of jatras and julus'

goodbye bardibas

Goodbye Bardibas

Migyoung and I made the long trip back to the Terai and Bardibas via VSO jeep with Panna our driver and his wife who wanted to visit the all-important-for-women Janaki Temple. On this trip, we took the shorter, more treacherous and just reopened route directly over the mountains rather than first skirting west then south and then east again. Although shorter in distance and as the crow flies, it consists mostly of switchbacks up and then down again—I have traversed hiking trails in just as good of shape… A few intrepid buses were attempting this route in addition to shiva lorries, which, with their brightly colored gods and goddesses painted or plastered in every available space, tend to press their luck and attempt the most precarious of passages. What the route lacked in comfort, however, it more than made up for in spectacular scenery despite the fog, cloud and mist, but the much cooler weather had us scrambling for long sleeved shirts for the first time since we first arrived in Kathmandu. We passed through the quaint and scenic town of Palung situated on a plateau before reaching the summit of the road with its fields of mustard in full bloom—golden patches amidst the drizzle and fog—and mounds of cabbages and radishes being readied for the market. Approximately 12 KM further along, we stopped in Daman—the summit—for a surprisingly delicious dhal bhat and hot glasses of ciyah.

We descended to the south through an even thicker haze of fog and rhododendron forest, but after a few hours of winding road (and numerous security checkpoints near the town of Hetauda) we reached the flatlands of the Terai. It didn’t take things long to warm up—by the time we reached Bardibas, my T-shirt shown the familiar splotches of perspiration and beads of sweat clung to my forehead. We made a quick stop in Sarlahi district—adjacently west of Mahottari and Bardibas—to deliver some school books in the small town of Hariwan. It’s the kind of scene that I’ve grown rather accustomed to—lush, green vegetation of rice paddies, sugar cane fields, bamboo groves, water buffalo immersed in pools of water. We had left Kathmandu at the break of day and arrived in Bardibas right at dusk. All of our neighbors came out to greet us (they seem to have a nose for this sort of thing—popping their heads out at just the right moment) with a bevy of questions: Where have you been? Where will you go? Are you returning to the States?

Our house appeared to be one huge mound of gecko droppings; spiders had spun their webs in every conceivable location, and a tiny mouse that had somehow found its way in, darted back and forth between the table leg and the round, red bottle of cooking gas. Thankfully, no snakes or other small animals had made their way into our bathroom…We spent about an hour sweeping and scrapping up the gecko shit, and then were greeted with something that we had forgotten about being in Kathmandu—power outages. Having cleared out our house of perishables, we borrowed a choko squash from the neighbors; cooked up what leftover pasta we had and dined by candlelight—something that we grew quite accustomed to in the Terai. Later, we visited with my colleague Navaraj (house across the path), his wife Usha and their just over one month old son. We had a few digital prints of the baby developed in Kathmandu, put them in a nice handmade paper frame and presented it to them as a gift. They all wore long and glum faces, asked if they thought I would ever be able to work for WCDC again, if we would ever be able to return and if we would forget them once we left. I made promises—ones that I tend to keep—about at least returning for a visit someday, perhaps working out a situation where I could support them on some small projects, or helping to link them with my new organization in Kathmandu, which implements programs in their area.

The next day was a whirlwind of goodbyes: the guesthouse where we spent our first night in the Bard; our favorite vegetable vendor—Rita and her mom; the bicycle walla with his familiar blue checkered doti, dirty singlet vest and eyeglasses sliding down to his nose who converted our rusted and creaky hulks into rideable two-wheelers; the young brothers of the “western goods” shop (in reality that means pasta noodles and packaged rice sans bugs); a last milk tea at the mittho ciyah pasal (the delicious tea shop—that’s what the locals call it; it has no name) and of course a lot of time with all of our immediate neighbors. We even saw our first worthless landlord who twisted his right forefinger and thumb up into the air like gun shooting off directly into the sky as if to imply, where and why? We missed the birth of the neighbor’s water buffalo by a week or so, but visited with them—and the young calf—as the proud mother looked longingly our way still with the battered old flip-flop around its neck to keep the rope from chaffing too much. I’ll miss her distinctive call—the Tuvan throat singing of the Terai.

And of course, there were many long goodbyes with my colleagues, who even said that they’d taken my advice to heart and had begun preparations to make the distinction between the board and staff—you have to choose one. I’ve learned to take everything with the proverbial grain of salt, however, and I’m not totally convinced that they were just saying something that I wanted to hear (and, hence, maybe get me to stay) or if they actually meant to implement this idea. If so, maybe I really did accomplish something in my six months time with them. There were short speeches by everyone with plenty of kind words to go around. I did my best to express my sincere thanks in Nepali and encouraged them to keep going forward organizationally; that they have the makings of something good which could be even better and which could conceivably produce a greater impact with just a bit more planning and effort on their part. Eyes on the prize sort of stuff…I was given the obligatory Nepali topi (hat) and Migyoung received bangles and a simple, beaded necklace customary of married women in Nepal, or, as they said, “now you are officially married.”

