We've been living within the Maiti Nepal Itahari rehabilitation house compound in tents. There's 8 of us, project leader Wendy, the group nurse Jess (who we renamed 'Nurse Jackie' for the entire trip - apparently it's a tv show), 2 Nepalese architecture students, Krishna and Min, and then our guide, Sandesh, our porter, Raj, and our cook, Maila.
We renamed Sandesh 'Sundance' and he's seriously one of the most loveable people I've ever met. Sometimes we sing "you are my sunshine" together. He's constantly smiling. Raj is crazy and likes to occasionally shout or sing things really loudly. He calls me "Saltini" which apparently means "good friend" in Nepali. Maila is quiet but just an amazing guy. He had a kind face and he makes the most amazing food. He even managed to make us pizza.. On a GAS CAMPING STOVE. The mind boggles. These guys usually work taking people up proper mountains.. Sundance has been most of the way up Everest (before his clients got too sick and had to head down) so by working for Aussie Action Abroad they manage to get a month of employment they wouldn't normally get since it's currently Nepalese Winter (not so great for climbing Everest - which takes about 90 days in case you were curious).
It's been a tent city - 2 to a tent except for nurse Jackie, Wendy and Sandesh who get their own tents, a toilet tent, a shower tent, a kitchen tent and a dining tent. Raj even erected a big flagpole in the middle of the grounds with an Australian and a Nepali flag. We've been really lucky to be located in the Terai.. It's sort of like a Biloela Winter - down jackets in the night/early morning and tshirts during the day. Mornings generally began with Ricki and I bursting into song in our tent. I think the others got used to it eventually.
The project work went well. The first few days were the hardest with the full interior demolition of the bathroom, which involved a lot of chiseling, sledge hammering (massively fun) and carrying of piles and piles of bricks and chunks of concrete. All without a single power tool. There was something like 3 or 4 layers of flooring to get through because of the way they build it here. No waterproof layer.. Just dirt, then big rocks as foundation then chunks of brick then concrete then the flooring.
It was really interesting building 'Nepali style'.. There's too many funny stories to even begin to tell them all on here. The tradies each had assistants.. And then there also seemed to be a bunch of 'watchers' as well. You never really know what you're getting with tradies. We thought we'd hired a plumber.. only to have the guy tell us half way through he'd have to call the plumber for part of the job.. "uhh.. aren't YOU the plumber??!". My favourite tradie was the tiler (who turned out to actually be the plasterer/demolition guy) who was named Shiri (which kind of sounds like 'Shitty' when pronounced correctly, so we called him Tiler for most of the project until the real tiler guy came.. That guy was an ass). A few of us bumped into him at the village corner store one afternoon (on the routine chocolate run) and he invited us into his home across the road for a drink. He had Mongolian heritage and gave us a home brew beer made on rice. Beer, cigarettes and wrestling on the TV.. I really managed to make it into the 'boys club'. In Nepali culture it's considered bad to not have 2 of anything on offer so we had 2 drinks, the second one we had to scull or miss dinner back at the compound so we strolled home feeling a little merry... Sundance and I almost managing to make it off with a parked rickshaw on the way.
It's really unusual to the Nepali tradies for women to be doing construction work so for the first few days there seemed to be an overcrowding of Nepali guys just watching us work. We had some issues with chauvinism/having tools constantly taken from us/not being listened to.. But we just had to take a deep breath and remember it's just their culture and they're not used to women being involved in this sort of work. Eventually tools were taken from us less and there seemed to be somewhat less sniggering. Shiri was always good, he taught me how to demolish a wall the proper way. The tiler guy was an ass though. It's ok.. We ended up literally making him work around the clock to get the project done.
Altogether we repainted the 2 dorms complete with murals (a giant map of the world and the other room had a solar system), repaired their timber beds, demolished and installed an entirely new bathroom, painted the dining room, and built new paved footpaths and a clothesline.
No one really got sick on the trip which was lucky (and made nurse jackie's life easier). One day I got sick with a cold which then rapidly developed into a sickness I've named 'Darth Vader Syndrome' (or DVS in shorthand). Symptoms include creepy wheezing sounds and a small struggle breathing. Nurse Jackie thinks I have asthma. Asthma Schmasthma I say.
Ricki turned 21 on the 11th so we had a day off to celebrate. We took a minibus to the other Maiti home near the India border where girls are initially taken when intercepted at the border before they're reunited with family or taken to the Itahari home to learn skills like sewing etc. A real issue these girls have is that in Nepali culture, if a girl spends a single night away from her family without permission, her reputation is forever ruined and she's shunned. So even though these girls have been tricked or taken against their will, returning to their community is often difficult or not possible.
