The NGO race

Internet is getting less and less for me so I apologize for the infrequency but I will do the best I can and just make them a little longer. I have now been living in my village for about 3 or 4 weeks and most of the projects and groups are underway. I am working in a girl's group twice a week in which we meet with about 18 girls from the village to have fun and also discuss more womanly topics that the girls do not necessarily have another outlet for. Many are very shy when it come to sharing their own experiences, but when you say something about yourself or how you feel they are always interested and agree if they feel the same. In one of the women's groups we decided to paint with the women and give them some time to just sit and look at the beautiful surroundings and paint what they saw. We come and look around and take our pictures and sit in awe at how green and serene the setting is for us but for these women this is their home and their work and probably do not even have he time to appreicate it. At first some of the women stared at us with these brushes and then they began to paint and paint. With only two or three colors for each women dropped into the egg cartons we had been using for our breakfasts, each woman did her own impression of the tree in the distance or the flower next to her and it was so nice to watch. We tried to play some soothing music (for the record Nepali women are not the biggest Adele fans, I know, shocking), but it was slightly hard to set the mood when there are 19 women painting with 10 children, two babies, and three machetes for cutting the rice surrounding them. In the end we had over 30 paintings of all types of aspect of nature, each one more impressive than I could ever make (which does not say much because I can barely even draw a circle, but you get the idea). They all seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves because for once the activity was just about them and although it is not likely hey will go home and become the next Van Gogh, maybe a few of them were just a little bit more proud of themselves for the work they had done.
  I am teaching English to a couple of the girls from that group at six in the morning because that is the only time they have free and it is so refreshing teaching students who want to learn.  Many of the girls had to drop out of school to help with the family at a young age so although they are 16, they are much behind other people their age. I am also teaching teachers at a public school nearby ( meaning n top of a half hour hike up a mountain which for Nepalese people seems to mean right around the corner) and I have to come to understand how truly difficult English really is. There are so many rules and exceptions to the rules that are so ingrained in my mind but so challenging to teach. The class is made up of the principal and five other teachers who all have different levels of English and it is fun to watch this role reversal of teachers as students copying each other's work, shouting out answers when it is not their turn, and of course every time they want to reenter the classroom asking us "Miss, May I come in?" just as their students would do.
  I am still trying to figure out the balance between where we as volunteers fit into the community and even more so into the volunteering role in general. NGO's have set up a complicated relationship with communities and in some areas have almost put organizations against eachother instead of working together. While at a women's group in the stone quarry I work with, one woman told us that another NGO has given the women pigs for income generation ( a term that gets used many times by a lot of people in this area but only few know what it actually means) and that our organization has only provided knowledge and questioned where that has  gotten her. She wants physical and monetary things and looked at us in that moment as if she was the queen and we had not brought her the shiniest jewels. To me, it seems as if the process of giving in many respects is dis-empowering the women because it makes them dependent on the NGO and also makes some of them believe that money will be the key to fix them all of their problems. In many cases it will, being able to provide more food, better education for their children. However, it will not cure the HIV that they may have and not even know about it and it certainly will not stop their husbands from beating them at night. This is where knowledge does become a key role and if they know about where to get tested or how to use self defense, that could also greatly improve their lives. We are trying to slowly work with other NGOs in the area so that maybe a joint program with an emphasis on knowledge and with some financial backing so that a more sustainable, well rounded plan can be established and it is not a matter of which NGO is giving the best deal but rather a group of people with a common cause (The NGOs and the women), all working together. I will keep you updated on the progress ( if there is any).  Sorry about all of the run on sentences and spelling errors! I can just see my sister's edits she would make. Miss you all!
Food for thought: At one of the girl's groups this week, we discussed the body of a woman, in regards to hormonal changes, the period, and pregnancy. Although the group is shy, we still asked if anyone had questions and I was surprised to see that one girl raised her hand. She asked "Why do so many babies die at birth?" The doctor we had invited to speak paused for a moment, not sure how to answer such a question and then used the only approach she saw fit, the medical, doctor voice we all hate to hear "There are many factors that can cause..." Although the answer was certainly appropriate, those of us in the room knew that in that moment the girl was probably thinking about a lot more than just the medical reasons for the loss of so many babies.

