Fist day in Nepal, I planned to stay at the hotel and rest. But I met the other volunteers and I joined their travel plans. So far we are only four volunteers at the hotel. we are two friends from France, another Canadian -Irish girl and me. The other volunteers will arrive on Sunday night and we will start our volunteer work on Monday. By Monday there will be around 18 of us here.
The guys have been here for a week and have visited many temples. Unfortunately most of them had undergone some type of damage due to a recent earthquake. So, the guys wanted to visit a temple at the other side of the city hoping it would not have been destroyed by the shaking. However, we had to walk there since it is hard to find transportation. It turns out that India stopped selling oil to Nepal for some diplomatic reason and there is a big shortage of gas. Most gasoline has to be bought in the black market and it is expensive. I was lucky I had no troubles last night when they picked me up at the airport. The people at the hotel could not pick up the other girl from Canada because they could not find gas to fill up the car (I am guessing they ran out of gas after picking me up). She had to find a taxi to drive her to the hotel and everything was fine.
We ended up walking for about 2 hrs in order to get to the Bouddhanath Stuppa temple which is sacred to Buddhism. The guys used a map to navigate the city. I was glad they were there because the streets are not marked with names and I would not have known where to turn. We passed residential areas, main roads, markets, commercial areas, schools, etc. There were many tiny temples in the way, in between the houses. There were dogs sleeping everywhere. Having naps in the middle of the road, oblivious to the cars around them. There were several baby cows that didn't have any issue letting me take pictures of them (I tried to take a picture of calves in Canada once but they ran away when they saw me :(). Our walk really gave me a sense of the city and the culture.
We also stopped to eat because the guys wanted some "Momo". It looked like perogies. It was super spicy to me but not to the rest of the group. I also had some hot tea which really help with the spice, but it burned my tongue. I hope to get used to the flavour over time since I am going to be here for 2 months, and all the food seems to be hot. I had some "Lassia" which is a fruit drink with goat milk. I really enjoyed that one :).
When we arrived to the temple it had been damaged by the earthquake. There were lots of monks praying and walking around. The highlight was that I learned to use a singing bowl. It is a metal bowl with a wooden stick. It looks like a mortar but it makes a beautiful sound if you softly touch its edges with a wooden stick. You are supposed to focus on the sound and let all the other noises disappear the background. It is used for meditation.
We also met a guy who wanted to walk with us because he was learning English, and he wanted to practice. He said he would not ask us for money. He explained lots of things about the temple and he was nice. But, when we said goodbye he wanted us to buy him some rice at some store. We agreed (since he had been so helpful) and walked towards the grocery of his choice. When we got to the store he ordered rice + cooking oil + milk. The total price was $37.0 U.S. dollars. The milk alone was only $22 U.S!!!. That is the most expensive milk I have ever seen. In Canada a litter of milk is about $4 dollars. It was such a rip off :(. We ended up buying him only the milk because he said that he needed it the most! He told us that the milk was for his baby sister, that his parents had died a couple of years ago and that he had no money for food. The total price of his desired groceries was enough to feed all four of us at a nice restaurant. Now, I figure he had it all planned with the man who was selling the groceries. He probably knew we would take us there and make us buy the stuff at an inflated price, and split the money. It feel so stupid now! How did I fall in the scam!
Here, you really have to be careful because people sell you stuff at very inflated prices and then you find out they took advantage of you. It is bad!. It makes me feel like I don't really want to buy anything just to avoid being ripped off . It is an awful feeling to know that someone has taken advantage of your good will.
I also got to ride on a cab. It was a crazy experience. There are no light signals in the streets, so people and cars mix together. People just cross anywhere on the road and cars just go around them. Vehicles honk to tell you to move out of their way. At one point, we had a bus coming directly towards us (apparently that is normal). Also buses are so full of people that you can see their cheeks stuck to the window, hanging on the doors and sitting on the ceiling.
I was worried about pollution but it was not bad during our walk to the temple ( probably because of the gas crisis decreasing the number of cars, and because it was not rush hour). Pollution started to become a real problem around 6pm. I started coughing, and my throat started being sore when I spoke. I guess that is why I saw a lot of people wearing face masks on the street. Tomorrow, I will wear a scarf to cover my mouth during rush hour because I hate the face mask!!
It is terrible how oil controls the world but it is so harmful to us. Everyone was freaking out about not having gas but no-body cares about having to wear a face mask?. Or about not having potable water?. What is wrong with us people? Restaurants here in Nepal are running out of certain foods because there is no gas for the trucks that transport food products. Is this the future we want? Do we know that oil is eventually and inevitable going to ran out? Do we know that oil causes pollution and makes us sick?
I think back about Canada where oil prices are down and many people lost their jobs. Gas is too unstable and is bound to be gone. I think our livelihood has to come from something other than oil. SO much unrest is not want the future needs. I hope this crisis serves like a wakeup call for us to start working about alternative clean energies. I believe that Canada has the brain power to make it happen!! We just need to make renewable energies our goal. We could combine the efforts of so many intelligent people in order to make it happen. It should be a priority. Developing clean energies will benefit our economy, and will also have a big effect in poor countries like Nepal.
