And seeing things as they are (Vipassana)
“Tapai ko saman chutyo ki (hola)?” (Did you leave your things here?) The bus sign asked us as we got off the bus.
See photos on Substack here: https://clarreese.substack.com/p/drinking-in-nepal?r=2iambl
Photo caption: See the Nepal, others can’t and probably won’t get to know
Most of Nepal’s buses were multi-colored, uniquely fitted out by the owners. They were the main transport other than scooters and motorbikes/cycles. No two buses were the same. Likewise — no two buses necessarily were going to keep a schedule.
On one bus ride, after we booked and confirmed, the managers had split booking between smaller vehicles and, likewise, expected us to pack inside like the tinned anchovies that the other passengers were already looking like. Firm on not separating ourselves to accommodate to a smaller, confined, and not-what-we-paid-for transportation vehicle, we ended up leaving almost an hour later. The same day, we ending up passing by a bus flipped. No one was hurt, praise God. However, it reminded me about how the delay is a blessing too no matter the inconvenience.
As we wound the hills, a shadow of a girl appeared…. and she was throwing up outside the bus window due to motion sickness. With all the winding, bumpy roads, I wondered about why that was their choice of road: winding and bumpy. I learned from my dear friend, Sri Sri (also bestie), that I was visiting that while the roads were “like thread was thrown on to the hills and it descended around each hill and mountain,” the style reduces forest damages and the environmental impact — protecting Nepal’s environmental integrity. As we passed series of tumbled rocks, earth, and even trees, I realized landslides could happen. As thus, there are structures that help prevent landslides from descending and unraveling completely into chaos and prevent drivers from going completely cliffside. Check out a better view of them in the linked video. They’re the caged in rocks seen in the thumbnail. The ones embedded in the hill provide stability support for the road.
One thing that I learned from the lego blocks was about the engineering happening across Nepal to create structures like this.
"You mean an engineer didn't put that together.""No, an engineer didn't put that together."The government of Nepal will pay engineers to assemble community members to help with projects, who lie outside cities in which engineers typically conglomerate, and pay them. From the landslide blocking — taught to me as Nepali term taat bandha — to bridges? Yes, the government also engaged in paying local peoples to even work on bridges because it’s a lot to bring engineering or construction groups from bigger cities to places they could get sick in, not like, etc. Local peoples also break up rocks to sell for construction projects like working on roads or houses; I jokingly included that an engineer didn’t do it, but the perpetuation and establishment of these projects doubly demonstrates to me how engineering can be localized and how non-matriculated engineers, are still engineers. It’s actually something that I’m studying now in my doctoral matriculation: how local environmental and ecological knowledges make manifest better the relationships between people and Earth.
Along the way, as the drivers drove these winding and bumpy roads, they would have to kill the engine or have a co-driving passenger to hop out and talk to the person standing guard on the road. The driver, or co-driver, would depict who and what is all in the car, and at times also provide permits to access certain areas. It felt like every other curve contained a road stop and safety check. While I thought they were a lot, despite the learned engineering practices of locals and the extensive roadside protection measures, roadways away from the city simply are in a derelict state and lack a lot of safety features. However unneeded I thought it was, I learned and experienced the fact that a lot can happen on these roads so they do what they can to keep track of the people and cars on the way, even radioing in if who they should be expecting hasn’t yet arrived as they waited.
God showed me who He was even in these bumpy and hurling-inducing moments: a lot of people get sick or weary or even scared looking at the roadway, or path, ahead. Psalm 119:105 tells us “He is a lamp to my feet and light to my path.” That would mean what? Where you’re at right now may be bumpy and folks may tell you to fear the unknown. My own host family feared me getting intensely sick on the road too. As preparation, Sri Sri told me to prepare myself for the worst on the road. I imagined being vaulted in the air. I imagined a flash flood sweeping us away. I imagined the car rolling. As we passed goats burnt to a crisp in a blaze just outside the country’s village area of Jumla, our family trip’s final destination, I was told that they were offering to their god. I just want to tell you don’t be too scared of a little water, little fire, the burnt goats, the pebbles nor boulders. He finna keep you all the way. Speaking of water, that’s where this title comes from: “Drinking in Nepal.”
