Monthly Archives: July 2017

Aamaa, Around Town, Family, Kaskikot, Nepal Life, Reflections

Between the Corn and the Millet

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I try to imagine Aamaa’s life as it was back then, when the water springs in Kaskikot weren’t concrete taps but delicate pools that stirred up silt if you took from them too quickly. As a girl and young wife of 13, she sometimes had to sleep overnight in line while other women had their turns gently lifting the water jug by jug. By the time Aamaa was 22, she was a widow with two young girls of her own, and it would still be years before a bus came to Kaskikot, or a door was put on the entrance to her one-room house.

There have been many impossibles in Aamaa’s life. She raised two educated daughters who could split wood and carry twice their weight by grade school. The civil war started, but it was elsewhere, in other villages. The electric mill came; the bus came; the tourists came; other people converted their houses to homestays and restaurants. Aamaa’s house is off the road in a cul-de-sac of mountainside that nobody wanders past by accident. Even after some foreigners bought the patch of land on the hill behind the house and built a fancy hotel there, passers-by from Korea and Israel and Japan and Australia hiked past with their eyes straight ahead on the sprawling white peaks, rarely looking down to notice Aamaa and Didi and Bishnu there in the sunny yard, drying grain.

The likelihood that I would wander through the door one day has always seemed both insane and inevitable.  And over the last fifteen years, I’ve mostly thought of my life opposite Bishnu’s.  We were the two girls born at the polar ends of the universe, the ones who looked at each other and thought, what if I were her?  She’s been in the U.S. for eight and a half years now, while I spend significantly more time in Nepal than she does.

Aamaa was always more like the soil: everywhere, earthy, constant, essential.  She has all the nutrients and produces all the food and water and shelter.  Aamaa keeps the house alive, the field and gardens fertile from cycle to cycle, the fire crackling.  No matter how many people show up, Aamaa feeds us all. And no matter how many people go away, no matter how empty this house gets or how many of her birthdays pass, she keeps the water jugs full and the seeds sorted in dusty bottles. Aamaa has spent five decades in this village.

I had no idea Bishnu had applied for Aamaa to get a tourist visa to the U.S. to see Bishnu graduate from her Master’s program in information technology. Nobody told me that Prem and Didi took Aamaa to Kathmandu for the very first time last May to go to the U.S. Embassy, or that on the way there, Aamaa didn’t eat any cooked food because she couldn’t be sure who had prepared it. A few weeks later, I answered my cell phone in the parking lot at Walmart, and Bishnu announced that Aamaa had been given a five-year multiple entry tourist visa to America.

“What?” I said.

“For my graduation!” Bishnu explained ecstatically. She hasn’t seen her mom since 2013.

This explanation failed to explain all the questions I couldn’t think of.  Obviously the idea of having Aamaa make this trip has floated through my brain millions of times, but it was the ultimate what if ever.  The craziest version of everything.  Part of me thought that maybe this was all kind of a whim – a thing that might happen next year, or something. But Aamaa had sold the buffalo within a week.

On my way to Nepal in June, I tried to imagine having Aamaa with me on the way back. First I tried to digest the most obvious and superficial matters. For example, how would I explain the enormous statue of a teddy bear bent over with an apparent stomachache dramatically bottom lit in the Doha airport?

I can’t even explain that to you.

When I arrived in Kaski, everybody’s greetings had adjusted to the most up-to-the-minute state of affairs. “Laura! You’re here! How long are you staying? So, you’re taking Aamaa back with you, eh?”

Only Aamaa and I seemed cautious and uncertain with our excitement. The whole thing is so surreal that even the discussion feels like an entirely new and foreign continent. For fifteen years Aamaa and I have had what is now a very well established routine: I come to Kaskikot, we eat together in the kitchen, we go plant things with neighbors and churn milk and carry water from the tap, I fix up some things that need fixing in the house, we gossip about family here in Nepal and all the far away people not in Nepal. Aamaa knows them all – my whole extended family and a good number of my friends who have been to visit – largely through stories. But she’s the stable point, not just for us, but for herself also.

“So we’re going to America, huh?” Aamaa says as we are sitting on the porch, as if testing out the statement.

