A Drop in the Ocean: Notes from Twenty-One

There is a question I have learned to expect, though I have never learned to answer it well: what will you do with your life, here, in this country?

I used to think the question was about ambition. Now I think it is about arithmetic. There are only so many rooms in this house, and so many of us standing at the door.

The Narrow Door

At twenty-one, the paths toward a stable future for a young Nepali look like this: a government post, if you are patient enough to wait for an exam that may or may not come. Tourism, if the mountains are still generous that year. A desk job in a city that cannot hold everyone who arrives in it hoping. Or the door that everyone eventually walks through; the airport, the visa, the promise of elsewhere.

It is not that we lack dreams. Many are born with wings wide enough to hold the whole horizon. But the sky here has a way of shrinking around young birds, until even the largest wings forget what it felt like to fully open. And sometimes, the sky fails the birds.

What the Streets Remembered

Not long ago, the young stood in the streets and asked their government to look at them. They were not asking for much. Only to be seen, only to be heard on the question of their own futures. What they received instead was silence dressed up as order, and then the government answered the way frightened power always answers; not with words, but with bullets.

A picture of a young Nepali Man during the protest.( yes it’s the parliament on fire in background)

I do not need to describe what happened. Anyone who was watching remembers, and anyone who wasn’t will read about it elsewhere, in the cold language of casualty counts.

I watched people my age discover that loving a country and trusting its government are two entirely different acts of faith. One is inherited. The other must be earned, and ours has not yet earned it.

But here is the strange, quiet thing I noticed in the aftermath: before the smoke could even settle, those very same young hands that protested started sweeping instead. They returned to the streets to clear away the glass, to clean the walls, to put back together the pieces that had been broken apart. It was then, I believe, that I saw the true patriots of our generation.

Protesters cleaning the mess after the violent unrest

What I Have Come to Expect

I no longer expect quick repair. Systems this old do not bend in a season, and I have stopped mistaking my impatience for their reform.

What I expect instead is smaller, and stranger: that some of us will leave, and some of us will stay, and both are forms of the same devotion. The ones who leave are not abandoning the house; they are going to learn how other houses are built, so that one day they might come back and lay a better foundation. The ones who stay are holding the door open in the meantime.

I do not think leaving and loving are opposites. I think, for people like me, they have become the same gesture, only stretched across more distance.

What Nepal Taught Me to Read

This is a country that raised me on unhappy sentences, and I mean that as gratitude, not complaint.

Somewhere along the way I learned to recognize a particular kind of emptiness; the sound of someone circling the same absence again and again, refusing to resolve it into comfort. In the same breath, my land has taught me about mist rolling over terraced hills like the earth exhaling. Prayer flags that wear down to threads by being in the wind until color is nothing but prayer. Rivers that cut into stone like patience cuts into grief — slowly, unapologetically. Mountains that are beautiful and look like they try to reach for clouds, standing pridefully with glowing white snow all over them.

View of Mt. Fishtail from my terrace in Pokhara

None of this was handed to me by accident. A country built on contradiction; sacred mountains and broken roads, ancient wisdom and modern neglect; teaches you early to hold two opposite truths at once without flinching. That is what this place taught me before any page did.

What I Feel, Looking at Home

I feel about Nepal the way you feel about someone you cannot stop loving even when they disappoint you — not despite the disappointment, but somehow through it, because the disappointment is proof you were paying attention.

I love the way strangers here still call each other Dai, Bhai, Didi, and Baini (Nepali words for brother and sister) without irony. I love that an overly sweet cup of tea will find its way to your hands even before you have properly introduced yourself. I love the stubbornness of people who keep building schools and clinics with their own hands because they have stopped waiting for someone else to. I love that when the young took to the streets, they were not importing someone else’s anger. It was entirely, achingly their own.

And still... I am disappointed by how easily good people are made tired here. How much brilliance gets spent simply surviving instead of creating. How normal it has become to say there is nothing for you here to a child, as though that were wisdom instead of surrender.

Both feelings are true. I have stopped trying to resolve them into one.

Where the Quiet Joy Lives

It lives in small, specific things. In the particular shade of blue painted all over the sky when glowing red rays of early sun just begin to kiss the snow on the tall mountains faraway. In the smile of an old man when the wrinkles on his face deepen, hiding hundreds of stories of joy and sorrow. In a language that has a word for the specific ache of missing a place you have not yet left.

It lives, too, in writing; in finding one true sentence after circling it for hours, the way old musicians describe finding the single note that makes an entire raga make sense.