When you start to drink, you have to keep in mind that water bottles are not typically just shared between people by lips. You should fount it to pass it on because it doesn’t actually belong to just you even if it is your private, personal water bottle. There were many times where I forgot “my” bottle was not mine. Then, I realized that I contaminated a water container that was meant to be shared with more than just myself, including my Nepali family members.
I first traveled to Nepal under this guise of my bestie’s graduation in May. Graduation in May? It was actually December and I forgot how we got to organizing the date. I think it was with the thought in which I would be available. Either way, I landed with a bounce and a twist in my trousers, itching to both bathe and rest in a bed.
Over the length of my stay, I experienced and treasured a lot more than I thought I would as I recall flopping in the bed and sleeping as if I were dead: eating raw coconut at temple, blessing mom with tikka on Mother’s Day, painting nails (there is something extremely intimate and blessed about someone being willing to handle with care both hands and feet), flies swarming around the Kathmandu compound after the rain, picking berries in the street, kids yelling ‘beautiful’ upon seeing me, bus naps, litchi juice and digestive cookies, roaches in the hotel bathroom that only appeared when I was looking, pepto bismol tablets, sightseeing and seeing lots of stairs; and the orange of the sun (bc of pollution); coffee and biscuits, getting my Nepali name as Fullmaya—a combination of Aamaa’s name and the word flower in Nepali to make “flower of love” in English, morning study and prayers, repeatedly being told “you’re really blessed” — Backahami. Backahami. Backahami — telling Sri Sri how I feel God using me to get the family together like they haven’t been in decades; Getting blessing from elders, Rice being thicker and more red in Jumla, channels of irrigation water networks in the countryside, and a photo shoot in Jumla Cultural attire. The longest stare — scary: “I’ve never spoken to someone that looks like you before.” Rejected from the Nepal-India border. Being blessed by my bestie’s elders, as linked.
Photo captions: I got blessed a lot. Visiting the hajuramaa and hajurbuwaa (the grandparents) and uncle.
This story wouldn’t be complete without talking about the driver guy who took us to and from the countryside. A 20 year old, more skilled on roads than I was had our life in his hands. I learned that he ran away to get married at 17 and currently has a newborn son. As I recovered from my shock, he took in my jewelry and appearance and minded my age and was asking for my “story,” my relationship history. Realizing he was asking about my marital experience, Sri Sri quickly told him I was unmarried and I laughed at his reaction, watching his sharp features contort into confusion. Who’s shocked now?
Although we were more like his customers, the family and I got to know him a bit more including his current goals, family life, and current career and how he plans to switch things up. In my head, and books, he remains a little booger-picking, feet-smelling menace no matter how cool I thought his backwards driving up and downhill was. He drilled me with his own questions whenever he and I would wait for the family in the car as religious ceremonies took place: Do you swim? Do you run? Is that bracelet from a cultural ritual? My answers weren’t ever really satisfactory because (1) there was always more to ask, (2) there was always more to say, and (3)…we had a double language barrier with no one to translate. However, no matter his good driving, or anyone’s of that matter, some things I ate really wanted a reintroduction to the outside of my body.
As I clutched my pepto bismol and braced the stomach pain as the tablets that entered my body were settling, I realized seeing the “real Nepal” takes resilience. Like traveling around here…actually takes resilience. I had to come up with a rule as we progressed in our cross-country travels. New rule? “No looking where you pee! Focus on peeing and dip!” and I quote (my iCloud notes). Bathroom shower in an unknown location? Out in the open? — don’t forget the new rule! One opening that we came across had a bathroom. It also had dancing.
Called from our photoshoot in the country air, Sri Sri and I started to walk along the dirt road. Blocking our field of vision, I joked about why the family sent for us. Based on how I’d seen Aamaa, my bestie’s mom, move I called out: “I bet we’re gonna run and dance in the middle of a field.” And did…that we did. Click the link to go see the view just before we danced in the circle: everyone is waiting for us to join in.
