Emily Rose's Travels: September 2009

But these stories are just so so Nepali!

Story the first: The other day I was walking home from work when I was hit by a bus. Ok, no. I was hit by a microbus. Ok, no. I was hit by the dude hanging out of the door of the microbus. It was hard enough to nearly knock me down though, and at first I was sure the bus had hit me. Dude clearly had been looking behind the bus at the time, and continued to do so when they passed me without slowing down in the slightest, with a look on his face that clearly said “watch it, murkha bideshi (silly foreigner)!”

Story the second: More microbus adventures. I was sitting on a microbus on my way to work yesterday when a woman got on with two small children. There was clearly no seats as the seating for 15 was already occupied by at least 30 people (you know the aversion Canadians have to physical contact with strangers? Nepalis do not have that. In fact it seems to be an ice-breaker). I was going to get up to offer my seat when, wordlessly and with a huge grin, she plopped her 3 year old daughter onto my lap and her young son onto the man’s lap behind me. As no one else seemed to think this was the slightest bit strange, I went with it, and spent the bus ride trying to ignore the small child continuously staring into my face from 4 inches away.

Story the third: It is dog mating season. All the stray dogs here are loud and annoying at the best of times, but they are nigh intolerable right now. There is barking and growling and yelping at all hours of the day and night, not to mention all the blatant dog-lovin’ on every street corner. And? They get stuck together when they’re done! Like, by their naughty bits! Did anyone else know this happened? And I don’t get why from an functionary perspective. They seem very upset when they’re stuck, yelping and rolling around and biting each other. The story here is that the gods were so offended by the shamelessness of the dogs’ mating habits that they cursed the dogs to be stuck together until 100 people observe them. Those gods are cruel sometimes.