It always seems to be in retrospect that one misses the things they had. There wasn’t much love lost between myself and the Bard from the time when I first arrived; in fact, I kept muttering something like, “what have I gotten myself into.” Even now, though, I cannot in all honesty say that much of anything ever happened in Bardibas—it is still the dusty roadside bazaar that it was when I first arrived—but one tends to hunker down and grow accustomed to circumstances and surroundings as a survival technique. My life had become a rather simple routine: early mornings at home; short bicycle ride to the office, back for lunch and then back again. Yet another bicycle ride to the market for the day’s vegetable and/or spice purchases, chatting with acquaintances; warding off the friendly screams of children; some chores around the house; cold showers; the voracious reading of novels; recounting the days with Migyoung and half-naked rooftop stargazing at night.

I suppose there is a Thoreauesque existence in there somewhere minus the tremendous heat. It is just our luck that the six months we would spend in the Terai are the hottest of the year… In general, the people of the Bard were very good to us and friendly in an intrusive and curious sort of way. There really wasn’t much more for us to expect in a place where we were the first foreigners to live in and most likely the last… In that sense, then, we consider ourselves trailblazers of sorts, and overall all the better for it. Mostly, life in the Terai revolves around the extended family. It is becoming the place of second and third generations, as most folks migrated to the area at some point in the recent past. Hill dalits, too, have migrated to the area in search of a better life; while they may now have a small plot of land on which to live, and if they are lucky, to cultivate, conditions are not much better despite civil society efforts to encourage social and economic upliftment. I am disappointed that I wasn’t able to do more for these communities, yet I am hopeful that my limited work with colleagues who work in the field with these communities will pay dividends in the future.

Simplicity for simplicity’s sake is nice enough. I dug the bare bones existence of our house—the bare concrete floors (which we sometimes watered down to keep cool), wooden shutters in lieu of actual windows; the tap and bucket for “flushing” the toilet; the dim bulbs oddly placed around the periphery of the room. While all of these things, believe it or not, might seem rather luxurious to many Nepalis in our area, it helped me understand a bit better the types of conditions that a lot of people live in and perhaps become a more empathetic development worker. Six months is not a lifetime, but it certainly provided me a taste of the place. I have traveled through many Bardibases in my life, but this is my first extended stay of this magnitude.

Despite the shortcomings of WCDC to meet any of the short-term six-month benchmarks, I do not regret the experience at all, and I am hopeful that they will begin to see the rationale behind many of my recommendations. It is also fortunate for me that my new organization (I will talk more about this later) works in the same area as WCDC, which gives me a bit of a head start understanding the social, economic and cultural proclivities and indicators of the region.

What I learned in Bardibas, despite the frustrations from the slow pace of things, was how to cultivate my own sense of patience and fortitude, and the unique cultural adaptations of NGO work in the Terai. I, admittedly, did not get off to the best of starts in this regard, wanting to jump right into things and perhaps pushing a bit too hard. But I also learned that there is a balancing act between pushing too hard and not at all, and did OK, I think, in this respect. In terms of our personal life and comfortableness, my colleagues tried so hard to make us feel at home that I am grateful beyond words. Unfortunately, they more often than not did not see the separation between the two and often ignored me in the office when my own objectives for the organization did not mesh with theirs—this happened way too much. There was some serious disgruntlement amongst staff upon my departure, and the organization is so immersed in top-down, authoritarian models of management that there is bound to be a blow up (some of this is already happening) in the near future… Yet, many of the dilemmas facing WCDC are not unique to NGOs in Nepal—when an organization hits hard times, beneficiaries are all but forgotten in the mad rush towards survival, and the agendas of INGO funding agencies (donor-driven agendas) does not make it any easier for local organizations to carve out their own niche. These are tough financial times for WCDC, so part of this “survival technique” is understandable; at the same time, my own assessment is that more participatory models of development, accountability and a keener sense of monitoring and evaluation once funding is secured would assure that funding would always be available—if not in droves, at least a steady stream. Again, I hope that I have been able to impart these recommendations sufficiently to WCDC.

The trip back to Kathmandu was an interesting if not trying one. We loaded up the jeep with our clothes, kitchen utensils, cook stove, a thin, cotton mattress we had made and one small table—not that much, really, all things considered. 14 kilometers outside of Bardibas, we had our first flat tire—a hole all the way through the rubber of the tire the diameter of a quarter. We stopped in the next dusty bazaar town to have the spare repaired (you could still see through to the tube!). Due to the delays, we only made it halfway back to Kathmandu, and spent the night in Hetauda before tackling the road over the mountain back into the Valley. We departed at 6:00 AM and made it to the summit for an early lunch, but once we started to descend the other side, we had another flat tire and were forced to put on the spare, which was actually the first tire that blew out. It started to rain; we scrambled for some plastic to put over some of our things on the roof of the jeep and yet again had to stop to have our spare repaired. I was feeling quite sick at this point, having contracted a bad case of the flu or a very bad cold the night before—fever, headache, etc. Of course, after repairing the spare it only took 10 minutes or so for the tire to again go flat… At this point it was pissing down rain. Migyoung did her best to hold the umbrella for Panna while he yet again had to change the tire. I shivered inside the jeep… Another 10 minutes or so down the road, and we encountered the still burning remains of a truck torched by Maoists as four soldiers stood nearby under a thatch rood…While the entire trip from Bardibas to Kathmandu takes anywhere from 12-14 hours, it took us 12 just to do have of that distance on the way back. I’m still recovering from a bit of a cold…

More on lessons learned, the new digs and organization soon.

any suggestions for a new name for the site?

Posted by david at October 23, 2004 03:35 PM