Banda, unclean souls, and near-death experiences

Banda, banda, banda
So 'banda' in Nepali means 'shut' or 'closed'. It's often used to describe when streets or stores are closed for various reasons. Well, we've been in the midst of a perfect storm of banda lately. For one thing, the maoist protests have amped up as the April elections draw nearer. On the way out of town Wednesday to visit PA's other children's residence in a nearby village I saw quite a few busses filled with 15 year old boys with lots of red flags, chanting. Everything was blocked, but we finally made it back to Kathmandu pretty late in the day. Another reason for all the banda is the gas shortage. I'm not entirely sure on the cause of, or possible solutions to, this problem. Basically, no one has any gasoline, so no one can go anywhere. This has led to several cars and trucks being abandonned on highways, blocking the routes, and also protests blocking any cars that do have gas. This led to Karen, Ronnie and Rajiv taking a 5 hour trip to Bhaktapur (nearby village) last Monday, which usually takes 45 minutes. Finally, Bhaktapur itself was totally banda Thursday and Friday because there were riots in response to a murder within the town, so Ronnie was trapped there and got tear gassed when he accidentally wandered into the middle of the action. Everyone (mom) calm down, none of this is really dangerous, it's just life here in Nepal.

Bhaktapur police station (on fire)

PA Nepal

Everything's still going well. I managed to do an on-the-fly diagnosis of ringworm for one of the kids last week. I noticed a sore on a girl's neck, e-mailed a photo to Karen at the hospital in Bhaktapur, she passed it on to a doctor, who e-mailed me back a perscription. Bizarre, but efficient.

Me with some of my favourite kids: (left to right) Samir,

Jennie, Robin (being squished by Jennie), Apa, and Sushma.

Sanku

Remember I said we went out to a village? Well, it's another home PA runs for older kids, and they learn village life skills, like farming, handicrafts, brick-making, basically practical stuff they'll need to live in this country. It's really beautiful out there, too, with a waterfall right behind the house where the kids bathe. It was a nice visit, where I got to do a little bit of help with the fields and Rajiv and I took a couple of kids up to this temple nearby. This temple has this bizarre feature: a tiny window. It's said that if you can squeeze through this window, your soul is pure. So I guess skinny people are really pure? One of the boys we were with managed to get through, and then Rajiv tried. Now, Rajiv's pretty skinny, but that window is tiny. He tried bravely for a good 10 minutes as I took pictures and laughed really meanly at him, but no dice. Then the kids wanted me to try, and I had to explain that my soul (or ass) was not nearly teeny enough for me to even try.

Rajiv: not so much with the pure soul

Oh, and check out what grows wild on the hills of Sanku!

Bowling

On Valentine's Day, we went bowling. And Dad, get this: I won the first game! With a 103. Yep. That's pretty much the whole story. Oh, except that Jesi, the country coordinator, finally returned from her massive Christmas holiday, so we have someone else in the house now. She seems pretty cool so far.

Back: DC, Karen. Front: Rajiv, me, Jesi and Brian.

Mountan Biking (subtitle: Neer's a liarface)

Everyone wanted to go mountain biking on Saturday. I told them they should go, but biking up a hill's not really my idea of a good time, thanks anyways. But then Neer tells me that a truck will take us up to the top of this big hill and we'll bike down. That appealed to me much more. So I said cool. We start biking uphill. Alright, I think, the truck stop is somewhere up this hill close by. After the next curve, or the next, or the next. After an hour I made Neer pull over, so that I could (breathlessly, cause: hard!) yell at him "Neer, I show you nothing but love, why the lies?!" And he said the truck has no feul (banda) and it's "just one more hour uphill". So I somehow managed, and the coming back downhill was pretty awesome. Although we were going so fast down such rough terrain that I remember thinking to myself, wow, if I fall right now I'll seriously injure myself. Huh.

DC (front) and me (behind) risking our lives. And that was
before we went off-road.


However, the ride did afford views such as this one. God, this
country's beautiful.