Manju

 

Next morning, someone is banging on my door, really hard.  Esbettt!! yells Ayush, the 9 year old boy.  They call him Babu. First born boy is called Babu and the first born girl is called Nani here.  I opened the door and he has a glass of tea in his hands with a smile and “Good morning!”.  I take the tea, thanking and sit outside, took a zip it is sweet, black tea with ginger and some other spices.  Oh what will I do without my lattes? This tea tastes odd.  And I still haven’t figured out the cigarette issue.  Shreeram told me there was no smoking in the house.  So I didn’t.  Oh I wish I had a coffee and a cigarette to wake up.  Well, I will find a way.

 

For now I am zipping my tea, and looking around takes my breath away.  Nepal is consisted of three areas.  The first is the highland. Average height is 6000m.  Eight of the  15 highest peaks are in this area.  Including Everest of course.  The other area is the hilly area as they call it.  Average height is 2000-2500 m.  And where I am is the lowland, about 200m higher than sea level.  With my tea in my hand I stand in the middle of an endless land.  You can sea the mountain Anapurna on a clear day.  Around me are rice fields surrounded with mountain tops.  Later I would understand how the Nepali could sit on the ground without doing nothing for hours.  For now my crowded and restless mind won’t let me give in the beautiful moment. 

 

 

Shreeram and his wife are not home.  Rekha Didi (sister in Nepali), babu and nai we finished our tea.  Nani who is 4 years old didn’t really sit at all.  And I will not see her sitting still except the times she ate for the coming 2 months.  By the way I thought she was a very small girl until I learned that she was just 4 years old.  She drank her tea and ate her cereal, then opened her books, to do her homework.  She wrote her Nepali and English words.  Then she packed up everything.  Babu asked me if I was hungry at 9:00.  I said “Yes!”   So we sat down to eat. Dal, bhat and tarkari again.  I looked at the food and regretted the moments I ordered rice when I could have chosen anything.  This is the food here. Breakfast and dinner. It is cultural and it is all they have.  Now you know...

 

They got ready for school quickly.  Nani put on her school uniform, a red old skirt and a white shirt.  She got ready on her own, made her hair with a very bad smelling oil, which was probably the secret of that beautiful, shining, long black hair of Nepali women.  Everything has a price, you see...

 

 

She looked very cute.  They want to school together.  At 11:00 Asa and Santi came home.  They go to government school, it starts at 6:00 and finished at 11:00.  Asa is Rekha Didi’s daughter.  Rekha’s husband went to Sri Lanka to work years ago and never came back. Nobody has heard from him.  She had 2 other daughters, I learned later.  They live with their aunt in the Tharu villiage that I will teach.   Asa is in the My World project and has a sponsor who helps her with expenses.  Santi has no family and has a sponsor as well.  When Shreeram finds enough sponsor to get this project going he will build a house for children with no families.  $15 a months you can help one child.  That’s nothing for a lot of people but everything for Santi, Asa and a lot who need help.

 

After Asa and Santi came home, they ate and sat down to do their homework.  Afterwards they sat in the yard playing with 5 stones they keep in the window casing.  This is a game my mother would tell me about, that they used to play in Malatya, where my mom was born.  It is the kind of game made up from nothing but goes on forever. You hold on to 4 stones, throw the other in the air and catch it. Then you keep throwing more stones and catch them. Every time you throw one more than before and afterwards you go on changing variations.  It becomes very hard after a while.  I never played these games.  Because my generation had toys.  We did not have 5 really carefully picked nice stones, keep them with care.  We did not have to build a whole world out of bottle caps, strings, grass and trash.  Everything was given to us ready.  And wrong! We took example from thin, tall, blonde Barbie toys, wanted to be like them, dress nicely like them.  We were encouraged to be moms playing with toy babies, do house work with toy irons,  be fast with cars, and unfortunately be violent with toy guns!  Instead of growing up with what goes through our heart or mind we were raised with what goes through the toy makers’ mind...

 

Seeing these little girls with 5 stones having so much fun I thought to myself if I ever have a child 5 stones will be enough.  The stones are always kept in a safe place.  They don’t get lost, because they are precious.  5 stones at the same size.  This is all they need to spend the whole afternoon.  If we could teach this to our children there would be not many problems...

 The rest of the family is coming home.  Shreeram and Sarita came at 11:30.  They eat, do house work.  Sarita and Rekha go to the filed to cut grass.  So the corn filed is clean of wild grass and the goat has food.  At  4 o’clock it is tea time.  And the tea which tasted odd at the first, now tastes much better.  Maybe Sarita puts more ginger in it.  Shreeram and I studied some Nepali.  At this age learning a new language is very hard.  Maybe basic sentences will be enough for me.

 

 

I sat in my room for a while.  I always sit in my room.  When I was living at my mom’s I sat in my room.  Especially during that shitty time called puberty.  I used to eat and go back to my room.  Now I have the tendency to even spend more time in the room, I don’t know anyone, I can’t talk to anyone.  I brought 5 books and my music.  I know they will call me the odd one, everybody has. But as soon as they get to know me they will like me.  Everybody doesJ When we were young, we had guests and I would say hello and run to my room, my sister she wouldn’t leave their side.  So everybody loved her.  This did not change, obviously.  It is hard to change... So we just arrange our life style and our environment accordingly...

We keep the people who accept us as we are.  Friends from high school for example.  We keep the people who don’t judge us around.  They didn’t judge my oddness here.  They didn’t care.  Life is so simple here, no one has the luxury, time or will to ask why...

At dinner we had our dal,bhat tarkari and the family decided that my name was difficult to learn, so they gave me a new name.  My name is not a common name in my own country as well and it was made fun of a lot.  Sarita gave all the volunteers a name so she thought and decided on Manju.  I thought Manju, a good end to the second day.  Among cricket songs, night birds, a soft wind and sounds unknown, tonight is a more comfortable night, even a little cooler.  Maybe it is just me feeling a little more at ease.  I am in Nepal.  Still have my doubts but I am here.  I am Manju.

 

Goodnight Manju.