March 11, 2009
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dear Blog,

It’s been a while. A good long while. Much has happened, much has been seen, done, tasted, felt and heard. And if this were some kind of journal in which was recounted the true remembrances of actual occurrences, the long gap between event and recall would surely prove plenty to have rotten the memories to gross exaggeration and stinking lies.

Such is the effect of time on the mind.

So, my Dear Blog, if you can forgive me for not bestirring the flies that lie laying on my tales of past adventure, I begin today’s story with today:

I woke up for the third time at 7:58am, the two earlier rejections having been 5:59 and 6:45. Reasonable hours. At nearly 8 I was being lazy. I could hear Charrisa and Laura, the two Dutch volunteers, already outside washing sheets. It seems Subash wet the bed again: the seventh time this week.

“How do we learn him not to do it anymore?” Laura asked Charissa.

“Well, he went to the toilette twice last night, and he even still did it again in his bed, so I don’t know.”

I threw back the covers and sat halfway up. I keep a bag of beaten rice on the table by my bed and I eat a handful every morning like a drunk eats aspirin. What to do about Subash? I don’t know either. The two loudest voices in my head say, with uncaring commonality, “Rub his face in it!” and “He makes his bed, let him lie in it!” but these rude thoughts don’t rattle my vocal chords. He is, after all, only three.

I stand up, a few pieces of beaten rice fall from my chest and find friends on the floor. I dress in my least dusty looking pair of clothes, a pair of brown shorts and a green hoodie, and fill a pocket with more beaten rice. It’s a holiday today; breakfast will be later than usual. It was a holiday yesterday, too. In fact, the last six days were holidays. Nepal is a country of Festivals and off-days. Out of the years 52 weeks, over 23 are National Holidays. Yesterday the entire city threw bags of red colored water at each other. It was fun for about an hour. But by the end of the day I was ready for a throw down with the next bag-throwing jerk. A few weeks ago Shiva Ratri was celebrated by children blocking roads with ropes and charging traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, one rupee to pass. The adults celebrated by smoking hashish. That one was fun…

I bend down to pull the cloth out from underneath my door. Since I began stuffing it there I haven’t had to share my room with anymore noisy, nighttime mice. Deep breath, I open the door to another bright sunny day in Kathmandu, Sad City of Dust…

I step into my shoes outside. I keep them there convinced that there are, per square foot, fewer spiders outside my room that may choose to seek seclusion at the toe of my sneaker (remind me to remove the egg sacks from the rafters or I’ll have even more roommates in a few weeks). And there is no threat of rain. In fact there has been no significant rainfall here for over 8 months. The drought is worrisome, the dust is thick, the leaded gas fumes from the heavy traffic color the air pale cigar smoke blue. Disconcerting to actually see the air you’re breathing. A heavy rain would clear it, but it may still be several months coming.

We have electricity this morning and the water pump is running. If our tanks fill completely, we get maybe 2000 liters a week. With 10 children in the house, and between 4 and 5 adults, all drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, cleaning…It goes quickly, and there never seems to be enough. Ali ali paani, they say. Little little water. And the shortage is only going to get worse without rain. But today the pumps run for too long. The tanks fill and we have to use buckets to catch the overflow. We all do our laundry, we clean the toilet and shower. The extra water feels like a gift, a luxurious, extravagant gift.

I’ve had a cough since Morocco. That was a month and a half ago. It’s like a smoker’s hack, but way less cool. I go into an obnoxious fit then wander over to Ramesh at the tap, brushing his teeth. “Hi, Ramesh,” I say, “I’m dying.” He takes the toothbrush out of his mouth, and through the foam he asks “Why shouting then?” I didn’t think I had raised my voice.

At 10:30 I eat breakfast. Which is distinguishable from dinner only by time of day. It’s always and only Dhalbhat: an intimidating and often overcooked mush-pile of rice covered in lentil soup with a small amount of vegetable curry, all served on a cold metal plate without company of cutlery. Spoons and forks add no flavor and you’d just have to wash them besides. I eat in 7 minutes – I’ve really gotten good with my hands – then I’m out the door. I’ve got a summer job interview, via skype, at noon. If anything comes of it, I’ll give more details. I pay a microbus 20 cents to take me into town. During rush hour the buses are just as slow as walking and more uncomfortable. The Nepalese know how to cram into a van. I usually walk anyway because somehow 20 cents has come to seem like a lot of money.

In town the rickshaw drivers and mumbling drug dealers give their regular sales pitches (Hey you! Rickshaw? Richshaw? Hashish? Hey!), but today I am uncommonly rude to them. I find a cyber shop and the interview goes fine. Indifference is an ace up the sleeve.

No hurry now, just me, the rest of the day, and the two miles of bad, broken, dusty road back home. Slowly Josh, it’s not really home. I stop at a shop and, due to my spectacular whiteness, am and offered assistance beyond what any non-quadriplegic could possibly need. I look over a bag of beaten rice. Beautiful white flakes. My assistant takes a different bag from the shelf. It’s more than double the price, and the rice is dirty brown. “Better?” I ask, skeptically. “Anh, better.” she says and takes the bag of beautiful rice from my hand and puts it back on the shelf. Okaaaaay. So I buy it, along with a bottle of water, a package of cookies and some noodle soup. A man can’t live on dhalbhat alone. I open the rice outside and taste it. Merde, if you’ll pardon my French, pure merde. Moving your unsaleable stock on an unsuspecting white fool, eh? Hmmm…well…If I’ve learned anything ever, I’ve learned a fool is the best we born idiots can ever hope to be. Ladies and Gentlemen, it seems I’ve arrived.