“Sure seems like it, right?”

We stare out at the tall curly corn stalks, crowding out the grassy millet that’s planted between them.

“What is the name of your District?”

“Pascal, do you know how many states there are in the U.S.?” I ask, and he doesn’t know, so I explain again about Virginia and Maryland and Connecticut and North Carolina.

We discuss departure dates because I have to change plane tickets that currently have me going home from Cambodia, where I’m visiting Bethy in August; Amaa knows Dr. Bethy, because she’s been here too. We mull over how long Aamaa’s trip to America should be. A month would probably be good – she might be bored after a month?

“I’ll go after cutting down the corn, and I’ll come back to cut down the millet,” Aamaa suggests with sudden firmness.

That seems good, I agree.  That is more orderly – maybe because we can see the corn.

Long silences. What, exactly, should we should be planning?

“Bishnu suggested I should get some kurta salwaars made,” Aamaa says. “I guess you aren’t really allowed to wear a sari in the U.S.”

“You’re allowed Aamaa. But a kurta salwaar might be more comfortable.”

“Ok we’ll plan a day to do that in Pokhara,” Aamaa states. “I guess we have to leave time to have it stitched and everything, right? We should go soon.”

“It only takes a couple days, but we can go soon.”

“Nah, you should just pick something out and I’ll meet you at the tailor,” Aamaa adjusts. “I don’t know anything about picking fabric.” Honestly, in sixty years, Aamaa has never walked in to one of Nepal’s fabric shops and picked out material for an outfit, which is how literally everybody in Nepal gets their clothes.

“No no no,” I insist, “I think you should definitely get to do the fabric choosing. Pick your own color, something you like.” I have to talk her in to it.

A few weeks later Aamaa takes the bus to Pokhara and waits for Pascal and I to come meet her at a chautara in Chiple Dunga. She can find her way to Didi’s house, but for the most part she prefers assistance to get around the city. Between the three of us, Pascal is the only one who can properly read in Nepali. We set off up the road to go to the fabric shop.

“Laura chiama, let’s have some ice cream,” Pascal suggests wisely, because I am the sucker who will pretty reliably buy us all ice cream. As we pay, Aamaa has sat down on the low wall at the foot of the store, which is not a seating area, and Pascal and I go with it. I hand Aamaa her first ice cream cone.

“Do I eat this bottom part, the biscuit?” Aamaa asks.

“Yes, but don’t eat the paper,” Pascal instructs.

“I’m not going to eat the paper,” Aamaa says.

I can’t even remotely transpose any of this to Connecticut. I ask a passer-by to take our picture, and as you can imagine, she looks at the three of us – the Aamaa who has very obviously just beamed in from the village, the entirely incongruous American, and this regular Nepali boy being raised in the city – and gets a huge grin as she takes our picture. What could our story possibly be?

We set off again. Aamaa has brought along a broken umbrella from the house. “Laura, where’s a place that we can fix this umbrella?” she asks. I blink, there must be an answer to that, but I’ve never thought about an umbrella-fixing place.

“We should probably just replace it,” I say, feeling guilty for my wastefulness and mental laziness. I don’t have the energy to try to figure out where the umbrella fixer might be and there’s really no excuse for it.

As we wander to the center of town I’m distracted and disoriented because everything is inside out. When I first came here I couldn’t say a word or do a single thing for myself, and in Kaski, Aamaa runs everything.  We get a few kilometers off her turf and suddenly she is the foreigner and I’m the one who knows what we’re doing. She has also brought with her a heavy bag of cucumbers and other items for Didi and Bhinaju and the boys, and she’s carrying it on her shoulder, the way people do in the village where nothing is flat.  Pascal is twelve and he goes sprinting out in to traffic as we cross the street and I pay him no heed whatsoever because I’m dodging people to keep eye on Aamaa, having no calibration for how much I do or don’t need to hover over her in traffic. We probably haven’t walked through the city together more than two or three times in a decade and a half, and never just us – not once.

We arrive at the fabric shop.

