Namaste Spring!

Dear friends and family, near and far,

It has been a little while since I last wrote, so I hope your respective winters are melting into spring in a good way wherever it is that you are. Nepal is warming up a bit too, the dawn now breaks at 5:30 when I depart my house to run in the mornings, and the warmer weather means if you wash your clothes in the morning, they’ll probably be dry when you take them off the line at night. (It occurs to me that I may actually be writing this on the very equinox, haha! The “official” start of spring after all!) The terraced fields that lay dormant through the coldest of the months have now been ploughed (twice! First to break up the packed earth into big clods and second right before sewing the corn, to dissolve the clods further and make a level bed) by oxen in pairs (is that redundant?) and a Nepali male riding the implement behind, often grunting and verbalizing strange noises that these animals understand. On planting days a woman will trail the team dropping corn kernels into the ditch that is made, leaving a seam of seeds which will be covered by soil when the team makes the next pass. Pretty incredible system…all of this is of course preceded by spreading compost (usually before the first plough) in laundry hamper sized loads, carried in bamboo baskets on women’s backs, tethered to the back with a strip of cloth around the basket and pulled taught on the forehead, whose contents is then plopped onto the fields in a well spaced array until the entire terrace is covered. Laxmi’s (the goddess of success and material wealth, embodied by the cow) abundance in all its steamy, nitrogenous glory hopefully giving back to the earth the richness need to grow the next year’s food. I bullshit you not. The planting cycle is a marvel to see as I approach my one year in Nepal mark. Soon again the monsoon rains and the months of rice plant. Cauliflower and cabbages replaced by peppers and cucumber and gourds. The changes afoot are many, manifold and marked, as I came back to village after taking three weeks (of my 48 allotted leave days) to hike the Annapurna Circuit with Nir. We began in the town of BesiSahar, Lamjung and hiked for 15 days, ending our trek in Nayapul, Kaski. Circumnambulating the Annapurna range, beginning in the low lands, passing banana trees and oranges, through cliffy hillsides and pine forest, finally up above tree line where juniper and yaks stand grazing, the icy winds unrelenting on wooly coats. We took three days to approach the La Thorung pass - just below 18,000 feet, staying in tea houses with plywood walls and prayer flags and salted butter tea to warm the cosmos within. Save for breathlessness (lack of oxygen and the presence of such thundering mountains all around) we made it up and over, taking hands out of gloves just long enough to snap a selfie or two and descend. Crossing the pass we made it to Muktinath, a pilgrimage for Nepali’s and Indians alike. The 108 cow headed taps lining the walls of the temple if bathed in, are said to absolve all earthly sin, so after stashing our packs we trucked it up to the temple and in all our absolution, got a gnarly case of brain freeze as well. Muktinath lead to Jomsom and a rainy, windy retreat before going on through apple country (where there is a mean apple brandy made, I brought some back for my grandmother figure in village!) down finally to where we began to see some familiar vegetation, and eventually reached the riverside and followed the Kali Gandaki all the way back to the highway where we high tailed it to Pokhara to recover from the travels. (Oh yes, there was a bout of food sickness for me at the end – first time I puked in Nepal in fact – 11 months in I’de say was pretty good!) An awesome adventure, and a long standing dream. What a better way to enjoy it than with Nir as well, teaching him Nepali songs as we wandered down the trails, keeping each other honest, and warm, on well below freezing nights.

I am stoked to know that he is soon returning to Nepal with the next Peace Corps class, and so will be placed somewhere in these Himalayan hills, perhaps only one or two death defying bus rides away (a girl can dream, can’t she?) The trek concluded just in time to get stuck in Pokhara for 2 days due to a nation wide transportation strike (these are actually fairly common and never very tumultuous events) and so I returned to village a bit later than planned with a face full of paint seeing as it was Holi and even I with bulging backpack and sore calves was not immune to the assails of the kids on the streets with their bags of colored powders, ready to rub them on the cheeks of passerbyers in royal purple and electric pink.

Spent a week in village and am now off to Kathmandu for an all volunteer meeting at the Peace Corps office, and a wonderful chance to see everyone and commiserate and laugh at the rather strange, trying and awesome lives we are all in the thick of. After Kathmandu then back to village, where it will be time to begin construction! The money for the nursery grant I wrote was approved and upon reaching village we will dive into cutting bamboo, hiring carpenters, amassing resources and constructing the tunnels and simple irrigation system for our soon to be community nursery. Kopila remains my steadfast partner in all of this, a dear friend and confidant, tough as nails, hardworking as hell, and becoming more and more of my true didi (older sister). I am lucky to have found such an ally here when at times the cultural chasms and context/social cue barriers can be so thick as to make lots of my interactions with villagers head-scratch provoking at best. And yet, we are all so very human, and so to relate to one another while in some sense intractably inaccessible, is also imminently accessible. You drink chiya together and when it rains you move onto the porch together. You ask people where they’re going when they pass by. Namaste’s abounding. Sitting by the fire with Kopila after eating popcorn for 3 PM snack (today’s corn sewn, tomorrow’s popcorn consumed!) talking of our lives in all their unlikeliness’s. Innumerable Blessings. (I’ll have to learn how to say that in Nepali before too long!)

Many hugs and much metta to you all. May you find peace in your hearts and wind in your sails, and in your gardens of plenty, bunches of kale.

Namaste,

Aja/Jayaji