School festival

A few days ago we were treated to another ‘cultural program’, this time associated with the school. Some 600 teachers, parents and students packed the newly build ‘party palace’ hall next to the school and watched dancing by the students and speeches by religious leaders of various faiths. One lady was a Hindu leader who sang songs about Krishna (they were call and response – so we all joined in) and advised people to be vegetarian, because then you will get a longer gut. Do I want a longer gut? The length I have the moment is quite enough of a handful as it is here in Nepal!

Culture

One notable cultural difference in this part of the world compared with Europe is that men are very fond of holding hands. Male friends routinely sit and walk around hand in hand, and even sit on each other’s laps for the fun of it – even if there are plenty of chairs. Alastair’s especially glad he’s managed to escape this treatment so far since we saw two of the male teachers holding hands when one of them used his ‘engaged’ hand to have a good scratch of the crotch. The ladies also have come up with novel ways of passing the long evenings when there are power-cuts and the TV doesn’t work. We observed one of the female teachers having a good spot-popping session, surrounded by several friends and students all working on different carbuncles.

Magar

Last weekend, our neighbour kindly invited us to a Magar cultural program – the AGM of the society of the Magar people of Nepal. These people are very proud of being ‘indigenous’, as compared to some other castes such as Brahmin and Chitri, who originated in India. Brahmin and Chitri families who have lived in Nepal for hundreds of generations unsurprisingly find this attitude a little exasperating. The Magar people hold a strong sense of indignation that they are not well represented in government office, so the meetings of their society are intended to raise awareness of this issue and encourage high achievement amongst their members.

The gathering took place in a large hall with a stage at the front and fragrant toilets at the back. We were not expected at the meeting, but we had not been sitting in the audience for more than a few minutes when we were invited on stage to receive scarves and rosettes and to join the guests of honour. The introductions of Magar luminaries went on and on while we sat sweating on the stuffy stage, with hundreds of eyes staring back at us. Eventually we risked being rude and returned to our seats next to our neighbour in the auditorium. The program started well, with some lovely dances performed by girls and boys in traditional dress. Strangely, a key part of the boys dress seemed to be a tartan scarf.

Next came the speeches. They averaged at about 20 mins each and were either delivered in a low monotone or haranguing, evangelical tones. The greater the heights of the oratory to which the speaker seem to aspire, the less attention the audience paid them, merrily chatting amongst themselves while the speaker’s amplified voice reverberated around them. Mercifully for us, this meant we could talk to other people in the audience and chat with the children since we couldn’t understand a word coming from the lectern.

The talking was interspersed with entertainment, including an emotional piece of dance in which 6 lonely boys met 6 lonely girls who fed them and gave them hats in exchange for hankies. Then all tearfully parted, because the men had to move on to find work. Although a traditional dance, this situation has special poignance for the present because so many men here leave their wives and young families for years at a time to go and find work in Qatar, Dubai or Malaysia. Men between the ages of 25 and 35 were almost entirely absent from the audience.

The lowlight of the entertainment was an astonishingly bad comedy routine in which a man in a silly hat crept about the stage making funny ‘ahhh’ noises and repeatedly saying ‘namaste’ when meeting invisible people or talking on the phone.  The sequence involved a young boy whole followed close behind the man most of the time and occasionally slipped round into the man’s field of vision, eliciting no reaction whatsoever. There was only one laugh in a routine of 15 mins: when the man pretended to snore.

At this point we were asked if we would like to address the audience about our experience of their cultural program. They insisted, so Alastair made his way to the lectern and spent a couple of minutes saying how much we enjoyed the singing and dancing and admired their sense of community. The final humiliation of the day came when Wiebke decided it would be a good idea to join the small group dancing on stage to music provided by a singer. So Alastair’s first attempt at Hindi style dancing (all writst and wavy hands) was also horribly public. There is video evidence.

After 5 hours, the speakers still breathing hellfire into the microphone, we decided to beat a retreat and returned home to a very welcome lassi.

Cockroaches

Tonight was again one of these nights...!!!  Yesterday, Alastair and I just talked about how nice it is that we havn't seen any cockroaches for a few days. Big mistake, just to mention the topic!!! We had to pay for it last night. Aroung midnight, I had to leave the bad to get something to drink. We always sleep under a mosquito net and when I untagged it to get out of bed, I found two huge cockroaches at the inside of our net- IN OUR BED!!! For the next 30 min we were hunting theses biests and at the end we killed 10! After this cliening session, we actually managed to go back to sleep. However, this morning, we found another 5 in the room.

