Bardibas is an uninspiring, scruffy, two donkey—quite literally—town which forms the confluence of the roads going south towards Jaleshowr and north towards Sundhuli. A few kilometers to the east, yet another road heads south to Janakpur. Long distance buses and lorries with their ubiquitous paintings of Shiva on the side lumber through town at unnecessarily high speeds horns a blaring. Shiva is both the creator and the destroyer, and from the looks of the numerous truck carcasses along the highway on our trip here, there has been a fair amount of destruction…The majority of the commerce in town—a smattering of general goods stores, tea stalls, repair shops and fly-infested restaurants—lie right along the east-west highway (constructed with the help of the Soviet Union back in 1972, so say the signs…) with the quainter village dwellings set along dirt paths on either side of the highway.
To say that we are a little disappointed with Bardibas would be an understatement. The realities of life in the Terai all came to a head—after an almost seemingly pampered existence in Kathmandu—in our first few days in town. Blame it on passing traffic or a local indifference, perhaps, but Bardibas is strewn with litter of all sorts and could do with a bit of sprucing up. The two town “triangles” (where the roads head south and north)—normally the location for statues, monuments or other cultural trappings—consists of dead grass and discarded plastic bags. I suppose that is what is most depressing about Bardibas: the lack of any historical relics, temples or other cultural paraphernalia makes life seem a bit hard and harsh and questions even the existence of the town. Was it here before the highway, and is the highway to blame for its current ills?
Of course, one is just as likely to see a herd of water buffalo, goats, cows or tractors on the highway as much as other vehicles. Woman and children are normally the caretaker of animals (to have animals is to have some income or food), and in some of the more pastoral settings of village life that one associates with the developing world, children riding on the backs of water buffalo or a lone woman in a red sari with her herd of goats grazing in a field are national geographic in character. Curiously, Bardibas is a town without rickshaws although most people have their own bicycle—or two feet—for getting around and the town really isn’t big enough to warrant rickshaws. A few tuk-tuks or tempos—those curious three-wheeled vehicles with rows of seats in the back—ply the route back and forth across town, but they seem to be more for goods than people.
The midday heat has been oppressive and renders it virtually impossible to do anything except sit or lie under a ceiling fan (day temperatures have soared into the 100’s, and the monsoon is still a month or so away). Our bodies will hopefully acclimate to these conditions, but for now we feel swollen and sluggish—discombobulated in a way—and have no complaints about cold-water bathing… The power supply is sporadic at best and comes and goes without any sort of set pattern or warning—it is just as likely to happen in the middle of night as it is in the mid-afternoon, although the former renders it almost impossible to sleep without the aid of a fan. There are no phones in town except for one at the tiny post and communications office that is purely for outgoing calls, but I’m not even sure that works most of the time... This obviously means there is no email connection in town, much to our chagrin, although we have been told that phone service is due to reach Bardibas within the next few months. Bholi parsi (today or the next day) is a fairly typical phrase in Nepal—in some sense it is almost a defining principle of life here, so much so that it was part of my working in Nepal training—so we are not holding our breath for this to happen anytime soon… I’ll make the trek south once a week or so to get things out to the world…
Our search for a flat/apartment here has been difficult. Bardibas is not high on people’s list’s of relocation, obviously, so there is a quite a dearth of available space. Additionally, most people live with their extended families, so most of the places are much too spacious for only two and would require us to share certain facilities. An added difficulty is that many if not most of the houses in Bardibas are adobe/mud houses—charming and quaint, yes, but probably not the best way to begin our life here. We stayed in one of the few guesthouses in town our first few nights, and have since moved in with a family on a temporary basis.
I have little to report on the work at this point, since we have spent our first few days settling in. The office is located just east of the “business” district on the ground floor of a house. There are two offices and one larger meeting/training room. My desk will most likely be placed alongside the president’s in her office. There is a breezy front porch, which is nice for tea time, and our two resident cows munch on hay most of the day 10 to 15 feet in front of the office. I have met most of the staff that work in the office, but haven’t had the opportunity yet to meet/visit any of the field programs other than one clinic in an outlying village...