On the Rim of the Valley

For the past four or five days, we've been staying in Dhulikhel, a peaceful Newari town on the edge of the Kathmandu valley. I came up here to visit the deaf school in Banepa, but there's also been the opportunity to take a great day hike, work on our Nepali language skills, and meet some wonderful people.

The deaf school in Banepa is on the edge of town, facing a sea of rice paddies and forested hills. The school has about forty students, ranging from age 6 to 22, and when we arrived, a half dozen of the older schoolgirls were making candles for the upcoming Dasain holiday. These candles will be sold in town and then be used for the school's upkeep. The teachers and principal (five in all) were enthusiastic and dedicated, particularly impressive since they decided to split the two salaries that funding allowed between the five of them. The students cooked lunch on two decrepit oil burners-- Ananda (whose sign name means 'yawn' because he's always sleepy) appeared to nearly set himself on fire. A good portion of the afternoon was spent rolling flour into puris and frying them, and lunch was a modest but delicious chickpea and potato stew with chai and puris. It takes many of the students two hours to get to school each day, and for that reason, the school wants to build a hostel for the students and get a bus.

The students were also excited to show us some traditional Tamang and Newari dances that they'd learned as part of the school curriculum. The principal played the music on a small tape recorder and made gestures to indicate the students' cues, and the kids did a great job.

It's really incredible the level of education that deaf students are beginning to get here. There's still a real issue about this translating into jobs and opportunities, and deaf children in smaller villages, particularly in the mountains, often don't get an education. While we were sitting with the students, a sixty-year old man stood in the doorway, watching us. The students all knew him, and teasingly tolerated his presence, but he's a living example of a lost generation of Nepali deaf people. He knows very little sign, lives in absolute poverty, and made his wages by working on farms and carrying loads. Now he's looking from the outside in as a new generation of deaf children are becoming fluent in sign language, learning math and reading, and forming tight-knit circles. He lives near the school, and I hope to visit him some time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our guesthouse is on the edge of Dhulikhel, overlooking a dense forest and surrounded by gorgeous flowers. The food is grown on cultivated plots by the guesthouse, and there are mandarin and persimmon trees brushing against the walls. We eat daal baat for dinner, with sides of potato curry and fresh squash greens. A family of goats lives just below us, and when we climb to the roof, we occasionally get tantalizing glimpses of the Himalaya, which are still covered with towering monsoon clouds. Yesterday we hiked up to Namobuddha, an important pilgrimage spot for Tibetans. It's a humble white-washed stupa streaming with prayer flags, a peaceful place where the Buddha (according to legend) took pity on a starving tigress and fed himself to her. All morning we climbed through mist, jungle and pine forest before the clouds cleared and we had sweeping views of the valley and brief views of the Himalaya. After Namobuddha, we descended steeply downward and passed through several small Newari villages on our way to Panauti. Our time here has been a welcome respite from the chaos and crowds of Kathmandu.

Indra Jatra and the Kumari

I've heard there are more festivals in Nepal than days of the year, and this past Sunday, we went to Durbar Sqaure to see the Kumari, the living goddess of Kathmandu, wheeled around Basantapur. Thousands of people were crowded on the steps of Maju Deval and the surrounding temples, many of the women dressed in red like the Kumari. We spent several hours in a standing room only crowd, watching a procession of cars pull up to the Royal Palace, some with embassy flags, others with Nepali politicians. There was an army contingent facing the palace and saluting the top brass as they arrived, giving the event more of a political than a religious feel. The legend of Kumari originated with 18th-century Malla kings, and perhaps it was more political even then. Men wearing fearsome red and blue masks danced into the square, a strange contrast with the embassy cars. Finally, three huge chariots were pulled into the square, the last and largest reserved for the Kumari, a pre-pubescent girl who will lose her status and be replaced by another living goddess once she has her first period.

Indra Jatra marks the end of the monsoon season, and pays homage both to those who have died in the past year and to the coming harvest. The simultaneously horrifying and comical face of Seto Bhairab is unveiled in Basantapur Square for the three days of the festival, and remains covered for the rest of the year. His monstrous head is grimacing and blue, his red mouth full of fangs. We offered him a banana, and the Nepali attendant put the banana in Bhairab's mouth. I wanted to laugh-- that was the moment when he somehow became benevolent and humorous.

