The deraa (flat/apartment):
It's a big, white, concrete monstrosity of a place that we call home these
days. We're on the second floor of two with the first floor serving as
guest quarters for Care-Nepal's operations in this area, which is mostly
watershed and forestry workˇXnot what you would normally associate with
CARE, or at least their marketing machine that we know in the west. Like
all concrete and brick buildings/homes in Nepal, ours too suffers from what
I have dubbed the birthday cake effect: homes are constructed in such a way
with the steel rods exposed and protruding out of the concrete/brick pillars
on the rooftop. I can only surmise that this is left this way for future
floor additions, but it sometimes seems, especially in larger towns, when
one looks out on the expanse of the city as if it is one large birthday cake
with candlesˇK
Our Bardibas estate has to be one of the most shabbily or hastily (or both)
constructed places I have witnessed: door latches donˇ¦t match their
eyeholes; leaky pipes in concrete walls create a sweating effect (and the
size of the wet spot grows dailyˇK); greasy handprints of workers still
grace the walls of our tiny bathroom sans basin, and having a ceiling fan
installed (essential) has thrown the entire wiring of the apartment into
disarray. Dim bulbs become dimmer, and frail lights that once worked now do
not. We have four wooden chairs on loan from my organization, a futon-like
bed on the floor with mosquito net (another essential) and a small wooden
table for preparing food in the kitchen. We have one old table on loan from
my organization in our bedroom/living room with an annoying and noisy
termite gnawing away night and day. We are waiting, or at least we think we
are, on another table to arrive although it has been so long ago I canˇ¦t
even really remember. That fact that one is told that something will be
ready today or tomorrow, however, is essentially a statement with no
meaningˇXyou will receive the same reply for a simple delivery, at work or
for something much more major, and some things are just simply forgotten.
We have also been informed with much confidence on the part of the locals
that there are no mosquitoes in BardibasˇXalthough the welts on Migyoungˇ¦s
body tell a different storyˇXso there is no need for screens on the windows.
This also defies logic since most people sleep with mosquito nets. They
havenˇ¦t been that bad so far, but there are a thousand other flying insects
that buzz around and crash into our wallsˇXthose hard shell dung beetles
being some of the fiercest. And Migyoung is having her own battles with the
army of ants that seem to keep marching right along, which despite their
size have a very fierce biteˇK
We do have one of those miniature fridges now, and we fill it full of
bottles of boiled waterˇXwith temps in the hundreds, it takes almost a full
day for the water to cool down sufficiently to put it into a containerˇXand
other things that we want to keep the ants and other insects away from. Our
other option is to solar disinfect water in plastic bottles on the rooftop
and then filter it. There is no sink in the place although we have been
promised one. In the kitchen there is a tap near the floor and a concrete
slab for doing the washing up; likewise, there is a tap in the bathroom.
Our water is supplied from a 500 liter tank on the rooftop, which is, in
turn, pumped upˇXfrom something akin to a go-cart motor which requires a
rock to be placed on top of the connecting plugs for it to workˇXfrom
another 500 liter tank in the yard. The so-called ˇ§government waterˇ¨ is
turned on at either 4, 5 or 6:00 in the morning and again at 12, 1 or 2:00
in the afternoon and is on for approximately an hour. All water must be
collected in the bottom tank before being pumped up to the roof. Itˇ¦s all
sort of a guessing game when the water will be supplied, but seeing as how I
havenˇ¦t been getting up at 4:00 in the morning (but Iˇ¦m usually awake by
5:00!!) to check the water, we can always count on a neighborˇXeveryone
around us is essentially from the same familyˇXto wander into our yard and
turn it on for us. [postscript to the water situation: our landlord is now
more interested in the construction of a home for yet another family member,
so our pump is sometimes here sometimes notˇK we are conserving and toting
accordingly] Of course, theyˇ¦ll also walk right in your door if itˇ¦s not
locked, but you take the good with the badˇK People are insatiably curious
about what we have in our house although it is essentially empty. Even when
we buy an item at a shop, curious onlookers love to pick it up and inspect
it, even if, as today, it is a simple package of instant noodles common
almost everywhere and to everyone.
We try to keep the gate to our yard closed to keep people and animals from
wandering in, not because we want to completely shut ourselves in, but
rather because it is the only thing that Nepalis tend to comprehend. But
because neighbors roam in and out all the time, it is usually open. If
youˇ¦re door isnˇ¦t locked it must be okay to come right on in, and if it
is, you must be doing something that you shouldnˇ¦t be. Walking into our
place unannounced is one issue; opening and handling things at their
pleasure is another, as is scooping up the cow dung from the path. Sacred
to them, perhaps, but not to us.
No locks are installed on the doors of offices and homes; instead you are
obliged to use padlocks. I am now the owner of more keysˇXyet fewer
itemsˇXthan I have ever had in my life: two keys for the two padlocks for
our home; two keys for the bicycle lock attached to the back wheel (you can
walk off with it, but you canˇ¦t ride it away); one padlock key for the
front door of the office; one padlock key for the door to the office which I
share with the President; one skeleton key for the cabinet in my office and
another for an inside compartment of the cabinet, and one key for the
padlock that we keep on our tin trunk in our room for storing valuablesˇXit
is sort of our bank, since there is no bank here. Padlocks come in all
sorts of shapes and sizes although most are something that you might be more
accustomed to finding in an antique or collectable shop, with a varying
array of skeleton keys like something out of a spaghetti western.