Joy, here, is rarely loud. It is usually something you find quietly, almost by accident, and then hold very still so it doesn’t leave.

The Ocean We Haven’t Seen

There is a line I return to more than any other: what we know is a drop; what we don’t know is an ocean.

At twenty-one, I know a single drop’s worth about my country, my future, what will become of either. I do not know if the systems will heal in my lifetime. I do not know if the ones who leave will return, or if the leaving will quietly become permanent, the way it has for so many before us.

But with tiny bit of knowledge I have of my country I can confidently say that Nepal is actively being rebuilt slowly and stubbornly, by people who refuse to close the book.

I am one drop in that ocean. I intend to stay one, for as long as it takes.

Nepal is broken. But it is still home. And homes are not meant to be abandoned. They are meant to be returned to, hands full of everything you have learned elsewhere, ready to mend what waits for you.

I am twenty-one. I do not know yet what shape my leaving or staying will take.

But I am not done with my country.

Not even close.

Planting Seasons

It’s a busy time in our local community; rice planting is happening! Our community has three primary crop seasons, potatoes, corn, and rice. The potato and corn planting seasons are variable, but rice planting is coordinated to line up with the start of the monsoon season, usually mid to late June for our community. This year has been drier than usual and the rain has been slow to arrive, but all is now in full motion.

One of the bigger surprises has been that the end of the corn season doesn’t mean the corn is ready to harvest, it just means that any corn field destined for rice is “harvested” to make way for the rice. Corn harvesting is all by hand, taking ears from the stalk and later collecting the entire stalk to feed the local family animals. The ears are sometimes stacked up for storage and other times shelled and driveway/tarp dried. Some premature corn (though not sweet corn) finds its way into the kitchen to become part of the local diet right away

To make matters even more complicated but amazing, a lot of the corn fields have some form of double crop. For example, green beans, cucumber, and millet are commonly found planted along with corn.

Rice Planting

Now for the primary feature of this story, rice planting.

Since we’ve been at our permanent site, we’ve been walking along numerous trenches that sometimes carry water and are sometimes dry. Once the rain started, they become alive and carry the water from the upper hills down to the terraced fields to be flooded. It has been truly amazing to see the years of work to assemble these water channels and the ease with which they install temporary dams or “gates” to push the water to the correct field(s). The irrigation water for our community comes from a pipeline from higher elevation river about an hour drive away. These water distribution channels are independent from the potable water supply to each home in our community.

.Once the field receives its initial flooding, the hard work begins. With either oxen or walk behind tillers, the flooded field is plowed up with organic material “smashed” down in the water. The field work crew works along with the “plowing” by digging along the edges and raising the field border up (with mud by hand) to increase the water depth. With a few exceptions, this field work crew was all male.

That’s all the longer that Steve was trusted to keep the ox in the correct field and headed the right direction. The boss was yelling at the oxen, not Steve, we think?

Next rolls in the planting crew, almost all females. They’ve already collected and bundled up the rice seedlings from a nearby nursery plot. These bundles of seedlings are planted, three to one hole, by pressing the seedling cluster into the mud under the water. Liisa enjoyed the simplicity of the task and the comradery of working in the crew.

Liisa did rice planting with the proficiency that was even turned into some Tik Tok videos (no, we’re not providing links). We were both ready to take a header into the water, walking barefoot with rocks and corn stumps made this feel like our future. But alas, no fails during the plowing or planting. Both the male plowing crews, and female planting crews, watched over us to make sure minimal mistakes and no accidents.

The crews we worked with were hired groups that moved from farmer to farmer. An individual received 1,500 rupees, roughly $10, for one day of work (8 to 10 hours/day). The work crews were fed meals throughout the day, and these meals were massive undertakings, no disposable dishes. But wow, it’s hard work in the sun and humidity with caked mud all over. Combine that with knowing one had to finish that farmer’s fields that day because there was another farmer scheduled for the next day, kept the pressure on and sometimes finishing in the dark with headlamps.

And something completely different…

Nepal celebrated is literary anniversary, Bhanu Jayanti, on July 13^th. The anniversary is in honor one of their first poets, Bhanubhakta Acharya. We were invited to a local poetry reading and it was very impressive to witness the energy of Nepal being captured by local poets.

