Time in the Village and My Reflection of the Trip

I’m back in the homeland so I guess it’s finally time to finish my last blog post. Since being home I’ve washed my clothes in the washing machine, pumped gas in my car, got redirected through a NASCAR race day (aka Redneck-ville), got my first speeding ticket because I got lost from the NASCAR thing, and have since been hanging with my family at my aunt’s lakehouse. Overall I still feel like I’m in a bit of a confused state and I guess most people would call this feeling culture shock. It feels weird to call home a culture shock but I think me explaining my experience during my last two weeks in Nepal will help explain why.

Sunday, August 4^th our group split in two where Group 1 and 3 went to the village of Baluwa and Group 2 and 4 (my group) went to the village of Khanalthok. The adventure began even before the Khanalthok group reached our destination when we drove up the hill to find the car ahead of us with its wheels nearly covered in mud. This is a common occurrence for dirt roads going uphill, especially during the summer rainy season because they easily get washed away or very muddy. This event turned into our first team building activity where we all had to do what we could to push the car out. After a few tries we were able to push out the car, then we pushed the bus out and finally pushed the car out of one more ditch before we felt like an accomplished group and continued to drive to our village.

Once we arrived to the village we went straight to the community health post to meet with leaders of the village and were able to ask them about their village.  This was a good start to our week to get an idea about the community but you could also smell the bit of bias they reported in trying to make things sounds slightly better than we would maybe report. We also experienced our first frustration dealing with the translation process but one of the Nepali students, Amol, did a great job with the translations.

We were then assigned to our host families and my host dad came to lead us to his home. Izzy, from Israel, Amol, from Nepal, and I then walked to the home and sat outside the house on a straw matt to meet with the family. Our family was obviously very happy to have us stay with them, insisted on how hygienic they were, and told us we all had our own beds to sleep on because their kids moved out of the house. The family consisted of a mom and dad, a daughter who’s a teacher in the local school, and a five or so year old boy who was the cutest thing ever. Overall, I don’t think I could’ve gotten a better family to stay with because they were the most friendly and welcoming people I’ve ever met and we didn’t even speak each other’s language.

Entrance of my homestay

Our animals

The front of the house

The first full day we were in the village consisted of a long tour of the area we were assigned to investigate which was more difficult than we expected because the land was quite hilly and it was rather hot that day. I even misplaced my foot as we were walking along a small path and slid down and edge that got me worried if I would break a bone but it ended up not being too bad and I only had a few scratches. Soon after we had our first interview with a house though who gave us some tasty pears and had a nice time relaxing for a bit. The man that we visited seemed to be involved in many things in the community and was very proud of the buffalo and cow he had just purchased and even showed us both animals.

 

The rest of the week then consisted of many interviews with households and key groups in the community including the water committee, health post worker, forest committee, primary school, youth group, transportation committee, secondary school, and the women’s group. Although having to speak through a translator was a bit challenging, the experience of these interviews was very interesting. Most all of the people said water supply was the biggest problem in the community as well as the lack of roads but not too many people complained about their health. I would have expected the households to backaches from the baskets of grass or corn the women would carry on their back or of lung problems from the smoke produced by the cooking stoves but these two things were rarely brought up I expect because these things are a part of daily life. The most common health concerns brought up were headaches, fevers, and sometimes occasional coughing.

We also found out about some random facts that we didn’t expect. The first was that even though the community had a temporary water system in place so each household had a tap, people would still walk hours a day to the tap because they didn’t like drinking that tap water because it tasted bad. We were also surprised to learn about a Dalit house in the community that was doing well despite them being “untouchable” according to their caste name. When nearly everyone got a 6,000 NRS loan (~$60) others spent it on useless stuff but this man chose to invest it in pigs and now he’s the community’s go-to guy for pigs. He also said how before, he would have to wash his own dishes when in a restaurant because the workers would not touch his dishes but now things have gotten better and he considers himself the top of the Dalits. Lastly, our guide in the community, Darma, was what our instructor called a “positive deviant” because he was a social worker in the community and you could tell that everyone respected him. He also told us how in eighth grade he helped establish a private primary school because he wanted to improve the education system and he even went back to teach classes after he had his own classes.

Paths we had to walk to get to houses

 

Overall the households wished they had some training to grow different crops and also an irrigation system so they weren’t only reliant on the summer rainfall to water their crops. These things require money or resources though and they weren’t sure how they could raise money for these things when they also need to install a permanent water system as well as a durable road. Our group chose to highlight the agriculture challenges in community and suggested a solution to develop an agriculture co-op so that they would lose less money as a group from the middle-man they need to pay to transport their crops. This co-op could also establish a tax system so that a small percentage of everything they sell could be saved for a bigger project such as bringing in a trainer or an irrigation technician.