Thereˇ¦s a smallish papaya tree in the yard whose fruit seems to keep
falling off before it has a chance to ripen, one snake that Iˇ¦ve seen so
far, many of those big, hila monster like lizards that love to bask in the
sun and a small altar/shrine just inside the gate with a brittle looking
bush growing out of the top of it. Our house is set back 200-300 meters or
so from the road, and is accessed by a dirt path from two different
directions. We look out onto about 4 other housesˇXthey get lots of pleasure
out of watching our every move; we feel sort of like a movie screen these
daysˇXbut beyond that it is mostly fields of what I think will eventually be
rice paddies or perhaps fields of wheat or both depending on the season. It
is a nice, pastoral if not flat (and dusty) view to the south. It is women
that one sees mostly in the fields performing the lionˇ¦s share of the work.
There are some larger banyan trees out there for shade and relaxation and a
few other scattered palms and banana trees around our house, but it is
mostly parched fields that one sees. Breezy days bring a welcome respite
from the heat, yet leaves a film of dust on everything. A small shady grove
of closely planted trees just to the west of our abode is a popular
childrenˇ¦s play areaˇXgames of tag with the trees being the home bases.
The men may plough the fields with the bullock team, but it is the women
who hoe the fields, cut the grass and other fodder for the animals, tote
incredible weights on their headsˇXfirewood, water jugs, cow dung, 50-100
pound sacks of rice and seedˇXin addition to the never ending household
chores of cooking, cleaning, washing, etc. Men tend to do very little,
actually (especially here where there is are no forms of economic activity
for men performed in larger cities and towns), from what I can observe and
it is on the tremendous strength of women that the Terai survives. A
womanˇ¦s day starts early and ends late, and it is only during the most
unbearable hours of the day that I have seen women napping or resting in the
shade. This is essentially all I have seen men doˇK It is an incredibly
hard and short life, which becomes all too apparent upon observing the
hands, feet and faces of these villagers. Major causes of death stem from
illnesses and causes that we take for granted as minor issues: after
asthma/bronchitis and diarrhea/cholera, delivery and miscarriage is the
major cause of death among women. You breathe in the smoke from cooking
fires without adequate ventilation, you drink the water; your bear children
at too young an age or without even the services of a midwifeˇXthese are the
hazards of womanhood.
In this district, the female literacy rate is a paltry 18% with the national
average at around 44%. Male national literacy rate stands at around 65%.
These are the grim statistics that my organization must deal with, and
something that I am only beginning to understand a little bit better, or
perhaps understand on a more poignant level. Upon visiting one of my
organizationˇ¦s womenˇ¦s saving and credit groups in a smaller village
outside of Bardibas, and having an opportunity to ask these women what they
would like from the organization, the almost universal answer was access to
literacy classes. But I digress and will save this topic for a later date.
The electricity supply in this part of Nepal is sporadic at best. Anything
plugged into a socket requires the services of a voltage stabilizer and
surge protector:voltages fluctuate between 200 and 300 with constant spikes
being the rule and the not the exception. Some bulbs seem to be no better
than a candle. The power outages makes it incredibly difficult to get any
work done in an office, and already I have had to alter my work schedule
accordingly while waiting for the electricity to return. Most people laugh
and shrug this off as part of life in Nepal; however, it strikes me as
rather ironic coming from people in the development field--no development
project is easy here, even having in order the simplest tools to do the
development work
Our biggest dilemma at the moment is the heat. I loathe both the morning
and the night, but mostly the day. Temperatures over the past couple of
days have reached 109 Fahrenheit with a balmy 85 or so in the evening. If
there is a breeze, you must contend with the dust--a thick layer coats our
floor and everything else at the end of the day. We are both feeling
sluggish, lethargic and swollen. If we are lucky, there will only be
another 3 months or so of this heat, and if we are exceptionally fortunate,
the monsoons will arrive within a month or so and bring periodic respites
from the hot temperatures. I have never perspired so much in my life, not
even during my frequent travels and time spent in southeast Asia. Even the
simplest of motionsˇXeating; moving from one room to the nextˇXinstigates
the beads of sweat rolling down my body. I have noticeably lost weight,
which I hope is nothing more than a symptom of the heat. It is not so much
that we are not eating, but that the weather has wreaked havoc with our
appetite. We are both drinking water faster than we can purify itˇXthis
morning we were up at 5:00 in order to collect water from the tap and
prepare it for solar disinfecting on the rooftopˇXand I have an insatiable
thirst that I just cannot quench (in this situation, it may be both literal
and symbolic). Water then gets run through a filter, since even the tap
water has a lot of sediment, gets put back in water bottles and then into
the fridge. Hopefully the power will stay on long enough for it to cool
down. It is, frankly, quite difficult to sleep beyond 5:00 in the morning
because of the heat. We bathe before bed, yet wake up feeling sticky.
Mornings and later in the evenings are the best times for bathing, since the
water in the tank on the rooftop has cooled down or hasnˇ¦t had an
opportunity to heat up yet. By midday, it is scorching. This will
hopefully work out ideally in the winter months.
The nationwide strike over the past two days has left us without anything in
the markets. Whereas in Kathmandu it was possible to find some shops open
on strike daysˇXand certainly there were no real shortagesˇXhere it is as if
the village became a ghost town. We were able to scrounge up some green
tomatoes and bananas but not much else. I have only on occasion been able
to get a copy of one of the English newspapers here, but there is no
reliability as to when and if it will arrive. I can sometimes pick up the
BBC world service on my little short-wave radio, which has essentially been
our lifeline to the outside world.
Strikes are scheduled in our neighboring district (where Janakpur and my
email lifeline is located) for the next ten days, so this may be rather old
news by the time I get it out to you. Even our plans to try and communicate
with the outside world on a weekly basis have been set back
Please address your deraa questions this way--there's a lot more to tell
Posted by david at May 29, 2004 12:45 PM