One of the more historically famous poems “Ghasi” (The Grass Cutter) authored by Bhanubhakta Acharya, tells the story of a poor worker who was trying to make enough money to build a well for his community to remember him, inspiring the poet to change his own life towards simplicity. We know just enough Nepali to agree with this English translation but also know the translation doesn’t carry the beauty of the Nepali language. We’ve witnessed countless grass cutters (harvesting grass in the forest, along the paths, or branches of trees as the primary animal feed) in our community and have had the chance to do it a couple of times ourselves.

He gives his life to cutting grass and earns a little coin,
He hopes to make a water well for people to enjoy,
So he is remembered well after his life is done.
This high-thinking grass-cutter lives in poverty and pain,
While I have achieved nothing though I have much wealth to use.
I have neither made a shelter nor a well for public grace,
All my riches and my treasures stay locked inside my house.
This grass-cutter has opened up my heavy eyes today,
My life on earth is worthless if my name just fades away.

May we all have our moments of being a high-thinking grass cutter remembered for making our communities a better place.

What is Peace Corps?

We’ve had the chance to talk with a lot of you in person and you may have inferred a lot from previous substacks, but we’d like a quick recap of what is Peace Corps by reflecting on our first five months with them.

Origin Story

Established via execute order in 1961 by John F. Kennedy, and congressional action the following year, Peace Corps is an independent Federal Agency. The goals have remained the same since inception.

1. Meet Host Country Needs - To help the people of interested countries meet their need for trained individuals.

2. Promote Understanding of Americans - To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

3. Promote Understanding of Other Peoples - To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Origin Dive Deeper - JFK Address

Sixty five years later, the goals remain the same along with the principle of living at the same standard of living as host communities and promoting peace through friendship. We’ve been encouraged to consider ourselves 24/7, small “a” ambassadors for America and to do the same for our host country to Americans.

What is Peace Corp Working on

Current Peace Corps focus areas include:

• Agriculture: Volunteers strengthen local food security, promote sustainable and climate-smart farming techniques, and assist rural farming households.

• Community Economic Development: Volunteers help stimulate local economies by promoting business literacy, eco-tourism, and financial skills.

• Education: Volunteers teach subjects like math, science, and English, while assisting with literacy initiatives, digital learning, and teacher training.

• Environment: Volunteers promote environmental awareness, conservation, and eco-tourism to create a more sustainable world.

• Health: Volunteers focus on community health, maternal and child health, hygiene promotion, life skills, and disease prevention.

• Youth in Development: Volunteers work alongside community members to empower the next generation through mentorship, life-skills training, and civic engagement.

Each country focuses on three of the focus areas in consultation with the host country governmental agencies. Our roughly 100 fellow cohorts in Nepal are supporting agriculture, education, and environment in roughly 10 of the 77 Districts in Nepal.

That’s nice, but what is it really?

First off, Peace Corps provides intensive pre-service training that includes technical skills (agriculture/food security for us), language, culture, and safety and security. Our first couple months included staying with a local family near our training site. This gave us the chance to jump-start Nepali culture with daily Peace Corps trainers/facilitators helping us adjust and understand the subtleties of Nepali life. Combined with the immersion language teaching and technical training, this was some of the most intense and stressful training we’d been through. In hindsight, we took it too seriously and took on more stress than needed, but it would have been very difficult/impossible to have a good start without pre-service training.

Next, we’ve been at our two-year permanent site now for three months. We’re thankful for the pre-service training, but we have to focus on the challenges faced by our community, not necessarily on the Nepali government initiatives or Peace Corps training. For example, there is a government subsidy for farmers to plant orange (suntala) trees, but limited farmer training on detecting diseases and treatment techniques. Liisa is training herself, with insight from other volunteers, as and orange tree disease detective and treatment czar.

Additionally, we are just scratching the surface on understanding Nepali culture. Everyday brings a new level of awareness and partial understanding. We thought we had something understood previously, only to realize we were only half correct and missed critical nuances. One such cultural onion peeling is a typical initial greeting with someone you meet along a path, the translated greeting or question would be “Have you eaten?” We thought we were doing our best to answer the question with yes/no, what we ate, or when we ate, or who we ate with. But recently, a language teacher laughing told us that it is really a rhetorical question similar to our American “What’s happening?” We’re still not sure we’ve got that one understood. This is one of many more onion peeling efforts we’re working on including still getting roughly 25 hours of Nepali language training each month.

Why

Our why story starts an inquisitive junior at Jefferson High School (Iowa) wondering why no one from her school was a foreign exchange student, even though her school hosted several each year. Insert a open minded local Rotary club, and a year later of Swedish schooling, this Jefferson High graduate was committed to a life focused on cultural immersion and the importance of service for others.

