Deshain in Namarkhu

Saturday, October 16

Dawn breaks to a blue sky gradually obliterated by clouds rising from the south. I come in to sit by the fire and Tuli-ama offers me milk tea and a pan of the toasted flattened rice grains known as cyu-rah. Today is Mahanswami, the ninth day of Deshain, and the main day of animal sacrifice. Indeed, just below our rooms a crowd of villagers, including children, have gathered around to witness a goat being slaughtered. The knife holder raises an effigy of the goat, made out of a cucumber and four sticks, mumbles a prayer, then slices the effigy and throws the halves up onto the rooftop Another man sprinkles water over the goat, drenching the animal to the point that it vigorously shakes off the water – that is the signal that the goat is ready to be sacrified. The knife man swings a very sharp 2-foot-long kukri through the air and beheads the goat; it is all over within a few seconds. Despite my studied objectivity, I still find the execution scene rather gruesome, and I think about how revolutionary the Buddha’s preaching against killing animals must have been in the completely Hindu society of his time. After the ritual is repeated up and down the village, the goat carcasses are carefully laid out and butchered. Most Nepalis will be eating buffalo or goat meat tonight, and the Gurungs also hang strips of meat out to dry on the racks that overhang the cooking fires.

A sprinkling of rain turns into a steady drizzle that continues off and on all day. Doing any outdoor work or visiting another village is out of the question, and indeed, Mitch has determined from the beginning that new installations cannot be accomplished during this prolonged holiday and will have to wait for another return visit, following his return from Bhutan. So we spend our time visiting folks and getting an informal status report on the current status of the solar lighting system. We visit the house of Nain-kumari, the mother who manages the charging system, which is powered by the two large solar panels that Mitch mounted on her roof last spring. It is very gratifying to see a steady stream of children bringing her the tuki lamps from their households to be recharged. Soon the charging station, which is nothing more than a series of power strips attached to a large 12 volt storage battery, is full to capacity with 24 lamps. We also observe that Nain-kumari has set up a side-business of charging personal cellphones (which are now ubiquitous even in remote villages). Amusingly, when any of the cell phones left in her care rings, Nain-kumari answers the phone and chats with the caller; her station has now become Gossip Central.

Gradually, a number of village elders including the (apparently self-appointed) headman make their way to Nain-kumari’s porch to talk with Mitch. People seem to be very happy with their lamps, which they hang over the cooking/eating area, but can also carry over to other rooms and outdoors to inspect their animals in the evening. The portable Black Diamond model has held up well, with only a few battery failures so far. The original plan called for each lamp to be priced at Rs1000 ($1 = Rs69), to be paid in monthly installments of Rs200 (equivalent to the monthly cost of fuel for the kerosene lamps that the new LED lamps replaced).

Together with the ongoing fee of Rs5 per lamp charge, these monies are supposed to go into a community fund for system maintenance and future development projects. However, a couple months into the scheme, the charging fee was change to Rs20 per month, and the amounts due from each recipient are now simply recorded, with no cash handed over. Thus, there is no accumulating cash store, and we have no idea how many villagers will make good on their debts for the solar lighting.

We’ve also noticed that there are now 5 or 6 additional roof-mounted solar panels, which must have been installed in individual homes over just the last 6 months, that are powering ceiling-mounted fixed fluorescent lamps. Although not as powerful or costly as the original community system, these private solar power systems were undoubtedly paid for by remittances from village men working abroad – the only source of significant cash income to these households. Mitch is uncertain of the significance of this phenomenon, but I think it means that (a) the original solar lighting system proved so superior to kerosene lamps that it inspired individual households to buy their own systems, and that (b) although one may start with providing a community-wide basic good, households with greater disposable income will purchase similar additional goods for their own individual benefit, and sooner or later an unequal distribution of that good will emerge despite one’s strongest egalitarian intentions.