There are hundreds of colors and textures of cloth to choose from. Aamaa looks hopeful that I will take over. As a young man begins removing options from the shelf she bends over them. He throws one on top of another and another and another and another. Her hands settle on a jubilant orange outfit.

“I like this one,” she suggests. She looks at me as though asking if that one is a good one to like.

Within ten minutes, Aamaa and Pascal and I are pawing through dozens of kurta salwaars, trading opinions on what Aamaa should wear in America. She picks two, and we take them to the tailor, who takes out his tape measure. He’s going to make something just for her, in her size and shape, to wear between the corn and the millet.

“I think you should do short sleeves,” I say. “Definitely short sleeves.”

“I don’t know – I think they should be a bit longer. To the elbow,” Aamaa says. The tailor agrees – maybe longer sleeves for an Aamaa. No way, I say, short sleeves look best on a kurta and it will still be hot in September. Aamaa studies her arms for a minute, apparently imagining them in a very standard piece of clothing she’s never had.

“Yeah. That’s how I want them,” she concludes. “To the elbow.”

*

Around Town, Nepal Life

Lifts

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The bus to kaski is very hectic right now: in addition to the heat, and the rain, the road has been sporadically damaged by flooding and landslides.  After last week’s sweltering ride with Aidan and Pascal, I decided that this afternoon I would try getting a ride with Nabin who lives up in Parapani and drives a taxi.  He’s always willing to drive me home at the end of the day for a pretty good price, rather than drive his car back up to Kaski empty.

I called Nabin on Tuesday to fix our plan, and then rang him up again as we were leaving the office at 5pm on Wednesday. He picked up, but the connection was bad and I couldn’t catch what he was saying.  I decided it was “I’ll call you right back,” and then I hung up.  I texted to say I’d be ready at 5:30, and went back to my room to putter around on the internet for a while.

I called Nabin at intervals but he didn’t answer.  The clock drifted past 5:15, then 5:30, when the last bus leaves from the bus park for Kaski.  At 5:45 I thought, I better move out if I’m going to get to Kaski today.  If I couldn’t get a hold of Nabin, I was already stuck making the hour long walk from Naudanda – potentially in a downpour, in the dark – because the last direct bus had left already.  I put on my backpack and walked out to the main thoroughfare running to Lakeside.

One advantage of being a foreigner is that you can do things like stop a random guy on a scooter and say, “Hey, would you mind just taking me up to the next intersection?”  I stopped a random guy on a scooter and asked him to take me up to the next intersection.  I hopped on the back of his bike and as we approached the intersection, I shouted over the wind, “So where are you headed?”  The guy was headed straight on to Pirthivichowk, and the bus park was up a road to the left, so I thanked him and said I’d hop off there.

“Oh what the heck, I can take you to the bus park,” the guy said, and turned left.

I’ve never tried this strategy for lift-getting before, ever.

As we drove up the road to the bus park, the guy said he’d served with the US Navy in Bahrain for eight years.  I didn’t even know that was a thing – is there water in Bahrain? – how to Nepalis end up in the US Navy? – and he told me more about it, but I couldn’t hear him over the wind in my ears and the honking traffic, so all these things remained mysteries.  Back in Nepal, he wasn’t doing much at the moment, he said.

“So where are you headed?” the US Navy guy asked.  I explained about Nabin, and about getting to Kaskikot tonight, and that I supposed I’d walk from Naudanda.

“Oh what the heck, I’ll put some gas in the bike and take you up to Kaskikot.”

“What?”

“Why not, I’m not busy.”

“But that’s really far!  It’s probably 45 minutes on the bike.”

“No problem.  I’ll just get some gas first.”

“How much will it cost?” I asked, wondering if that was the least of the confusion.

“No cost.”

“But – but – but……”

The guy pulled over to get gas.  I pondered the situation.  The next bus to Naudanda might not leave for another 30 or 45 minutes.  It would be dusk, if not night, by the time I arrived in Naudanda, and then it might rain, and I’d have another 60 minute walk.  It seemed like I should be worried about why this stranger wanted to take me up in to the hills at dusk to a place he doesn’t live, but I wasn’t.  I tried to get worried and instead I thought, “Wow, it would be pretty great to get a scooter ride up to Kaskikot right now.”