Now insert a 20-something boy who discovered he really liked the returned exchange student. So much so, that he asked her not to go the the Peace Corps after college (he was pretty sure she wouldn’t come back) in exchange for a promise to join Peace Corps upon retirement. Wow, what 20-something boys will do to get the girl.

Fast forward to today, our why has evolved since our dating years, and some since we’ve been in Nepal.

For Steve, “the why” includes getting to know other cultures and learning more about himself through this experience, but it was mosly about being of service to others. After a career with great support and friendships building capital intensive projects, he’s been looking forward to a retirement 2nd career with more direct tangible connection to service to others. He would not be doing this without Liisa and is very grateful for her 40 years of patience to get here.

Being in Nepal, Steve has reflected on the The Starfish Story often (adapted from Loren Eiseley’s essay, “The Star Thrower”) that features a man observing a boy throwing stranded starfish back into the ocean after a storm. When the man notes that countless starfish will still die, the boy tosses one into the waves, replying, “I made a difference to that one.” Our time in Peace Corps will not be about the big projects, more likely our impact will be one small effort or encounter (helping one starfish) at a time.

For Liisa, the why is a deeper connection and understanding of other cultures. When I live in a culture different from my own, I learn new ways to think, how others perceive the world, that expressions of feelings vary widely, and how the flow of the day is tied to work, food and the sun. Cultures are different and people are mostly the same. It is deeply gratifying to experience the Nepali culture.

We are amazed at our fellow Peace Corps cohorts here in Nepal. By being here, they are committed to the three goals for Peace Corps, but more importantly, they are all amazing people who daily demonstrate the importance of service to others. Beyond the service to others, here’s a recap from a couple of our cohorts “why”:

• Building experience and test driving a future career in USA Foreign Service

• Taking a “gap” two year, totally different from the planned ocean marine studies graduate and PhD work, no oceans in Nepal, getting to know themselves better

• Building on their Nepali/SE Asia origin family history to better know their own origin story

• Limited options post college available, so getting work experience and better positioned as a citizen of the USA

Here’s a couple of our Nepali cohorts substack feeds to learn more.

Townsend

Amy

Really?

Yep, we’re doing it and staying with it!

We’re going through ups and downs of feeling like we are making a difference. We knew this was a wild card and we may never know what impact we will have had, even after being here two years. It takes effort, but one has to relish in that one new Nepali word a day or unique interaction where you can make a difference for a day in someone’s life.

We’ve interfaced with over a dozen farmers in a one-on-one basis helping them plant new crops for them (ginger), proper pruning of tomatoes, building bamboo trellises for vegetables, proper fruit tree planting, orange tree disease identification and management, and introducing new vegetable seeds. Additionally, we’ve started a demonstration worm composting operation, consulted with a farmer group starting up a commercial composting operation (Steve), did a landscape design for a local hotel (Liisa) and are teaching at local schools one day a week.

Our host family has gotten us to numerous cultural celebrations and made sure we’re included, despite our language gap of being able to understand what’s going on.

The connection to the rest of the world has been surprisingly easy. With only limited power interruptions, we’ve been able to stay as connected as one can being half way around the world time zone wise. Despite the technology for easy connection, we miss our family and friends immensely. Also home sicknesses for autonomy, food options, USA recreation options, and taking a walk without climbing hundreds of steps.

In the end, we know will learn more about ourselves from this experience, stayed tune as we discover what that may be!

So, how do we and other Nepalis get around? First off, vehicle ownership is a rare luxury in our village, and in other rural villages throughout Nepal. The primary reason is economic as the average Nepalis’ annual income is $2,800/year. There is a wide income disparity across the country, making the income level even lower in rural regions, so vehicle ownership is not in the picture. It is a much different story in Kathmandu and other larger cities.

But Nepalis are industrious and there is a thriving private vehicle/jeeps for hire that provides for a lot of the local transportation needs. We have yet to see an American-style Jeep, most of the vehicles that provide local transport are Indian manufactured, underpowered four-cylinder, four-wheel drive, three row jeeps. Not large at all, more like a small SUV with a third seat shoved in the back and 2” behind the third seat for luggage. Probably officially listed as 9 passengers, but more like a six passenger by USA standards and leg room for individuals shorter than 5’. Luggage is either on the roof or in your lap. We’ve ridden a couple of hours when the number of passengers grew to 11 adults plus four toddlers.

It might take a half hour or more to get everybody loaded. The temperature rises in the jeep with no additional air flow. Nepalis don’t mind at all. They seem perfectly comfortable in the rising heat while wearing jackets or sweaters. Meanwhile, we are fanning ourselves and wearing a single layer of summer clothes.

