Notes From Nepal: Part 1

 

In the middle of March, I was in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal, back to oversee food work I jumped into fifteen years ago without considering what that might kickstart. A little charity with the motto: Strong minds need strong bodies somehow grew from the visible results of that initial and subsequent forays into feeding malnourished monks, nuns and the schoolchildren in their care. At the start of the year, it received a surprise five-figure donation. So despite my doctor not wanting me to jeopardize my precarious respiratory health in one of the world’s filthiest places, I had to go in person to insure money dedicated to food, fruit trees and vegetable gardens did what it was supposed to do: feed people. Wired funds had at times, I am sorry to say, been secretly waylaid and hijacked by construction or classroom or ceremonial needs, and that rankled my reputed integrity. I’ve had a tough time trying not to sully my faith in Dharma with this discovery that a tight-knit organization of Tibetan monks sustaining an international empire of monasteries can be as treacherous as any global corporation protecting a brand. I keep telling myself Samsara is Samsara, and Dharma warns: it is inescapably pervasive.

I have been to Kathmandu enough times to arrive with trepidation, not so much about getting the job done as what doing that will do to me. (Several years back, I left in a wheelchair.) To starry-eyed trekkers touring for a week, Nepal seems to be the high (Everest, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri) and the mighty (Sherpas and Gurkhas). But we schleppers who go there longer and stay more down to earth know it as the world’s most flagrantly failed state, a patchwork country where things never get better so everybody does their damnedest to make them get worse-- a way, I suppose, of feeling at least they managed to do something.

Thanks to vicious squabbling between two Brahman factions that keep vying for vise-like control (Maoists who destroy and Congress who dithers), the country endured a prolonged and devastating guerilla siege that displaced a large portion of the primitive population, driving them and the infectious diseases they carry to the urbanized valley where the water table, trash collecting, air quality and farmland have been decimated. The decade-long internecine war also prevented any progress on upgrading electricity with all the hydro power the Himalayas offer, so blackouts of 10-14 hours roll daily across the valley, forcing mass reliance on diesel-fueled generators whose noise and fumes add to the misery. Roads remain unpaved, seriously rutted and sometimes blocked by people extorting money or protesting. Germs run rampant, especially in the food supply.

Whatever government there is at any moment is so corrupt, Nepal is the only country I know where you can’t send anything more than a postcard or thank you note through the post office because it’s bound to be stolen. The national oil company is such a mess, it has to keep raising the price of the fuel India delivers because it can’t find the money to pay. While I was there, gas was to rise again a considerable 10 rupees a liter, inciting university students to protest by doing what every protest does in Kathmandu: shut the entire city down by calling a strike and physically threatening anyone who ventures outside. (The Maoists used to assault even ambulances on humanitarian emergencies.) As usual, it did not stop the price hike; it just damaged everybody’s already meager daily income and upended scheduling.

On some charts, Kathmandu has become the most polluted city in the universe: none of the black diesel fumes, carpet factory particles, unpaved road dust, cement “smoke” from the nonstop construction, generator fumes and rotting garbage odors can rise higher than the Himalayas surrounding the city. A once breath-taking, sense-of-place, blue sky view of the city as a basin surrounded by snowy mountains is now permanently obscured by so much smog, it’s all a gray blur. Everybody wears a face mask.

To add to the joy, when the Maoists were winning the political tug of war, they deliberately spited India, mentor of the Congress Party, for its cavalier dealings with Nepal by turning to the Chinese. This race of people that has no respect for anything but itself is now callously upending or perhaps bulldozing everything physical and cultural everywhere to create something for its own benefit. They've been especially harsh to the Tibetan community that has lived here for decades and has a millennia long relationship with as well as blood ties to the people of this valley. “The Nepalese don’t seem to understand they’ve sold their soul and culture to the Chinese, and it’s going to cost them their country,” more than one expat told me with palpable sadness.

Naturally, a mass mess like this gets thickened with NGOs in infinite number and UN agencies of every kind. I am always hearing about yet another orphanage, another school, another medical mission somebody thinks I know about or should. It’s not possible to keep track. Too many people, like me, fall in love with the gentle, generous, long-suffering Nepali people— at least those in particular ethnic tribes, and want to help. This time I was introduced to Eva, a good-natured, bulging middle-aged Swedish woman who funds yet another small orphanage/school a few miles from the overcrowded charity boarding school where I started cooking. Nepal is an ocean of unclaimed children, indentured children and children exported in the sex trade because a huge portion of Nepalese are too poor to keep the children they keep breeding, thanks to the total absence of education and medical help.