Every few minutes one of the old folk, as they join the crowd on the porch, take a look at me and ask Mitch how I can possibly be American when I’m obviously a “mongoloid” (their term) like themselves. Each time Mitch patiently explains, “Uni huncha American, buwah ahmai Chinko.” The fact that Mitch can speak Nepali and I can’t is also incongruous to these folk. One of old ladies, cigarette in hand, wisecracks, “Why doesn’t your American friend talk? Is he a deaf mute?”

Later on, in fact, I encounter a deaf -mute old man, walking completely bent over with a cane. Mitch tells me that there seems to be at least one deaf-mute in every remote Nepali village he visits, and there are three deaf-mutes here in Namarkhu alone. Iodine deficiency can cause congenital malformations and retardation (so-called cretinism) in addition to goiters, which were widespread in Tibet and the Himalayas before the introduction of iodized salt. Although the man I encountered may have been a cretin, all these deaf-mutes cannot be explained by iodine deficiency alone. Among the Gurungs and other hill tribes, there is strong societal pressure to marry within one’s clan, and I speculate that this practice may result in higher rates of congenital deaf-mutism and other genetic disabilities.

After a lunch of dal bhat with the addition of cucumber, Bijan takes me down to the village’s primary school, situated on a plateau 300 steps below the village. The school has 5 grades and 3 teachers, but the distance and danger of the walk for small children is a concern. As a possible sign of general literacy, I haven’t seen a single book in anyone’s house, with the exception of a Tibetan prayer book being recited by the village lama. Later in the afternoon, as children come by Tuli-ama’s front door, I take out the only two books that I have with me – an English-Nepali phrase book and a Nepal tourist guide book. Kids gather round and pile on each other to look at the illustrations and Nepali characters as they mouth out the English words. When I unfold my wall map of Nepal, one of the older children, a 13-year-old girl, is the only one who can eventually find our Lamjung district on the map. Then I open up my laptop to show them pictures of my family and our travels, to general curiosity and wonder. When it runs down, I bring my laptop to Nain-kumari to be re-charged.

Sunday, October 17

Tuli-ama offers me a cup of milk tea, then stoops on the front stone walk to wash the dishes. Bhau-jyu comes out onto the threshold and lights a candle and joss sticks, placing both on the shelf above the door, between framed pictures of Hindu and Buddhist pantheons. The alcove fills with the smell of incense. Today is the 10th and most important day of Deshain, Bijaya Dashami. On this day, people seek out their elders, who place a tika mark on their foreheads to bless them with fertility and abundance for the upcoming year. Amongst the Gurung, the tika is made of rice immersed in yogurt, and thus white, unlike the vermillion tika we see on the lowland Hindus. Mitch and I each receive tika from Tuli-ama. A steady rain falls throughout this quiet day, and a steady stream of friends and neighbors comes by to receive tika from this elderly matriarch.

Monday, October 18

The day breaks clear, so Mitch and I decide to leave Namarkhu for the long and uncertain journey back to Kathmandu. However, we must first attend to the next community project: a new water supply. Namarkhu depends on a rainfall-dependent stream more than 15 minutes walk away. Last year Mitch and the villagers scouted out a fresh spring uphill from the village, with a steady dependable stream of water. The idea was to build a piping system to bring this spring water to the village, to be paid for by a combination of local government funding, proceeds from the solar lighting project, and individual remittances. Since then, the villagers opted to use the government funding to build just a storage tank for the current water supply. Neverthess, the headman and others have agreed to re-explore the original plan.

To obtain an estimate of the amount of plastic piping needed for a new water supply, we must measure the linear distance from the spring to the village. An an hoc committee of village men comes together armed with a ball of rough string and a tape measure. Within the tight space between two households, we painstakingly measure out 10-meter lengths of the string and tie a knot at each juncture until we have 40 meters of measuring string.

