakfast" said my host, bringing me a tin plate with curried beans, curried potato and betel, and some warm, thick, fresh yoghurt.  I ate like it was my first and last breakfast.  

The crowd clapped.  The speeches began.  And went on.  And on.  Every few minutes I heard the word Stralian.  Then the people clapped.  Every time I tried to get up to take photographs, the blue plastic seat (with cushion for Chief Special Guest No 1) was patted.  You. Stay. here.   The clapping became less and less enthusiastic as the speeches continued, even after the microphone power had gone out.  Bored with the excruciating proceedings,  children in lampshade party dresses and kohl eyes broke free from their parents to climb trees, pick their noses and scratch pictures in the sand. 

Two little girls whom I'd befriended took me up to the school.  I have never seen such poor conditions, anywhere, ever.  Not even in Africa. Two 4 metre by 4 metre mud and stone classrooms led into each other through a single metal door held upright with wire.  The children sat on planks on the dirt floor. There was no electricity.  

The windows were shuttered with wooden planks through which streamed harsh, dusty light.  There were no books, no toys, no apparatus, no computers, just one blackboard for the one old teacher, leaning on a cane, who taught two classes in one session - crossing between the rooms.  

An old calendar was nailed to the mud wall.  The children don't have books, pencils, pens, crayons, calculators.   How can they learn to write, if they can't write it down? They have to remember everything. It's freezing in winter, and suffocating in summer.

I am the first western woman to go to this village;  most of the men did not take their eyes off me, and the women first regarded me with amusement and then with friendship.   I had to make a speech, which Uttam translated.  The villagers clapped.  I had to do a dance with the girls.  The villagers clapped.  We walked down to the houses, most of them over fifty years old and built from the local wood. 

Mango and papaya trees grew amongst corn and rice; corn dried in dark rooms, above where goats and cows ate and slept.  Rice is stored in large cupboards, water is drawn in large brass pots from springs away from the village that have to be fetched several times a day. The rice and corn are ground on an old stone as it has for millennia. Cooking is done inside, in a depression in the sand, where smoke and cooking smells mix with the animals and humans. For every community event, a kitchen is set up outdoors, in a makeshift tent below the school, and every villager shared their food, their labour and the produce. 

Uttam asked if future "tourists" would like to have a "genuine Nepalese homestay" here, to raise money for the school.  I could stay here;  but I'm a veteran traveller, seasoned, used to sleeping anywhere and eating anything.  I've even done locusts. I suggested that he bring small groups of hardy travellers out here - who could endure the bus ride - and bring packs of school items for the children. But equally importantly, they need money to rebuild and enlarge the school. What hope would these gorgeous, spirited children have, with this continued level of poor education? We were given more potatoes, peas and fried tofu balls as a parting meal. I think quite a few people went hungry to feed me.

I walked out the village, with a gaggle of girls clinging to me, shouting I Love You!  I Love you! and kissing me at every opportunity. They took turns holding my hands.   I gave one of them my Chief Number One Special Guest Rosette, and another my sandalwood fan. Both almost fainted with excitement.  I kissed them, I told them I loved them, too.  But I wished I'd brought books, and pens, and crayons.  I wished I could stay longer and help them with English.  Most of all, I wish I knew a way to raise money to help build this lovely community a new school.

I asked where the teacher lived. Uttam pointed to a misty point on the horizon - "Far, very far," he said.  "She must walk in every day."  And any person who wants to go anywhere, must walk this way, too.  Any books that have to come in, any medicines, and clothing, have to be walked in, or survive a hellish bus drive.  I asked Uttam about the possibility of a four wheel drive, for the village, or for anyone who wanted to come and visit.  He looked at me as if I was mad. A four wheel drive? Here? How?  This crazy bus was the villagers link to the outside world:  some of the villagers made the weekly trek to the market, and, yes, some of them had seen westerners in downtown Thamel.  The driver apparently did it every day - but every day the road presented a different challenge.

We walked further, to where the bus was had hobbled close enough to meet us.  I walked hard, and quiet, thinking, up and down and along ridges, and through terraces and across potato fields and rocky streams.   I watched the sun set over the Himal, watched the wood fire smoke rise, saw strong, brave women carry fifty kilos of cabbages in conical woven basket on a tarp on their foreheads.  Barely missing a step, they always stopped to greet me. I saw families loading trucks of healthy, beautiful cauliflower for the next day's market. 

