Life and Times in the Village

After some time, what were once perceived as extraordinary feats, gradually become the mundane functions that keep the wheels of life well oiled in the village. Initially when I moved to Gaindakot, my half-hearted attempts to acclimate to a simpler lifestyle were met with my own resistance to the required input of ever more time and effort to implement the most minor of tasks. Life in the United States can be characterized by what John Perkins, in Confessions of an Economic Hitman, refers to as the corporatocracy, which traps citizens in the clutches of capitalism, where the culture of mass consumerism-I want the fastest, the latest, and the best- prevails. We are all victims of it, and in our self-indulgence, we often forget that most of the rest of the world knows not such a life. What we define as basic necessities are defined as exclusive luxuries for the majority of the world’s population. When friends and family press for details on what life has been like living in semi-rural Nepal, my response is that it must be like what Jaffna must have been before the occupation, but just without the beach.

Each morning and evening, the mother fetches fresh buffalo milk from a neighbor for our chai. If the buffalo becomes pregnant (as was the case this past week), then another neighbor is approached to sell some of her buffalo’s milk. A boiled cup of this milk always follows each of the two meals of the day, which consists of rice and dhal (dhalbaat), a vegetable dish, and pickle, typically spiced with sesame seeds, turmeric, ginger, garlic, fenugreek, cumin, and cilantro. Nearly all of the inputs for the meals come from the kitchen garden behind the house, situated alongside the storehouse for wheat and rice. Rather than buy flour and cooking oil directly from the market, my host family prefers to routinely have their wheat freshly ground into flour by the local miller and oil pressed from mustard seeds grown in a field adjacent to the house. It’s an organic food lover’s paradise. Morning and evening meals are freshly prepared before each mealtime and served on metal or brass plates. When rinsing off the paste from our hands after meals, the saturated water is collected and dumped in a bucket that is fed to the buffalos with their rice grass. There is a system for nearly everything!

Laundry is most often hand-washed and hang dried anywhere that two ends of a cord can be tied. I usually give my laundry to the training institute’s laundryman because I don’t have the time, patience, or energy to pick up some new habits. Once washed, I hang the clothes on my roof to dry along with the undergarments that I wash at home. After literally buffing off layers of skin, I’m starting to get the hang of hand washing!

Like in Afghanistan, the working week is comprised of six days, while Saturdays are set aside for the weekend. After work, we usually sit on the balcony with a cup of tea, watching the neighbors’ children play cricket, badminton, and other small games, or I sit on as a casual observer as my host family engages in random chitchat with their neighbors. In the winter, since there is no heating system, we usually warm our frozen bodies around fires that are lit next to the field and fed with rubbish and dry leaves. Unfortunately, there is no solid waste management offered to residents outside of Kathmandu, so to take out the garbage, literally means to dump the contents of your bin in an assigned location near the field and set it alight. The two times a month that I do this, I’m wrought with guilt for partaking in this environmentally totally unfriendly practice.

The inconvenience most strongly felt is from the load shedding. Nepal is the world’s second richest country in water resources, yet, it is unable to generate enough electricity for its population, particularly during the months leading up to the monsoon. These days, we are forced to schedule things around a 12-hour daily load shedding schedule, and I hear that this will likely go up to 18 hours per day over the next few months. Lack of appropriate infrastructure aside, games that allow this condition to fester are played on many sides. Candle and generator salesmen make a handsome profit during these months, so what’s to stop them from giving the local electricity controller an “incentive” to prolong load shedding a little bit here and there. With rare access to power, productivity of businesses and other service providers is hit the hardest.

The second worst inconvenience is the effect of Nepal bandh on nearly everything. When bandh is called, as I discussed in a recent entry, businesses are required to stay closed, and motored vehicles are not permitted on the roads. Every time I book a flight out of Nepal, I’m sure to travel to Kathmandu a few days earlier in case an unanticipated bandh is announced and reluctantly prepare myself mentally for having to walk to the airport if a rickshaw doesn’t present itself in time.

I’ve, more or less, come to terms with this lifestyle, more so because I know in my mind that this is temporary. I value it because it is an experience in itself, but the perspectives that I’m gaining personally will hopefully help me to do my job a little bit better over the long run. What never ceases to amaze me is the peace of mind displayed by these communities. Maybe, simple is better after all.

View of Gaindakot village from my balcony