We have redefined our expectations of personal space, part of our Nepali cultural training. It is truly amazing that everybody just does their part to make it work, including putting someone else’s luggage on your lap, having someone sit on your lap, or even having multiple passengers take a shortcut to the road leaving town and jump on the roof at a designated final fill point. Because most of the rides are coordinated to head directly to a village, passengers are family members or neighbors, and it all just works. We’re fortunate that our local village has several jeeps that service the town and one even parks his vehicle overnight at our host families’ house. By American standards, the jeep travel is very affordable. On a recent trip to a major town recently, we paid $5.35 each for a two-hour ride one way. There are also vans (and some EV vans) and “two rows” pickup trucks with the back bed converted with side bench seats as local transportation.

What is more affordable and more common is motorcycle/scooter transport, with either self-ownership or ride for hire. Nepal’s version of Uber/Lyft (in the major cities) even has a motorcycle transportation option, and it is roughly ½ the cost of a vehicle hire. Most of the motorcycles are low power, 150 cc or less, so capable of highway speeds, but barely. Helmets are required by law and usually worn, but we’ve also seen as many as four, no helmets, on a 150-cc motorcycle with all ages of riders, even infants carried in passenger’s arms or a toddler sitting in front of the driver holding onto the mirrors for balance. During the election, we witnessed a young man give his grandmother a motorcycle ride to the voting location. It was quite the site seeing an older woman with a cane maneuver getting on and off the motorcycle so easily. For us, Peace Corps has a No Motorcycle rule, so it is interesting to observe and a vital link for many, but not an option for us. It is ok for us to utilize are auto rickshaws, one step up from a motorcycle but not known for comfort. The drivers want a full rickshaw to maximize profit. You either wait until the rick-saw is full or pay for the empty seats

.

Between larger cities, there are various levels of bus service available, nothing fancy, but the higher-end ones will have designated seats and fewer stops. The local buses between towns have porters that ride in the door, ushering people aboard and collecting the fares as you travel. Seat spacing is also designed for 5’ tall people, but they are functional, low cost, and affordable for many. On a recent one-hour trip, the fare was $1.25 one way. Locals know which intersection to meet a bus. There are no set schedules for these local/regional buses. A bus may hang out until it is full or overflowing. The porters will always say there is more room at the back. We’ve managed to make connections with local shop owners at our closest intersection. They are kind to make sure we get on the correct bus. Much more challenging for us are the return trips as there is a designated bus park, but there is no sign.

The road quality is best stated as a work in progress. Occasionally, it is a paved four lane road that one can safely hum along at normal speeds. Just when you think the trip is going to stay smooth, the road transitions to an unsigned, under construction, rock/gravel road that has jeep-eating potholes. These road construction projects combined with narrow roads, potholes, and lots of blind switch backs, are best left to the astute driving ability of the bus, jeep and motorcycle drivers who travel the roads daily. The drivers have a horn honking code to communicate with each other. It works well!

We’ve yet to fly in Nepal, but many options exist from the larger cities. Air travel is outside our Peace Corps budget, but still very affordable and a huge time saver. From our district, it is roughly eight hours of bus riding and $20, or a 90-minute bus to an airport with hourly departing, ½ hour flights to Kathmandu for $150 total. If you are a tourist, you pay a higher price.

This brings us to our favorite mode of transportation, walking. Our village has numerous waking paths along the fields and so many stone stairs to traverse the elevation changes. A lot of the homes in our village do not even have vehicle access, just paths and steps. The layout of the paths and steps has us frequently walking through a neighbor’s patio. If they are outside working or chatting, which they almost always are, an invitation for tea and food is frequently offered and hard to resist. The old and the young walk these steps easily compared to us. We are like an old cow going down the steps making sure to get each foot placed well. The Nepalis glide and hop down the steps like young goats without a care in the world while wearing flip flops.

Our community has more elevation change than distance. For example, there is 1,300-foot elevation drop from our home down to the local market, but it is only about 1 mile in straight line distance. There are several paths/steps for us to take, one is even poured concrete steps with handrails. All longer established paths have “rest stops” along the way to take a rest and take in the view or have a chat with a neighbor. We truly enjoy these walks and are grateful to be physically able to hike down and back up the height of the Empire State Building in order to visit members of our ward (aka township) or buy some groceries. However, whenever it seems like we’re really doing well, one of our older local villagers walks past us with a full load on their back. It is good to be humble.