At last the rattling bus contraption wheezed and spluttered up to us, sliding on loose stones and shale. It screamed into gear, ground its brakes, the rusty doors were opened and I was squeezed in with 51 other people, villagers who'd been waiting hours at the roadside for a lift to Kathmandu. Boxes of food, vegetables, babies, a bicycle and humans filled the bus to capacity. There wasn't space for me.  So I sat on a pillow on the gear box, all the way back to Kathmandu, ignoring my screaming kidneys, my bursting bladder, and my buckled spine.  I was very quiet on the long, long, long drive home. We arrived to a dark, quiet city, because the power was, once again. out. 

It was darker than a dark and stormy night.  The lanes were quiet.  Nobo was waiting for me in the lobby of the hotel with a candle in a brass holder.  I ate butter paneer and rice by candlelight. I had a coldish shower and curled up beneath my feather doona, grateful I wasn't sleeping in a hut with a mud floor.  

I am able to read. I can write.  I do both for my living. And I can travel the world, with a passport, in comfort, sometimes eating Lobster with champagne.   What of this village - hours from anywhere - with ongoing generations to bring up?  How far will they go, without a school to educate them?  It's one of Unesco's basic principles of human rights.  

Some days, unexpectedly, come as major blessings. A child I'd never met told me she loved me because I gave her a sandalwood fan and a rosette.   

And yet I sit here, in this valley, with the Annapurnas brooding down on me, listening to chickens, dogs, wedding drums, smelling pancakes and garlic, hearing the coo of pet pigeons, and I'm sometimes selfishly miserable because I've lost such a lot over the past two years - and my future is a little bit shaky - and I don't have my big home any more, or my fancy car - and I don't have a husband to care for me or to cook for.  Life seems so simple in these villages. They don't have any of the fancy accoutrements we think we need for a happy life: but they have the love of their community. 

Today, I miss my children more than ever.

Now, about raising money for that little school?  I returned to the hotel that day with a huge conscience and a desire to do something, tucked tightly into my heart. At my usual NGO cafe, I met some people who suggested that I help this little village.  I was put in touch with the organisers of Room to Read, who funded projects such as these.  I started a blog called "No Stones Unturned".  I started raising money; my followers and friends began putting money into a Paypal account. I formed a committee of the businessman in Kathmandu. We held meetings. I begged them to open their own wallets first, and start the donation project. They owned hotels. They owned Mercedes. They had more money than I had. I said they should open a bank account, with me as a signatory, into which I would put the money from Paypal.  I told them, as I'd been told, that whatever they were able to raise, would be matched by other NGO companies. I managed to get $15 out of them. A hundred excuses were made about the bank account.  They wanted me to give them cash, so they could go and buy pencils and take them to the village. Yea.

I should have subtitled the school blog "Headbanging #101".  Eventually, frustrated, disgruntled, time wasted and tired of cracking the whip, I gave up.

Later, when I left Kathmandu, the school project was delivered to Uttam’s shoulders.  After many requests, he still hasn’t sent me the statement from the bank account for the schoo I almost had to threaten him to open. The committee were supposed to have weekly meetings to continue the path, but nobody has turned up.   When I was pushing the project, we had 100 nostonesunturned blog readers a day - we are down to zero. A few enthusiastic Nepalese men are facebooking about the village to try to raise money, but that's where the project has stalled.  I haven’t heard a peep from Room to Read, in spite of some enthusiastic and encouraging first communications. Alas, although a community was formed and rubber stamps made, unless all parties concerned are practically flogged to do something, they behave like children without direction.  I was angry that I'd had to become the schoolteacher with the cane. 

To compound problems, the donations I’ve received from readers and friends for the school were frozen by PayPal because they were entered as donations.  PayPal want all sorts of tax files and exemptions from me.  They don’t have a facility where issues can be resolved by a human, so I can’t explain via email.  They want me to call them.  From the desert in Morocco.  

Apart from the very generous women who sent the money for the street children outing, I've hd to refund donations sent by others, as the freezing of my PayPal account compromises my ecommerce website.   

I’m sorry goddessess, it’s all become too hard to continue, but from the hearts of my bottoms, as someone once said to me, I thank you for your love and interest and contribution.

At least I tried.

The Daily Lama finished my day aptly with this quote:

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.