“I think he really wanted a banana,” Melissa said. It's true. He seemed happy somehow.

In Kathmandu

We've been in Kathmandu for a week now, and we're just beginning to get settled in at our place in Handigaon, which is near the Krishna Mandir, a small temple with a huge tree rooted above it. There are no specific addresses in Kathmandu, and even at the bank, we were required to draw a map of where we lived as part of our paperwork. There's an outdoor market every evening just around the corner from where we live, blankets and tarps set out with pomegranates, guavas, eggplant, tomatoes and greens.

Kathmandu is much more chaotic and crowded than I remember, but seven years ago I spent most my time in Asan Tole, Durbar Square, the older parts of town, as well as Thamel, the tourist district. Taxis, trucks, motorcycles and pedestrians all share the narrow roads, passing within a few inches of each other and kicking up clouds of dust. Our lungs are tight, our noses burn at the pollution, and the lushly forested hills all around the city seem an endless distance away.

I thought it would take a month or so to acclimate and ease into my project, but things have been moving quickly, giving me a strong feeling that I'm meant to be doing this. My first full day here, I stumbled into a courtyard and saw two young girls in blue school uniforms signing to each other. They joined a crowd of deaf students, and I follwed them into the courtyard of the Naxal School for the Deaf, one of my Fulbright affiliations. I saw an older western man and two Nepalis walking together, and I introduced myself. The westerner was a member of the first class of Fulbrights to go from Germany to the U.S. in 1965, and he has been doing volunteer work in Nepal for many years.

Within a few days, I'd met many of the Naxal students, visited the hostel where they lived, and went to a meeting for the Kathmandu Association for the Deaf, where more than fifty people were gathered in a small, dimly lit room, eager to meet me. Melissa and I went to a deaf performance in Kirtipur, a small town just outside Kathmandu, which still has the feel of an old Newari village. I was dragged onstage in front of a standing-room only crowd in a community center, introduced myself as best as I could, and met Raghav Bir Joshi of the CPN-United Party, the only deaf member of the Constitution Assembly and one of the few deaf politicians in the world. Melissa and I were taken backstage to join in a simple and delicious meal served in woven reed baskets. I already feel so accepted and comfortable in the deaf community here.

I'm picking up Nepali Sign Language quickly, much faster than the spoken language, and already I've seen so many stories. Most of the deaf I've talked to lost their hearing at a young age due to sickness. Some have not seen their hearing families in many years. One 17-year old student was a soldier in the Maoist army before he escaped and went to the deaf school in Kathmandu. He's going back to his home village in the border of Tibet for Dasain. He hasn't been back in four years, and he needs to get his papers in order so he can compete in Kathmandu's deaf karate association.

There are deaf people everywhere here-- we only need to follow the signs-- a Tibetan with long hair in Thamel who works outside a gem shop, a family enjoying the Indra Jatra festival in Basantapur Square, students in uniforms walking along the narrow footpath by the Naxal School. A simple introduction and soon we have new friends. The Nepali people have been warm, accepting, and inviting, the deaf community particularly so.

T minus 12 hours

It's almost time to go. This entry will hopefully mark a more or less regular return to this blog, under the auspices of my Fulbright experience in Nepal. These last few hours in the states have seemed a bit surreal, as I enjoyed one of the first crisp nights of fall in Boulder, a purple sunset descending over the Flatirons.

Denver to St. Paul to Tokyo to Bangkok to Kathmandu, 35 hours in all, 10,000 frequent flier miles one way. I set aside the temptation for a layover in Tokyo, much as I was enticed by the idea of spending a few nights in one of those plastic capsules. Same with Bangkok, where the monsoons are coming in.

It's been seven years since I've last been in Nepal, and I wonder what I'll remember and recognize, and what will seem different after these years of political upheaval. I can't help but imagine that our apartment in the Naxal area will be a few cinderblock rooms-- I'm keeping expectations low for now.

A few hours ago, at the bookstore on Pearl Street, the title that drew me in was Alan Weisman's latest work of non-fiction, which posits what the natural world will look like after humans die out. It's beautifully written but a bit dramatic, so I decided on a Buddhist magazine for my airport reading instead, settling on a lighter version of human transience.