Our district is known for its suspension bridges. We have several in our ward and our district center town, Kushma, is known for its suspension bridges. One of the Kushma suspension bridges is privately owned and boasts the world’s second tallest bungee jump at 750’. Bungee jumping is also against Peace Corps rules. It is not on our bucket list!

That’s all for now. We appreciate the continued support we receive and welcome any questions. We’ll do our best to answer.

Steve & Liisa

Subscribe now

Greetings and thanks again for reading our Substack feed! We love your support and feedback!

We’ve been experiencing some Nepali cultural differences. We hope you will find them enjoyable!

· Goats passing through the house to get to the front of the house to see what there is to eat…maybe there are harvested crops drying on the driveway!

· Our best Nepali doesn’t allow us to always understand what’s being said. Liisa thought she was going to do some garden planting only to arrive at food preparation time in the neighborhood to honor a deceased relative. Liisa was wearing appropriate clothes and had the right attitude. She helped stir a large pot of dough by hand which means you use your hand. People are generally happy to see us and let us join in the activities, even if we have no idea what’s going on. It is characteristic of the Nepali easy-going attitude in life.

· There are many names for how people are related to each other which precisely indicates who that person is in relation to you. For example, your father’s older brother is your “Thuli baa”, father’s younger brother a “kaakaa, and mother’s brother is “maamaa”, all are uncles in English and might also just be called father “buwaa” if the families are close. Most villages are full of relatives. We know how to ask people what their names are in Nepali and also give our names in a complete Nepali sentence. It takes people by surprise that we start with asking their name, rather than their relationship to our host family. One day on a walk we meet two younger men walking with a woman who appeared to be their grandmother. We greeted and asked the grandmother first for her name. She was having trouble understanding us, so the grandsons’ translated for her. We heard them ask the grandmother what her name was, she has always been grandma, “hajuramma”, to them, no name needed!

· We joined our host mother at the village’s yearly celebration of the women’s savings and credit union meeting. We sat in front on the stage facing a room full of women and listened to a 60 minute, impassion speech in Nepali. It was warm. We were thirsty. It was past time to eat. We were hoping we looked engaged. Many photos were taken. If you see any with dazed Steve and Liisa, sweating on a coach on a stage, yes, that’s us!

· Setting up a meeting with the agricultural supervisor was a good lesson in patience. It took three attempts to set up the meeting and then our host mother insisted she come along. She is very well intentioned and wants to be sure we get to where we are going. The trip to the office took 50 minutes to walk down the makeshift steps in the hillside. It was a fascinating walk down the winding, narrow path as it crossed homes and farm fields. Nepali’s have incredible eye-foot coordination which we don’t. We managed to keep up and not fall. The meeting with the supervisor was great, and it was a good family trust building experience. Yes, we had our host mom at our meeting with our boss; we felt so grown-up!

· We ask people to speak slowly which they gladly comply with for the first 3 words, then it is off to the races. Nepali people love to talk and it appears to come naturally to speak fast. We’ll easily be known as the “bistarai” (slow) listeners.

· Coming home from a day at the market means an hour walk uphill om stairs that switch back the entire way home. We did not protest that our host mother arranged for the local jeep driver (think bus) to take us home. The jeep has room for 8 people, but it often accommodates 11. On this day, we were at capacity, but 2 youths were still hoping for a ride. The driver went around the block and let the 2 youths climb on the roof into the luggage rack for the gravel road ascent. Steve could swear he heard them say, no problem!

· Speaking of drivers, the driver is our neighbor. If we are missing an ingredient for supper, we can call the driver and he will pick it up his way home, no app required!

· People are laid back, get their work done, they enjoy tea with one another and want to make sure that you have had something to eat. One of the most repeated questions to any Nepali is “Have you eaten?” If you haven’t, they will feed you.

· No natural gas pipelines come into the homes for hot water or heating. There is well established business in natural gas containers that hook up to the kitchen stove tops. Some homes have solar water heating on the roof to heat the water. On chilly days, you wear a lot of clothes in the house including a stocking hat. You might heat up a tea kettle of water to add to a bucket of cold water so you have warm water bucket bath. Steve’s favorite self-treat is a warm bucket shower, but he is getting used to cold showers!

· All the work is done in flip flops and with no gloves. It doesn’t matter if you are building a road, building a wall, planting, driving a motorcycle, or walking to town. Flip flops get the job done. Even if it is cold out, flip flops are the choice of footwear. We stand out with our tennis shoes on.