So, we will never mention them again!

Walks around Pokhara

Alastair finally recovered from his illness and the effects of the medication, so we were able to do a couple of trips before school began.

On Thursday we walked down the Seti river, which runs through a 2 m wide gorge through most of Pokhara, to the point where it bursts turbulently from its confines and forms a fast moving stream about 50 m wide. The wider gorge it emerges into has a wide terrace half way up (rather like a miniature grand canyon) which supports a picturesquely
perched village. Strange grassy rock ridges(reminiscent of Bryce canyon) rise from the village to the top. After a nice lunch at the mountain museum, we make our way back on the other side of the road,
coming across a old man scooping fresh buffalo dung from the road with his hands; presumably to use as fuel.

Friday, we started at 6 am on a bolder adventure, to climb to the local beauty-spot and mountain viewing theater, Sarankot. We found our way out of the city, and climbed on a narrow path through increasingly
dense vegetation. Occasionally we passed clearings containing abandoned or half-finished buildings, one of which contained a rather frightening looking man who didn't answer our Namastes and watched with what we hoped was disinterest as we passed. There were many butterflies of all colours and some strange flower munching stripy things - bees or beetles?

Eventually we reached habitation and made our way to the look-out point at the top of the hill although, since there was too much cloud to see the mountains, we avoided the 30 rp fee to see the same hills we could see from below the view point. We also avoided paying 250 rps for vegetable chowmain (about 1 pound 80 - scandalous!) and retreated down the mountain to find something more reasonable priced (80 rp). On the way down we stopped to watch the paragliders launching
themselves from the hillside towards the lake shores below. There was a specially trained policeman, who assisted with dragging unresponsive tourist along the ground then they didn't react quickly enough to the
command "run run run!!". He also tried to prevent collisions, between gliders competing for take-off time - it was busier than Heathrow up there, with sometimes about 5 take-offs a minute.

The day was really hotting up, so we made our way down by a different route to take us to a more convenient part of town. It was never clear which path would take you there, so you just have to follow one and hope something convenient will turn up, but after some warmly contested decisions, we made our way down to a very welcome cold Lassi.

Football

Yesterday we were invited to watch the boys football team in their 3rd round match of the Pokhara region school's cup.  We gathered, on a small, concrete stadium stand, very grateful of a the shade because the sun was beating relentlessly on the pitch. On the other side of the dusty football field, young men training for the Gurkha soldier entrance exams ran up and down the steps of the other stand (no shade there), with weighted baskets on their backs. I was chatting to one Gurkha hopeful in the stand and he said that among other tests, they have to do 70 sit ups in two minutes and run 800 m in under 2.45. There are around 4000 applicants each year for 63 places in the British Gurkha army.

Eventually it was the turn of our school to play, and they put up a sterling performance in the 30 minutes each-way game. The other team were bigger and stronger but our boys made up for it in skill and strategy, comfortably winning two - nill. They were also helped by a large supporting crowd of particularly vocal girls who probably did some long-lasting damage to their vocal chords and our eardrums! Next, it's the quater finals, and if they win the Pokhara contest, they enter the all-Nepal competition in Kathmandu.

Food

Food! This topic is at the moment not Alastair's favoured one, so it's me giving a short summery of our daily meals. First at all, it's rice, rice and rice again! Did you hear! RICE. I still really enjoy it, we can get it (if we want) for breakfast, lunch, tea time and diner! And  in addition to the rice, we always get dhal (lentel soup) and a cooked dish with vegatables (such as beans with tomato and potao / other beans with tomato and potatoes) and a lot of garlic!! A lot!!! We are already afraid that when we come back to Europe, everyone will smell our arrival miles in advace. And not to forget, all the spices!

However, we decided really early on, that we prefer no rice for breakfast and therefore, we get always black or milk tea (really good!) and either white bread, cookies or, really fancy, popcorn! I love this!!!

These meals we get in the cantine at our school and from time to time, we sneak now out to have a different meal out. We found a really nice restaurant around the corner, where we can vary our diet and Alastair can also get a non-rice meal, such as pancake, nuddel dishes or the famous momo's (see earlier blog post).

Today will be again such a sneaky day! After finishing writing our blog, we will have a loveley diner in our 'Stamm-Restaurant'! Guten Appetit!