Hello all! It's been a while since my
last update (http://journals.worldnomads.com/bokserb/). Since then I
have experienced an interesting educational tour of the grounds of a
Hindu temple, the Dashein festival in Kathmandu, and a meanignful Yom
Kippur at the Chabad Jewish center in Kathmandu. I have also studied
and learned a lot. I was unable to write in much detail about these
things, though I have attached some pictures from this time. However,
I have written in detail about the time starting with the Jewish
holiday of Sukkot. Enjoy the following...
On the Jewish holiday of Sukkot we
build temporary huts covered with organic matter and pray with four
species of plants (myrtle, willow, palm branches and citron fruit).
The holiday comes at the time of the fall harvest and these two
activities serve to counter the potential haughtiness that could come
from a good crop. At this time when it is easy to become proud and
self-absorbed in our accomplishments we go outside of the civilized
trappings of our homes to a house that is clearly built from nature
and that is dependent on the gracious protection of God. We show that
we are too a part of nature and that all that has come to us has come
from God. We pray with the four species to show that we, like the
four species, are dependent on water to survive. While these two
activities are meant to be humbling, they are also meant to inspire a
happy gratitude.
This year I fulfilled the ideas of
Sukkot in an additional manner. On the second day of Sukkot, after
celebrating the first day in a beautiful Sukkah in our group's house
in Kathmandu, I and seven other volunteers (and two staff) in the
Tevel b'Tzedek program traveled to the village of Suspa to begin
volunteering there. As was appropriate for the holiday, we were
leaving the more civilized trappings of Kathmandu (and Israel and
America before that) for a village of simpler lifestyles whose
residents live more directly off their own land. Here we live with
people who seem to have the humble and grateful happiness which is
the point of Sukkot. See below for a day-by-day description.
Wednesday 10/15
We leave our house in Kathmandu at
5:30AM to try to make the 6:30 bus. When we arrive at the “bus
park” we realize that our Nepali staff member Bishnu can only make
the 7:30 bus so we have some time to wait at the bus park. While
waiting the group sits for tea and I recite my morning prayers in
front of the tea shop. As it is Sukkot, my prayers include waving the
traditional four species (willow, myrtle, palm, and citron) in
additon to wearing Tefillin (phylacteries), leather straps and boxes
worn on the arm and head every morning. I was aware that what I was
doing was very foreign to the many people around and noticed many
stares. Yet as this is Nepal I could simply explain “Mero Puja” -
my worship – and they would somewhat understand.
After a little while on the bus we
reached a point where we would stop for ten minutes, move another
little bit, and then stop for another ten minutes. After a while of
this the bus stopped for good and everyone got out – we realized we
had reached a bhanda – a strike – and there would be no
movement for some time. Bishnu told us that the strike was done by
the family of someone who had recently been wounded in a bus accident
and wanted the bus company to pay for treatment (in Nepal there is
almost no health insurance and the family could not pay). Along with
the stream of people who had been freed from their cramped buses for
a little bit I saw the center of the strike; at two places trees had
been placed in the middle of the road and what seemed like the family
was in the middle. As it was hot and we were lucky the strike was
alongside a river, so I and some friends jumped in for a short swim.
Soon after, though, we were called back with the message that the bus
was about to leave. The bus filled up and we nervously tried to call
our entire group – and then it turned out that the bus still could
not leave for about twenty minutes.
We arrived near dark to Suspa and the
house where five of us rent rooms and another three often stay. After
a long day of travel we were very happy to eat the homemade dhal
bhaat that the woman of the house gave us. Dhal Bhaat is
the basic meal in Nepal and consists of dhal, a lentil stew,
bhaat, rice, and tarkari, a cooked vegetable dish. Yet
the name is misleading because in many parts of Nepal dhal
is not grown locally and is thus not often eaten and rice can be
expensive. Other possible elements include diro, a thick
porridge/polenta made of millet or corn flour, and achar, a
cold (and spicy or sour) vegetable dish. We eat dhal bhaat
with our hands in the village after mixing the diro or rice
with any of the other more liquidy elements. The dhal bhaat we
eat in the village is an alternative eater's dream – almost fully
organic, local, and macrobiotic. While dhal and much of the
rice we eat is bought from a store (the family's rice crop is enough
for only 3-6 months), the rest of the food comes from the family's
garden right by the house or from local wild plants. Vegetables to be
eaten are picked right before each meal. Thus the food is obviously
local and macrobiotic (seasonal), and as the family uses no
pesticides and a very small amount of chemical fertilizer (in
addition to compost), it is pretty darn organic. To my benefit as
well, the food is also vegetarian and thus (to my standards at least)
kosher (the family eats meat about once every few months on
festivals, and uses different dishes for preparing meat). We have
come to love the fresh and tasty dhal bhaat we eat in the
village and fill our stomachs at every meal – which is just morning
and evening here in Nepal (a small snack is eaten in the afternoon).
