come down off the cross, we can use the wood
I am up at 5:00 am most mornings, not because I do not wish to sleep any longer, but normally due to rustlings outside our window, sleep which somehow evades me, and, most recently, some gnawing and unidentified insect bites. Although we are quite secure in our mosquito net-it is a haven for us during our nighttime reading hours-there always seems to be an added element of nature there waiting to take its place. It’s a bit like camping: inside our netting we have our books and other reading material, flashlight, tiger balm and other assorted ointments and wristwatch.
The early morning hours, along with the night, are the cool ones-an internal debate I have going whether to utilize them for waking or resting activities. I normally go down to check out the water situation, suck on the garden hose connecting the bottom water tank to the pump to the upper water tank, crank up the pump (and hope that it works) and fill up the rooftop tank. Power supplies are a bit more dependable and of a higher voltage in the morning, and our pump barely has the oomph sufficient to pump water up to the roof. Now, we have only muddy water at our disposal; something about leakage of river water into the system although it is hard to get a knowledgeable answer as to the source of the problem. Some have commented that this is a problem during the monsoon (just beginning; oh goody) while others say it is a temporary situation… But normally, the answer is a simple if not obvious one, and I quote: here is a water problem; here is an electricity problem; here is a wood problem (no wood in the markets for constructing window screens); here is a lock problem (no locks for the doors); here is a mail problem; here is a government problem; here is an insurgency problem, and the list goes on and on and on… The head wobbles from side to side-it is both a yes and a no and neither, an affirmative, negative or neither, a tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
I put on some water for a fairly awful yet caffeinated cup of instant coffee before brewing a pot of ciyah-I like to read for half an hour with that first cup of coffee; an old habit that eases me into the day. Some semblance of breakfast comes next. We occasionally find sliced loaf bread in the markets, which is barely palatable. Sometimes we scramble some eggs and have a few curried leftovers from the previous night, and on occasion we will even have rice. We also make roti or flatbread on occasion using an empty beer bottle as a rolling pin. Our flatbread pan, however, only allows for one to be cooked at a time, and we are generally just not that industrious in the mornings… Roti is good in the evenings as well for dipping into curried vegetables.
We were invited to and attended a pooja (offering/blessing) for a new house across the way yesterday. Well, actually, it was quite an old house, but there were new tenants moving in. There was plenty of singing and dancing of mostly devotional Hindu music that sounded so much like the Sufi music-a la Ali Khan-that I love so much. A harmonium, hand cymbals and something akin to a tambourine accompanied the singing and dancing, and everyone from the youngest kids to the oldest grandmothers pitched in with clapping and/or generally being in a trance like state. By far the most interesting and fascinating cultural highlight of our time in Bardibas.
Nepal has a new prime minister who is actually the last prime minister dismissed over a year and a half ago. Some strikes and closures called by the opposition parties will hopefully be called off now. A temporary respite.
Posted by david at June 4, 2004 03:10 PM