A mud hole

I know it has been a while since last I posted and they will only become less frequent because I have finally moved to the village of Mahadav Besi! There is no internet there so I will post when I have access to a computer. The village is really beautiful, hard to describe but there are rows of fields that almost look like green pyramids carved into the mountains. There are seven of us in one mud house. When we arrived it almost felt like we were young children who stumbled across an old house in the woods and decided to make it a play house only we decided to actually live in it for almost 3 months. The monsoon had ruined part of the house, and no one had lived there
in over 5 months, so it was time to clean things up. There was a hole in the roof of my room as well as the ceiling of the people below me and as fun as it to play will I fall through or won't I, we needed to close it. It turns out that one of the best muds to make a sturdy floor is, you guessed it, buffalo manure, which can only be properly mixed by, you guessed it, our hands. My friend reminded me to really get out all of the "lumps" as if this experience wasn't scarring enough but in the end, it was kind of exciting to help build my own floor, whatever materials may have been used.
  Most people in my group are extremely proactive and have worked really hard to make the house a home and someone even made a small clay oven outside along with a hammock. Someone even tried to create a tap in the bucket shower so it could be even closer to taking a real one. Every night the power goes out for about an hour and a half right as we are cooking dinner but everyone wears their headlamps and just keeps on chopping, and I must say I have become quite the master of peeling potatoes in the dark and still have all of my fingers.
Sometimes I feel like I am in one of those museums that has the exhibits where you can dress up and pretend to cook in a kitchen from the 18th century but then I realize this is how all of my neighbors in the village are living today. We have three Nepali staff who work with us and come with us to all of the meetings to translate as well as
provide their own knowledge. They are so warm and helpful and the people love them just as much as we do. We have not started actually working in the groups and communities yet because we are still observing them all and trying to figure out what role we will play and how helpful we can be in such a short amount of me. I will be working
mostly with a girls group in which they can hopefully speak out things that may be embarrassing or not openly discussed in their society normally in a safe place, working in a theater group and choir at a school, and in 3 women's groups as well discussing a variety of topics. One of the women's groups is located in the stone quarry in
which the women work to break stones everyday to be sold and they are migrant workers that live in very small tin and plastic structures near the quarry. They lead a  challenging life but today we had our first meeting and the women shared a lot and even laughed for most of the time and told us they felt very comfortable in this setting so I am excited to see what we can accomplish or at least provide an hour a week for them to relax and talk about any issues on their minds.  Although some of us feel at times that we do not have so much to do in the village and that our groups meet so infrequently, there is something so comforting about being able to walk around the village and have people call out your name from fields away just to say hello and how are you, knowing its the only words you truly know in their language. Although some of the bigger goals I had in mind might be harder to accomplish in the amount of time I have here, there is so much for me to learn here about myself, the land, and of course the communities and I look forward to see what the next 2 and a half months will bring. 
     Food for thought: We had a couple of girls come over to the house during our last days of training from the youth group and they asked us to share what the youth do in our own countries. One group of Israelis did a small skit showing games they like to play and explained about strong the youth groups are there to which one girl said " That all looks like fun, but when do you all find time to work in the day?" No one knew how to answer and then someone finally tried to begin to explain how in Israel and America a lot of children do not work at such a young age and for those who do it is sometimes more for their own "piggy bank" and rarely to pay for the groceries for the family. There are obviously many who must work as well but for most of us in our group and in our social circles this is not the case and it made a lot of us think about our own childhoods and how working at that ice cream shop in the summer to pay for a new iphone maybe was not so bad after all.