· As we walk through the narrow paths of the village, our host mother is on the lookout for things to eat or use. She will pick a thistle, strip it and eat it because it is good for her heart. She will pick mulberries to feed us. She has taken a branch from a plant to propagate once we get home.

The local farmers are getting used to us stopping by to say hello and ask questions about what they are doing. It is currently a transition time with winter wheat being harvested and corn or rice being planted. We have planted 4 vegetable gardens, started 10 mushroom bags, and trimmed diseased orange trees. Steve was able to help a local farmer vaccinate his 3 pigs. We are in awe of how they manage the local produce without refrigeration or canning. There is a lot of drying of grains and some municipal cold storage of the potato crop. We are awaiting the monsoon season in June. Currently it is quite dry.

A reminder of the disclaimer from our first post, any opinions that we may share are ours alone and are not Peace Corps’ position.

Till our next post, enjoy spring and keep your clothes separate from your goats!

What started as Liisa’s foreign exchange student passion of serving others throughout the world, combined with 20 year old Steve’s irrational promise to join her post retirement, has happened. The 10 weeks of training culminated in our swearing in ceremony last week as Peace Corps Volunteers.

Since we’ve been in-country, there was an election that resulted in a shift from previous generations of political leaders to younger political leaders. Time will tell about their ability to change the socio-economic status of Nepal. Nepal has been an elected democracy starting in 2008, with a constitution in 2015. Amongst these early days of democratic government, they have also rebuilt from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that resulted in 4,680 deaths, hundreds of thousands of homes/buildings demolished and over $10 billion in damages (50% of Nepal’s yearly GDP). What we’ve witnessed in our short time here are people that believe strongly in family bonds and making the best with what you have. Their genuine spirit, hard work, and resourcefulness combined with generous hospitality is truly remarkable.

Secondly, we’ve transitioned from trainees to volunteers. We feel very prepared for our two years of service, not because we’re language experts (very far from it), but that we have support from our host community, host family, Peace Corps staff and fellow volunteers. This entire assembly of support and passion for building peace in the world through friendships (Peace Crops mission statement plug) has been inspiring and humbling. Our host family during our training time opened their home and welcomed us into their family. We’re very grateful for all we’ve learned.

Next, during our first three months at our permanent site, our primary objective is continuing to improve our language skills and getting to know our Nepali community. This will mean drinking a lot of tea (Steve’s working on moving from pop to tea) with our neighbors, community members, and local government officials. We remain focused on learning the language with the assistance of a local language tutor.

We continue to be amazed by what we experience here. Our new village has built some impressive dry stack walls in order to terrace the land. The steps through the hillsides which serve as a sidewalk between homes, have very heavy stones as the steps. We very familiar with the work it takes to install something like that. We are sure the work was done by hand with people power. Being a passenger in a bus or jeep no longer frightens us as we have witnessed the communication between drivers with honking and blinkers as they work together to share the road based on the horsepower of your engine! Daalbhaat is served twice a day and we are loving it. We feel quite healthy with our Nepali diet. Liisa loves the free ranging goats, dogs, and chickens.

We appreciate how a Nepali’s face lights up when we acknowledge them with a bow and “Namaste”. When they dress up they look amazing and sparkly. When they are working, anything goes, fabrics, prints, colors.

A lot of field work and construction is done in flip flops. Nepalis of all ages can walk with such agility up and down the smallest path or balance on the narrowest path. They never seem to be out of breath.

Our permanent site location that we just moved to this week is located in the Parbat district of Nepal, about 6 to 8 hours of bus and jeep ride west of Kathmandu. Peace Corps values privacy, so we’ll not share any site specifics including our host family. We’re in the hilly region of Nepal at 4,200 feet of elevation and on a moderate clear day we can see the Himalayans from our balcony.

It is great to be doing our service together. As older volunteers, we are given much respect and a lot of stares. We’ve been told we are an affable and beautiful couple. Liisa enjoys wearing her Nepali clothes as they are comfortable and practical. Liisa has the common field work style clothing which gets an additional 5 seconds of starring.

This morning Steve went for a run in the new village. Our host father went with him as Peace Corps wants us to be accompanied wherever we go for the first month. Our dear host father ran in flip flops. Dedication.

The pronunciation is another level of the language. Our ears are starting to hear all the nuances. Our mouths are slow to figure out how to form all the sounds. We are meet with many questioning looks as we speak Nepali. Often times we engender much laughter, which makes the learning entertaining.