I arrived in a city experiencing a torrential reign of trekkers from just about everywhere people earn enough money to travel. March is a high season, the dusty one before summer monsoon makes October the higher, clearer one, and the political stand-off seems to have sunk from its own weight far enough underground to make the country appear safe again. I arrived to a city magically able to keep the lights and water on in areas crowded with tourists paying Brahman-backed businesses. The hotels were full, restaurants busy, little white Suzuki cabs scooting everywhere. Six Swedes had come to see Eva and her orphanage before going with her on a little vacation trek too.

I was there, as I said, not to trek but tote, on a sort of NGO effort to channel money to the care and feeding of about 500-600 monks, 210 nuns and the 425 children in a Buddhist boarding school. I was also there to learn more about the local cooking and its medical uses from the Newars-- original inhabitants of what was once known as Happy Valley, the artisans whose remarkable woodworking skills made 13th Century Rajastan refugees fleeing the Muslim Mughals call it Kathmandu (wood-carved shelters). The Newari have a unique and uniquely scientific/artistic cuisine I’ve been studying for years. As I always have to say when I’m in Nepal: “Most people come here to see Annapurna, Chitwan or maybe Manaslu; I see Kalimati (Kathmandu’s teeming wholesale food market) and kitchens.” (I've posted reports about this on Facebook @Prima Dharma Cook.)

Somehow despite the drastic loss of farmland, there still seems to be plenty of food: mostly fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, grains and sweets. I take this as testament to the Nepalese great agricultural genius. They are credited with teaching the ancient Chinese how to grow greens, and the British found the Tamang tribes in the region around Kathmandu so spectacularly gifted at terracing steep slopes to make them produce prolifically, they shipped thousands to Darjeeling to create and sustain the tea estates (which is why the local language there is Nepali), as well as to the highlands of Burma where about 20,000 of them remain, abandoned to fear and obscurity. It’s always astonishing to drive alongside what looks like a dangerous ravine, turn the corner and discover the entire escarpment is a bright green, terraced farm.

I met with Tamang farmers on this trip: one at the small nunnery on the crowded outskirts of Kathmandu, and one at the large, sprawling monastery at a higher elevation in the countryside more than an hour away. I have at times raised funds for their salaries, which are now around $600 a year. To greet me, the bright-eyed, dazzlingly white toothed, moon faced farmer at the nunnery shimmied down one of the bamboo poles of the garden's monsoon protection tenting we’d paid for and immediately apologized for the torn plastic he was attaching to it. “Cheap,” he said with shame. “Try save money.” Just beside him was a gorgeously thick and green peach tree full of small, hard, green first-stage fruits—one of the 24 saplings we’d donated 4 years ago in a quiet campaign not only to secure nourishment for the then sickly nuns, but to provide a green oasis for the birds, bees and human souls in a neighborhood that had just lost every last shred of green to concrete buildings. His Holiness the late 16^th Karmapa had maintained an aviary, claiming birds are the energy manifestations of dakinis (Buddhist and Hindu female goddesses of wisdom), so we wanted the nunnery to serve as a bird sanctuary. And now, as the Tamang farmer led me around to the other thickly green and fruiting trees, my ears told me it was. (I've posted a picture of the peach tree on the blog at www.veggiyana.org)

Most Nepalis will not take without graciously trying to offer something in return, even if it’s just a cup of tea. So I was offered a lunch at the nunnery, a typical meal of rice, dhal and vegetable, in this case spinach from the garden. And in this case, every time I took a spoonful, the nun attempted to refill my plate. It was hard to stop her until I said: “I don’t need anything more. Just seeing the cleanliness of this place and the healthy smile on your face now that you have food is enough.” With that I gave her a check for more monsoon protection over the garden--with higher quality plastic, 3 more fruit trees (guava and pomegranate to stretch the season), more store-bought fruits until the trees can be harvested, and seven months of peanut butter to up the nourishment of their steamed bread breakfast. She gave me a detailed receipt and a huge richly gold colored khata.  I left feeling insanely happy about putting a miniature dike in an enormous flood of misery.

Part 2 will follow so this account doesn’t seem too long.

~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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