A Winding Road

    This week we finally had the chance to visit the third location that some people may be working at. The village is 8 hours outside of Kathmandu and the only way to get there is go through a winding road in which there really is only one way. Buses honk their musical horns to let others know they are coming around the bend and if another one is coming also then both must slow down and pray that they both make it through because the alternative is one going off the cliff. When we finally arrived in the village, we looked around at the beautiful scenery and realized just how high in the mountains we really were. At this point we were used to the welcome ceremony in which we receive tika, usually a red powder mixed with rice, placed on our foreheads (and my nose somehow every time) and flower necklaces. We were staying with host families which I was slightly nervous about with my lack of Nepali language skills but excited about as well. The family lived in a beautiful mud house that the father had built and had two sons who spoke some English that made it easier to communicate. The mother used an open fire in the middle of the house to cook the food and to warm the house as well which caused a lot of smoke to fill the house, so much so that I had to leave the room when I went down the small stairs to breathe in some fresh air.
    My favorite member of the family was the grandfather or Hajur Bua, a small man with just one tooth, who wore an old  blazer from who knows where, and a pair of shorts, in 10 degree weather, and still managed to smile and laugh every time I said any word in Nepali. We learned so much about life in the mountains and how much agriculture controls these communities' lives. We met the incredible youth group there that has meetings once a week and have already helped reduce alcoholism in the community just by raising awareness of its causes. The school we visited has to be moved within the next 6 months because if it is not, it will be washed off the area with the next monsoon season. It was inspiring to see how far they have come but there is still a lot of work to be done. With no internet and very unstable electricity, we were able to really understand the power of disconnecting and focusing on the moment, and see how much more it brought families together.  There were definitely no TV dinners in sight. On our way home we stopped at a hospital hat seemed to be quite impressive and supposedly offers lots of free treatments for all kinds of needs. I couldn't help but think if they had this kind of hospital ion a place like Ghana how many more people could use and deserve (especially one very special boy) that kind of care but hopefully this is just a model for future cheaper hospitals in many places in the world. This week we find out where we will be placed and I would really be happy in either village, even if one is an 8 hour ride to the capital city so I shall keep you updated as I find out as well as add more photos.
   I seem to have forgotten to mention the monkeys that live near our house here. At first they seem exotic and exciting as previously mentioned but after the latest attack, I know longer hold that special love for them. I had been warned that they like to take people's biscuits or plastic bags but did not think much of it. As my friend and I were walking to the Monkey temple, I was carelessly swinging my biscuits in the air until a monkey jumped in front of us. he basically put his monkey hands on his monkey hips, just like the high school bully in Full House waiting for Stephanie's lunch money ( for those of you unaware of the reference I apologize but you get the idea). I naturally started shrieking which led him and his monkey accomplice to start circling us until I threw the biscuits in the air as he jumped to catch them. He then proceeded to eat every single one in my face and lick the wrapper just to be obnoxious. For the rest of the day I had monkey anxiety and could not be near them without wondering if I would be jumped or not. I know this is all part of the process and hopefully next time I will be able to keep my biscuits and teach the monkey a lesson. For now I'll just hide my food under my coat. Monkeys: 1 Sophie : 0

Another interesting and thoughtful week. My Nepali language teacher gave me the initial Nepali name of "Bhuddimaya" which if said correctly could mean wisdom but if said with the wrong emPHasis on the wrong syLLable (yep, just quoted that movie), means old lady. The good news is the Nepalese people I spoke to got a great laugh this past week as I tried to say my name, the bad news is I do not know how to say it correctly, so I just asked to change it. My new name then became chulbule, meaning small goat, implying someone who is chatty and always moving around (later found out to mean naughty). My teacher laughed a lot and hugged me as she gave it to me, which one would think would imply a good name, but as I slowly started telling local Nepalese people what it was, they were just laughing, no hugging, so it may be time to just stick with Sophie. Finally, a girl in the village we visited gave me the name Imani, which was the name of a princess I am told so that sounds like a safer bet to me.
      The big adventure of this week was bungee jumping off of a bridge about 4 hours from here. Ten of us went and it was quite an exhillerating experience. I went last in my group and spent a half an hour on a bridge with 10 Nepali men, 2 girls from China, and 2 from India. We all did not know each other but had this commonality of potentially jumping to our deaths in the upcoming minutes. There is nothing like a little fear to connect everyone real fast. I suddenly pretended to know meditation as I led a small exercise that people actually followed. We started singing (okay I started singing) "I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid, to take a stand.." and the boys started singing a Nepali song. By the end we were all cheering for each other and there is nothing like standing at the edge of  a bridge as 10 random people shout Sophie, Sophie! The empowering moment was slightly interrupted by the man in charge who could see my attempted confidence and properly shut it down with the comment "Great day to fly, even better day to die"....but overall it was completely worth the fear and the free falling feeling is one I highly recommend.
     Yesterday we made our way to one of the villages that 7 people will be working at, Mahadebesi. We danced with the women's group, visited a school, and saw many other products of all of the past volunteer group's work. As we watched how far the village has come, I wondered what work was still left to be done and what could I personally provide that hadn't been thought of already. When we visited the stone quarry, one of the women asked us, " What are you here to actually do? Or are you just here to take pictures?" After spending a day going to so many ceremonies in which everyone was clapping and explaining all of the wonderful things people have done it was a slight slap in the face, but a very honest question that caused many in the group to think about their true purpose here. Hopefully as we actually start working in the villages the answers will become clearer but regardless the village was a beautiful place with lots of strength and lots of potential for growth which was exciting for them to show and for all of us to see. 

