Buses and waffles

I might as well get into a good habit of writing every few days while I have the time, so here goes post number two of random thoughts and stories.

Our neighbor, Robin from Norway, came down last night for evening banana bread and tea. Very cozy! He is a Norwegian student at a Buddhist school here in Kathmandu, and has been very helpful. Halfway through the meal the electricity suddenly came back on, (it was off) and we all jumped. After some ooing and aahing (light, woohoo!) I started thinking about how we start appreciating these things in a new way here. Small things, like electricity, warm water or a driver who uses his blinkers (!) make us happy. Did they make us happy at home? We’re actually getting pretty good at doing things in the dark here. Every day power is off for 3 to 6 hours or so (supposedly following a schedule.. haha) to save electricity. Our candles are at all times placed in strategic spots around the apartment, and by now it feels quite normal to do everything from reading to eating to peeing by candlelight.

In the outside world our biggest achievement since we arrived is, without a doubt, learning to take the bus. Did I say bus? I meant the little white vans that rattle along, fitting up to 34 people inside (yes, we've counted!), including the people often hanging on in the open door. These microbuses (that’s what they’re called) don’t really ever stop. There is a guy standing in the door who is in charge of shouting out the destination of the bus, shoving people inside, holding them in, and making them pay. A slap on the roof means stop, two means go. To get on a bus you have to be quite agressive; stepping out into the road to ask where it’s going, and then scrambling in while it’s still moving slowly. The first day, Anna and I ended up with the stand-in-the-door, hang-on-to-the-roof, look-out-for-telephone-poles spots. These are really not bad. Andrea was bent double with her butt outside and her head just under the roof inside, and of course Nepalis love to laugh at people (especially white ones) who don’t know what they’re doing. The first few days I’m sure we gave a lot of joy and entertainment to our fellow passengers, but the last couple of days we’ve actually managed to do the whole 1 ½ hour ride and transfer smoothly! They don’t even make us pay more than the average Nepali, which is a sure sign that we don’t look like clueless tourists anymore. Progress!

Our first bus ride included a monsoon rainshower. I am talking heavy, hard drops that soak you to your skin within seconds, not an annoying drizzle. We got off to transfer to another bus, and found ourselves splashing around in an ankle-deep river (the road), trying to see through the pounding bucketfuls of water being dumped over our heads. Running around in 3 lanes of white minivans, trying to find the right one.. we soon abandoned all hopes of keeping anything dry on our bodies for the rest of that day. But the rain brings back good memories: of muddy swimmingpools in the streets, warm rain, catching frogs.. the roads are just as muddy and stinky as they always were. We try not to think of what we’re stepping in on our way home (to quote Andrea: ”it looks like we’re walking in a nice stream of diarrhea” – unfortunately this is probably not too far from the truth).

Today we went to the Norwegian embassy's friday "waffleparty", to meet other Norwegians (and for the brown cheese of course). We met Alice Holmen, who recruited us, and who is going to show us around HDCS headquarters (the organization that runs the center where we will be working) on Monday. We are looking forward to getting started, even though we enjoy the days of roaming around town, reading, eating out and knitting by candlelight at home. I will tell you more about our job when we've seen it ourselves!

Sentence of the day:
"yo microbusmaa chautis janaa chha!"
(= there are thirty-four people in this microbus.)