Of course, it is only fitting that dhal bhaat be such an
important part of our day. My work with village agriculture is
focused on helping the village women raise vegetables in the gardens
near their houses. We spend all of our day learning, thinking, and
helping raise vegetables. We have learned a lot about the vegetables
raised locally and how to care for them. So eating those vegetables
is the crowning achievement of our work.
Thursday 10/16
After dhal bhaat we built a
Sukkah with the help of the man of the house, Pirthivi. He is a
jack-of-all-trades who works on carpentry and electrical projects
throughout the village, so he was very resourceful in helping us make
the Sukkah; it was finished pretty quickly. Building the Sukkah also
seemed to come pretty natural to him since many things in the village
are made of local organic materials. For the rest of the week I ate
my dhal bhaat in the Sukkah; At every meal I would come up to
the top floor, where the family eats, cooks, sleeps, etc. in one big
room, and be given a heaping plate of food (so as not to have to come
back too many times for a refill), which I would take down and eat in
the Sukkah.
The rest of the day was not too
eventful; some people went to town to buy food, the group members who
are teaching in the local schools went to visit one of the schools,
and we reviewed material about gardening.
Friday 10/17
Either today or yesterday we began
doing Yoga in the mornings. Irit, a member of the agriculture team,
is very experienced in Yoga and also an experienced teacher. So she
leads us every day – mostly at 6:30AM – in a Yoga class that has
been great for my body. I do my morning prayers before Yoga, waking
up around 5:30, which is fine since we go to sleep around 9PM here.
In the morning I helped the “education
team” move their stuff up to a house they live in during the week
which is closer to the schools. We walked through a beautiful
forested area. When I returned to our house I helped cook for
Shabbat.
Shabbat 10/17 evening to 10/18 day
As a group we did evening services and
dinner in the Sukkah. While it was cold, both went well and dinner
was great. The Sukkah was lit by flashlights which we hung from the
roof of the Sukkah. On the next morning some people went to a nearby
town for the day. I stayed and participated in Yoga, a great meal,
and a group reading of the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes),
traditionally read in synagouges today.
Sunday 10/19
We started work for real. In the
morning we (the agriculture team) worked in the demonstration
vegetable garden of ETC (the NGO whose work we are joining here). We
prepared a tomato nursery and garden under a greenhouse. I learned
more about the work of gardening. In the afternoon we did some
“kitchen garden monitoring” with the ETC staff and visited a
garden with a great tomato greenhouse.
Monday 10/20
We ate dhal bhaat early and
rushed to get to an 8:15 AM bus to a nearby village in the area. As
is often necessary in Nepal, I sat on the top of the bus, which is
always somewhat exhilirating while scary and uncomfortable. When we
got off the bus we met an ETC staff member and walked for about 20
minutes straight up to the village. ETC runs its village activities
through women's groups composed of about 20 women who live near each
other. We had come to see such a women's group meeting. It was run
(by the ETC staff member) in Nepali, so we couldn't really understand
anything, but we were able to notice each woman donating dues to a
group microfinance fund, some women requesting loans and then
receiving them after everyone else agreed, and the staff member
recording everything in the group's records book. What seemed great
was that the staff member was only facilitating but the women were
really in charge. After the meeting we did some more garden
monitoring.
Tuesday 10/21
We did some more kitchen garden
monitoring with ETC staff. In the afternoon we prepared some food for
the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.
Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah Tuesday
night to Wednesday 10/22
We began with prayers and the
traditional singing and dancing done on the holiday. It was smaller
and shorter than the singing and dancing I usually do in a bigger
Jewish community but felt very special nonetheless, as this is a
group I feel very close to at this point. We ate with our host family
but did the special prayers over wine and bread before eating. After
eating we invited the parents to have some roxi (a local
alcoholic drink) with us, which they did. Yet right after they
offered us their own homemade roxi and jar, another
local drink made of corn meal. It felt very much in the spirit of the
holiday. In the morning I prayed alone in a beatiful spot near the
house, we did Yoga, and then went downhill to the rice paddies, which
are all being cut now. It was a beatiful sight and fun as well –
all the children go with their parents down to cut rice. Afer a fun
hike up the river from the rice fields we read from the day's Torah
reading.
Thursday 10/22
A full day of work at the ETC garden.
