I awake to roosters crowing and rain falling softly on the tin roof above us and the family already up sweeping floors and clanging pots and pans beneath us. It is about six o’clock in the morning, but with all the commotion below us as well as outside it seems like afternoon. We slept in the loft of a barn, no glass windows and no insulation only gaping two by fours separated us from the elements. We did have electricity, a crude fixture with a dim light bulb protruding from a wall decorated with aged and yellowed news papers. Unfortunately, we were unable to leave the light on too long because of all the moths it attracted from the outside, and not to mention all the wolf spiders we were able to see made having the light off more comforting. As humid as it was I forced myself to sleep with my sleeping bag zipped up over my head for fear of some vicious spider or insect crawling on my face in the night.
AB who is looking much better is stretching outside our door with a liter of water in hand. He says he is going to force himself to drink as much water as he can so he won’t sweat himself to death like he almost did yesterday. Our clothes that we hung to dry in the night are still wet from our perspiration. It is almost impossible to have dry clothing and shoes in such a humid environment and as gross as it feels putting them on that seems to be the only way to get them to dry. We climb down from the loft and are greeted by the warm cheerful smile of our innkeeper. Tony stops and looks at a poster on the wall that features the Hindu god, Hanuman the monkey headed deity. The innkeeper notices Tony gazing at the image and proudly pats the poster and humbly says, “That’s my god.” We sit at a picnic table and order our breakfast of Tibetan bread and eggs with yak cheese. As we sip our tea and coffee I can see the family hard at work in the kitchen preparing our food. A woman is kneading the dough for my Tibetan bread on a blackened tree stump, while a dark stove glows with a wood fire and eggs sizzling on the surface. To the left of our table a young girl goes to a small alter covered in red wax and rings a small bell and lights some incense. It all is so simple, a morning prayer, preparing food, playing with children, and working together for survival as a family and as a community. Back home we start our days alone by rushing to work or school sometimes barely eating breakfast if we eat any at all. We leave our children with strangers and we go someplace we would rather not be, but cannot survive without. We go to work dreading the day until our paychecks come and we can spend it on things that entertain us only for a short time and then we bury them in a closet or we yearn for them for another two weeks until we are paid again. These people are not distracted by a commercial world and are in no need of it because they have each other and are surrounded by a harmony and a cultural tradition that makes them who they are. We have lost our traditions to a materialistic and industrialized world, but although some of us do not realize it we are constantly searching for it when we absorb ourselves in the toys, clothes, gadjets, vehicles, and vacations we buy every day, every month, and every year. It reminds me of something the Buddha teaches, “The gift of truth conquers all gifts, the taste of truth conquers all sweetness, the joy of truth conquers all pleasures and the loss of desires conquers all sorrows.”
The rain is still falling steadily as we pack up for another long day on the trail. We wrap our belongings in plastic bags and then stuff them in our packs so we can be sure that we have dry clothing to change into in the night and also a dry sleeping bag to crawl into. We pay our friendly innkeeper and I leave one of his children with an ink pen which is a highly prized item in the mountains where a pen helps kids learn to write easier than chalk. We shuffle onto the trail with other children who are on their way to school. They wear blue uniforms if they are available or affordable because some kids do not wear them but still attend school. They pass us in the rain with umbrellas or plastic bags over their heads some looking up at us shyly while others mostly the real little ones try their hardest to avoid being noticed by us. There were times yesterday when we would be walking along the trail and off in the distance we would hear someone shout, “Hello, hello!” or “Hey Namaste!” and up on a hillside we would see several children dressed in blue waving at us from their school yard.
The children here are full of smiles and generally not scared to approach strangers. If we were stopped for a short rest the children will come to us and touch our packs or clothing or in my case the tattoo on my arm. They whisper little things to each other and giggle and test their English skills on you by asking for treats or pens. “ Sweet?” Have pen?” Unfortunately giving out candy is not recommended because there isn’t any kind of dental care here not even toothpaste so giving candy out increases their chances of having tooth decay. I read a report from the Everest region that so many tourists pass through there and give out treats to the kids that there is a real problem with tooth decay and a dental clinic actually needed to be put in the village of Namche Bazaar, the last big village before Everest. 5:00PM Jagat
It rained all day, the air was nice and cool but after walking long hours in wet shoes and water dripping down my neck and the sleeves of my rain jacket I wanted the hot weather to return. We were introduced to another native of Nepal, leeches. Disgusting slimy worms that suck onto your flesh until they are bloated with blood and then fall back to the ground leaving you a bloody mess from the anti-clotting agent they release into the blood. The worst part about them is that most of the time you never notice that they were on you, but you find the wound they left behind bleeding terribly. You wonder how they manage to climb on your boot and under the cuff of your pants and lastly up your leg without ever being seen or felt, that really gives me the creeps. When we got to our room for the night Tony slipped off his shoes and had four of them on his foot, two of which were practically on top of each other trying to get the perfect vein. To remove them the best thing to do is take your thumb and scoot it under the leeches sucker then pick it off quickly before it tries to reattach itself to your hand. Supposedly using a lighter or match will work as well, but when we tried it hurt us more than the leech.