Our fellow Peace Corps trainees voted Steve to be the person to give the speech of appreciation to our Nepali host families during the goodbye-thank you party as we move on to our permanent site. I am so proud of him especially since the speech needs to be in Nepali.

We have been learning how to grow mushrooms in a plastic bag, make a plastic low tunnel to extend the growing season, vermiculture, composting, and seedling nursery construction. The soil at our training site is mostly clay which requires much manure compost. Everything is done with very few tools and all people power

The pace of life is rhythmic and not stressful, even if the day is long. Most people are up by 6:00 as the sun is rising and go to bed after the last dhal bhaat (yes, their meals are called lentils and rice) as late as 8:30 (after milking the cow). There is always time to visit as you cross paths with neighbors on the road, by your house, in the field or at the market.

Nepal is proving to be a friendly place. Even though our language is lacking, we greet people with a friendly and respectful namaste!

Liisa

Summary

Nepali people are very friendly, lots of rice and lentils, lots of Peace Corps training, a few new adventures, and looking forward to what lies ahead. We miss you all!

Couple of beginning disclaimers:

1. Any opinions that we’ve shared or that could be extracted from this article are strictly the opinions of ourselves.

2. This Substack feed is in Steve’s name, and Liisa is half of the contribution.

What have we been up to?

After our initial staging in Philadelphia on Jan15th, where we first met our fellow 50+ Peace Corps Nepal cohorts (called N211 means the 211th Peace Corps group to serve in Nepal), we traveled by bus to Newark. We pulled the all-nighter to board a Turkish Airlines flight(s) to Kathmandu with a 6 hour layover in Istanbul. Total travel time of 30 hours, 24 of them air and layover. We left Newark at 1:00 AM on the 16th and landed by 1:00 pm Nepali time on the 18th. Overall, hassle-free flights and painless entry into Nepal (with support of Peace Corps staff meeting us at the airport). Wow, the Istanbul airport is a city that never sleeps. Old and young travelers are in such good spirits. There are so many food options. Lots of shopping. Beautiful architecture.

Our first week was an hour +/- east of Kathmandu at a site that had both housing and training facilities. As Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs), we had full days of scheduled training for language, culture, policies, and host family living preparations. We also had a number of medical briefings and got our final vaccinations. Highlights included meeting our USA interim ambassador (Charge D Affaires - the title given when the Deputy Chief of Mission fills in when no USA ambassador) and getting to know our fellow N211 trainees and Peace Corps Staff. All are very impressive individuals committed to an outreach from America to Nepal, and vice versa. As Peace Corps volunteers, we were told to consider ourselves USA ambassadors (with the small “a”) This was also the week we started eating Daal Bhaat (lentils & rice) with our right hand, no utensils. That was quite a new experience that has now grown on us.

On the second week, we were relocated 2 hours east of Kathmandu, to a semi-urban setting for the next 9 weeks. All N211 cohorts were moved into “training” host families. This host family relocation was a good next step of acclimating to our next two years as a volunteer. Our host pariwaar (family) has been very helpful and transitioned us over to our language immersion learning process. We’ve got our own room and bathroom (including a toilet - what modern convivences!) and even solar heated hot water. Our training host family includes two children under 16, with great English, along with parents and one grandmother. The dad is a computer repair technician in Kathmandu. He comes home on most Saturdays. The mom is super woman. She milks the cow, moves the dung (aka as cow manure) to the field, plants potatoes, fixes meals, and does all the religious things for the family. They’ve been instructed to speak only Nepali with us to help on language, but being able to use some English has been helpful as we gain Nepali words and sentence structure.

Peace Corps keeps us very busy with a 6 days/week training schedule. The standard work week in Nepal is 6 days a week with Saturday off. Most days start with a 7:30 small group language class, back to our host family homes at 9:30 for daalbhaat, 40 minute walk to town (includes 4 hills and one still makes us perspire) and with more language and technical training until 5:00. Not much free time with a 40 minute walk home to beat the 6:30 PM curfew. Yes, we’ve got a curfew. Our walks back and forth to town have given us a chance to interact more with local Nepalis. One gets a smile and a greeting from anyone that we see with a namaste, hands held upright together along with a bow of the head. It is really an amazing way to greet the one another!

Some sites we’ve observed on the way to town.

There’s lots more to share with all, but we’ll save those topics for later notes. Our goal will be once a month to post our experiences.

We think of you and pray you are all well.

Feel free to send a chat or call to WhatsApp, Steve’s connection is

May the road rise to meet you and the wind be always at your back!

Steve & Liisa