“Ok, let’s go,” I said.  I determined to give him some gas money, at least.  Also, I have a black belt in taekwondo.

For the next half our or so, we rode up the switchbacks, watching the valley recede in to the hazy, rose-tipped blue of evening.  The day fell away below as we climbed up in to the hills.  I cinched the hood on my rain jacket to provide a little wind protection, but the guy was a reasonable driver and the breeze from the movement felt good. Occasionally I stuck my arm out in the direction of the beautiful scenery, as if it was some kind of compensation I could offer for this inexplicable act of generosity.

We came upon a sloshy patch of suspicious looking mud and disembarked.  The two of us regarded the scene: a pit of soft mud with the gash of a thick tire through it, left by something much larger and heavier than the scooter, and surrounded by pools of brown water.

“I can walk from here,” I said.  I was feeling kind of guilty.  “It’s only about half an hour or so. I’d have had to make an hour walk from Naudanda.”

“Still half an hour of walking?”

“I’ve walked from here many times,” I insisted.  “It will be a real mess if your bike gets stuck.”

The guy looked concerned, partly with the matter of my walking, and partly with the oppression of humans by an inert patch of mud.

“Please let me contribute something for gas,” I offered.  He declined.  He had time on his hands and it was a pleasant trip.  I thanked him, asked his name, and we took a selfie.  Raj Kumar Gurung.

A motorbike came up behind us with two young dudes on it.  They sped over the mud pit.  Raj Kumar Gurung looked from them back to his scooter.

“Let me just give it a try,” he said.

“But if–”

“I’ll just try it.”

Raj Kumar Gurung, US Navy, revved the scooter and launched it in to the mud pit.  It rolled through to the other side.

“I’m coming!” I said, and stepped directly in to sucking mud-slosh the consistency of hummus up to my ankle.  “Be right there!” I cried, rinsing off some of the brown hummus in a puddle, and then in a clear stream that had had developed across the road on the other side of the mud pit.

Raj Kumar Gurung said that instead of returning back to Pokhara the way we’d come up, he’d continue straight on past Deurali and meet the road in Naudanda.  At this point, he was going to drive past my stop regardless.  I decided to get off a half mile or so early to stop in and say hi to Thakur sir, one of our founding oral health program members, and I insisted that Raj Kumar Gurung at least have some tea before continuing on, but he demurred again.  Off he sped, having lifted me directly from Lakeside to Kaskikot just as night was falling.

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oral Health Care Project, Work

Technician Training

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Last winter, for the first time ever, we had foreign dentists meet our technicians, supervise them treating patients in the field, and assess their treatment outcomes. This has been an enormous opportunity for us as an organization and for our technicians who are working hard to provide the only dental care in their villages. This week, we had Dr. Keri back for a second training based on findings from last winter.

Our refresher training included two days of classroom work and a one-day treatment camp at a school. Keri covered topics related to infection control, pain diagnosis, pediatric behavior management, informed consent, treatment planning, and charting. Based on the results of our study of treatment outcomes in fillings placed by our technicians, we introduced a new instrument used to prepare a tooth for a restoration.  On day two, we had a few patients come in for practicals, including Aidan and Pascal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On day three, we treated about 100 children and adults with supervision from Keri and from Dr. Kafle from our referral hospital, Kantipur Dental Hospital. This gave the technicians and assistants a whole day to apply the concepts from the classroom training to many different types of patients.  I was worried we might not have enough patients during summer vacation…but that was definitely not a problem.

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Over this last year, I’ve realized how far JOHC has moved in to new territory in the oral health care world in Nepal, and really, in to the health care world generally. I’ve come to appreciate that our technicians are true specialists in low-resource dentistry, with training and institutional support that has allowed them to venture in to realms of sophistication not typically expected of providers serving the rural poor. I’ve always been committed to making sure their scope of practice remains safe and appropriate, and at the same time, I recognize that there’s been far less time and money invested in identifying how safe and how good a service can be when the customers are millions of people who cannot rely on reaching a conventional health care setting. Such questions are asked only from the perspective of established institutions and well-funded people in power; that this leads to widespread, unnecessary suffering for the vulnerable is very obvious.