The day was dedicated to preparing an organic pesticide based on cow
urine and leaves of strong-smelling plants. We cut up the plants and
filled them in a burlap sack. We then dug a pit, put the sack in the
pit, and filled the pit with diluted cow urine. The liquid will take
in the scents and ingredients of the plants and after a few weeks
will be a powerful yet safe pesticide.
Friday 10/23
We did some more work in the ETC garden
– weeding and turning soil. In the afternoon I prepared food for
Shabbat and showered in the river.
Shabbat Friday night and Saturday 10/24
We started with communal evening
prayers joined by many of the local children. Though they don't know
Hebrew at all, they were very excited to sing and clap along. Many
also grabbed prayer books and pretended to follow the words.
Afterwards we ate dinner joined by the rest of the host family; the
parents enjoyed our food which made us very proud. In the morning
there was Yoga, lunch, and reading of the Torah portion. In the
evening Irit led a very throughtful discussion about our impressions
of the village and how exactly we see ourselves affecting it.
Sunday 10/25
Me and the two other “junior members”
of the agriculture team, Itamar and Gili, went for some more kitchen
garden monitoring with an ETC staff member. Yet we spent more time
enjoying the scenery and running into the staff member's friends than
doing real monitoring.
Monday 10/26
We went to visit Makunda, the principal
of one of the local schools, to speak about working on agriculture in
the school. Makunda is a Brahmin and he lives uphill in a
neighborhood markedly different from that of the poorer Thami ethnic
group where we live. The houses have ornately carved windows,
beautiful flowers and other plants, and very well-kept vegetable
gardens. We were served home-grown tea in ceramic cups (as opposed to
the metal cups used by almost everyone in Nepal). Makunda showed us
around the school's large grounds and we saw how much area there is
for agricultural projects in the school. We spent the rest of the
afternoon hanging out with the “education team” at their house
nearby.
This week is the festival of Tihar, and
today was the day of the dog puja (offering/worship). At
Makunda's house we noticed a dog with a garland around his neck. He
had been fed puja by Makunda's family and presumably many
others.
Tuesday 10/27
The Nepali (Hindu, yet observed also by
the Thami ethnic group in the village and many others) festival of
Tihar went into full swing starting in the morning with the cow puja.
The family we stay with offered ceremonial food to their cows, dabbed
their foreheads with tikka (a colorful ceremonial paste
including red rice), and put garlands on their necks. Then the family
(and some of us) received tikka and food as well. While the
cows were happy to have the sweet ceremonial food, they were not
fully cooperative in recieveing the tikka and garlands, yet
the family persisted. The mother of the house explained that the cows
do not understand what is going on, but this did not seem to deter
her. While some might look down on this custom, I appreciated the
idea of expressing gratitude to different things that we depend on –
such as cows, which provide Nepalis with milk and manure – even if
those things cannot understand.
In the evening we were served a lot of
raxi for the holiday so that we were ready to fully enjoy the
performance of the child club at 9:30 (which is after our bedtime).
About fifteen kids of assorted ages were going around the village
performing dances accompanied by music and singing. After a number of
impressive dances, they opened into a simpler song with a chorus
repeated every line. We soon learned that this was the song where
they ask for donations – and, for a foreign group such as us,
expect a lot and keep singing until they are satisfied or worn out.
After one of those happened (not sure which), they invited us to
dance with them, which we did. It was a fun “late night” that
lasted until 10:30PM.
Wednesday 10/28
After morning dhal bhaat the
celebration continued with the preparation of sel, a brown
simple doughnut. The mother of the house (with a little of my help)
prepared a lot, and we ate a lot. Afterwards we went uphill to where
people had constructed swings – one standard back-and-forth swing,
and another four-seat merry-go-round-style swing. All were built by
hand of local material (wood and rope). Four of us went on the
merry-go-round swing and it was very fun, though we felt we were
straining its capacity and got off quickly. After this we returned to
the house for a very interesting discussion led by participants Barak
and Galia about the Thami ethnic group that makes up the majority of
the village region. Their culture is very interesting – e.g.
property and clan names are handed down through female and male lines
as girls inherit from their mother and boys from their father – yet
many aspects of their socioeconomic status are depressing.
Dinner was a special meal. It is
customary to eat buffalo meat on Thursday, but because we were going
to leave on Thursday the family cooked meat instead on Wednesday, but
using separate dishes and a separate fire out of respect for those of
us who keep Kosher. The first course was a plate of sel,
coconut, a fried hard boiled egg, and rock candy, and a bowl of meat
for those who eat non-kosher meat. Afterwards we ate a special dhal
bhaat including dhal (lentil stew, rare in this house) and
a peanut and potato vegetable curry. After dinner there were again
visits by roving groups singing and dancing, yet this time the groups
were made up of somewhat tipsy adults, which made for a different
experience.