My group also seemed to be impressed with the government primary school because the teachers were dedicated and used innovative teaching techniques however when members of our group visited the secondary school they were less than impressed. The school had graffiti on the walls of the classroom, there was no running water, all but one of the toilets were filled with shit and the one left was only allowed for teachers and girls. The girls however had to go to the woods during their periods and the boys always had to go out to the woods to defecate. The teachers themselves were also not accountable to their students because they wouldn’t always show up to the classroom, they charged their students for private tutoring sessions that taught the same material that was supposed to be taught during the day, and because of this only a small percentage of the students passed the nation SLC exam that allowed a student to continue on to 11^th grade. Lastly, there was nearly no pushback from the parents about the quality of the school because many of the parents were not educated and was not sure what to demand.

Needless to say, our group also saw a large opportunity for the community to join together to work to improve the infrastructure of the secondary school. We thought that maybe if the infrastructure was improved that respect of the school system would also be instilled among the staff and ideally more students could pass the SLCs.

We were assigned to make a presentation to the community on Saturday about our findings and found this to be somewhat of an intimidating task. We were only able to observe the village for one week and then we were supposed to stand in front of the community and tell them what we thought the strengths and weaknesses are. This made Friday the most difficult day when we were supposed to as a group make our presentation and decide on what to present about but we eventually decided to present about the many strengths of the community and then focus on the two topics we thought had the most potential for improvement, agriculture and the secondary school. We didn’t really propose potential solutions because we didn’t think we completely understood, nor worked with the community enough to tell them what we thought as students. After we made our 30 minute presentation in English and Nepali we hoped to get feedback from the community but it just turned into a kind of long thank you session and them telling us to not forget them, which we won’t.

After the presentations was the best part of the week because we just hung out with the community all day. I bought a small basket from the grumpy basket man, then hung with my host mom to make a flower lei thing, and then 4:00 was tea time at the health post where everyone’s host family showed up to drink tea and we ended up playing games and dancing with the kids.

The last day was like a dream. We packed up our stuff and Izzy, Amol, and I were given a flower lei, a silk scarf thing, and red tikka on our forehead. Our group then thought we could eat breakfast and go but the community had one last farewell planned for us where we went up to the health post to have a second breakfast, drink the local (very strong and not super tasty) alcoholic beverage, have a group photo, and then gave us more flowers and tikka. The amount of love and appreciation the villagers showed was incredible and I can’t believe how much they cared for us when we only stayed there for one week. I wish I had pictures to show all the flowers and everyone in the village but I haven't seen them posted yet. Check out my Facebook later if you'd like to see them.

Our group then made our way to the other group’s village in hope of assisting with the building of a few bioreactors but it ended up we were only able to help with one. This was hard work though because hand-mixing the concrete that was very dry with shovels was difficult. It was nice finally seeing the other group and to see their village though. We even got more tikka there as they also left their village.

Last tikka of the day

 

The last week was quite busy because each group had to make their final presentation. This is when we had to put everything we learned in class to practice and it took much longer than we expected. Everyone had at least two late nights but in the end, we were all able to make our 20 minute presentations on Thursday. We then filled out our post-survey of the class and I never would’ve expected I had so much to say. Overall the course was awesome and I wanted to express it as much as I could.

When then left the school and had to quickly head to the Israeli Ambassador’s house for our closing party. It was quite weird at first because it felt so political and I wasn’t really comfortable with the situation when I was thinking about the village we were living in just the week before. But soon enough the talking and random people went away and we ended up dancing to our own music and eating and drinking merrily. The night concluded with a video our TA made of the course and it nearly made everyone cry, especially the hilarious impressions of the staff and a few of the students at the end.

Saying goodbye to my new friends was difficult because I’m not sure of the next time I’ll be able to see them but they sure won’t be forgotten. I had no idea what to expect prior to this course and really only chose to do it because it started the day after my India program ended so I thought, “if I’m in this area of the world already, I guess I should go.” But this was maybe one of the best accidental decisions I made in my life. After this experience I feel confident in the career path I want to go into and that’s to continue in community development work like this. It makes me a bit nervous that the path is less clear because I love to have things planned out clearly but I know that this work will at least be meaningful to me. Most of all, I feel weird about how I did nothing to be born into an easy lifestyle while so many other people were born into more difficult circumstances. The majority of the world’s population is in poverty and I would like to help these people to at least be able to access the basics such as water and electricity. Not only this but I also want to make an effort to teach the communities to develop in a sustainable way and teach that the Westerner’s very wasteful and consuming way is not the only way.  

So this concludes the blog to my summer adventures, now I need to start prepping for my last year at MSU. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.