The other side of the same coin is that it inadequate services can be easily excused because they fit a conventional mold.  While Keri was here, we took time to visit the dental section of the public hospital.  We met some great doctors, many of whom are only one or two steps removed from hospitals or people we work with.  But they are working in an underfunded environment with rusted instruments; we observed numerous breaches of infection control in our short 20 minute visit.  The sanitation and safety measures used in our rural clinics are significantly stronger than those we saw in the dental ward of the hospital, even though we are working in a much simpler setting.  Why?

Something else that’s magical about this newfound opportunity for more training and collaboration is getting to know our field staff better, and as a group.  Our clinic assistants – all women (also, on all of our teams, either the technician or team leader must be female) – are these incredible women who tend to listen quietly and then, with very little fanfare, make everything run smoothly.  Without them our infection control protocol would be hash.  They are always the first people to show up at a training or field program.  Biju is raising four children and managed to complete the rice planting in her fields the day before she made the six hour trip to Pokhara from Sindure with her nine year old in tow.  Renuka and Pabitra are always smiling, never miss a thing, and both have put in long stretches of work without pay while we straighten out agreements with their local governments. Sita is upbeat, diligent and ready to toggle between different roles without being asked.  They are just SO AWESOME.

It was a good week.

*

Aamaa, Aidan and Pascal, Family, Kaskikot, Nepal Life

Laura Chiama

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I’ve been here a week and by yesterday it was time to head to Kaski for the weekend. Pascal and Aidan have their exams this week, but I like taking one or both of them with me when I can.  In Pokhara, there is too much sitting. When Didi and Bishnu where 9 and 11, they spent all their non-school hours working, carrying, cooking, washing, or studying by the little kerosene lamp. Aidan and Pascal should examine bugs and trip on roots while running over the terraced fields.

Pascal said he wanted to come along, so I told him to show up at 4:30 the room I’m renting this summer.  He was here and ready at 4, and Aidan showed up a few minutes later. While I put my things together, they explored my little apartment, and I suggested they take the opportunity to try out the private shower with its shiny hot and cold faucets. The boys are used to bucket bathing. Pascal gave the shower a go (very refreshing, Laura-chiama), but Aidan ran out of time. The sky was gathering a storm and we had to get to the bus park.

We arrived just in time to cram ourselves in to the last Friday bus. The bus to kaski is always crowded and always an adventure, but Friday evenings are the worst. I found a spot up near the front of the bus with my back to the driver – I was sitting, so that’s a plus – and Aidan wiggled up on to my lap.  The bus was packed well beyond capacity, every knee and elbow and hip bent to accommodate a body part belonging to somebody else, a situation made worse by the rain that had started.  With all the windows closed it felt like oxygen was being consumed faster than it could be collected, and the window panes fogged up with body heat, leaving everything slick and heavy. Aidan was hot on my lap, and I wished I’d shoved him in to the shower. Then again, he was my only shield against the sea of limbs and sweaty brows, and at least his sweat is familiar. For a 5’8” American, I can pack myself in to a pretty small space in a crowded Nepali bus, but this ride was set to put my capabilities to the test.

Up we went. Switchbacks.

By the time I peeled Aidan off my lap in Kaski, dusk had settled soft and blue on the hills. We emerged outside into the cool wide air, suspenseful with pending rain, and ran through the corn stalks to the house (Laura-chiama, the corn is so much taller than you!). Aamaa put dinner on our plates, and sitting on the floor, we arranged our knees to fit in the narrow kitchen. The electricity went out.  The very same kerosene lamp Didi and Bishnu studied by all those years (my single favorite object in the house) lit up the clay walls and the boys’ faces in the kitchen, where I feel happy.

Aidan and I are both partial to the new kitten, a bony sliver of a thing that always seems hungry and cold. Aidan likes to pet its fragile spine with two fingers, the only thing I’ve ever seen him do gently.  Normally Aidan moves too fast, is covered in bruises, and breaks everything. But he feeds the kitten little bits of rice on the clay floor while we eat. When we get in bed, the kitten wants to cuddle with us and I let it nestle on to my shoulder while I read. It purrs in to my neck. Aidan is delighted, but Aamaa and Pascal are displeased. The cat is a feral beast with no business in a bed. It is here to eat mice. Poor little thing.