Thursday 10/29
Before leaving for Kathmandu we were
presented flower garland necklaces as a holiday going-away present.
Yet it took a while for a bus to come and the bus only went partway,
to the town of Chericot. There were no buses going to Kathmandu in
the morning, so we had to wait unsure of how we would arrive until a
bus finally took as at 1PM.
Friday 10/30
We were back in Kathmandu with the rest
of the Tevel b'Tzedek group for “Seminar Nepal.” For the first
segment, we were split up into different groups researching different
sectors of Nepali society – Tibetan refugees, the Newari ethnic
group, Muslims in Nepal, and the Young Communist League (associated
with the Maoist movement which has succeeded in overthrowing the
monarchy and winning parliamentary elections held this year). My
group researched Tibetan refugees. We had an interesting time
including a visit to a Tibetan monastery and a “refugee camp”
made up of the houses across from our group's house. The afternoon
was spent cooking for Shabbat.
Shabbat Friday and Saturday 10/31
After a great Friday night meal I went
straight to sleep to wake up for the group's 5:30AM walk uphill to
the nearby Swayambhou temple. We saw a beautiful sunrise from the top
and observed the large number of people jogging and/or worshippping
at this early hour. Afterwards I did Yoga, which made for a very
focused morning prayer following. At 10AM we had an interesting
speech by Shanti, a parliament member from the United Marxist
Leninist party (which is less radical than the Maoists) about human
and womens' rights, a field she has worked in. After lunch we all
presented our research from Friday morning and then Yotam, a staff
member who also works at the Israeli embassy, talked about the
complicated situation of Nepali foreign workers in Israel. After
Shabbat there was a very impressive talent show.
Sunday 11/2
“Seminar Nepal” finished up with a
speech by a top secretary of the Maoist party. In short, he said that
Nepal suffers from structural oppression (of the poor, women, and
ethnicities) domestically and external interference and that the
ruling Maoist party hopes to address these issues through
renegotiating treaties with India, land reform, a strong
constitution, and development. It was interesting to see him describe
Nepali history from a different angle – that of exploitation –
than others have. Also of note was his emphasis that the Maoist party
sees previous communist states as mistaken in their lack of respect
for human rights and political competition.
I followed that speech with a visit to
Zandon Ukyab, the husband of a colleague of my mother's in the New
York West Side Montessori school. Mr. Ukyab warmly welcomed me and
talked to me a little about his political views and experiences,
which were very interesting to me. He spent many years involved in
the government in the previous monarchial republic regime, including
a role as consul to Tibet. Yet when the last king curtailed democracy
in 2006, he switched his
support to the Maoists and is currently active in consulting with the
Maoist government. As with the previous speaker, this experience gave
me the impression that the Maoist government is serious and
thoughtful. With people like Mr. Ukyab providing advice, I am
optimistic about the government's future.
Monday 11/3
We woke up very early to make a 6AM bus
back to Suspa. The bus went very quickly and we were at Suspa by 1PM.
We spent most of the afternoon helping in the rice fields. First we
helped our host father's parents (who seemed very old) in the hard
work of collecting and piling up their emptied rice stalks. The old
woman worked harder than me. Part of me is saddened by the amount of
work people here do even at an old age, yet part of me is impressed.
Then we helped our host family collecting and piling rice stalks in
the field they work.
Tuesday 11/4
At 6:30 was the first meeting of the
child club which we are leading a few mornings a week. While it took
a while for children to come, we had fun.
Today was election day in the US, but I
didn't have much to do with it, especially since the election only
started late in the day given the time difference. Today we worked a
bit in the ETC garden and had a bunch of planning meetings. Our
Nepali staff member Bishnu had a baby boy and we celebrated.
Wednesday 11/5
We left early for a day of lots of
walking. Along with the ETC staff we walked throughout the village
area to visit the leader farmer of seven womens' groups to set dates
when we will come and teach how to prepare organic pesticide.
Throughout the morning I tried to call my mom to find out the
election results. When I finally found out that Obama won, I and some
of the others in the group who were Obama supporters were very happy.
The day was also happy because it was the birthday of our staff
member Leora. At the end of the day we had a little celebration with
her.