We then went to the actual border to see how Maiti works spotting girls that may be getting trafficked and had a tour of the police station. They really have their work cut out for them since it's an open border, meaning if you look Indian or Nepalese you can basically just stroll on through. It's actually just a street with an arch over it where the border line is.
When we got back to camp Wendy had managed to paper mâché a piñata and the dining tent was filled with balloons and a happy birthday banner. There was also pass the parcel after dinner. And cake. CAKE! Maila made a CAKE with RICE FLOUR on a CAMPING STOVE! I swear there's nothing that man can't do with a camping stove.
Trekking was pretty damn amazing. We drove to a little town called Hile to begin with massive bags of snacks packed. Unlike the trek I did in Burma we had to carry a full pack with sleeping bag and our down jackets, thermals, etc. By the end of the first day I had actually developed lumps on my collarbone where the weight of the pack sits. The next day I figured I needed to tighten the hip belt so it wasn't as bad. We had some truly spectacularly incredible views. Where we stayed after the first trek day provided one of the top ten sunsets of my life. The accommodation was truly local; Ricki and I had what I named the "honeymoon suite" which was literally a corrugated iron shed tacked on the back of a family home, complete with water tank, clothes line and window to the toilet. Nurse Jackie and Wendy had the penthouse suite upstairs, also made of corrugated iron. They had pigeons for companions and I kid you not the floor of their room was literally covered with corn. On the cob. Like actually covered. No walking space. The family had stored their Winter corn supply up there... But they bagged it up not too long after our arrival.
We also discovered a new local beverage called tongwa (pronounced kinda like 'tongba') which is fermented millet in hot water, served in a small wooden barrel with a brass or wooden straw. The magical thing is that when you hit the bottom, you just top it up with hot water. It's actually like magic.. It never ends!
The second day of the trek we ascended higher into the mountains and at one stage all the ground was frosted and the leaves crystallised with ice. It looked really mystical.
The third day we trekked half the day and then caught the bus back to Itahari. We made it home on dusk to be greeted by all the village children.
We've made lots of local friends. The Maiti compound is just outside of Itahari in a farmland village and all the local children like to peer over the fence and yell "sister sister!". They're also really good at picking up and mimicking things we say or do. When we were playing piñata if someone missed we'd yell "one more go!" and soon the kids were yelling it for us over the fence. We gave them all the piñata candy because they were so cute. We also played several games of soccer with them sometimes in the afternoon. The first couple of games were played on a semi-ploughed field which made it extra challenging on top of being completely outmatched in terms of skill. We narrowly avoided several rolled ankles. The last 2 games we played on a more level field amongst some tethered cows and a lot of dung.
The architecture around the village was seriously fantastic. A series of isolated fantastical mansions painted in all sorts of colours and covered in ornamentation. Multistories with towers and roof terraces with hanging colourful washing. It's really something else. I think it's really cool that they just build these fancy things and paint them whatever colour they want. No need to be modern or stylish just do what you want. This one was my favourite:
On our last day the girls that live in the dorms came back and we all ate together. They loved the improvements and made us beaded rings. Then there was a ceremony thanking us for our work which was really lovely. They presented us with traditional scarfs and posies of flowers, put a tikka on our foreheads and fed us traditional sweets. All the colour made for some great photos.
The bus ride back to Kathmandu was interesting. On the way to Itahari we'd taken a shortcut o some pretty hairy roads they were still building and down actually running riverbeds to make the journey quicker. This time Wendy decided we should take the safer roads which basically involved circling the Kathmandu valley to enter from the main highway route. 15h later....
We left Itahari at 6:30 in the morning. They blasted that Icona Pop song "I don't care" as soon as we set out. Followed by Nickelback, followed by Guns n roses, followed by System of a Down, followed by Green Day. We heard this same playlist (the only songs they had in English) three times during the trip.
We finally made it onto the national highway. A few minutes later: "traffic jam... 2 hours waiting". We crawled along. They put some slow Nepali music on. "Sentimentals!! I don't like!" yells Raj (Raj pronounces a lot of English words with an added 's'.. My favourite being every night when he brings the soup into the dining tent and announces "chicken soups"). So Icona Pop went back on and Raj started dancing down the aisle. That man can really move. I went to sleep for the rest of the traffic jam until we made it to Bhaktapur.
I'll write about Bhaktapur later... For now I'm off to enjoy my last night in the country!