The open area invited me to reflect on the three different national parks that I visited, including Rara National Park. It’s interesting how folks will be enclosed (actually not enclose but build around them) in national park. I’ve noticed this model goes worldwide and intend to research it more: how, globally, national parks are formed around conservation policies that don’t include the sustainment of indigenous peoples — just the living world in which they live.
I realized maybe all religion ever was a desperation to get back to God and we’ve all found Him in a multitude of ways.
I had insightfully disrespectful questions based on things that I learned and experienced. There were things that bothered me and things that I didn’t like. Likewise, others had their own disrespectful questions to ask. I asked myself if Buddha really wanted be worshiped. As we entered the village worship temple for the familial god, elder brother asked: “why god so hard to reach?” That’s all I will say for this section because there were things I came to like.
Things I came to like: Daal-baat and momos and really actually having meals as I probably should. Way less snacks. Spending time, trekking, litchi juice, freshest mango ever, the sweetness of jeri, mom making fun like my mom does and dad weird like my dad is weird. I asked myself what I am bringing back, as I did on my Cuba trip. Beyond my family’s custom design and seaming of the Nepali kurta cultural dress and cow milk soap and a shirt that read “Yak Yak Yak Yak Yak” with …yaks embroidered across the shirt. As we traveled, my extended family kept calling me blessed: things continued to work out or happen and a situation “shouldn’t” be a certain way and it is and it’s beautiful. To God be the glory. That reminds me of worship.
I was told that Nepal’s greatest wealth is forest. I’m thinking their wealth is in their worship. I realized maybe all religion ever was a desperation to get back to God and we’ve all found Him in a multitude of ways. One of the legends that gets told, making man god, is of an engineer.
Long ago, the Kathmandu valley was a lake. Later, Boddhisattva Manjushree, projected in some stories as an engineer instead of an enlighten being, drained the lake out from the Chobhar gorge and made it a habitable land and make way for “beings without supernormal powers” to worship at the stupa location just beyond the lake. He conducted more surveys to drain the lake completely an alter the hydrology to create a steady water source that would come to the now drained valley. He is credited for creating the Kathmandu valley, part of which is pictured below.
My friend pictured with her arms out wide facing the valley of Kathmandu
Summer makes me want to get deeper into His Word. Even now the time spent here, I feel like I’ve gotten to know Him more and differently with all I’ve experienced, not just seen. I haven’t had many trips where all I leave with is the view. I mean, I traveled on roads that I thought I might puke and die on. That’s nothing but God to me. To keep me like I’ve never been kept and show me love through so many people. Even those just solely fascinated by me. Like yes. God made me too.
05/29 I asked (again in iCloud notes): So what were you taught here?
And I answered:
I was taught about strength in God and being even more obedient and faithful and loving towards Him and how that can look like not taking offense but guarding your heart and mind in Christ — that folk won’t know what they won’t know till they’re looking you in the eye and taking you in, body and appearance without regard for Spirit. They just know: they not like us. Maybe I was taught about how different Sri Sri lives here versus the States and also experienced that…hardship of earlier lives that I haven’t considered in years. I was taught of God’s way of having you endure and the way He’ll supplement my resiliency with things like new rules — of shielding your eyes to keep faith and sanity in a bathroom — , old rules of not assuming and especially not believing in the negative thoughts about conversations you think people are having and remembering folk are obsessed with the Black girl — , and His portion for me: peace, joy, love, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self control, and patience… I learned how folk engineer as a collective and how transportation networks work here and how reliant the engineer has become on the local persons. I wish I could learned how an engineer organizing locals for projects. How are they being taught? When? How long? What story is spun to get people on board? Is it really only money that motivates people?
It’s been “real” Nepal. I pray that I learn more and construct my answers for you. For this world we live in. I thank you for letting God use you, my medium, and giving me questions, revelations, and thoughts I never thunk.
All the Best,
CLG
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