I take a left to walk the long way down the none-too-scenic Balaju Industrial Zone. I pass the Coke bottling factory, the parked, parrot-colored trucks with such inspiring tailgate messages as “SEE YOU” and “HORN PLEASE”, Kathmandu Bank, the long stretches of rusted barbed wire separating one intolerably dusty place from another…I notice a group of school boys up ahead, one has a stick. As I pass they demand I give them my water. Psh! Mero ho! Its mine, punks! I just keep on walking. I rejoin the main road and pass an old prune of a woman selling peanuts. I used to buy from her everyday, but I lost my taste for her wares and now I feel only slightly guilty as she stares at me ignoring her stare as I head up the hill to the orphanage.

Five of the ten kids have final exams tomorrow. Most exhausting and futile endeavor, trying to make a child study. Children are like water, they spread out everywhere. And if they come in contact with some containing wall, say a nay-saying, go-study guardian, they pool together to probe everywhere for weaknesses. Unclear directions, lack of resolve, laxity or leniency in discipline…They know quicker than you do how deep the water’s going to be, and, to be honest, nobody’s getting more than a damp trouser leg stepping behind my dam. I have no real authority. After an afternoon arguing study location (Its too noisy in the boys’ room? Maybe the outhouse will be quieter…), proper study posture (sit with all four of the chair’s legs on the ground, Janga, look the book, and open it too…) and relevant study material (Ramesh, how do you think Suraj’s class 2 English Grammar is going to help you tomorrow on your class 3 math exam?), I finally got pissed, dragged one non-studier by the neck to his book, where he cried and cried, then went outside and pinched the bridge of my nose in the twighlight.

The stars over the Balaju neighborhood are intense during a blackout. If this country never develops due to the electrical shortage, at least they still have the night sky. I say that’s worth something.

After some time alone, tiny non-English speaking Ashmita shuffled out into the dark and whispered into my ear: “So many coconuts!”

That made me feel better.

That night, for a bedtime story, I improved upon Hemmingway’s “Old Man and the Sea.”

Once upon a time there was a simple old man with an unfortunate face like a dry lake bed. His cracks and scars and eyes like scattered rocks scared children, and repulsed women. As a youngster he had taken too much sun as a crew member on a slave ship harvesting from the plentiful Côte d’Ivoire and now he could find no form of gainful employment on shore, and was forced to spend his lonely days taking what he could from the sea. But for 84 days now, he hadn’t landed anything larger than a mackerel, and suffered a man-o-war sting pulling the line in to boot. But his simple way and hopeless optimism sailed him out to sea an 85^th time. On that day, he quickly hooked a baby dolphin and cheerfully clubbed it to death, sprinkling a little blood in the water for good luck. As the mast’s shadow shortened and the afternoon’s heat burned down on the top of his grizzled head, he felt a monstrous tug on the line. Something big had taken the hook, and was now traveling to the north! The old man held the line and let the fish pull the boat, slowly, slowly. Slowly the boat was pulled. The old man spends some time in thought. And tells his brain to stay clear. As the boat gets pulled. Slowly, slowly. Further and further from the lights of Havana. The fish pulls the boat. Slowly. It’s the farthest out he’s ever been. And still the fish pulls. Imagine! The fish pulls the boat for 80 pages! Incredible! But lo! After such a feat with nothing for food but the sweat sea water, the fish tires, and begins circling the boat. Closer to the surface…Closer to the boat…Closer… Close enough now, the Old Man drives his harpoon hard into the old heart of the beautiful marlin. The Old Man thinks about money while the fish labors under the burden of death. Soon the hush of oblivion takes him and reduces him to the silver center of a crimson stain spreading across the surface of the sea. The Old Man lashes the giant fish to the side of his boat, as it was too large to take onboard. But sharks are drawn by the blood in the water come to take what they can. They rip meat from the marlin carcass in 40lb chunks and knock the boat around so fiercely that the Old Man spills into the ocean where the sharks rip him to pieces simply because they are sharks. His empty skiff is found three days later by a cruise liner and curious tourists take photographs of the huge fish skeleton lashed portside.

Now, I ask the kids, where is my Nobel Prize?

They are quiet for a moment before they realize that I’ve finished the story, and then begin whining:

“Ahh, that’s it, so quick? Come now, Sir, tell another!”

No, no, children, that’s one of the treasures of western literature, be silent and ponder it a little longer.

“Come now Sir! Tell another!”

I won’t. You children sleep now.

“We won’t.”

You will, because you are children, and as such your life is directed by the unexplainably malevolent whims of adults who can’t possibly remember what its like to be a child. Now shut your eyes, good night dears.

I turn off the flash lights and go to my room. Rajendra gave me a mosquito net which I hung dangerously close to my candle’s flame. Someday I’ll carelessly move the net into the fire and my whole room will burn. I can’t wait to tell that story.

I read a few pages of Don Quixote in the yellow light, pull a louse from my hair, then blow the candle out.

Good night dears.

Blog,

Josh

PS: It’s now March 22 and the rain is here. So much for my pessimistic prediction that “it may still be several months coming.” The air smells so sweet now. I celebrated by smoking a cigar I brought from France. Then smoked three more out of boredom. Nothing to do in all this rain…

In other news of wetness Subash stopped wetting the bed. But he started wetting his pants. Three times a day. And he cares not whether he be standing or sitting on your lap. All I have to say to Subash these days is “Toilet jau!” Go to the toilet, you…