The Unknown

Hello again! One week in and things are on a roll, or should I say roti (bread in Nepali). Finally starting to feel like I know the area as I proved today when we were asked to walk around Kathmandu alone for 4 hours and find our way back. So I hopped on a bus and then had to get out because there was a 300 car traffic jam that the driver told me wasn't moving and just continued walking. Found a man and a young boy playing a game called Ludo and over the next hour I became known as the "Ludo masta". As I continued walking someone overheard me asking for directions and asked if I wanted a ride there on his motorcycle as most people ride. I know my mother said to not ride with strangers but he seemed so nice and the walk was far and it really looked so cool. Don't worry mom, he was harmless and took me to his Sari shop where I watched a man embroider Saris by hand and tried one on myself. He may have introduced me to his whole family who may have thought I was trying Saris on for a potential wedding between us but I quickly explained it was not the case and politely excused myself from the store. For those that may know me, I've never been known for my sense of direction and especially at night in a foreign country, but somehow I found my way by constantly saying the name of my town and with lots of arrow pointing, as dark as it was, most people could not see that I was a tourist and for once we were all just people walking through the town.
     Yoga is a common practice here so a couple of days ago a couple of us woke up at 4:30 in the morning to go meet 75 other Nepalese people as they sat near the Monkey temple and did yoga for an hour and a half. A guru sat on top of a large podium and right as I crossed my legs, a large crackling sound interrupted my attempt at finding peace within my thoughts and I realized the guru was speaking into a microphone and there were 3 large speakers surrounding us. Technology certainly has its place but this did not seem right, especially as monkeys were constantly moving around us (and walking one foot from my head) and I felt almost more like a Richard Simmons video than a yoga class. Despite the sound system, I soon stopped thinking about it and focused on my breathing and the poses as people looked at me with encouraging looks as they could tell this was obviously my first time and flexibility is certainly not in my genes. We went to a bar last night in which I met 4 Nepalese men who spoke English and told me they were all "brothas from other mothas" and I find it so interesting how certain phrases make it half way around the world. There is a curfew in the city so we had to sneak out of the bar into an eerily quite road and quickly hopped into a taxi. 10 minutes later, we got a flat tire and attempted to help ( okay the three boys I was with attempted to help, I was there for moral support). Nothing worked so we eventually just walked home and as we walked I thought about the beauty and excitement of the unknown and was grateful for the ability we have (or hope to have) to adjust to almost any situation and embrace it. So much more to say but for now I will just say that I am excited to be visiting all of the sites we will be working at this week to better understand how we will be involved and finally start putting some of our knowledge to use.

Iodide Falafel

Namaste! First blog ever and not known for any skilled or witty writing so bare with me! Arrived in this beautiful country just 2 days ago and have had each of my senses exposed to a whole assortment of culture shock from the deep red saris to the distinct smell of rotting goat meat. By far one of the most surprising images of the day was two live chickens tied upside down to someone's motorcycle as he drove home to....well you know. Not sure how PETA would feel about that.
    The weather is quite pleasant these days, warm in the day and a nice breeze in the evening. The streets are narrow and filled with motorcycles and taxis consistently honking at every person on the street and with no real  road signs or lines in the road, it's really a free for all. Let's just say this is not the place for me to show off my new driving skills if I want to make it home alive. There are many temples with large steps and pagoda like structures,quite serene to look at but somewhat difficult to focus on serenity as homeless men lie across the bottom steps and small children follow you for money.
   Had falefel and chumus for lunch and have heard more Hebrew than Nepali. It is quite humorous to hear the Nepali shopkeepers call out "Shalom" as you walk by. I'm excited to start the actual program and learn more about the culture, history, and social structure of the country and actually get to put that education to good use and really get to know the people beyond what goods they sell or the food they make. I'll write as often as the internet allows and when there are hopefully enough interesting things to say!