During the night, I wake up every time I have to roll over because I don’t want to smush the kitten. Aidan jabs his knee in to my back.   Around 4am, the kitten poops exuberantly onto the blanket. I take the kitten and the blanket off the bed and go back to sleep.

I wake up my favorite way: gradually, lazily, inside the conical mosquito net drifting up to the ceiling, with rain pattering on the tin roof.  Aidan is already gone out of bed.  Saturday stretches out before us, a long summer meadow rustling and flowered.

Narayan with his other American gift

I come out on to the porch and Aamaa is serving milk tea. Milk tea! Aamaa sold the buffalo a few weeks ago and we are milk-less.Where did the milk come from? But Aamaa knows that I forget about black tea halfway through, and it gets cold sitting on the porch.  Somehow this morning she is pouring creamy milk tea in to a tin cup and everything is perfect.

Narayan comes over from next door, and within a few minutes, Aidan has broken the toy I gave Narayan: a set of Velcro pads and a Velcro ball to play catch with. The boys set to fixing it. Aidan recruits some tape from someplace, I can’t imagine where, and Pascal has taken a sickle to a piece of bamboo. He is making a walking stick. They want to watch TV and Aamaa tells them that’s fine so I unplug the TV and hide the remote and tell Pascal to go wield a sharp object too close to his hands, like the rest of the kids.

I walk over to Govinda dai’s house for is sarad, the anniversary of his mother’s death.  I get there just as  the priest is arriving to start the puja, and he asks after how I am doing. The priest knows me partly because I stick out, and also from my project documenting death and mourning rituals. I have sat and listened to him and taken his photo and written about him and sought explanations from him often. The house fills with incense and stillness and an oil lamp is lit. Sulochana doesn’t want me to leave; she asks for some henna on her hands, and I’m surprised this is allowed on sarad, but Govinda’s father doesn’t seem to mind.

In the afternoon little Narayan takes a break from his exploits with Aidan and Pascal to bring me down to his mother’s fields where Aamaa is helping plant rice. I follow his tiny frame along the edges of the flooded rice paddies, and through the part of Kaskikot where the students I taught in 2003 are from. Their families know me as Laura-miss, and I spend less time in this area, so people might only see me every couple of years, but I sense a certain look of recognition when I pass somebody who knows me as the teacher of their kid. “Eh!! Laura, Laura right?” She is going to cut rice, they shake their heads, isn’t that delightful? Yes yes, it’s Laura. I have a weird life, I think, and it is pretty great. After all this time, it is still magical to be known on a wooded stone path winding down to the rice paddies.

 

We pass our neighbor Butu bouju. Laura! Did you have milk tea this morning? Aamaa wanted to pay for the milk, Butu bouju says, and I said no, Laura is here from America. Aidan and Pascal are visiting from Pokhara. They should have milk.  How was the tea?

For three or four hours, Saraswoti and I stand shin-deep irrigated mud, planting one sprig at a time.  The gleaming hills stretch out across the valley, monsoon humidity draped over their shoulders.  The edge of my left leg will get burnt below the knee, where my rolled up trousers cease to shield skin against the hot sun. Mostly we work together in silence. Every once and a while Saraswoti looks over and murmurs, bhay chha Laura, bhay chha, it’s good. Or, Laura, how much does a plane ticket cost to get to America? I bet it is scary, being on a plane. I ask if Saraswoti has ever been on a plane, even though I know the answer. Does she think it would be scary? Probably, I think. It would be scary, I guess. Splash, plop. Bhay chha, Laura.

Last Saturday, I think, I was in Connecticut.  I try to remember what I was doing…errands?

*

Downpour.

