Nama(staying) busy - updates from Nepal

Dear All, Hello from a respite in the rain, and a little fan-cooled hotel room in Pokhara. It seems like ages since I last wrote. As usual, lots of things to report...but where to begin? On the homefront of course! Both tunnels for the nursery are up! One is now full of tomatoes whose first fruits are just beginning to come out and whom we must be good stewards of as early and late blights spread easily in these hot, wet conditions.

(It is said by seasoned Nepali farmers that growing tomatoes without pesticides/fungicide in Nepal is nearly impossible. If not impossible, truly a challenge. Good thing my didi is onboard to cook up some "compost tea" with me as a natural alternative and try this on our plants instead of chemicals!) Considering we sort of missed the window for sewing rainy seasons starts to sell in village, we decided to use the first tunnel for our own personal agricultural experimentation, and wait to plant seedlings for the cold season once the larger tunnel was done. (Though while everyone may have already planted their sponge gourds, cucumbers and peppers before our nursery was fully up and running, we did have plenty of tomato seedlings left over after starting our own plants from seed, of which we sold almost all of to our neighbor farmers with tunnels!). The plants are now chest height and about a week ago didi, Nir and I spent a meditative afternoon trellising and removing blighted leaves while sweating bullets in our humid, hot (and therefore effective!) tunnel (aka basic green house). It is fun and still sort of mysterious to see the literal fruits of our labor ripening on the stalk.

I returned from our Peace Corps mid service training at the end of June, enduring a 6 hour traffic jam on the main road heading west of KTM to get home - think dwindling water bottles, bodies bathed in sweat, baking in cars creeping along the one lane highway winding inexorably above the brown and rushing Trushuli river. Needless to say, the men selling slices of cucumber with chili and salt made a killing. The monsoon is not so forgiving for these hillsides and the beat of brutal rains leads to landslides, and on such skinny laned highways, these interruptions of rock and dirt can mean back ups for miles. In my case, this one was 30 Km! So while the monsoon may not be the best time for travel, it certainly didn't slow down our project at home...

Once again to the forest to cut bamboo! Once again hauling the giant poles through village back to the homefront. In fact, because we cut so many, and because I just got darned tired of walking so far to only move one pole at a time, I suggested to my didi we call upon the rest of the Dalit community to help us by proposing to them to come with us one morning and in exhange for hauling one bamboo from the harvesting site (about a half mile away) to the site of our second tunnel, we would feed them their morning dahl bhaat, cooked by Jaya and company! Luckily, they went for it, and while perhaps a bit sleep deprived the actual event of (having stayed up late with didi the night before to make curry for around 20 and waking up early the next day to put the massive pot of rice on to boil) the meal came off successfully, and I took this as a small victory for getting the community involved in the nursery, and bringing the people together to enjoy a meal.

With bamboo amassed, dhaai and I (and Nir too! Shout out to this one for all the bamboo processing he helped with as I ran around doing other tasks!) managed to find plenty of sunny mornings before afternoon thunderstorms to construct the second tunnel. This second tunnel is sizably bigger than the first, and recently dug by me and didi. Soil soon to be amended with compost, beds to be built up and then to get some seeds in the ground! The drum and pipe irrigation system is running like a dream. The grant money is being spent and put to good use. Didi and I are giving ourselves and each other the space to experiment and learn from our mistakes. We grimaced as we (ruthlessly?) uprooted a few tomatoes who were blighted beyond saving, but took refuge in the fact that these lessons are indispensable parts of the all encompassing "Ahnubhav" (as my didi says) or "experience" we continue to gain. The sunflowers we planted that I spoke of in my post in May are now blooming, and there is a hint of chill on the air at night...a harbinger of the fall and winter to come. Many beautiful things in my life as of late. As some of you may have seen on the old facebook, Nir and I got engaged a few weeks ago...a proposal I can't say I didn't see coming, but that certainly doesn't make it less exciting or big feeling. Without becoming too mushy or maudlin for you, my sensible reader, lets just say I feel utterly blessed to be joining my life with that of my best friend and soul mate.

Many, many adventures in tandem to come. While we will not be getting married on US soil until after Nir's service is over (post June 2019) we are currently planning a Nepali wedding (symbolical but still certainly ceremonial) for the end of November. I figured it was too cool of a chance to pass up - to have a mulitcultural wedding, wear a red sari, invite my whole village, and all my peace corps friends (to say nothing of our immediate stateside family!) to come celebrate such love in sight of the himals!? Still many months to go before real preparations begin, but definitely some plans to set in motion before the event itself... It is interesting now to be able to see the remaning ten months of my service, and truly be able to plan out the time ahead, not only by the events punctuating the months (wedding aside, the Nepali holiday season is coming up in Sep/October) but by the cyclical nature of the stark seasons here: being able now to see the monsoon rice paddies in floursecent green as soon to give way to harvesting time, stock piling the straw to feed the animals as the cold settles into the hills, the green lushness of the landscape mutes a little as fields lay fallow after bundles of millet straw are also collected and removed. The sun will set earlier the cold wind will blow, no more mosquitoes will buzz by my head during meditation, and then soon enough the cold will give way to the spring, and before I know it the monsoon will have started up again and plunge the place and its people into another turn of the great cycle. I am astounded, and in gratitude, and also down right tired. A deep fatigue has settled in my body-mind and it seems sort of unshakable as of late...no amount of rice or sleep can seem to replenish the old energy stores. Can this be a symptom of what some other volunteers may have called our "17 month slump?" or perhaps the realities of day in and out of village life (and work? are such words not synonymous?). Again, all things a lesson, again all sensations rising and falling. Lovely to hear notes from the world afar, do drop a line if you've got the time. Many blessings, Aja