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!

Mountains!

Three days ago there was a great storm at dusk. It had rained hard all day, but as the light drew in a great sheet of lightening illuminated the whole city and then plunged it into power-cut blackness. Pokhara is surrounded by hills so the rolls of thunder echoed round the valley. The storm continued to rage for over an hour before it gradually took it's wrath elsewhere

The next morning....

Mountains!!!!! :-) We woke to see towering, icy summits where there was only cloud before. The 6000 m Machapuchare rises in an impossibly steep cone whose summit is only 30 m as the crow flies behind the city. The still greater peaks of Annapurna make up the backdrop behind.

Diner Invitation

Last week on Tuesday, we had a holiday. It is the start of a new month in the Nepali calendar and in this month, people rest and the plants (rice, maize) that were planted in the previous months will just grow. On this day, families come together and lots of animals will be sacrificed to the gods and then later eaten. Women dress in green and red saris and they wear green arm rings at their hand wrists. Also really typical are the mendis that are painted at the female’s left hand balm. On this day, Alastair and Wiebke walked in the afternoon along our street where we meet Rashem, one of the science teachers. He invited us spontaneously to his place where we met his wife, daughter, sister and parents. It was really nice and we spend 2 hours there, getting some nice food and tea. Wiebke was then also asked to get a painting on her left hand  and now she is a proud owner of her first mendi.

Hospital

A couple of days ago we got some first-hand experience of the Nepali medical system. Alastair started feeling ill one evening and then vomited all night. The next day he couldn’t keep down any fluids for more than a couple of hours and was getting dehydrated, so we decided we’d better go to hospital. A lovely teacher, called Kim, kindly accompanied us and translated when necessary.

We went to Phewa City Hospital which is a private clinic – one of about 20 hospitals in Pokhara. The entrance hall / reception to A&E is also a ward containing six beds, and Alastair was lucky enough to get the one next to the window. A medical orderly came to see me and took his blood pressure (rather low) and soon the nurses were hooking up a drip and giving him intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Everything was sterile-packed, but you had to pay for each item as it was provided. A blood sample was sent to the lab and the results (unsurprisingly) confirmed a bacterial infection, but no other issues.

There were a couple of other patients on the ward, also on drips, receiving treatment for the infections which abound in the monsoonal climate. Later, an old later was brought in an her wrists and ankles clamped will giant crocodile clips to what looked like an ancient fax machine, which turned out to be an ECG.

Eventually, sometime after four O’clock, the consultants arrived. Nepali consultants spend most of the day at state hospitals and then retreat to their respective private hospitals in the late afternoon, where they see patients until about midnight. The consultant who saw Alastair was very jovial and spent an efficient couple of minutes with each patient. He proscribed a pharmacopeia of drugs to be taken for five days: gastric enzymes, two antibiotics and an anti-amoebic drug amongst others. All in all the visit was very efficient: four and a half hours spent in the hospital and no queuing at all – beats the NHS!

Now Alastair’s recovering and relaxing back at the school – all those drugs really knock it out of you.

Scary creatures

Last night was quite a challenge. Before going to brush our teeth, we found 2 cockroaches in our room and Alastair was so brave to remove them (I think he removed so far around 50 since we arrived!). However, after coming back from the toilet area, we found next to our bed a massive spider on our wash bucket (big as a hand). Well first of all, Wiebke jumped onto the bed, Alastair put some solid shoes on and then we thought about  a good strategy to remove the monstrous thing. In the end we managed to throw the bucket with the spider out of our window.  

Well, to cut a long story short, we found 4 more cockroaches this night,  outside there was a massive thunderstorm and we heard some bats at our window. That was one of our best night! Grrr!

Children entertainment

Since we moved to the roof top apartment the rumors are spreading that up there on top of the guest house a foreign couple is living. How exciting! Well, we have now every late afternoon small and also taller visitors who come to say hello. The last two days we had an art workshop running. 

Between 3-6 children came and drew / copied animals from a work sheet that Wiebke’s mum gave her for school lessons. The children really love copying these pictures of elephants, tigers, camels…. And some of them are really talented. However, it seems to be that they prefer copying things to being creative. Maybe over the next few days we can encourage them more and more to draw their own pictures. 

As well as the art project, we also had a microscopy workshop running. That even attracted the adults and so we looked at dead cockroaches, live ants and flies and a dead salamander using our 4x magnification glasses. 

Young and old are so excited to see these things magnified. Later, this workshop turned into an english-nepali lesson and Alastair and Wiebke learned some new words and phrases.

Our neighbour, a 6 year old boy, always comes and wants to play with us. He got so excited about the 8 m long skipping robe we bought a while ago and it is fascinating what different games you can play with it. This of cause attracts the other kids and we had some really nice circus evenings where they tried to walk the tightrope. The youngest participant is 9 months and she gets really excited holding the rope at one end as the other children are jumping over it.

Having to deal with all the school children during the day, we thought that maybe it will be too much to have children around our living place. But it is a really joy to have them around us and especially during the drawing time when we can read and they play next to us in silence.

  

Wedding

The courtyard (ie rocky, muddy, wasteland) next to our house is currently being developed for a ‘party palace’ to be hired our for weddings and other celebrations. Things seemed to be moving along pretty slowly, but one day last week the area was a hive of activity. Holes were dug, the bare breeze block walls were faced with cement and we gathered a wedding was going to take place the next day. The following afternoon the guests arrived rapidly trampling a green ceremonial carpet into the mud. The ladies were beautifully dress in red, pink and orange saris threaded with gold, and the men mostly wore European style suits with a Nepali hat. We looked down from our rooftop as they paraded past; first the women, carrying platters of luridly coloured food and then the men, heralded by a traditional Nepali band. The musicians took their place under the tarpaulin: two played an oboe-like instrument, two sported large horns which curved back behind their heads, while others played drums and cymbals. To the untrained ear, each tune sound quite identical to the previous. The oboes played the melody, generally on the same scale, interrupted occasional by blasts from the horns, all underpinned by some complex percussion. Alastair’s hoping to learn more about Nepali music from the school music teacher while he’s here.

 

The bride and groom mostly stayed inside performing the elaborate ceremonies of a Nepali wedding while outside, one by one, men got up to dance. Classical Nepali dancing must make you dizzy. It involves rapid gyrations punctuated by fluid and wave-like movements of the hands and wrists. Even the old men manage some elegant moves. Eventually the bride emerges, looking demurely at the ground. Our neighbor says this may be shyness, or an attempt to conceal her emotions if it is an arranged marriage she is not entirely sure about. Love matches are increasingly common in Nepal, but are still not the rule. Weddings here generally go on for two days, so tomorrow it’s the brides turn to host the party.