Then we all march up a small side path above the village, reaching the spring after about 25 minutes of walking uphill and downhill. The water gushes forth in this post-monsoon season, and one of the men fills a large plastic bucket as Mitch counts off the seconds. It’s impossible to make an estimate of the water flow (in cubic feet per second), but we decide that the even the slower flow previously observed during the dry season will furnish an adequate supply of water.

To measure the full linear distance that a pipeline will have to travel, Mitch has brought an (in)clinometer, an instrument by which one can measure the angle of slope or inclination of a fixed object at a fixed distance with respect to gravity. So the village headman, holding one end of the string, steps away from Mitch, who is standing at the spring and holding the other end of the string along with the clinometer. Unfortunately, we can no longer find any of the knots marking the 10-meter lengths, and suspect that they must have come undone in stretching the string. Fortunately, another villager has arrived with a flexible tape measure, which we use to mark, and this time cut, a 10-meter length of string.

Hence we begin. The village head man stands 10 meters away from Mitch, and because he is the same height as Mitch, Mitch can look into the headman’s eyes through the clinimeter to obtain the angle of slope. We then discover that it’s also important for the subsequent reading that Mitch stand precisely in the same location where the headman stood during the prior reading. A burly barefoot man steps forward to mark that spot with a stick. Thus: the headman stands rigidly at attention staring at Mitch, as if posing for a formal portrait, while holding a piece of string in one hand. Meanwhile, the marker wallah bends down and digs a marker line at the headman’s feet, throwing up dirt clods high into the air and into the headman’s face. Mitch calls out the clinometric reading (plus or minus x degrees compared to level), which I record with pen and paper. Then everyone moves down until Mitch places his feet at the dirt line made by the marker wallah. Our group must present a fairly ridiculous picture as we repeat this process in unison almost 100 times coming down from the spring...

After about 2 hours, we re-enter Namarkhu and I pick up my laptop from Nain-kumari (offering her Rs20 which I instead hand over to her 3-year-old daughter). While we wait for Tuli-ama and Bhau-jyu to cook up a lunch of (guess what?) dal bhat, I enter the clinometric readings in Excel as Mitch figures out the correct trigonometric formula to use: the sine of the clinometric angle times the hypotenuse gives the length of the long side of the right triangle. By the time lunch is ready, we have the full estimate and even a chart to show the headman and others: Everyone is suitably impressed and the expedition is declared a success.

Finally, we say our goodbyes to Namarkhu and the villagers drape us with katas and leis. We’ve decided to take a different route back to the east-west highway by walking down to the Chepe Khola, and seeing how far we can go along the river before we have to stop for the night. The descent is steep as we pass by the schoolhouse and several Gurung and Tamang villages on the way down. Each switchback offers a view of the villages across the river in the Gurkha district, seemingly near and yet so far. After we reach the comparatively level path along the river bank, most of the walkers we encounter are now Brahmin-Chhetris bearing vermillion tikas on their foreheads. By dusk we reach the bus terminal town of Burung Khola, named after the small river that joins the Chepe Khloa there. We have to spend the night here after determining that the next bus won’t be departing until 7a.m. the next morning.

The “hotel” is a foul establishment with a rude proprietess. When Mitch asks her about the rooms, she jerks her thumb to the rear stair; when asked about a shower facility, she points to the Burung Khola. We stash our gear on the filthy beds and make our way down to the river, where I wash in a blissfully cool eddy pool. At dinner, a stray dog roots among the dirty dishes piled at the faucet next to my seat, before Miss Manners picks up a huge cudgel and propels the creature off with a massive “whack!” I decide to sleep out on a corner of the concrete rooftop veranda, with a sleeping bag and pad. I wake up every couple hours from the sound of rats in a pile of boxes in the opposite corner, but this allows me to track Jupiter’s clockwise progression around the moon as it traverses the clear night sky. The next morning Mitch tells me that I made the right decision, as he has come away with multiple itchy bites on his skin, whether from bedbegs, fleas, or other arthropods we don’t know.