Changing from my wet clothes to dry clothes I notice my body starting to show wear and tear from my backpack. I have sores on my shoulders and on my hips and a nasty blister forming in the center of my back. We made ourselves a first aid kit before we left the states full of band aids, tape, mole skin, ointments, and sports wraps since good sterile medical care is not available here in the mountains. I take a few snips of the mole skin and apply it to my hips and my shoulders, hopefully it will get me through the many miles ahead I still have to hike through.
There still is enough daylight left in the village after we are settled in so we decide to walk to the end of the village and hopefully get a chance to meet local people. The rain has stopped, but a heavy gray mist lingers over the surrounding hillsides and the sky itself is thick with dark clouds. Despite the weather everyone in the village is live and happy and children are playing on the pathway. There are still a few lingering trekkers coming into the village for the night asking us where we are staying and if the rooms are nice others continue on trying to find the last inn at the end of the village so that they can get to a quick start in the morning. I have Tony carry the camera and as he snaps a few shots he meets a little girl probably about seven years old and asks to photograph her. She immediately shimmers with happiness and beckons Tony to follow her to her house at the end of the village. She calls for her father and mother and excitedly yells, “Picture, Picture!!” From inside the tiny thatched roof shack comes a young man and woman maybe the age of twenty-five or twenty-eight carrying two babies, one a newborn and the other close to twelve months. They welcome Tony into their home showing him the kitchen and pictures they have received from other western travelers. I had also brought pictures from home of friends and family and my two cats of course and passed them around to the many children that have gathered around the house. It is amazing how well these pictures worked as a way of communicating with each other, because while the Nepalese do know a little English it is still a challenge to try to have a conversation based on a few words. They looked at the pictures of my cats and reacted to them by saying, “Meow, Meow!” One little girl ran home and brought back a kitten to show us. I also had a picture of me with my mother and they would hold their hands around their face in an up and down motion and say, “Look the same.” and point to me.
We have the family pose for the picture and are also asked to get into a picture with them with promises to send them the photographs when we return home. We give the father who we find out is named, Chandra a picture of Tony with our friend Eric in Times Square which he fell in love with, actually kissing it as he hung it on the wall in his house repeatedly saying, “This is very good, very funny, very good.” The picture is rather comical showing the two of them in a stance like they were models or a couple of gangster rappers in the middle of New York City. It is funny how Chandra not knowing Tony or Eric could somehow pick up on the humor of the photograph even with the cultural barrier.
Darkness was beginning to set in and our innkeeper catches up to us and asks it we could return so he could prepare dinner for us. We say our good nights and tell Chrandra we will stop back on our way out tomorrow morning. What a great experience to be able to meet local people who simply wanted to connect with us out of the curiosity and kindness of their hearts. It breaks the wall down of feeling like a nosey foreigner. Some people go places simply to check it off of their great list of accomplishments and to brag to friends back home, “Been there, done that.” However, in order to truly live you have to open up your heart to everything and every person that surrounds you and let them experience you just as you experience them. Photographing your experiences is great, but sometimes you have to remove yourself from behind the camera and not worry about what there will be to show for it when you leave. You just need to enjoy the moment for what it is because sometimes that camera can prohibit you from connecting with people. Tonight we were lucky and it did help us, but I am noticing that the site of the camera can also make people very nervous and more likely to hide.
The three of us end up being the only guests staying at our inn that evening and because of this we are treated royally by the family running it. We seat ourselves at a picnic table and order a round of dal bhat sets while white moths flutter around the burning lamp above our heads. Our food comes and we realize that we might be in a constant battle with the moths to keep them from diving into our food and drink. At one point a moth nose dives into AB’s bean soup and while we were not certain one of the girls attending to us let out a shout that sounded like, “Shit!” as she grabbed for the insect. I know it seems silly to report the incident, but the only reason it is funny is because she really didn’t speak any English and hearing that burst from her lips out of nowhere took us by surprise. Shit is probably not what she was saying, but it did give us quite a laugh. The innkeeper attempts to play a radio for us, but is having trouble getting any stations to come through. He is so determined to get the radio to work that he labors over it for a good forty-five minutes. Unfortunately we were all pretty tired and had long since finished our meal and after waiting out of kindness for him to try to play us some music we finally had to urge him to stop. Bless his heart for trying to make us comfortable while we stayed, but we felt bad having them run a generator only for us just to give us some light and music. The people are wonderful here.
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