Thursday 11/6
I went to Chericot, a town near Suspa,
to buy supplies for the group. We cook our own meals for Shabbat, and
since there isn't much available at local stores, we buy food for
Shabbat in Chericot. I just rode in on top of the bus and had a
beautiful view of the Himalaya mountains - most of them fully
snow-covered. Some seemed very big. The view of the mountains in the
background of the high hills in the foreground is very special. While
in Chericot I went to check my email but the internet was very slow
and otherwise problematic, so I spent a lot of time staring at the
screen and didn't finish all that I wanted to do online.
After I returned home we went to the
ETC office to visit another foreigner who will be volunteering here, Tracy Tyson. Tracy, an experienced Montessori teacher from Ohio, will be here until June
at least teaching in a local school with the goal of adapting Montessori
teaching to Nepali resources and context and providing general
teacher training. This seems like a very interesting project which
fits with ETC's goal of improving on the overly frontal teaching
here.
Friday 11/7
In the morning we finished visiting
leader farmers to arrange organic pesticide training. Afterwards we
returned home to bathe and cook for Shabbat. Tevel b'Tzedek has
opened a new program for short-term volunteers, and this group
arrived in the afternoon for a short visit. While I had met them
before and they had seemed nice, it was difficult for me at first to
see a large group of outsiders in the village as they seemed out of
place and I felt like I had work to do in cooking for Shabbat. But
after a little while I was able to adjust and be a good host happy to
have more people see this wonderful village.
Shabbat Friday night and Saturday 11/8
We started Shabbat with the largest
Kabbalat Shabbat services Suspa has surely ever seen. Our ten people,
seventeen of the short-term volunteers and two staff, a number of ETC
staff plus Tracy, and
a few village children, packed into our communal room for a Kabbalat
Shabbat that was spirited despite being limited to about five prayer
books. Afterwards the ETC staff and Tracy stayed for dinner, which
was followed by roxi
and fun revelry – singing and dancing of Israeli and Nepali songs.
Shabbat
day was pretty uneventful. Lunch was a picnic on a warm patch of
grass with a great view.
Sunday
11/9
The
day started with a fun (though a bit stressful) child club and Yoga.
As it was a Nepali (Hindu) holiday, we did not work with the local
women, but instead practiced preparing the pit and ingredients for
the organic pesticide at our own house. We also built a mud oven for
us to bake with for the rest of our time here. Many villagers,
including the father of our house, walked three hours to a holiday
service. He returned along with the other villagers in a parade of
music and dance. Many women, including the mother of our house,
fasted today. She broke her fast with the first local rice of the
season, which we first ate in a ceremonial dish of uncooked rice,
yogurt, and spices (very tasty) and then as part of dhal
bhaat.
The local rice is much tastier than the rice we've eaten here before,
which is bought imported from India. There seem to be a number of
possible reasons for this: it is a different species; it is processed
and milled less intensively as e.g. the mill here is river-powered;
rice from higher altitudes is better. Either way, this rice tastes
better and, the mother of the house has told us, is more nutritous.
For whatever reasons, the imported rice is presumably produced for
price and quantity and not for quality, and the costs of such a focus
are clear. Yet without such low-quality, mass-produced rice, this
family might not have enough to eat for most of the year; their local
rice will only last about a month.
Monday
11/10
After
a short yoga and morning prayers, we went to the child club, where
today we handed out notebooks for the children to research family
history and the like. We had them decorate their notebook covers,
which they enjoyed a lot, and then gave them a first research
question – to find out about the day they were born. After dhal
bhaat
I, Itamar, and Gili (two others in the agriculture team) set out for
our first day of teaching village women how to prepare organic
pesticide. While there were a number of complications – the women
didn't come to the arranged meeting spot so we had to find them at
one of their houses, and they didn't have the exact required
materials – it went well and we had fun. By the way, the organic
pesticide is a solution of (e.g. cow) urine, water, and strong
smelling plants. Our teaching involves building a pit lined with
plastic sheeting for the solution to sit on, making sure the
appropriate plants are there, cutting the plants and putting them in
a sack, and explaining the rest of the preparation of the solution
and its use. This is a task that is very much needed, as the women's
plants suffer from pests and fungi but the women don't exactly know
how to prepare the solution, while easy enough for us to have learned
quickly.
After
finishing the three of us headed over to the Chemawati school to help
Irit and Galia, also in the agriculture team (Galia is working in
agriculture and education), as well as staff members Bishnu and
Leora, who were leading work in the school garden. Some of the work
was preparing beds for a vegetable garden and some was preparing a
plot for an experiment in which we will plant wheat in different
conditions (with and without compost, water, or sunlight) and notice
the differences. This will all be in conjunction with an agricultural
science class Irit will lead.