Tuesday, October 19

The bus horn blasts its rapid 5-note trill at 6:30am and begins to fill with families returning from Deshain holiday. The largely Brahmin-Chhetri crowd pushes, cajoles, and squeezes onto all the available seats. Mitch and I sandwich ourselves into the very front of the bus, on a sideways bench jammed against the manual transmission and facing the driver. The tout continues to invite passengers to board until the bus is filled to standing room only, then the driver finally starts the engine and we begin to rock and roll over a dirt road muddied by three straight days of rain.

We’ve gone no more than half a mile when the bus stops for an extended family of what must be 15 people, standing by the road and already sweating in their suits and holiday dresses. I mutter aloud “You’ve got to be kidding me, there’s no way all these people can get on,” but Mitch reassures me that we’re just beginning to load up the bus, which will not be at real capacity until there are at least 30 people sitting on the roof on top of the luggage. Sure enough, everyone manages to squeeze on. The bus stops for anyone standing randomly but expectantly by the road – not one person gets off since everyone is heading back to the main highway - and the process is repeated. I’m reminded of the children’s picture book in which all of the forest animals, from mouse to bear, crowd into a lost woolen mitten seeking warmth.

We lurch forward in this fashion for three and a half hours until we reach the end of the dirt road and the footbridge spanning the Mardisyangi Khola. We get off and carry our bags across the river and up the hill to the next town, where we will attempt to find a bus to take us back to Kathmandu. In the bazaar, Mitch finds and asks the driver of a Kathmandu-destined bus that is already full if he can take us on. The driver bobs his head and point to the roof of his bus, where we can sit for the duration to Kathmandu for Rs 300. I ask Mitch to ask the driver if we can cajole a couple of passengers to give up their seats if we pay them twice the fare, but the driver again he bobs his head toc say “no, sorry.” Then I tell Mitch that every viable vehicle is going to be an absolutely packed today, so we’d better take this sure thing despite the safety hazards. So we climb up with our packs and wedge ourselves in the front between a metal tool trunk and a tied-down spare tire.

The bus driver hasn’t returned yet, so I get down to buy a soda and cookies for the road. From his high post, Mitch then spies a silver bus labeled “Tourist” rolling up and yells at me to see if we can switch to this undoubtedly better-appointed bus. I run up to driver’s window to ask if he can take on two more tourists, but he too points up to the roof. I figure that there can’t be that much of an added comfort or safety factor to riding on the roof of a tourist bus than a regular bus, so we stick with Plan A.

I clamber back on the roof, where Mitch is wiping sunblock lotion onto his face and arms. I congratulate him on having the foresight, unlike me, to bring a tube of sunscreen, but Mitch says, “I live on Maui, so I never go anywhere without bringing this stuff along.” So I borrow the tube and slap some lotion on. As the driver starts the engine and kicks into gear, we have an open view ahead and the air blowing in our faces, and I figure that sitting on top is much more pleasant then being crammed inside the bus, as long as one mentally blocks out thoughts of falling off. The five-hour drive to Kathmandu becomes an adventure in itself, a panorama of motion and chaos along the unending stream of human, animal, and vehicular traffic winding below us. At the end, I get off no worse for wear except for a bad sunburn on my legs (at which point Mitch tells me, "That's why I never wear shorts.")

Total shared expenses for Lamjung 6 Days, 5 nights:
Hired car, Kathmandu to Bandipur 5500
Bandipur room & meals 1000
Jeep hire, Bandipur to Pounde 1500
Porters, Pyarjung-Gounda-Namarkhu 700
Namarkhu food & lodging (3 days) 3000
Porters, Namarkhu-Burungkhola-Dhumre 500
Burungkhola hotel & dinner 1000
Bus, Burungkhola to Dumre, porter 280
Bus, Dumre to Kathmandu 600
TOTAL Rs 14,180
Exchange rate $1 = Rs 69.70
= $16.95 per person per day