Starting around 4pm, we could barely hear ourselves for the rain pummeling the tin roof.  Sulochana and Narayan were both over.  I decided Aidan still needed a shower and began to goad him in to going out in the deluge.  Narayan, who is even more of a spaz than Aidan, launched himself into the center of the patio with all of this clothes on and was immediately soaked.  Aamaa began screeching at all of us.  In this weather! Get inside!  Everybody on the beds with the windows closed!  Aidan changed in to shorts and came running on to the porch, alight with glee, while Aamaa scolded him loud enough to cut through the noise of the pounding water.  There was a curtain of rivulets dripping off the corrugated tin all along the edge of the porch.  Aidan stuck his hand out, stuck his toe out, and then finally

I dried Aidan off.  See, Aamaa?  Now he’s clean-ish.

Narayan spent the rest of the afternoon without his shirt on.

I lay down on the bed to read by the gray light of an open window, because we’d unplugged all the lights and turned off the electric sockets.  Lightening has ended more than one life in this neighborhood; in Saano Didi’s family, it was inside the house.

Laura-chiama!  Let us use the henna!  Please please please….I allow Aidan, Narayan, and Sulochana to decorate my outstretched left arm with henna while I use my right arm to hold mybook on my chest.  The three of them hover intently over their work by the light of the window, while the rain continues singing loudly over our heads.  It tickles.  Sulochana has been learning by watching me, and she makes a lovely flower in my palm.  I take my eyes off my book and notice Aidan squeezing the tube of henna lusciously in to a pile of brown goo under the spot where he has scratched out my name below the elbow.  Later, this will become a bearded LAURA hat looks like a large bruise.  Oh well.

Aamaa and I debate all afternoon over the boys’ exams.  They haven’t brought their books, she says, and they should have gone back to Pokhara today to study.  Aamaa comes up with all kinds of nonsensical plans such as walking them to Naudanda an hour away to catch the bus.  I say that if they want to get on the 3:30 bus from Kaski, we can send them off and Didi will meet them at the bus park.  I say we are leaving at 7:30 am tomorrow morning on the first bus.  Aamaa says they shoudl be reading now.  I ask Pascal how old he is and he says almost twelve and I say, “Do you know you have an exam on Sunday?” and he says yes Laura-chiama!  And I say, see Aamaa?  They decided not to bring their books and that’s up to them.  Aamaa says the bus could be cancelled tomorrow morning, and I say there could be a flood or alien space landing or invasion by Mongols, but generally speaking, the bus leaves Kaski every single morning at 7:30am.

It pours torrentially all night.  Waterfalls, oceans, tidal waves coming from the sky, filling every bucket, drum, jug, pot; washing the stones clean; overflowing the planted rice paddies.

Aamaa wakes us up at 5:30am.  I scold her from inside my mosquito net.  Aamaa!  I set my alarm for 6:30am!  Why do we need to get up in the middle of the night?!  Grumpy, I stay in bed until 6:15.  When I get up, the boys are eating heaping plates of rice, vegetables and daal that Aamaa has cooked before 7am.  Like she does for me when I am leaving at 9am for the office, when I eat rice because I know how much it matters to her to feed us before we leave the house for the day.

MILK TEA.  I fill up my cup twice.

Aamaa wants us to make the hour long walk to Naudanda to take the bus to Pokhara.  I roll my eyes.  There is a bus leaving from right here at 7:30am!  The road will be washed out, Aamaa says, the bus could break down, a million problems could occur.  We could be late.  The boys have their exams, they haven’t even studied, why don’t we walk to Naudanda?  Has Aamaa spoken with my mom lately, I wonder?  Moms are all the same.

We go backwards through the drenched corn stalks to Deurali to wait for the bus.  Prem sir greets us.  The bus is not going this morning, Prem sir says, because there have been some small landslides and the road is blocked.

We have to walk to Naudanda.

Laura-chiama, we have to walk to Naudanda!!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Everything is soft and cottony in a mist that makes us unsure whether or not it has stopped raining.  Even though there is no water coming down, the air is wet, our hair is damp, the road is full of puddles, and the hills float in and out of a white sky.  We take photos of the mythical landscape.  We find sparkles of radiant purple and red poking out of the clouds in our hands.  Some vehicles pass, taking, like us, the opposite route to town this morning due to the blocked road, and I could stop them, but now we are not in a hurry.

Was there a hurry?

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