Dearest friends, Namaste!

Dearest friends, Namaste!

Hello from Pokhara! I am currently tapping away at a little café, wrapping up two weeks of training with all the other volunteers. We trucked it out from village to Katmandu to learn some new technical skills related to our agricultural work – everything from growing oyster and shitake mushrooms (was able to pull out some of my old knowledge from years of farming past!) to fruit tree grafting. We spent a good portion of our time at this amazing little farm/food forest called “Everything’s Organics Nursery” whose bread and butter is trying to introduce fruit and nut trees to the Nepali countryside, in part to diversify the diet, and also to make more economically viable the rural life in this age where lots of young men are going overseas to work and make money for their loved ones in the hills.

Our training time has been a blast, I have been fully enjoying hanging out with all the other volunteers, being able to process and reflect on our separate experiences – whose similarities are striking and also remarkably diverse. Just having people around whose cultural coloring of the world is similar to mine brings incredible comfort, when most of our time here is spent in a sort of cultural limbo – constantly walking the thin line between being maintaining my integrity as an American woman and submersing myself fully into the Nepali identity.

Tomorrow I am headed back to village, which will be a wonderful homecoming. This next month ought to be exciting, the largest festival in Nepali is upon us – Dashain! The festival is 11 days (or longer), and is dedicated to the goddess of power – Durga. Family from all over Nepal return to their maternal homes at this time and everyone deep cleans their houses, buys new clothes, slaughters lots of goats and water buffalo (wow, yes, I have in some weird way become desensitized to this coming to Nepal, even as a vegetarian) and generally feast and celebrate. The Nepalis certainly know how to get down. Before this training I was able to celebrate the festival of “TEEJ” – a day where women traditionally fast (for lord Shiva and for the long life of their husbands), dawn their finest red threads and dance for the whole day. Of course, my friends in town helped dress me up in proper attire, and of course I was not shy about grooving to the beat, despite the hoards of onlookers – how curious to see the way someone else from somewhere else’s body moves! Yes, my village has become my home, I find myself walking through the jungle paths knowing which rocks to avoid (even though the monsoon is almost over, even a thin veil of moisture can cause calamity when scaling Nepali hillsides!) and often being stopped by neighbors to chat, or for advice on why their cauliflowers have pests. It is funny to think that these folks whose traditional agriculture has subsisted for generation upon generation still look to me (as someone who is “well studied” and from the (over)developed and technological world) as an expert in such matters, when my knowledge of the land, the climate and food system here is still very much in its infancy. Yes, just as I must be ever sensitive to myself as a bi-cultural agent, I also find that navigating the space between what I have learned as “proper” or “science-based” agricultural methods and what I am observing as the “indigenous” practices of growing food to be a challenge – how to improve upon the “old ways” with a “new lens” while still maintaining integrity of both, and also seeing results and enjoying the fruits of our labor!

My latest inspiration in the world of my work is born of a trend I have been noticing with the women in my community – most of whom have two or more kids and whose husbands have gone to Malaysia, or India or Saudi Arabia for years at a time to earn money doing whatever work they can find. When probing why most women only grow certain vegetables in their gardens, the response I receive more and more is “biu chaaina!” -because there isn’t any seed! (Of course, there is seed, it is just a jeep ride and a few hundred rupees away – requiring both extra money and lots of extra free time, both of which are scarce for young mothers in village). Thus, my brain has been cranking, why not try to start a seed bank in my town – preserve native varieties and make available the most quintessential component of food security -the very source itself!

I have made a super sweet connection with one woman in my town who (despite her 13 years of marriage) never managed to get pregnant, and as a result has lots of time to muse on projects with me. She is a Daulit woman (from the untouchable caste – a topic that surely deserves its own blog post, and whose intricacies I am still learning and emotionally coping with daily) who can read and write Nepali script and is very motivated to work and learn with me. I feel like I have found an awesome ally in my projects, and am excited to reconnect with her and the women’s group she is the secretary for, upon returning to site. I am also stoked to be getting back to my running route (think sunrise wake ups and bolting up the hill – on an un-foggy morning, Macchapucchre looms near!) my meditation practice (which has been slightly truncated due to the serious friend hang out time and the general tumult of Peace Corps training schedule) and my overall village vibration.

I am also ready to relinquish the English and begin another stint of 24/7 Nepali speaking. My language, while still surely sophomoric, is enough to convey the depth of my feelings about my state (of mind/heart/physical body), my country (debunking American myths maybe one of my main jobs here!) and my values. It is truly special to tell my friends here how much of their culture I love and want to emulate in my relationships and life: the cohesiveness of the family unit and community, the way everyone here lives so close to nature – the wilderness and the village boundaries seem seamless to me– and the general humility and respect of the Nepali people. And yet I am also able to speak critically (and gracefully) about those parts of this culture I think we have the power to change – parts of the West that the East may be benefitted by adopting: our desire and pursuit of creative self-expression, our transcendence of fixed gender roles, our lack of hierarchy (or supposed lack of it – surely we are less marked about this than the Nepali caste system enforces) and in general our willingness to try new things, forge new paths, and shift our paradigms at will. Many more musings wrapped up in these statements than this short post can allow to be explained, but for now that download will have to suffice.

Now to cruise Pokhara for a bit, perhaps enjoy my last non-white-rice meal for the next little bit (though don’t get me wrong! There still hasn’t been a dhal bhaat meal that I am not excited for!) Yes, this Nepali life chugs along. I hope all is good in your (Buddha)hood. Will try to update again post Dashain festivities.

Much love and Metta,

Aja/Jaya